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@ Chris Liss
2025-04-04 07:59:59
Saw a post a couple days ago -- too lazy to find it -- arguing that bllionaires shouldn't exist and that we only tolerate them due to a pysop that says you might become one which is statistically as likely as getting hit by lightning.
Not true. I am find with billionaires existing not because I might become one but because to confiscate their wealth would give the confiscators power over me. In fact, when the confiscators come for the billionaires, they will find that the billionaires are highly capable of defending themselves, but the principle of confiscation, once enshrined, will then be extended to all of us, and we are less able to defend ourselves.
The problem is not that someone else has resources, and the solution is definitely not to give the politbureau confiscatory power.
The problem is a lack of bottom-up freedom and opportunity which the government has stifled. The government’s ONLY legimate role is to create conditions for bottom-up prosperity, not to redistribute wealth or fix outcomes.
Of course *some* billionaires have ill-gotten gains, and there are laws against that which should be used and are often not. But saying gains that are ill-gotten should not be able to be retained is very different from saying all gains above a certain threshold should not be able to be retained.
Envy is a catastrophic council for governance of human affairs.