you will find that once we have the first multitrillionaire family, you have a default single family ruling the planet. If you find that societies need allow that to happen, just because there is nothing stopping them - well bend the knee.
I think a billion is a ridiculous number that no one should be hoarding and anything over one billion should be taxed at 99 to 100%. It still allows all people to be as creative and successful as they like, still be ridiculously and absurdly wealthy, and all that taxed money can be used for real good.
They invariably use it to weild incredibly outsized political power and influence to subvert and co-opt our most important institutions in ways that are detrimental to those of us who aren't obscenely wealthy.
No one should be allowed to accrete that much wealth to themselves.
Man, you're over here down voting me before you give me a chance to speak? What's up?
Bezos creating Amazon is a huge thing. Just about anything you could want showing up at your door the next day for a good price. I grew up in a pretty small town and watched all of these small businesses go under once we got a Walmart. I couldn't imagine how a force that large being able to buy everything in bulk for resale could ever be toppled. Then here comes Amazon, and the beautiful thing about it is any small business can list their products on that platform and have global reach without having to invest in the infrastructure that it would otherwise take to expand their customer base to that scale.
Elon and Space X is another obvious example. Before him the US was spending an obscene amount of money getting satellites to space while being almost entirely reliant on Russian rockets. And as we've seen that isn't the best country to be propping up. Could a government have mastered reusable rockets? Probably eventually, but Elon's approach of speed running failure after failure and learning from each crash exponentially sped up the time frame to invent that technology, putting the US clearly at the top of the pack when it comes to the space race. And because of those rockets we no have reliable, fast, and cheap satellite internet that blows away any internet from geostable satellites. If either one of those gambles didn't work he would have been bankrupt. Then he was a pioneer in EVs and power walls when there wasn't yet a market for either. Those projects took massive amounts of private capital when governments weren't dedicated to those issues and when financial institutions wouldn't invest in those technologies. And now he's funding the technologies necessary for a colony on the moon and Mars. With government help, but still with a massive investment of his own money.
I think people need to have a different outlook on massive individual wealth. It isn't the case that there's just a pie of money and the larger his slice the less we have. The entire world is growing that pie. Look at the global poverty rate 100 years ago compared to today. Look at the best case predictions of ending global poverty and how we blew those predictions out of the water. All thanks to capitalism. When it comes to something like a colony on the moon we had to wait till the world in general had enough capital take a risk on something so relitively unnecessary as a colony in space.
So you’re saying when they reach 999million they should quit and let the company crash, affecting everyone except themselves because they already have enough for generations?
"but that doesn’t mean we should automatically punish someone"
No. Thats exactly what it means. Countries with extremely high tax rates on their top 5% actually have the money to increase the quality of life in the country in question.
May I ask how flying car tech is useful elsewhere?
The tech behind it, like precision thrusters, control systems, and lightweight materials, could have applications in spacecraft, satellites, and robotics. The real benefit would be making existing technology smaller, cheaper, or more precise, though, not every application is necessarily a breakthrough.
You know microwave ovens came from radar technology developed for military use, right? That's the point. Technological advancements don't have to be immediately practical or even seem necessary. They can become building blocks for future innovations that we can't predict today.
I already did. You just can’t seem to understand that even if flying cars themselves aren’t practical right now, the technology developed to make them possible could benefit other technologies in the future.
Pull your head out of your ass. There’s a difference between thrust technology from the ’80s and the kind of technology we’re seeing now that can actually propel and lift a freaking car.
Seriously, man, don’t let your bias make you stupid. You can do better.
How is that? Billionaires work no different than the value of your house increasing. They hire people who do the work and adds value to their companies.
It’s predatory and you’re cool with that?
Hiring people is predatory now? If i hire people to come do the roof of my house and value of my house increases its predatory?
This is such a silly fucking argument. So I just shouldn’t use computers? How would people work? Go to school? There is no alternative otherwise I’d fucking buy it.
This is such a silly fucking argument. So I just shouldn’t use computers? How would people work? Go to school? There is no alternative otherwise I’d fucking buy it.
Flying cars is a total shitshow when you try to put it into real world application. What happens if the car shuts off? It falls on buildings and kills people’s. What about people that can’t drive? Well now you have it crashing and more fatalities. How about airspace? There’s planes, helicopters etc. this list goes on and on.
Sir, cars shut off all the time and we still use them.
“What about people that can’t drive?” I meant, we have many people can’t drive normal cars, they’re sitting at home or use PT.
“How about airspace?” With more advanced programs, we could use them to communicate fly paths for every vehicles. Or put certain limits on when to use. Mind you, we still have regular roads to use.
These are engineering and regulatory challenges, not fundamental technological limitations.
Redundant propulsion and safety systems, autonomous navigation, collision avoidance, and automated air traffic management could address many of these concerns.
None of the problems you’ve listed are inherently insurmountable.
With that said, I do think there are still too many technological and economic hurdles for flying cars to become practical in the near future, even setting aside regulatory challenges. The technology simply isn’t mature or cost-effective enough yet to make mass adoption viable.
The latter paragraph is exactly what I’m saying. Idk why folks think this is some life changing tech that is going to be instituted now. Flying cars just isn’t viable.
And why haven't thrusters been commercially viable until now? Maybe its because we didnt have the guidance technology to properly calibrate them nor the correct capitalistic incentives to make them viable until spacex used them to land rockets. Its called innovation. Blindly saying that x technology existed y years ago is a brainless way to discredit people. There have been things that have existed for thousands of years that we're still improving. But its so much easier to be negative about other people's cool ideas right?
