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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Most super-wealthy folks are not going to spend anywhere on the order of $200B or even $20B (in the broad timeframe of Elon's payout) on their own consumption. Even if Elon spent $100B on a mission to Mars or whatever it is that he cares about, would you really have reason to object to that, any more than if the money was spent by NASA? (The whole Apollo program and surrounding stuff probably cost on the order of that amount of money once you control for inflation, so there's plenty of precedent.)

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Nope no complaints, but most wealth isn't being spent. If the majority of the wealth was being spent, then there wouldn't be wealth imbalance (as all that money would flow elsewhere into the economy).

The only way a wealth imbalance can occur is that someone sits on wealth and that it continues to compound. The top 1% have wealth greater than the bottom 95% of the population combined. I don't see why its more moral for someone to sit on investments than to have the money distributed to others to spend.

In one case, the money goes to whichever investment the individual favors (e.g. buying tons of gold). In the "redistribute" scenario, it goes to improving the lives of many millions of people in real tangible ways, and creating a more equitable and balanced society and social trust.

The top 1% of the US hold roughly 30% of all the wealth. That's roughly the same as the bottom 90% of the population. I understand there are implementation issues, but I'm merely calling out the obvious immorality of "90% of people should scrape to get by while trustfund kid lives in 4th mansion, because 'market efficiency'".

Wealth that isn't being spent is effectively inert and frozen. It may have some precautionary value for the person who's holding it, but this is immaterial once you get to the million-dollar range, let alone the billions. The only interesting thing to ask about is what happens once the wealth is in fact being spent. (Of course, this wealth is generally invested in productive ventures and not literally 'frozen'; but this is a happy side effect, not something that's expressly chosen by whoever holds it. They're simply allocating it so that it 'compounds' effectively.)

> The only way a wealth imbalance can occur is that someone sits on wealth and that it continues to compound. The top 1% have wealth greater than the bottom 95% of the population combined. I don't see why its more moral for someone to sit on investments than to have the money distributed to others to spend.

The critical insight is that this doesn't actually work. When we say Jeff Bezos is worth $200B, we don't mean that he has $200B of money that's locked up in a vault when it could be redistributed. We mean that there are a variety of productive businesses in the world - for Bezos, mostly Amazon - which he holds ownership claims to. The vast majority of wealth in the modern US isn't money, and can only be converted to money by finding people with lots of money and selling them the right to sit on the investments instead.

That's just not how the economy works.

> Even if Elon spent $100B on a mission to Mars or whatever it is that he cares about, would you really have reason to object to that

Of course I would. It shouldn't be up to Elon how that money (and the capital/labour they command) gets spent. It should be up to all of us. And if I want it spent on libraries or healthcare instead of space exploration then I should get my equal say in that.

Maybe this is me being a dumb peasant, but I can't imagine where I would get the right to have a say in that.

How is it different from me looking at my neighbor in his bigger house with his nicer car and deciding that those should be mine instead? Or my neighbor with a smaller house wanting my stuff?

There is a pretty big difference in scale. How would you feel if you could barely afford ramen and your neighor was using prime steaks as fire wood?

Sure it would feel bad, but would my feelings justify taking the steaks from them?

If you believe in the equality of man then I think so. These people didn't individually invent and then produce 1000s of years of collective humam technology and culture and society by themselves to justify such extreme inequality.

And even if you thought so you can't be surprised when the have nots band together and attack or topple the rich society even if it obly for a small temporary gain. Desperation is the largest source of crime and political instability throughout history.

Yes, that situation is ridiculous and intervention is necessary. But don't paint it like it's just your feelings. The situation is objectively ridiculous.

What is it then if its not just my feelings? Can you give me some specific principle to go by? When is it OK for me to decide that someone else's possessions should be mine?

If you can justify it from behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance while taking the categorical imperative into account, and any other universal moral meta–rules that you may be aware of that I'm not

I have no idea what any of that means

That's fine, you can leave it to philosophers if you want or you can go and learn it. I only referenced two principles and they both have Wikipedia pages. But don't make no effort to learn how people think about objective morality and then complain nobody knows anything about objective morality.

I'll even link them for you:

The veil of ignorance says you should design morals for a society as if you don't know which position you'll be in in that society. If you want to know if it's moral to feed people to crocodiles, imagine that your mind and soul is placed into a random body in the world where people are fed to crocodiles. You might be feeding someone to a crocodile, you might be fed to a crocodile, and in some versions you might be the crocodile. If you had the choice to live in that world but you don't know which one you'll be, would you take it? If you wouldn't because the chance feels bad to you, that's a sign it's objectively immoral.

Categorical imperative: follow rules that you'd be okay with everyone following all the time. Suppose you're very hungry and you see a supermarket and you steal a loaf of bread. Is this moral? "Everyone should steal food" quickly breaks down commerce and isn't good. "Very hungry people with no money should steal bread" works well enough because most people aren't very hungry with no money. We can say it's moral for very hungry people with no money to steal bread. "Very hungry people with no money should just die" works too, but it fails the other principle: that could be you who dies, and you'd rather be allowed to steal bread to prevent death.

These might be different versions of the same principle but I'm not philosophically savvy enough to know that so I'm stating both.

OK, thanks for spelling them out.

I don't see how either of those principles suggest I should go steal the steaks, because I could easily end up being the person who is stolen from.

Its not surprising when starving people steal, and you can't really blame them for it. And people shouldn't waste frivolously when there are people in their community that are lacking.

But adding these unwritten caveats to private property rights based on whether someone is satisfied with their lot or not... I can't wrap my head around it.

What's the expected value of:

90% chance of being a hungry person who steals a steak instead of dying

10% chance of being someone with 100 steaks and having 9 stolen?

I think the EV of this ends up positive.

I didn't take being barely able to afford ramen as someone who is going to starve to death. Their health is probably pretty poor, but I was assuming like in real life there would be other options.

Like I said before, if the alternative is death, then obviously stealing is justified. But if the alternative is the soup kitchen or something, then I can't justify stealing the steak. Otherwise you're on a slippery slope.

The guy with a hundred steaks still won't notice them gone. Probably.

The slope stops when the expected value is zero.

Is it only ok for luxury items? What happens when you swap steaks out of that sentence?

You have a hundred (dollars|pens|shoes|boxes of cereal), you probably won't notice if I take one.

I don't feel right taking one if I have other options. Whether or not someone notices doesn't make theft OK, it just means you get away without consequences (depending on your religious beliefs).

Not to mention you probably have to trespass/break and enter to do it.

Here's how it adds up: you are either the elite person who will have a few steaks taken (your life still rocks), or as the poor person, you can at least have enough steak to survive, rather than dying of hunger watching your rich neighbor throw steaks away for no reason.

Elon and people like him are currently spending a similar amount of money on building AGI, how's it going, any reason to object?

Asthma and lung cancer from Elon's gas turbines, polluted water everywhere, high electricity prices everywhere, RAM and SSD price hikes, Micron and Nvidia completely stopped making equipment for consumers, disinformation is everywhere, the internet is full of slop.

Oh, seems like billionaire projects are actually bad for people and there's plenty of reason to object.

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