Ask HN: What can we do to stop the rich from getting richer?
The current political developments indicate that the Anacyclosis [0] theory is true, the political caste is closely engaged with big business and the small voter has almost no influence in changing this development . Same is true for the media, which are with a few exceptions by globalists, so the fourth estate is, to check those in power. Morover, in germany - as an example - flat market prices are dictated by a few coorps too [1].
Are we doomed to watch the system evolve into an oligarchie/dictatorship or are there some bottom-up approaches to stop it?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis [1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nachdenkseiten.de%2F%3Fp%3D46219%23h18&edit-text=&act=url
48 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadThe October revolution also didn't end well.
It was all a disaster through and through. From La Terreur to Napoleon and his wars, it was a disaster.
Worse than that, La Terreur set a pattern that has been repeated (and, sadly, "improved") in the many years since.
I'm fine with that.
But you might actually be more concerned with accumulation of power, in which case let's address that directly.
It's that simple. The rich are rich because you give them money. If you and everyone else makes it a point to try out startups rather than always buying from the established company, buy from local businesses instead of big chains, buy fresh local produce instead of processed foods, rent from individual families instead of big corporate apartment complexes, invest your money yourself or stick it in Vanguard instead of paying a fund manager, and so on, the rich will become less rich.
New people will become rich instead, but you don't expect to eliminate the whole concept of wealth, right? (The corollary is that if you want to become rich yourself, don't spend money and invest your time in activities that will cause other people to give you money.)
The other suggestions are good.
That's fine for things like food and drink, but for everything else there's a huge amount of "stealth consolidation" over the past few decades. For example, if you want a pair of glasses there is literally one company that make them - EssilorLuxottica[1]. They own everything around glasses. All the differentiation is false - they're just brands owned by two mega-corporations. The same is true of cars (14 giant corporations owning 60+ brands), food and drink (a few hundred giant corporations owning thousands of brands), etc.
[1] A good read about them https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/10/the-invisible-p...
Support the land value tax (Georgism). Much of rich people's wealth is tied up in the land value of big cities.
Imagine asking what you can do, to stop the sun from rising tomorrow. Your question is not too far off.
The world is going to go, the way it's going to go. If you've ever tried to get a relative or friend, or gasp yourself, to cease a harmful habit or pick up a good habit (getting in good shape, quitting smoking, etc) - you'll know how much or how little you can do to stop anyone, from doing anything.
So really, the answer to your question is - pick something you know you should do, but aren't doing, and go do that with any consistency. Something that is unquestionably positive - not something along the lines of changing others. If you can stick with it, do one more, or do one less of what you know you shouldn't do. Repeat.
If you can do that with any consistency - you'll quickly become a role model to some, and have a positive impact on society as a whole, which's what you seem to really be after.
There's a path of violence - that appeals largely to young people, and then the path of peace, that one gets around to, usually when there's no more you can accomplish with violence, and lots to fix. Path of violence is thinking if only others were more like me, the world would be a better place. The path of peace is realizing that's a delusional thought, and that if you want to get along with others, that's a counter-productive way of living your life. Everyone wants to get along with others - not everyone is smart/wise/whatever enough to realize the place (violence) their attempts are coming from, is at least half the problem.
The equilibrium may shift due to individual greed of capitalists. If it gets bad enough something may change for a generation or two.
Probably very short-sighted, but interesting topic nevertheless.
To accomplish that, you would need to exert more pressure on politicians than the lobbyists, who fight against such things, do. Since the lobbyists have more money, it would have to be social and peer pressure. Also, you would have to pressure individuals (ie: influential people, not their companies. Influential politicians, not their entire party).
With that done, the obvious is possible. Raise taxes on the rich, crack down on tax havens, gut military spending, expand public heathcare, improve infrastructure, etc.
democracy will always reduce itself to who can yell the loudest, who can create the most fear, who can be the most persuasive to the mass (even if not a sound factual argument.)
and then every blue moon you will have a Trump, that finds a way to amplify their image on the cheap, by getting everyone to talk ABOUT them. all press being good press, and the bad press is free.
So get busy changing yourself and raising new instantiations not thusly flawed.
and see all of nature follows a law of square roots. If you have 10,000 people, 100 will have all the money. If you have 10,000 music artist, only 100 will be getting their songs heard. This is a law of nature. Stop fighting against it and spend some time understanding it.
Another fact to note is, that economic inequality is a relatively recent phenomenon. The hunter-gatherer system - where people shared equally all economic "product", but exceptional contributors were rewarded with regard (social signal) - lasted for tens of thousands of years.
