All Morals & Ethics are Biased, Self-Serving - Exhibit A - The Brahmin & the Royal

[bilby]

bilby recited the popular opinion that allowing billionaires is why some people lack basic necessities

Did he? Can you quote him doing that?

 

[Bomb#20]

My point is that what bilby wrote was unscientific, unobservant, and logically fallacious, so I was merciless to his argument. I'm trying to induce him to sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up his preconceived folk-economic and folk-moralistic notions

Yeah, but your condecension is misplaced,

I know, right? And after you were so polite to the targets of your invective.

as it is based in your unevidenced belief that if a bit of private wealth is good, more must be better.

The evidence is the enormous positive correlation between societies letting people have more than a bit of private wealth and how good a job societies do keeping people from dying of exposure and starvation.

Note that I am not arguing against the existence of wealth. Only against a system that creates hyperwealth, and against the attitude that this is somehow an unavoidable or necessary prerequisite for economic development of any kind.

Arguing against it, are you? I've seen you condemn it; I've seen you call the people in it nasty names who don't base their lives on your folk-economics; I've seen you appeal to the "To each according to his need" moral theory that killed tens of millions last century and impoverished hundreds of millions; I've seen you dismiss contrary evidence without refuting it; I've seen you take for granted that Sweden disallows billionaires; I've seen you indicate you don't like tax laws not discriminating against your outgroup. What I haven't seen you do is present an actual argument for why stopping a system from creating hyperwealth would result in "sharing the wealth such that everyone has a decent basic living", as though "the wealth" were a fixed quantity unaffected by the system for creating it.

 

[Bomb#20]

bilby recited the popular opinion that allowing billionaires is why some people lack basic necessities

Did he? Can you quote him doing that?

Post #5.

By medieval standards, there are, and we are fairly close to giving such pay and prestige to everybody.

Certainly as a society we can (in the developed world) easily afford for every person to live in a comfortable home with heating in winter and airconditioning in summer, and with enough food that they need never go to bed hungry.

If that doesn't strike you as wealth or prestige, then you haven't grasped what life was like for most of history (and still is like for many in the developing world).

In the Roman and medieval periods, the idea that everyone could live with such security and wealth was an impossible dream. Today, it's easily affordable and achievable, but for the handful of <insult snipped> who didn't get the memo and who still think that amassing billions in personal wealth is a better idea than sharing the wealth such that everyone has a decent basic living, before we allow a handful of prestigious guys to become hyper-rich.

 

[pood]

Where did I say anything about preventing anyone from buying anything from anyone?

You indicated you didn't think we should "allow a handful of prestigious guys to become hyper-rich." Well, it's lots and lots of customers making themselves better off by buying vast amounts of goods and services from them that makes those guys hyper-rich. For example, a seller offers to sell for $1000 a service a million people like as much as having $1500, so they take him up on it, so they're each $500 better off and he's got a billion dollars. That's the arrangement you're proposing to put a stop to, isn't it?

Care to explain the cause and effect mechanism you have in mind?

Taxation. Highly progressive taxation.

I.e., you're not prohibiting the customers from getting the $1500-worth service; you're just insisting they do it by finding somebody motivated to do it for them in return for them paying $1000 to the government? If no one has such a motivation, then you're preventing it every bit as much as if you'd prohibited it.

What highly progressive taxation rate do you have in mind? I know in the past you've advocated a 100% marginal tax bracket; is that still your thinking on the topic?

There is less income inequality and there are stronger social safety nets in Scandinavia and Western Europe than here, and in addition, universal health care — not provided among western industrialized nations only by the good ol’ US of A. And, lo and behold, they can get the same goods and services we can, frequently better, as in food.

And? bilby recited the popular opinion that allowing billionaires is why some people lack basic necessities; I pointed out that logic and empirical evidence are against him.

Did he say that, exactly?

Why are you bringing up the universal health care and strong social safety nets in Scandinavia and Western Europe? Are you trying to prove I'm right?

