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Absolutely, that's why I said if competent people were in charge. Because then those would be paying taxes. The fact they don't is laws being too weak, non-existent, or poorly enforced.
You still haven’t answered the question: Why should there be people who, as private individuals, have enough capital to finance entire countries?
We’re seeing the consequences of your approach today, and it’s this very approach that led us to this problem in the first place: The world isn’t run in the interest of the general public, but by unscrupulous billionaires who don’t give the general public a second thought.
Therefore, one can only conclude that your idea of some "Führer" who act justly leads to disaster.
I'm sorry, but if I have to put it this way, this is Nazi ideology.
What you might have in mind may be a technocracy, but even that would endow individual people with a level of power that, in my opinion, is hardly desirable.
China is largely organized this way, since most of its ministers are experts in their respective fields.
However, that doesn’t strike me as a society worth living in.
We're not, because countries don't have competent people in charge. Except maybe New York, I'm not too familiar with the guy's work, not being from the US myself and all, but I've only seen positive news in the right direction about him.
Just to clarify here, I interpreted your question philosophically, not related to a specific real world situation. So I answered with an ideal scenario. A "if x were to be the case then y" scenario. X isn't the case, so y doesn't apply. But y would apply in a world where x is the case.
My approach in fact has not come to pass, so we're not seeing the consequences of it. We're in need of a lot of politicial legwork to weaken the power of money first before billionaires can become a net benefit.
That said, some countries like mine do apply wealth taxes to the rich, and my (non-US) state had actually redistributed their surplus in tax income (almost certainly due to wealth tax, as the rich love this state for its low taxes iirc) to the people last year, by lowering the cost of healthcare this year iirc. So i think we are seeing some of what I'm talking about selectively. Though I do agree that selective cases aren't nearly enough, and that the current situation doesn't result in a net positive for having billionaires.
Yeah and that's because the world isn't run by competent people but by corrupt bastards who only care about money and getting reelected.
Also I think this is a very US centric opinion. I agree that my scenario doesn't currently properly apply to any country I'm aware of, but money has vastly different power in different parts of the world. "The world" is a big term, and I really don't think it applies globally. Money doesn't buy you everything everywhere. Otherwise the US wouldn't have been the only country (that mattered) to oppose the OECD deal. I know my country ended up implementing almost all of it, except for the part that would have had to be implemented by everyone to be effective. I assume at least a few others did as well. I doubt the money was in favor of implementing it, yet it still happened.
I think you're kind of putting words in my mouth there. I know the specific term here is meant to be a form of figure of speech, not something I said, but I'm clearly not talking about having a benevolent dictator in charge. In fact, while I didn't bring it up here, I do believe that having a single guy at the top of any branch of government is inherently problematic. Imo more countries should use the Swiss approach of having a council of equals from multiple parties as the head of state, not a single president or prime minister. it's the only way to properly represent the people even at the highest level.
I might have to clarify here: To me, a politician's job in a representative democracy is to represent their constituents and act in their interest. Not pocket money and act as a puppet to the highest payer. That's how I differentiate between a competent and an incompetent politician. Hence the better the system enforces this, the better it is imo. As a little background for my opinion above on having more than one person in charge.
No, what I have in mind is representative democracy with competent representatives. Simple as that. Not technocracies or other alternative forms of government.