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Comment by jdiff | Hacker News Reader

This system doesn't eliminate people. It eliminates the pointless and harmful hoarding of wealth.

Your usage of the word "hoarding" implies a Scrooge McDuck view of wealth where its just stashed away in some vault - never put to use. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

My mental image is one of unelected, untouchable oligarchs taking actions that they're accountable to nobody for. That's far worse than Scrooge McDuck.

So you're imagining President Xi and the House of Saud, I take it? As long as you aren't imagining someone like Elon Musk who is certainly accountable to his debtors and shareholders and Boards, then this can be viewed as a realistic take.

If you're talking about people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates who have giant wealth because of their investments in businesses, then arguing that they should have that wealth taken away would literally take money out of the coffers of businesses that are currently using that money for things like payroll.

The GP is correct -- these people are not sitting around on a vault of gold like McDuck. Their money is in the economy, doing stuff. That's what investments are. That's why investors exist, and why they get a cut of the profit for taking a risk and lending their money to industry.

That's not the same thing as hoarding. It's always the case that the wealth of even unelected untouchable oligarchs is comprised of productive assets, not hoarded in a secret pile.

It's put to use by making the other person go in debt. Happy?

This is the same mistake Lawrence Van Dough makes in Richie Rich. He assumes the massive vault must be full of gold bars and diamonds, the wealth of the family. But it's not. It's invested in banks and stocks etc. The money is not just sitting there, it's producing other activity in the economy.

The good news is banks continuously print money to make sure that there's more than enough cash to go around.

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