More Evidence That Extreme Wealth Is Totally Indefensible

[Alpha Male]

The top 1% hold more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. Of COURSE they pay the majority of taxes, they have all the money!

And the idea that they "deserve" it is beyond ridiculous. Most of the money they make is simply via the leverage of already owning money. Our monetary system is designed to ensure that the rich continuously get wealthier and wealthier, merely because they're already ahead. Money isn't a moral good, it's supposed to simply be a means of exchange, the idea that someone should be rewarded simply for already having piles of it is moral idiocy. It's a constantly self re-enforcing perpetuation of injustice.

You mean investing capital can create more capital?

 

[Alpha Male]

Also, it's not just about "giving more money to the school system" (I personally think spending a large amount on education is smart)--it's about changing how educational funds are distributed, and how educational resources are allocated.

If property taxes are the major determining factor of the quality of schools your child attends, then it should be apparent that lower income areas will have inferior schooling than higher income areas.

That becomes a problem when that disparity occurs mostly along historically racial lines. A large percentage of poor people today are Black because of longstanding policies to restrict economic opportunity based on skin color.

"Our problems will never be solved by the white man. The only way that our problem will be solved is when the black man wakes up, clean himself up, stand on his own feet and stop begging the white man, and take immediate steps to do for ourselves the things that we have been waiting on the white man to do for us. Once we do for self then we will be able to solve our own problems"

- Malcolm X

Translation:

BOOTSTRAPS!

 

[Professor Emeritus]

@Alpha Male, do you even understand the differences between the unjust system as it exists and the systems I have proposed? Can you make a critique that addresses the actual issues I called out?

Yes, even in the system I proposed, "investing capital can create more capital." It just wouldn't do so unfairly and destructively.

You mean investing capital can create more capital?

You are hiding behind the "accepted" vocabulary in order to cape for their system.

It's not that investing capital "can" create more capital, which is fair. It's that the system is designed such that the holders of capital will always be favored over the borrowers in every transaction. In fact, due to the way money is created, those giving loans on average HAVE to win and get further ahead, and those taking loans on average HAVE to lose and get further behind, in pretty much every situation other than catastrophically large default levels. (And even in that case, as we've seen, those who control money will immediately rush forth to bail out the wealthy with quickness and ensure their wealth-accumulation immediately restarts, whether or not everyone else's does.)

Someone has digits sitting in a computer stating that they are rich. Literally NOTHING about those digits is helpful to the world. They're just electronic digits. They may have originally come from slavery profits, stealing land, political corruption, who the hell knows. The existence of those digits proves absolutely nothing about the capabilities or ethics of the person whose name they are in. And if you erased those digits from the bank's computers, nothing meaningful about the world would actually change.

Yet the system is designed such that the mere fact of owning digits means you get to have power to say what is done where. And because extremely wealthy people control the Fed and other regulators of the money supply, the system is rigged such that the mere fact of making those decisions is ALWAYS weighted towards wealthy people's electronic digits and power increasing.

Imagine if you had two teams playing basketball. And you made up a rule that said, "The team which is ahead gets to decide where players shoot their free throws from...oh, and we're going to give you 1.2 points per free throw if you're ahead but only 0.8 if you're behind."

Technically that's a "fair" system if both teams started 0-0 and had an equal shot to get ahead. But even then, it would be an incredibly stupid system compared to an equal playing field where teams had equal ability to determine where to take their own shots and shots were worth the same no matter who took them. Add in the fact that the system is NOT fair and a lot of people start out ahead, and you see the problems.

 

[Alpha Male]

Someone has digits sitting in a computer stating that they are rich. Literally NOTHING about those digits is helpful to the world. They're just electronic digits. They may have originally come from slavery profits, stealing land, political corruption, who the hell knows. The existence of those digits proves absolutely nothing about the capabilities or ethics of the person whose name they are in. And if you erased those digits from the bank's computers, nothing meaningful about the world would actually change.

There are 3 ways to own capital:

- Work for it
- Invest for it
- Steal for it

Only 1 of these is detrimental to society.

Unless you can prove that every rich person stole their fortune, you're making a losing argument.

 

[Cynic]

How To Solve Inequality In The United States

Education reform - Wikipedia

Reparations for slavery - Wikipedia

Along with people actually acknowledging the inequality that exists as a product of the system itself, not the individuals within the system. That would keep people from essentially filibustering equality efforts by moralizing about "self-respect".

Maybe if they were given solely to the STEM students and already successful black business people...yes

but be real reparations would only end up back into the hands of white companies ...so in the end what have you really done ?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

There are 3 ways to own capital:

- Work for it
- Invest for it
- Steal for it

Only 1 of these is detrimental to society.

Unless you can prove that every rich person stole their fortune, you're making a losing argument.

There are numerous ways in which all three can be detrimental to society. Obviously there's a shytload of people working in jobs that make society worse.

But let's talk about investment. Let's say someone invests in a coal mine on a mountain. The mountain's landscape and its trees are destroyed to extract the coal, the watershed the mountain supported is indefinitely poisoned due to the runoff, the miners' families all face ever-increasing hospital bills and early deaths decades later due to their work in the mines, and several thousand people contract respiratory disease due to the pollution created when the coal is burned.

And the investor made a profit.

Now, was that investment helpful to society or detrimental to society?

Due to the systematic insanity in the manner in which the system is designed, our current economic landscape is FULL of decisions like this. We're trying to destroy every last bit of nature so we can monetize it, commericialize every last human relationship and interaction so we can monetize it, ignore every bit of air and water and soil pollution because we have to monetize it...and the interest-based system demands that there is no holding back, that it is GROW GROW GROW the economy in every circumstance, whether it is good for society or not.


And all that is without even going into the fact that the money supply is DESIGNED to ensure that borrowers lose in the long run, and that those who hold money win. There is a pro-loaner premium built into the interest rate, above and beyond the cost of the loan and the risk premium and every other justifiable cost, which is there PURELY to ensure that those who hold money creep further and further ahead.

How the hell do you justify that? Do you even know what I'm talking about?


Go back to the quote I put on the first page by Silvio Gesell, the economist who best popularized the modern view of the necessity for negative-interest systems:

In spite of the holy promise of all people to banish war, once and for all, in spite of the cry of millions 'Never a war again,' in spite of all the hopes for a better future, I have this to say: If the present monetary system, based on interest and compound interest, remains in operation, I dare to predict today, that it will take less than 25 years for us to have a new and even worse war. I can foresee the coming development clearly. The present degree of technological advancement will quickly result in a record performance of industry. The buildup of capital will be rapid in spite of the enormous losses during the war, and through its over-supply will lower the interest rate. Money will then be hoarded. Economic activities will diminish and increasing numbers of unemployed persons will roam the streets ... within the discontented masses, wild, revolutionary ideas will arise and also the poisonous plant called "Super-Nationalism" will proliferate. No country will understand the other, and the end can only be war again."

He wrote that in 1919. You should read up on him. Of course, the world (including Fisher and Keynes) has already declared him a prophet once, but the crazy thing is to watch the cycle simply repeat itself again.