If you agree with this view: Why do you think societies should allow billionaires to exist? How does that benefit the common good? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 weeks ago by DandomRude@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Please go easy on the downvotes—the point here is to try to understand a perspective that many of you probably won't share.

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[-] SapereAude@anarchist.nexus 23 points 3 weeks ago

Rephrase of what I think you're trying to ask: Should a society allow any person to accumulate wealth and power in the amount that today's billionaires have?

There's a huge amount of socioeconomic theory and history behind this apparently very simple question. In general, I think there's a lot more benefit to all of us when advances do not flow entirely into the hands of a few people. Taxation has been the major form of wealth redistribution in the western world for a while now - since the Gilded Age robber-barons decided that helping society by building libraries, museums, and universities was preferable to having the government take 95% of money they made over a certain high amount.

The current system has been so perverted by that accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few that it's become self-reinforcing, and is backed up by educational "reform" and propaganda from end to end. The result is that while the world may be continuing to get better overall, it's either stalled, or is actively getting worse for many of us normal folks.

Without writing a novel, I think it would be a good idea to tie tax brackets to the poverty and average income levels, and then tax anything over like 100x the baseline amount at 99.98% or so. Also close all the tax loopholes like borrowing against assets being untaxed even if it's the only source of income. Try to re-balance the system for all of us, and add as much buffer as possible to keep it from being re-fucked by those dragons hoarding all the gold.

[-] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Count me in this bracket. A progressive income tax should prevent billionaires in the first place, and for less controllable things like an IPO a wealth tax will do the rest.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

Well, I wasn’t so much getting at what you’re saying—which I completely agree with btw—but rather, I’m trying to understand what prevents people from realizing that the reason for their poor living conditions is the accumulation of capital in far too few hands.

The reason for my question: the global resurgence of fascism, which, in my opinion, is the direct consequence of the influence of billionaires, because they use this mindless ideology with all their might to pit people against one another and thus distract them from where the real problem lies.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there are so many democracies where people view immigration as the most pressing problem. Absurdly, this is also the case in my home country, Germany, even though the German labor market needs far more foreign workers in a wide variety of sectors.

This is classic fascist ideology, which we unfortunately know all too well in this country. What’s frightening, however, is that the billionaires wield their influence so effectively that even the German masses no longer remember their inhuman faces and now still parrot whatever the algorithm—or rather, the will of the billionaires—presents to them.

It’s a tragedy, and my question in this post simply seeks to understand how this can be—how people fail to grasp that it is the powerful, and by no means the powerless, who should be despised.

[-] SapereAude@anarchist.nexus 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

There has been a concerted effort by fascists since at least 1965 to reduce education, buy up the entire media apparatus so it can be used for propaganda, break down government regulations so that they can aquire more power and wealth, create foundations and think-tanks that pump out quasi-scientific crap supporting fascism, dilute and distort scientific progress if it does not agree with them.

Studying history makes the efforts and trends clear. This isn't people supporting fascism in a vacuum, it's the result of society-wide manipulation of the entire world population, or at least, any part of it that votes. In that environment, I think it's pretty remarkable that they've only managed to fuck up 35-40% of people at most. They've had to cheat political systems to make that minority act like a democratic majority.

[-] theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago

People who think billionaires should exist generally don't believe in the common good as much as they believe in Big Strong Man IS Cool and Sexy. Or they don't know how labor works

[-] aburrito@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

There’s absolutely something to this, in that religions that enforce hierarchies are going to be more attractive to people who desire hierarchies (befitting from them or not). There’s no form in which you can be a billionaire without believing in hierarchy because it’s about as peak of human power as you can get

[-] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Billionaires in themselves aren't the problem. The circumstances creating them are. And not taxing them appropriately even more so.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Aren't the circumstances that give rise to them simply the fact that societies allow individuals to become so wealthy in the first place?

[-] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Yes, and that's exactly what I'm getting at: One does not become a billionaire without exploiting a system that allows such exploitation to begin with. Nobody gets to where they are without any form of help; I'm fairly well off, and I am very aware of where I got help along the way. Becoming a billionaire is simply the result of taking any help offered to you without paying back your fair share, and that's where the faults lie: The society that hands out government subsidies with no stipulation past a "trust me bro".

Laws and policies need to be enacted that stifled an individuals economic growth past a certain point, effectively preventing people from becoming billionaires in the first place.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

And who do you think has the greatest interest—and the resources—to set up the system you're talking about in such a way that it essentially serves only the interests of billionaires?

I'd say the U.S. demonstrates quite impressively how this works.

To me, the saddest aspect of this nation's decline is that the people who are paying the price have resigned themselves to their fate, since their ideology seems to make it appear inevitable to them.

[-] Pamasich@kbin.earth 5 points 3 weeks ago

If competent people were in charge, you'd benefit greatly from their taxes.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

The problem, however, is that the world's largest corporations pay virtually no taxes, which gives rise to the very serious problem the world is facing today.