These observations suggest how a system can be built bottom-up, that can topple capitalism. It will look like the HG system, but will be held together by apps running on personal computing devices to simulate the economic transparency necessary for the system to work. Crypto currencies are a caricature of such a system (the important parts are in place, but the proportions are way off).
That is, many people seek wealth, and signal it through a lack of frugality. Look at the number of owners of super and mega yachts, and tell me how they are frugal. There are a lot of such yachts, yes?
(You could say that they are frugal because they live well within their means, but that's not what you meant when you singled out Buffett and Kamprad.)
Look at billionaries like the Koch brothers, or the DeVos family. Money gives political power, and both of those families have used their wealth to push their respective political agendas.
Thing is, that can also be interpreted as "social/psychological signalling", could it not?
So it seems like anything that a rich person does can be interpreted as "social/psychological signalling".
I don't know what you refer to when you say "one billion people ... a trillion USD/year in value." Does that include all of the people who sing for free in their church choir, or who volunteer to organize a race, etc? Again, if you say those are all examples of "social/psychological signalling", then I think that definition is so broad as to be meaningless.
Much has been written about Carnegie's philantropy. Quoting Wikipedia, '"Maybe with the giving away of his money," commented biographer Joseph Wall, "he would justify what he had done to get that money."' Isn't that a rather different interpretation than yours?
Note too that Carnegie was far from frugal.
Finally, you reference to hunter-gatherer systems (excepting the settled hunter-gatherers) in what seems which reminds me of Marx's description of "primitive communism." If I continue with a Marxian analysis, those hunter-gatherer systems had no mechanism for capital accumulation, and it's that accumulation which contributes to the social power imbalance we see now.
How does "economic transparency", much less "apps running on personal computing devices" , result in a major equalization of social power gained from capital accumulation?
I mentioned frugality only to hint that these folks must have non-economic motives for working. I claim that the motive is signaling. And the megayacht owners - what else might they do with their Veblen goods than signal their status? Does Paul Allen need 50 bathrooms on Octopus (just guessing here, not sure about the exact number) to address his physiological needs?
> Look at billionaries like the Koch brothers, or the DeVos family..
In my opinion signaling is a manifestation of a deeper motivational mechanism that I call the modeling instinct. Basically we have instinct to build perfect world model in our brains and one of the way we test its quality is by creating goods and services. The difference between the Koch brothers and - say - Buffet is that they test different aspects of the world models - that part, which is interesting for them the most. We all carry unique, but incomplete and distorted world representations and therefore tend to test our model-building effort in various domains. Signaling plays however an important role - it is a measure of how successful is our modeling effort.
> I don't know what you refer to when you say "one billion people ... a trillion USD/year in value
There is actually a research done in this field. See for example Salamon, L.M., Sokolowski, S.W., Haddock, M., 2011. Measuring the Economic Value of Volunteer Work Globally - Concepts, Estimates, and a Roadmap to the Future (2011). Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics 82, 217–252. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8292.2011.00437.x
In personal communication one of the authors confirmed that also FOSS development has been included in the estimates.
> Re Carnegy.
Let's not focus on frugality. hopefully what I write above elucidates this point sufficiently.
> Re hunters - gatherers.
The takeaway from this should be the fact, that a stable human society can exist that is economically equal, if it maintains potentially unequal "merit" signaling. This by the way nicely fits to the idea of how a just society should look like according to Rawls.
> How does "economic transparency"...
The HG economic system fell apart once people lost ability to see what material goods their neighbors acquired - simply put. This transparency must be restored in order to build economically equal society. I believe technology will play central role in re-instituting a HG-like economic system. The loss of privacy in social networks, the (wiki)leaks of confidential information, the cameras in our cities - that is a part of the pendulum swing toward a more transparent society - which is a prerequisite to a more fair world.
Maybe I should conclude the main point of what I am trying to communicate here - people can be completely happy (and economically productive) even if they are economically equal, if their ability to signal their naturally unequal abilities is unrestricted.
Thank you for the comments.
So what can we do ? Roll back globalization. Heavily tax or outright prevent international movement of goods and people.
We should be asking "What can we do to make becoming wealthy easier for everyone?"
https://www.thevenusproject.com/resource-based-economy/
This utopian idea from Jacque Fresco is practically impossible to implement unless an all-powerful benevolant dictator type AI is in charge of everything.
What can we do to stop the smart from getting smarter?
I've heard that 99% of the gallery paintings were created by 1% of the painters, and 99% of the best-selling books were created by 1% of the writers, and 99% of inventions were invented by 1% of the scientists. If we don't stop this, there'll be no paintings/books/inventions left for us regular folk, and then what will we do oh god what will we do.