Norway: 12 billionaires. Denmark: 9. Sweden: 43. Finland: 7.
Spain: 29. Portugal: 1. Italy: 73. Switzerland: 41. France: 53. Monaco: 3. Ireland: 11. Britain: 55.
Netherlands: 14. Belgium 10. Luxembourg: 1. Liechtenstein: 1. Germany: 132. Austria: 9.

Are you trying to prove yourself wrong? What do these numbers prove? First, there are far fewer billionaires in these countries than in the U.S., but of course you have to adjust for population. Even when you do, I’d guess that the per capita billionaire class is greater in the U.S. than in ay of these countries.

But look at how few billionaires there are! But you seem to be saying that more billionaires are a good thing because they increase wealth and incomes for everyone else — good old trickle-down economics long discredited empirically. And yet, somehow, with so few billionaires both in absolute terms and per capita, these nations seem to have no problem getting pretty much the same goods and services we do, in addition to having universal health care and a stronger social safety net than we do. Earlier, you mentioned that nations which “disallow billionaires” do poorly. And I asked you, which nations actually disallow billionaires? I don’t recall that you replied.

Anyway, the real fundamental issue is increasing income inequality.

 

[Elixir]

US had over 750 billionaires in 2023. Now estimates run over a thousand. Europe, with twice (approx) the US population has about half the number of billionaires.
No wonder it’s a worse societal problem in the US.
Taxes were more progressive in the 1950s.

 

[Bomb#20]

You appear to be taking for granted that "developed" and "allow a handful of prestigious guys to become hyper-rich" are two independent variables, and you appear to be advocating excluding any empirical observations tending to throw that premise into doubt from the set of input data we consider.

I am not taking it for granted, but I do lean towards believing it to be true.

If you lean towards believing it to be true without taking it for granted, then you must have evidence for it. What evidence?

You appear to have decided that it is absolutely, definitely, and demonstrably false - but have not shown your work.

You appear to have added intensifiers to my expressed opinion in an effort to shift burden of proof. I do lean toward believing it to be false, and I did show my work. That list of the world's billionaireless countries, most of which are pestholes people want to escape from, is empirical evidence that it's false. Also, consideration of elementary economics weighs against it -- most wealth exists in the first place because voluntary trade for mutual benefit gives people an incentive to create it. So stopping one party from benefiting from a trade is typically going to prevent the wealth from being created in the first place rather than cause her share of the mutual benefit to become available for someone else to use.

 

[pood]

You appear to be taking for granted that "developed" and "allow a handful of prestigious guys to become hyper-rich" are two independent variables, and you appear to be advocating excluding any empirical observations tending to throw that premise into doubt from the set of input data we consider.

I am not taking it for granted, but I do lean towards believing it to be true.

If you lean towards believing it to be true without taking it for granted, then you must have evidence for it. What evidence?

You appear to have decided that it is absolutely, definitely, and demonstrably false - but have not shown your work.

You appear to have added intensifiers to my expressed opinion in an effort to shift burden of proof. I do lean toward believing it to be false, and I did show my work. That list of the world's billionaireless countries, most of which are pestholes people want to escape from, is empirical evidence that it's false.

Causation, or correlation?

 

[Bomb#20]

US had over 750 billionaires in 2023. Now estimates run over a thousand. Europe, with twice (approx) the US population has about half the number of billionaires.
No wonder it’s a worse societal problem in the US.

Sweden has a lot more than the U.S. per capita. The European average is dragged down by poor countries like Spain and Portugal, and all of Eastern Europe.

Taxes were more progressive in the 1950s.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that this isn't a debate about how many billionaires is optimal, or how hard it should be to become a billionaire, or how much more wealth a person needs to create and externalize to the community in order to justify letting her keep a billion for herself, or whether the hyper-rich should be taxed at 48% vs. 68%. bilby didn't say the U.S. should only have half as many billionaires. He's advocating getting rid of them altogether. So arguing that it's better in Europe or was better in the 1950s or whatever is missing the point.

