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Notes -
What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
New to The Motte, looking for constructive, critical discussion.
Here's an example of what I mean by a "fundamental":
Every economic system that has seemed credible to most people since the dawn of civilization has revolved around the legal establishment and safeguarding of property through the concept of ownership.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it. Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative. Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
Here's something from years back, before I'd zeroed in on the perverse nature of ownership:
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
/images/17459352527399495.webp
I think the question of which economic system is “right” should relate to function and results, which necessarily involves understanding evolutionary instincts (perhaps more than anything else) and metrics of national wellbeing. Our evolutionary nature enjoys both ownership and sharing. It requires incentive and status signaling to do things. It works best with peer competition for status.
So the question of ownership should be a question of degree, not “what is it” or “is it good”; ownership is our evolved desire and understanding that a thing is ours, which we crave knowing, and this concept is simply implemented differently in different economic systems. The healthiest and most dominant people have even more of this instinct, it would seem. A big problem with “capitalism” in my mind is: if we are giving people resources in excess of what is required to incentivize them, then it’s wasted resources. If Bezos would do all the same Amazon stuff at only 20% of earnings, then it’s wasteful to allow Bezos to keep the leftover 80%. Because all the wealth of billionaires in America combined is the lifetime earnings of something like 1.25 million median Americans; more when factoring in billionaire lifetime earnings and not just current wealth; there are better uses for it than expensive properties and cosmetics and ex wives and so on. Like, fuck, imagine being able to allocate one million people toward a project? And the project is necessarily better than the prodigal billionaire? It’s crazy all the resources we waste based on the modern fiction that people “deserve” what “they” made. I want utopia, not capitalist purity spiraling.
That question is completely off-topic to my statements and my invitation.
And to the rest of your comment, you're thinking wholly within the paradigm in which rights have been predicated as principled deprivation. I'm asking for an alternative to that predication. So, although there's some good stuff there, your comment is nonresponsive to my post.
If its not about whats right, then in what sense do you want an alternative? In a purely conceptual sense, denying any ownership rights is an alternative.
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Well, it's not as though billionaires generally put their assets into swimming pools full of gold coins and go diving. Most of that wealth is tied up in the companies and being put to work providing additional economic value. The very wealthy also tend to use spare wealth for other goals including charity and pushing boundaries which the government can't or won't: c.f. Blue Origin. On balance, I expect billionaires to be more competent and frankly lucid than your 'we' which I'm interpreting to mean 'the government'.
One has but to look to Europe to see what happens when 'we' make sure to not let innovative, driven people 'take' more than their 'fair' share. Stagnation.
And as Kulak once said so well, a 1% annual difference in GDP growth over 100 years is the difference between living in the US and living in Mexico. Still keeps me up at night.
Now, sure, some amount of that wealth is 'wasted' on unnecessary expensive things but A) it's comparatively insignificant and B) that also brings down prices for others since it effectively subsidizes the market. A company producing a cool new item that only the very rich can afford will be blessed by the income and often able to transition to the next level of scale.
I have no problem with billionaires investing, provided that every single time they take that money out for personal use, it is taxed so that most of the returns go to other people, and not wasted on their own consumption. This is an easy way to get the best of both worlds. Charity is part of the problem. Look at how Bezos’ wife spent her fortune on racial justice advocacy. I fundamentally dispute that “charity” can be better than raising the middle class worker’s quality of life, unless that charity is for something that actually does this. I have no problem with a law that demands billionaires give money to useful charities.
As for “subsidizing new technology”, I also dispute this and think that wealth inequality reduces technological development. This is because of economies of scale and competition. You can’t buy a new compact cassette player which is as compact as older models in their heyday, because the factories only built models with such precision because of the millions of people looking to buy them. When it’s only one wealthy person buying something, as opposed to millions of people with more money, the results are always worse. This is due to economies of scale and also due to the tastelessness of most billionaires. A billionaire alone could never get an iPhone made, only tens of millions of consumers (at least). Or if you consider the video game industry — there are billionaires who love video games, yet not a single product made specifically for billionaires. Instead, the best titles are made for millions of consumers, or else by a small group who has the “resources” to attempt to make a groundbreaking title!
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