[-] Pamasich@kbin.earth 2 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

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.

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[-] AskewLord@piefed.social 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

competent people are in charge.

that's why they pay very little tax.

[-] Pamasich@kbin.earth 1 points 3 weeks ago

I think we have differing ideas of competency in a representative democracy.

[-] AskewLord@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

money is speech, that's the law of the land. more money = more representation.

always has been, always will be.

[-] Pamasich@kbin.earth 1 points 3 weeks ago

But you can prevent that with laws and taking corruption serious.

A politician taking bribes from rich people is corruption and wouldn't be allowed with competent people in charge.

Rich people influencing politics through ads and such can be outlawed by politicians taking election integrity serious.

Money buys representation because the elite in charge prefers corruption over doing their jobs as politicians. Not because it inherently does. There are actions that can be taken to prevent it, they're just not being taken.

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[-] schwim@piefed.zip 3 points 3 weeks ago

Its not that billionaires should or shouldn't exist. Its the corrupt system that creates and protects them from citizens negatively impacted by their existence that needs to be addressed.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

And who do you think has the greatest interest in this? Who do you think has the power to make it happen?

[-] schwim@piefed.zip 2 points 3 weeks ago

I don't know where you're located but if you paid any attention to the current US political system, neither of those questions would need to be asked.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

In and of itself, it doesn't matter at all which country someone lives in, as long as you're aware of the answer to the question I asked.

The answer is simply: the billionaires—even if you think you can undermine that reality with a counter-question (in Europe, where I live, there are certainly billionaires as well).

However, if—knowing all this—you don’t come to the same conclusion, I can’t understand why not.

That’s what my original question was about, and so far no one in this thread has answered it: How does society as a whole benefit from the existence of billionaires?

I know my answer to that.

Do you know yours, since you say it wouldn’t make any difference whether they exist or not....

[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 3 weeks ago

I would like progressive rules that make it very difficult the higher you get but theoretically allow people to dream of vast wealth. Sorta like a soft cap in an mmo. Im talking taxes here of course.

[-] Delphia@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

At "Billionaire" (or even hundreds of millions of dollars) levels of wealth the government should implement a different tax scale based on net worth. Simpler and harder to manipulate. An annual minimum tax bill of 1% of your net worth that cannot be reduced, offset, deferred or otherwise mitigated per billion annually to do buisness in the country, per country.

Just stop them rorting loopholes. I think people would probably hate billionaires a whole lot less if they just paid a FAIR amount of tax.

Edit: actually the math works pretty much all the way down. Everyone should have a minimum income tax bill every year of 1% of their net worth with the only exemption being your primary residence.

[-] Witchfire@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

A healthy tax code would not allow billionaires to exist

[-] FoxtrotDeltaTango@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago

[-] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

Billionaires aren't the problem. They aren't good, but even eliminating them would not move the needle.

The only real fix for a significant portion of the current affordability problems is a sizeable Land Value tax. Henry George was mostly right, he wrote that shit out for us more than century ago, and we're still ignoring him while we fuck everything up because we keep treating land as this giant pyramid scheme of investment.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

But why wouldn't it solve the problem if top tax rates were imposed that would make it impossible for such parasitic investment firms to emerge in the first place?

[-] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 weeks ago

Go run the math. If you were to tax away say everything people own that's greater than $50 million dollars, and give it to everyone else, the total amount each person gets is something... but not as much as you would think. On the order of tens of thousands of dollars in the US for example. That would happen one time.

The most significant problem with housing costs isn't that corporations can invest, it's that ANYONE can invest. Investments require that an asset appreciate faster than inflation, and if that happens by definition it will always become increasingly more expensive than people can afford. Homes cannot be an investment for anyone, or they will always become too expensive.

[-] Lehmuusa@nord.pub 2 points 3 weeks ago

In a lot of countries 10 000 dollars is the salary for about 5 000 days. Or in other words, far over 10 years. And you were talking about several tens of thousands, which means several decades of life when distributed among 300 million people, about a decade per person if distributed among a billion people.

[-] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

Those numbers are for US billionaires divided by US population. If you were to try to divide global wealth from billionaires vs global population it likely wouldn't even be a thousand dollars.

[-] Lehmuusa@nord.pub 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Not everyone on this planet is poor. I don't need that money. But maybe roughly 2 billion people do. And "not even a thousand dollars" is two years' salary. In this case we're talking about a quarter of the world's population, so you "not even a thousand dollars" becomes "not even four thousand dollars".

And that means: "Not even the salary for 8 years. Possibly only 5 years!"

I mean, the money is enough to completely eradicate poverty from this planet. That's all that really matters.

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[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

You seem to be trapped in the status quo, as if it were a law of nature. There are no self-regulating markets, as economists claim. What you’re presenting here as inevitable isn’t real. It’s simply an expression of an ideology that you mistake for reality.

