I was prompted to think more on the topic of Limitarianism after an interesting exchange with Alex (thanks Alex). So here’s a little further thought-wrangling.
Steps to improve the world:
-
- Make an arbitrary limit to the absolute wealth that any one human can hoard, let’s start with £1B because if you’re not happy with £1B, you’re not going to be happy with £5B so just give up ya psycho
- Everything you ‘earn’ above that £1B ceiling gets ripped away from you, boo hoo hoo 🎻🎻🎻🎻🎻🎻
- Put the money into communities (world bank / UN does this all the time, just not on the scale we’d be unleashing here)
- Also, while we’re at it, sort out the facken bots! Get the AIs on the case, there
- Cup of tea.
Okay? Sorted. Soon as I’m Archduke of the Universe, I’ll be sure to impose steps #1-4, and #5 can be optional. It could be coffee, it could be a cup of gravy; up to you. You’re welcome.
My occasional forays into Limitarianism in order to achieve #1 may sound pretty harsh when looked at through the lens of doing things to people ‘against their will’ (ie. imposing limits to wealth) – but I think if we look at the history of the Banking or Advertising industries for example; they both started out with real arseholes misusing the system to basically trick people out of their money. In both cases, civilisation had to learn how to regulate the industries properly – it’s no longer possible to just setup a fake bank and steal people’s money, nor to get away with advertising products based on total lies.
That regulation of Banking or Advertising was ‘against peoples will’ in many respects, because the douchebags profiting from others misery didn’t want those regulations put in place. Well … tough titties. < . >< . >
I’m not saying we do it with everyone who’s worked hard and made a lot of money – but we do seem to be getting to the stage where there’s such obscene methods of towering wealth that it simply cannot be ‘earnt’ nor ever truly spent, it’s just this psychotic harvesting and hoarding that robs entire societies of their ability to proceed. It is that, like the Banking or Advertising industries, which needs regulation – which needs ‘limiting’. Both for the sake of society, and for the sake of those sick-minded individuals who have managed to play the system and hoard so much.
Why do we listen to people like Bill Gates, who holds such incredible wealth that even his ‘goodly’ works are the tiniest drop in the ocean; just a smokescreen of philanthropy ~ enough to help us to forget he’s been catching STDs from Russian girls for decades. And don’t get me started on Clippy … okay fine I can make my peace with Clippy.
But if you’re operating on a level where you’re pocketing Government subsidies and affecting global trade, you shouldn’t be applauded, you should be stopped. Just because you’ve found a way to get away with it, does not mean you’re right.
This is from 4 years ago …
… and what has happened in the last four years? Has Musk become nice and quiet and used his money for [any] good? Or is he an unutterable chump who desperately needs a good punching? It’s that second one, isn’t it.
Part of our global problem, I think, is our media is so dominated by the billionaires who now own it, that we have slowly become indoctrinated into believing that the ultra-wealthy are ‘geniuses’ who managed to somehow earn more than everyone else, and well-played them – rather than just sick-minded individuals who leveraged privilege into this game-playing GDP-hoarding psychosis.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, our need for foodbanks is still rising; a college near me has been temporarily shut down because of an infestation of lice. [NB. lice=poverty – it’s from kids who can’t wash their clothes or sheets]. One of the schools about 200m from my front door has had to increase the instances of ‘homework clubs’; where kids stay on for longer to do their homework … and get fed by the teachers who run the clubs. It’s a shame-free way to feed the children who aren’t going to get any food at home. Like … no food. And I live in a very rich, ‘first world’ country. There’s plenty of money here … somewhere …
As a society we need a bit of a wakeup, because “The $2.5 trillion rise in billionaires’ wealth [last year] would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over. [Oxfam]” … so … hold on … why do we have extreme poverty at all?
The question has never been Why does God allow suffering? I think the question has always been; why do we?
I like the principle, but as a general rule I don’t believe in hard limits; I prefer “nonlinear frictional response”. There’s no need for an upper limit if you have a robust fiscal structure, with tax rates that raise (with an upper theoretical limit of 100%) as your income gets higher, and what is “higher” is based on median income and standard deviations of the distribution, or something like that. This is easier to reason about for things such as housing, with a simplified example: own 2 houses? pay twice the taxes. Own 3? Pay *six* times the taxes. Own 4? Pay *12* times the taxes, etc. Now there’s an incentive to not own more houses than you need, because it quickly becomes so expensive to own houses that there’s no way to make it profitable, and it’s cheaper to sell than to rent, even below market rates (also market rates for houses would be lower generally, making it easier for more people to own the roof over their head), so you have a fairer distribution of assets. You could do the same for energy consumption, water consumption (no more communities disrupted by power- and water-hungry datacenters), and of course income and wealth in general.
But of course this is a matter of political will. We do seem to be witnessing some rebound at least locally, that as imperfect as they may seem, still give me hope for alternatives to the current system to get their voices heard. So maybe we’ll see more actions to reduce suffering.
Heck, I’d even be happy with only a billion pennies!