alt Hacker NewsThe power and influence (and damage caused) does not scale linearly with net worth. And you don’t need to have money on hand to be able to use it to harm others, you can e.g. use it as a collateral for loans and funding to build your child crushing machine.
Personally I wager society would be better if the excess wealth of billionaires was simply deleted, or burned. It would be better yet if that wealth was used in our shared funds to build common infrastructure and services. Leaving such wealth in such few hands is really the worst you could possibly do for society.
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Uh-huh. It brings clarity to say you'd be happy to have the wealth destroyed. These are two different concepts, and the second one (about redistribution) always muddles these conversations.
1. Billionaires shouldn't wield lots of wealth, because it's scary.
Sticking to that concept makes the discussion a lot clearer. Never mind concept 2, it's haunted by the futile spirit of Marx and he's throwing crockery around.
Why not just force them to to build the common infrastructure and services, and in exchange they get to keep the money? e.g. Jeff Bezos has to build some subway stations in NYC or something.
That way you get somebody with a proven track record of building big projects who is also motivated by money, so the common infrastructure and services is handled competently.