Oh good, centrists that are all about the "nuance" of letting people exploit others' labor so they can get a big number that impresses nobody except idiots. Nice
Make me. And...really? If you think billionaires work hard enough for all that money themselves I have a bridge to sell you.
People are tired of working their asses off and getting scraps while dudes that play games with their money that they get from our labor get richer and richer. You wanna fix that? Solve economic inequality, or the wound is just going to get worse and worse, honey.
You want to fix this by punishing others for their success?
Seriously, there are problems with mega companies and exploitations in the world, but blanketly blame billionaires for your failures in your own life is just as bad.
If you can’t understand this simple concept, maybe that’s the reason why your life sucks right now.
When someone's success is entirely from others' work, is it really theirs? I'm not for punishing the hard worker, I'm for punishing the leech.
My life doesn't suck. I work hard every day at a job that's actually not terrible, make a living wage plus a little extra. I have a roof over my head and meals to eat every day. All that's because I work a union job that constantly advocates for the worker against exploitative business practices and wage theft. So I'm not blaming billionaires for my failures, I'm blaming them for the state of things I see out the window, on the street, and in my fellow workers that aren't so fortunate.
But keep defending people that see you as a peasant! I'm sure they'll reward you like a good boy/girl/enby any day now. Maybe they'll even let you lick their loafers!
That’s your main issue. You seem to think that labor is the sole reason a business succeeds, but the reality is that every level of a business contributes to the company’s success.
This is why you don’t start a business yourself and instead choose to complain about inequality here.
As I said, exploitation and corporate greed absolutely exist, but the issue is far more complex than simply saying, “Billionaires are bad because they don’t work as hard as I do.”
Mm, yesss, more nuance...the situation is always more complex than I understand, apparently. Even though I understand quite a lot.
If you really wanna have a serious discussion with a commie, explain what you mean by "every level" of the business. Because 90% of a company are the working class people. I'm not talking about people that are doing organizational work or directing/managing labor. I'm talking about people that sit at the top, own most of the shares, and parasitize companies for short-term profits via stock buybacks, dividends, and layoffs, rather than prioritizing long-term gains and the quality of the worker.
Nice. Ask a centrist a question about their subjective view of a vague statement, and they'll just call you an idiot and/or dodge the question. Many such cases!
Hope licking those loafers while telling yourself you're above others feels good. Mmm, cognitive dissonance...
I will add to this "we don't need" popular commentary going on...
Try telling that to New York City during the 1907 bank crisis, when they defaulted on their debts, no banks to front them a new loan, and JP Morgan bailed them out.
Except he's the kind of person who, when the chips are down, would rather watch large swaths of the population sink into destitution and even starvation than give up a single dollar of his wealth to help a single person who he doesn't feel "earned it".
You’re talking about two different things now. Living with roommates, working 40 hours a week, and not being able to afford drinks on a weekend isn’t being destitute or starving. It’s called going through the process of being someone of value and earning a high salary.
I'm talking about the speculative future scenario where much of the work that humans who don't own meaningful amounts of capital rely upon for survival is automated away.
I was not attempting to describe the relative privation enforced by our current system (which is still a very real and significant problem) but rather the potential for it to become objective, absolute privation once businesses no longer need their labor.
Also, there are far more people who need to work to survive than there are high paying jobs. The shortfall in America alone is in the tens of millions.
Pointing to individual examples and saying "anyone can achieve upward mobility if they get off their ass and work!" is a fig leaf used by apologists for corporatist capitalism to obscure the fact that the majority of people stuck in low wage jobs can't ascend to a high paying job, no matter how hard they work.
Edit: Lastly, I think it's pretty telling that you base a person's value on how well paid they are.
No you’re not lol
Automation? Speculative scenarios? I don’t believe that. Your gripe is that people can’t make a “meaningful” wage right off the bat.
I’m not saying anyone can achieve upward mobility - let me know where you got that from.
I’m saying logically, a persons value in the marketplace is generally determined by their skill level. Like how middle school teeball can’t generate billions in revenue but pro baseball can.
I was speaking within the context of a future point in time, at least 4 years hence, in which the labor force is replaced by robots. This is the context you yourself established in the comment to which I was replying. How are you unable to grasp that?
And you haven't bothered to address the fact that there are vastly more people who need a job to meet their basic needs than there are high paying jobs.
Confusingly, you've also conceded a point that I didn't even assert. I said not everybody can achieve upward mobility and you misunderstood it as "not just anybody can".
My point was that a certain number of individuals can ascend to a higher socioeconomic stratum, but that our economy is structured such that there isn't room in the span from lower middle class to oligarch to accommodate every working person. Our current economic system holds, by various mechanisms (and quite deliberately), roughly the bottom two quintiles of society in perpetual poverty, precarity, and relative privation in order to ensure there is always a large pool of desperate labor than can be purchased on the cheap.
It kind of sounds like you believe that it is good and natural that there is a heavily striated socioeconomic hierarchy, and that those at the top fully deserve their station in life, as do those at the bottom. Am I off base here?
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u/SorryCashOnly 23h ago
All of these things can coexist. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Yes, flying cars may be impractical right now, but the technology developed in the process could still have useful applications elsewhere.
Yes, we may not need billionaires, but that doesn’t mean we should automatically punish someone for building a successful business and becoming one.
If you can’t understand the nuance here, STAY AWAY FROM POLITICS.