For example, who was Elon Musk's wealth transferred from?
What do you think about all that money being invested into AI? Is that "extreme short term profit maximization"?
Even if you agree with some of DOGE projects’s goals, the way it operated was wildly thoughtless about consequences beyond Musk’s personal wishes, and almost completely unaccountable.
I’m honestly sick that my personal Model Y purchase helped add to that power.
And I say that as someone who was a huge Musk fan for years, despite the warning signs — the Thai “pedo” comments, and his very public turn during COVID.
It was not transferred to him.
The same goes for Bezos, Jobs, Gates, etc.
Cantillon Effect
How much does your bread cost and how much did it cost in the 90s? Where do you think all that value gone? Has bread some what become much better quality or something? Are they lacing it with gold?
They are stealing from your pocket, in many ways than one.
Another point to consider is that musk wealth is on paper only, real value if he wanted to cash out would turn much smaller, it's all hypothetical.
> They are stealing from your pocket, in many ways than one.
You need a more compelling argument than that. Agriculture is not a particularly lucrative industry.
> Another point to consider is that musk wealth is on paper only, real value if he wanted to cash out would turn much smaller, it's all hypothetical.
Back to "what is value?" There is no such thing as intrinsic value. Value is what people are willing to pay for something. That's it. If people are willing to pay more, then the value is higher. If the are only willing to pay less, then the value is lower. And certainly the value of x is different for different people, and varies moment by moment.
The value of a TSLA share of stock is no different from the value of that piece of paper you have that says "One Dollar" on it.
The government gave Musk a trillion dollars?
> So not all activieties that bring profit to the richest are good to the rest
I didn't say they were all good. I said he created his wealth, it was not transferred to him.
> And stats on inequality just highlights that trend
All those stats highlight is some people create more wealth than others.
What happens when you pay back the money? Yes, it is symmetric, the money is destroyed! (wild, isn't it!)
So why does the bank do this? They make money on the interest from the loan.
This is how "free banking" works, and it applies to your scenario. Creating value does not devalue the rest of the economy. The supply of money is not fixed, it rises and falls relative to the value in the economy.
I know this is a difficult thing to describe briefly, there are college degrees on this topic.
- Over-optimizing for short term profit can hurt innovation and value creation.
- The economy is not a zero sum game and new value is created out of thin air.
If one of those people suddenly "creates wealth" and now has $100,000, then the average value of the dollar goes down and the cost of everything goes up. Person X can trivially afford the increase, but the other nine now have lower buying power, lower standards of living, and the $100,000 now can exert coercive control over those with less.
We are all slightly worse off every time there is a new billionaire.
I responded to the zero sum theory in another reply.
I'll just say that every country that decided to get rid of its wealthy people wound up poorer, a lot poorer.
For a specific example, Massachusetts has a luxury yacht industry. The government decided that they wanted to tax the wealthy, and slapped a hefty tax on yachts. The billionaires simply took their yacht buying elsewhere, and the yacht industry collapsed, costing thousands of highly paid jobs. The government rescinded the tax.
Bezos ran at a loss for so long it drove out actual and potential competitors.
Most (or all?) of the recent titans seem like each has his own company town. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town )
While their activities certainly fall in the realm of capitalism, and are just blips at longer time scales, it certainly feels like capitalism has been a bit under the weather for the past couple decades.
Regarding the money invested in AI, it all gives me "irrational exuberance" vibes.
Nope. (Any government incentives were available to all the other car companies.)
> Bezos ran at a loss for so long it drove out actual and potential competitors.
Where do you think he got the money to sustain those losses? Investors! Including me. That is not a "transfer" of wealth, as in exchange the investors received an ownership share of the company.
> Regarding the money invested in AI, it all gives me "irrational exuberance" vibes.
It still is the opposite of short term thinking.
