this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

There is a surplus of resources, that's a strawman argument.

Taxes on unhealthy items such as cigarettes and recreational drugs, and sugar exist, these are how you account for those issues of behavioural social damage and the imbalance in cost of social healthcare.

You could be held criminally liable for eating too much for example, because you're taking away resources needed to keep others alive

Yes, we should do this. Let's start with the billionaires and see if everyone has enough then.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you quantify this surplus? Because your unqualified statement requires there to be enough to meet ANY demand. You just sound like a genzedong tankie who does not understand the most basic market theory that for every demand there must be a counterpart, who themselves will have demands, and there's no unlimited resource hack IRL (yet).

Your right to life ends where my right to not get unalived by your wishes ends.

Sorry meant to add here and this app needs polish... Deleted comment too slowly.

Also your tangent changed subjects. Right to life. Criminality vs liberties.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

How do you get unalived by taxing the wealthy? How do the wealthy get unalived by not being allowed to hoard excess resources beyond their consumption? And how is their ownership not an infringement on the rights of the poor to not be unalived by exploitative systems?

Your grasp on the subject is beyond tenuous, it's outright non-existent. I don't know what conversation you think you have the capacity to be part of, but this is not the one you want.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Your grasp of how money works is surface level.

Let's start here: billionaires do not have billions of dollars like Scrooge McDucks swimming in gold. They hold securities for companies that are doing things on the idea that they can sell them and redeploy that capital later.

In other words: the money means nothing. All that wealth means is they're the ones who control resources.

By similar reasoning, modern monetary theory is that government can print money and activate unused resources without driving inflation very much.

So what you want is a planned economy. Soviet style. In fact the language you use makes it clear you're fully bought into tankie propaganda.

There are 3 ways to make people do things: money, love and power. So am I going to give you everything you need because of love? money is clearly not the means to ends in your system. That leaves the threat of unaliving.

And so we're back at gun control, the only way your kind is able to make such a system work: by killing everyone who disagrees.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Do you know how many dollars you'd have if you took every dollar away from every billionaire and divided it evenly? Enough for a nice dinner, maybe a very cheap getaway, not enough to stop working or get all your needs met by someone else who is in the same position as you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow, who doesn't understand economic theory now. Of course that wouldn't work, you'd have to be a moron to even suggest it.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You're the one who replied to my deleted comment with " all those billionaires exist" (I can't actually pull it up in this app now to quote).

That's some maoist theory you're leaning on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here you go:

Can you quantify this surplus?

Billionaires exist. Are billions of dollars worth of the very resources we need to survive quantifiable enough?

Who do you think is hoarding both your resources and the benefit of your labour? Who do you imagine is diminishing your capacity for survival?

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ok so America has 300,000,000 people. That's $3 per person for every billion dollars. Come on genius, bring that math, explain how all those billions divide into everyone having everything they need and everyone else will absolutely deliver those needs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's not how economics works, you cant just pay everyone a dividend. besides, only about 15% of those 300k need a share of that assistance to get up to base levels of not being homeless and starving. If you're going to bitch about knowing economic theory as least have the intellectual fortitude to not make disingenuous bad-faith arguments befitting a troglodyte.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

You're right that you cannot pay a dividend but you missed the check on your knowledge of how wealth and money work: that money doesn't exist. Only a miniscule fraction of that wealth exists as a budget you can just spend as you know it. All that those billionaires have is the ability to tell people what to do and all they can spend is reallocating productivity towards other goals. All the money that actually gets spent goes into other people's pockets and gets spent in turn. The inefficiently in this system is far lower than the inefficiency in a planned economy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why are you deleting your comments? Don't they have any merit?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

App issue, reposted