 

[pood]

According to Global Finance Magazine, the wealthiest country in the world by the metric of per capita GDP and constant prices is … Luxembourg. There seems to be conflicting info on this, but it appears that the current number of billionaires in Luxembourg is … zero. It may have had one at one time.

 

[pood]

That list of the world's billionaireless countries, most of which are pestholes people want to escape from, is empirical evidence that it's false.

Yet you have not shown it to be false. And a single counterexample is a defeater for your claim. The counterexample is Luxembourg.

 

[Elixir]

Sweden has a lot more than the U.S. per capita. The European average is dragged down by poor countries like Spain and Portugal, and all of Eastern Europe.

True. There are concentrated pockets of billionaires all over. The US isn't even in the top ten in billionaires per capita. The leaders are small countries, generally, with low taxes and lots of banks. The larger European Countries that make the list are basically outliers, globally. There aren't any populations on the list, of 350+million people flaunting 2+ billionaires per million population.

Numbers below are billionaires per million people.

Monaco: 76.825
Liechtenstein: 25.174
St. Kitts & Nevis: 21.189
Cyprus: 10.892
Singapore: 6.591
Switzerland: 4.591
Sweden: 4.075
Barbados: 3.734
Israel: 3.649
Iceland: 2.519
United States: 2.420
Taiwan: 2.178
Norway: 2.162
Ireland: 2.083
Australia: 1.790
Canada: 1.643
Germany: 1.560
Luxembourg: 1.513
Denmark: 1.510
Italy: 1.239

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that this isn't a debate about how many billionaires is optimal, or how hard it should be to become a billionaire, or how much more wealth a person needs to create and externalize to the community in order to justify letting her keep a billion for herself, or whether the hyper-rich should be taxed at 48% vs. 68%. bilby didn't say the U.S. should only have half as many billionaires. He's advocating getting rid of them altogether.

I don't advocate forcibly de-billionairizing billionaires, but I do advocate a top marginal tax rate in the high (>95%) range, steep estate taxes on big estates and a range of taxes on material benefits conferred on corporate execs that are currently categorized as "Company Expense".
I'm not a macro-economist by any stretch, but I don't see how concentrating such high percentages of all wealth into so few hands, benefits society at large.

 

[Bomb#20]

That list of the world's billionaireless countries, most of which are pestholes people want to escape from, is empirical evidence that it's false.

Causation, or correlation?

Wally: Is human motivation the result of genetics or environment?
Pointy-haired boss: Both, duh!

It's both causation and correlation. Causation: I bought batteries from Musk because the benefit to me exceeds the purchase price -- it saves me a bundle on my power bills. This reduces my demand on the power company, tending to make the natural gas they burn a little cheaper for everyone else, freeing up resources for others to use to develop the country further. Economic activity spreads positive externalities throughout the community.

Correlation: "Correlation" just means shared causation -- rather than X causing Y or vice versa, some third thing Z causes both X and Y. The Zs that tend to cause countries both to become developed and to allow a handful of guys to become hyper-rich are pretty obvious: cultures that respect contracts and property rights, cops and judges who don't take bribes, laws that promote win-win solutions rather than just robbing Peter to pay Paul, laws that are the same for everyone, laws that have a rational basis and aren't there just for the sake of hurting somebody we hate.

 

[pood]

Sweden has a lot more than the U.S. per capita. The European average is dragged down by poor countries like Spain and Portugal, and all of Eastern Europe.

True. There are concentrated pockets of billionaires all over. The US isn't even in the top ten in billionaires per capita. The leaders are small countries, generally, with low taxes and lots of banks. The larger European Countries that make the list are basically outliers, globally. There aren't any populations on the list, of 350+million people flaunting 2+ billionaires per million population.

