alt Hacker News> 3. Nonethless there is and should be a limit to wealth acquisition, given moral hazard.
How do we determine that limit ?
Most Americans ( middle class and above ) are richer than most people in the world.
Way richer than most people in Africa or poorer parts of Asia can ever aspire to be.
Consider that when competing for resources these poor people are competing with wealthy middle class Americans.
Add to that the USD being world's reserve currency makes life easy for a small part of global population earning in the USA and makes it harder for people in every other country whose currency might not be competitive compared to the USD.
Replies
By legislation and policymaking - just like any other numbers we as a society end up picking (like the age to get a drivers license or buy alcohol or the income tax brackets).
Just like those cases, what other countries are doing would mostly be irrelevant - except, just like now, people may try to find arbitrage opportunities by getting creative about where they live.
> How do we determine that limit ?
How about a cap relative to GDP?
Elon Musk's net worth is 3% of USA's annual GDP and 1% of global GDP.
I'm not a fan of limiting wealth among the upper class. But I am a fan of stopping a small number of individuals from controlling a significant percent of the world's GDP because if that trend continues, we'll end up with individual people more powerful than the governments that are supposed to keep them in check.