Exactly. Don't hate the players, hate the game. We are too focused on finding a scape goat to see the inherit system is the problem.

I don't agree with that argument.

You're right from the point of view that removing those with immense power from their billionaire wealth will be replaced by someone or another group. It's our natural human condition to always want to be in control and there will always be those among us that will want more power and more control than others.

Removing the ability of any one person accumulating enormous amounts of wealth just levels the playing field. If those with a higher need to want more power don't have the ability to control an entire sector, an entire region, an entire community or even an entire nation than others will have the ability to challenge them and regulate their power and control.

As it is now, when we allow individuals to gain enormous amounts of power, no one has the ability to challenge them. When those with enormous power decide to affect governments, industries, society or finance, there is very little any one can do to challenge them. Sure we can band together and take billionaires to court ... but it comes down to how much money you have ... the ability to challenge power means you need money and whoever has the most money has the most power. It isn't a justice system that treats everyone fairly, it's a legal system that favors those with the most money.

Outlawing billionaires won't create a utopia, it won't remove our conflicts we have with each other. What it would do is level the playing field and distribute power among many other people who would all challenge one another as to what they can or can't do. It would create a more democratic system where power would be spread to more people.

Once we create that distribution of power, we could then spend our energies solving the problems we have with each other and our world, rather than in spending all our time trying to defend finances.

As it is now, democratic power is impossible because power is only centered on those who have the most money.

Counterpoint - if people don’t need to take crappy jobs just to afford food and shelter, those jobs will have to provide better pay and conditions to get employees.

Also, if more people can afford to get further education, you’ll get more doctors and engineers and high skilled workers, because they’ll be able to do the training instead of getting several minimum wage jobs just to support their families.

I’ve said it before - any society that can afford billionaires can afford to feed, clothe, shelter and provide basic medical care to all is members, it’s just choosing not to.

This is the circular argument I often have with my friends about wealth and it all boils down to just power.

When billionaires lay claim to enormous amounts of money, it gives them an equal amount of enormous power.

Have that wealth redistributed to millions of people and that wealth no longer matters and no one person has any great level of power.

It's our own belief that we need or see that it is necessary to have individuals with enormous wealth that is the problem. The belief that our world can only exist if there is infinite wealth.

The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won't happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won't work that way, ever.

I envision a gradual change ... where billionaires are just steadily taxed into non existence, where their wealth is just slowly absorbed into public services everywhere and at the same time any individual that accumulates enormous wealth is discouraged. It would be a process that would last decades or lifetimes and eventually to a point where individual excessive wealth is eliminated.

While that's correct in the short term we know it's possible in terms of resources to feed everyone as we produce more food than we need. Likewise plenty of states have socialised medicine and aren't running out of doctors. All of these problems can be solved in time, especially after eliminating useless jobs created by capitalism.

You're talking (partly) about two different things.

The simple truth is that our planet only has a certain amount of replenishable resources which leads to only a certain standard of living being possible for a certain amount of people.

Thus, the problem you're talking about only gets solved by reducing the amount of people or the standard of living, globally.

The problem OP is talking about is inequality in the standard of living between people.

Outlawing billionaires alleviates both problems, but the general resources problem only temporarily until the people with lower standard of living now raise theirs by having more resources available, which is what you talk about.

Inequality gets improved permanently by this, so it's a good change for that problem.

The limited resource problem you're talking about, though, doesn't get solved by this at all, there might be a short dip in less resources used while resources are being reallocated, but then it'll likely go back to before, because most people use as much resources as they can to make their lives as nice as they can.

To solve our problems, both population as well as standard of living need to be limited. Because if either one is allowed to grow infinitely, resources will never suffice long-term.

but the post is right, billionaires got the law changed to benefit themselves...

The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive.

I call this set the "idiot army", the activated dunces. It's propaganda, this 40% is not inherently bad people, it's guillible, low-education, low-information people that have been activated by malicious propaganda to promote the interests of the billionaire class.

The solution lies not in eliminating or dominating this group, it lies in de-activating them. The typical person in this group, if not being actively directed is too busy in their own world to destroy society.

The first step towards any sort of revolution (violent or not) or real change our world needs has to start by destroying all for-profit news. As long as for-profit news controlled by the billionaires exists, the idiot army cannot be deactivated, and any acts of heroism will be called acts of terrorism.

Edit: But how to destroy the news? Law, as long as we exist in a state, use the available tools. Focus on ranked choice voting, increasing voter turnout, and running for office to collaborate with others to make laws that prevent the news from being so toxic and so profitable. What kinds of laws? Just throwing out ideas

• Change the First amendment (bill of rights) so that it applies only to individuals. A news business or organization does not have the right to free speech or press.

  • Make the news unprofitable and risky for a business
  • This would probably have a ton of other beneficial effects as businesses could then lose the right to lie

• Any company that produces news content may not operate in another other industries, and may have no executives or board members currently in any other company or married or have children in other companies.

  • Make it difficult for the bad people to be in charge of the news

Great point and one I often circle back eventually when I have these discussions with my friends.

I'm starting to think that it is another one of ingrained human traits .... we always want a world with protectors, leaders, figure heads ... it's like being children and wanting to be comforted by a parent, a mother or father.

Except it's a twisted kind of need that we outgrew a long time ago because we are all becoming very capable, knowledgable and intelligent enough to exist on our own. Modern technology, the internet and mass communication is making us more aware of the world and each other and we are realizing that we don't need figureheads any more.

We're all made to think that we don't, won't or can't possibly think like this. We're made to believe that the world and humanity is one big dumb mob that would crumble without a leader.

I believe the opposite is true .... it's our supposed leaders, figureheads, strong men and billionaires that have all the incentive to keep the world as it is because it would mean they would lose most of their power and wealth .... and with it their positions as leaders and figureheads.

The Emperors are strutting about the world completely naked ... and we have to keep up the pretense that they are wearing the most beautiful fashions imaginable.

Right now billionaires are a huge bottleneck to global development and those people who actually want to do something about our worlds problems. Getting rid of them won't solve our world's problems ... it will just make our problems easier to solve. Leaving them alone means our problems persist while they actively block everyone else from dealing with the world's problems.

That doesn't even come close to meaning we shouldn't do it.

Hey thanks. That is IMPRESSIVE and deserves a post of its own, please do it

I stopped when it got to the trillion comparison. Surely I can find a better use out of the next two weeks of my life.

You know what, if they ban billionaires, Imma be your girlfriend

This is exactly why I'm not a billionaire

“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.”

There’s the “joke” about the king/billionaire being asked, “Aren’t you worried about people rising up against you?” He replied, “No, I’ll just pay other people to kill them.”

As a German, I sincerely apologize for allowing our next mini-Hitler to emigrate to Silicon Valley.

Yeah OP needs to spend more time with poor people. People are no better than billionaires on average, billionaires just get all the media attention.