Numbers below are billionaires per million people.

Monaco: 76.825
Liechtenstein: 25.174
St. Kitts & Nevis: 21.189
Cyprus: 10.892
Singapore: 6.591
Switzerland: 4.591
Sweden: 4.075
Barbados: 3.734
Israel: 3.649
Iceland: 2.519
United States: 2.420
Taiwan: 2.178
Norway: 2.162
Ireland: 2.083
Australia: 1.790
Canada: 1.643
Germany: 1.560
Luxembourg: 1.513
Denmark: 1.510
Italy: 1.239

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that this isn't a debate about how many billionaires is optimal, or how hard it should be to become a billionaire, or how much more wealth a person needs to create and externalize to the community in order to justify letting her keep a billion for herself, or whether the hyper-rich should be taxed at 48% vs. 68%. bilby didn't say the U.S. should only have half as many billionaires. He's advocating getting rid of them altogether.

I don't advocate forcibly de-billionairizing billionaires, but I do advocate a top marginal tax rate in the high (>95%) range, steep estate taxes on big estates and a range of taxes on material benefits conferred on corporate execs that are currently categorized as "Company Expense".
I'm not a macro-economist by any stretch, but I don't see how concentrating such high percentages of all wealth into so few hands, benefits society at large.

I see Luxembourg on that list. As of 2024, it had no billionaires, according to three different sources, but it does have plenty of millionaires.

But we are told that it’s poor “pesthole” countries that have no billionaires, which seems to confuse correlation with causation. The unstated or implied premise seems to be that a lack of billionaires causes “pesthole” nations to be “pestholes.” Yet I can employ the same reasoning to argue the opposite: the absence of billionaires causes Luxembourg to be wealthy; indeed the wealthiest country in the world. Of course that causal claim is not true either, but it is reasoning that is parallel to Bomb’s reasoning, it seems to me.

 

[Bomb#20]

True. There are concentrated pockets of billionaires all over. The US isn't even in the top ten in billionaires per capita. The leaders are small countries, generally, with low taxes and lots of banks. The larger European Countries that make the list are basically outliers, globally. There aren't any populations on the list, of 350+million people flaunting 2+ billionaires per million population.

There will be if we annex Canada!

bilby didn't say the U.S. should only have half as many billionaires. He's advocating getting rid of them altogether.

I don't advocate forcibly de-billionairizing billionaires, but I do advocate a top marginal tax rate in the high (>95%) range, steep estate taxes on big estates and a range of taxes on material benefits conferred on corporate execs that are currently categorized as "Company Expense".

Then you're on my side in the Morals & Ethics debate; you just want to twiddle the knobs a little differently to tune the prosperity engine.

 

[pood]

True. There are concentrated pockets of billionaires all over. The US isn't even in the top ten in billionaires per capita. The leaders are small countries, generally, with low taxes and lots of banks. The larger European Countries that make the list are basically outliers, globally. There aren't any populations on the list, of 350+million people flaunting 2+ billionaires per million population.

There will be if we annex Canada!

bilby didn't say the U.S. should only have half as many billionaires. He's advocating getting rid of them altogether.

I don't advocate forcibly de-billionairizing billionaires, but I do advocate a top marginal tax rate in the high (>95%) range, steep estate taxes on big estates and a range of taxes on material benefits conferred on corporate execs that are currently categorized as "Company Expense".

Then you're on my side in the Morals & Ethics debate; you just want to twiddle the knobs a little differently to tune the prosperity engine.

I don’t advocate barring billionaires either. But I think that increasing gilded-age wealth concentration in the hands of a few and growing inequality is not a good thing. I also think that no one actually needs a billion dollars, and the claim that all these wonderful billionaires and plowing most of their gains back into productive wealth engines that benefit everyone is unsupported by the evidence. You mentioned Musk, but look at the bulk of what he does: Crappy cars, vanity rocket trips, an inane hyper loop that never got off the ground, flatlining the economic performance of Twitter and zany wet dreams of flying millions of people to Mars to live there, whereas in fact even if he were able to do such a thing they would all die. Right now he is asset-stripping the public weal to benefit himself. The man is nuts and a total menace.