There are people who live in houses, and there are also people who build them. There is simply no “real estate god” who is anything other than a human being.

You might think that’s naive, but if you think that way, aren’t you also saying that climate change is an unavoidable catastrophe? That puts you no longer in the camp of rationality, but in the realm of theology—namely, the inevitable Last Judgment, the end of the world, and all that nonsense.

What I’m getting at is this: The biggest lie that economics has ever come up with is that it’s science—it isn’t. Based on the theories it pursues, it’s at best a social science that has already been largely disproved.

[-] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago

My proposal is to destroy the market completely with a land value tax. How does that have anything to do with being stuck in the status quo? It's incredibly radical by the standards of the average person right now.

If something is an investment, by necessity it must increase in price faster than inflation. If you tax the ability for that to happen completely away, it's no longer an investment vehicle. That's not economics, it's not science, it's basic math.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This strikes me as similar to the ideas of Lizzy Magie, arguably one of the most absurdly exploited individuals with noble goals that history has to offer. She invented Monopoly to illustrate the absurdity of land ownership—today, Monopoly is the game that teaches children cutthroat capitalism.

Magie received a ridiculous low sum for her Monopoly patent, while others became millionaires off her idea (the Parker brothers, whose empire still exists today, benefited the most).

Edit: Please don't get me wrong—I completely agree with you. I just don't think it's effective to focus solely on the one area where the world's wealthy accumulate their wealth. This is simply a realistic view, since no billion-dollar company operates in just one sector (for example, Alphabet, Google's parent company, is involved in real estate deals worth billions, even though it is, at its core, a tech company). So what I’m trying to say is: Regulations targeting only the real estate market cannot possibly solve the problem.

[-] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's because that game (or more specifically The Landlord Game which she made) was meant to teach on Henry George's work (the guy that came up with the idea of Land Value taxes and explained why they were needed)

[-] Lehmuusa@nord.pub 1 points 3 weeks ago

Apparently about 300 billion per year is what would be needed for ending extreme poverty.

I'd say we should.

[-] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I'm not on board with casual murder, for one.

Really though, this is a simplistic question that can't really be discussed well without major time. It's not as simple as "allow billionaires to exist" - as even that framing is bad because it implies killing them as that's the only way for someone to "not exist".

[-] Steve@communick.news 4 points 3 weeks ago

You don't have to kill them. You could simply take their money. Then they wouldn't be billionaires. It's not like the money belongs to them. It belongs to the government. They're just holding on to it for a while.

[-] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago

You could simply take their money.

Except this is far from a simple thing to do, since a vast majority of the wealth isn't money.

For a more realistic option, I think that ending the practice of borrowing against stocks as a method of dodging taxes would go a long way towards getting billionaires to pay their share.

[-] Steve@communick.news 2 points 3 weeks ago

It kind of is simple. They have to sell stuff.
It's up to them how to do that.

Say we tax them at 15% of US assets after the first $1B. That'll slowly widdle them down.

[-] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

So here's a scenario:

You started a website, and this website became enormously popular. The company you started to run this website is now worth a couple billion dollars. You're not an asshole, so you pay your employees generously and take an equal wage for yourself. You weren't in a rush to grow, so you never took venture capital or became publicly traded.

As the sole owner of that company, you are technically worth a couple billion dollars, but your sellable assets are nowhere near that 15%. How is the law supposed to handle this situation without further making enshitification legally mandatory?

[-] Steve@communick.news 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Sell the shares to your employees. Or to the government.

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[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

I can't understand why you think of murder when it comes to the question of whether it makes sense for societies to allow people to become so rich that they rise above everyone else. In reasonably functioning states, this can be regulated by law.

You're probably from the U.S., right?

[-] myrmidex@belgae.social 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

What if society takes away the billionaire's money so that he ceases to be a billionaire. Does the billionaire still exist then?

[-] TachyonTele@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago

Ah the Ship of Billionaires

[-] andrewta@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

I don’t care whether or not billionaires do or don’t exist. As long as the people that they hire get paid a living wage so that at some point, they can retire. I don’t care how much a billionaire has.

[-] DandomRude@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yes, I completely agree with you. I just fear that reality shows that billionaires—who, after all, aren’t some kind of fantasy—simply don’t do that. Quite the opposite: With their power, which is equivalent to the capital of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, they do everything in their power to make life for ordinary people worse and worse. We’re seeing this happen right now.

I simply cannot understand why people fail to recognize the reason for their increasingly dire situations.

I do understand that the reason is that the billionaires have so much capital that they control the media and can thus spread misinformation massively. That is precisely why fascism is so strong again—it is so attractive to billionaires because, with its ideology, it is designed to protect the “elites.” However, it’s not foreigners or any of the bogeymen this idiotic “doctrine” has to offer: the problem is those who spread this inhuman ideology—namely, the billionaires.

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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026

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