 

[Bomb#20]

According to Global Finance Magazine, the wealthiest country in the world by the metric of per capita GDP and constant prices is … Luxembourg. There seems to be conflicting info on this, but it appears that the current number of billionaires in Luxembourg is … zero. It may have had one at one time.

That list of the world's billionaireless countries, most of which are pestholes people want to escape from, is empirical evidence that it's false.

Yet you have not shown it to be false. And a single counterexample is a defeater for your claim. The counterexample is Luxembourg.

Numbers below are billionaires per million people.

Monaco: 76.825
...
Luxembourg: 1.513
...

I see Luxembourg on that list. As of 2024, it had no billionaires, according to three different sources, but it does have plenty of millionaires.

But we are told that it’s poor “pesthole” countries that have no billionaires, which seems to confuse correlation with causation. The unstated or implied premise seems to be that a lack of billionaires causes “pesthole” nations to be “pestholes.” Yet I can employ the same reasoning to argue the opposite: the absence of billionaires causes Luxembourg to be wealthy; indeed the wealthiest country in the world. Of course that causal claim is not true either, but it is reasoning that is parallel to Bomb’s reasoning, it seems to me.

Dude, you're being ridiculous. Luxembourg evidently had a billionaire or not at different times in 2024, presumably as market fluctuations popped his or her net worth above or below the cutoff. And the reason it only has one at about that level is plainly not because of any particular anti-billionaire practices but because it only has a few hundred thousand citizens. I already mentioned Tuvalu upthread as a billionaireless country whose government should not be blamed for the number rounding down to zero. And I didn't claim they were all pestholes -- as I just said, "most of which are pestholes". You can't refute "most" with one counterexample.

So no, the unstated or implied premise was never that a lack of billionaires causes “pesthole” nations to be “pestholes.” It's that anti-wealth-creation practices in general cause nations to be pestholes and to lack billionaires. The practices bilby is advocating are anti-wealth-creation.

 

[pood]

It seems to me if we look at the history of this country, deregulating capital and letting the cowboy capitalists runs wild always ends in tears, even back into the 19th century. The most prominent example is the hand-off Roaring 20s, when Cal Coolidge proclaimed “the business of America is business” and Herbert Hoover talked about having two chickens in every pot and two cars in every garage. Then came 1929 ad the onset of a decade-long nightmare. We have the more recent example of the hands-off approach of Dubya, abetted by the “New Democrats” Clinton and Carter before him with their mania for deregulation, that culminated in the financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession. Yet we can find parallel examples back through the 19 century. Lincoln said labor was prior to capital and therefore superior to it. I should add that as to the Great Depression, there is a strong consensus that the Harley-Smoot tariffs of 1930 made the depression much worse. Yet here we are again today with Orange Jesus and … tariffs.

 

[pood]

Dude, you're being ridiculous. Luxembourg evidently had a billionaire or not at different times in 2024, presumably as market fluctuations popped his or her net worth above or below the cutoff. And the reason it only has one at about that level is plainly not because of any particular anti-billionaire practices but because it only has a few hundred thousand citizens. I already mentioned Tuvalu upthread as a billionaireless country whose government should not be blamed for the number rounding down to zero. And I didn't claim they were all pestholes -- as I just said, "most of which are pestholes". You can't refute "most" with one counterexample.

But your invocation of “pestholes” is totally irrelevant to billionaires and macro-economics, because the countries in question are poor for a huge host of other reasons, almost all of them outside their control, that have nothing to do with billionaires.

 

[pood]

You have still not specified which countries “disallow” billionaires.

 

[pood]

As an aside, I think maybe this discussion should be split off to its own thread. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the OP.