Welcome to economics where everything is made up and the money doesn't matter.
'Reality' is saying "no, you can't live there, that's one of my hundreds of investment properties. No, you can't eat that, you should have bought it before we threw it away."
What exactly is indefensible?
Why is a flatter distribution of the monopoly money even desirable?
Right. So why are you so interested in taking money from people? We fund the things we want by printing money, what use is erasing Musk's?
You know food banks exist, and are stocked almost entirely by businesses trying to feed people with food before it expires, right? I'm sorry reality isn't a desperate enough hellscape to justify your revolution, but it isn't.
You described quite nicely how someone in a particular situation has no power in or control over their life, and then defended someone who would choose that existence. It's not simply a matter of waste, it's an abdication of personal agency to sit around drinking all day.
The key perhaps is in the word you mention there: monopoly. Monopolies are bad for free markets - competition should be the order of the day. Where one or just a few companies are stupendously rich, this often is not because they are particularly inventive or their products so good, but because they have found other ways of "capturing" the market (entrance barriers, buyouts, forms of legal suppression) that are really about stifling competition, and their market dominance thus can reflect unhealthiness.
What does it mean to "choose" an existence?
Ah, so you're one of those 'christians' who don't try to emulate Christ or his message.
10,000 poor people being able to buy 1 $20,000 car each is better for the economy than 1 billionaire buying himself 7 Lamborghinis for $1,000,000 a pop.
It's not a zero sum environment. Those situations are not one or the other.
This isn't an argument, nor does it have any bearing on what I said. I had 4 separate responses in that quote, and your retort applied to none of them.
Work is optional. The consequences of not working might be significant depending on your situation, but there are places in the world that you are inescapably trapped in an existence less desirable than an American choosing not to work. It's funny to me how often you try to describe how things are wrong or could be better, and the better you imagine is the way things already are.
I see no sense in treating conclusions drawn from a proxy variable as a mandate for revolution. People getting enormously wealthy may be indicative of something broken, sure; others here treat it as an inherent fault in and of itself.
The imbalances is power/wealth are senselessly and heavily exaggerated. People constantly sensationalize the wealth of the rich, and then act like if someone has 100 times your wealth, it makes them 100 times as powerful living 100 times better a lifestyle. And the truth is, that enormous wealth has diminishing returns, it really is just meaningless numbers in many ways.
Then why do they care so much about keeping it and growing it?
It's not.
Not the people who, by your own admission, are uselessly accumulating that obscene wealth.
It kind of is though.
Like that dirty socialist Jesus.
A stock investment is literally giving someone else your money to use productively on your behalf. It is the opposite of hoarding.
Your statement is wrong, but it more importantly still has nothing to do with what you're responding to. I'm not engaging with this if you can't connect it to the topic at hand.
But why is that aspect of lifestyle not a defence of redistribution (or, if you prefer, limiting overaccumulation in the first place)? Studies would suggest that there's a point where on average additional wealth does little to create happiness, and that amount is in the greater scheme of things quite modest - albeit still considerably higher than most of the population have. This then should lead us to question why a few should have stupendous quantities of wealth from which they derive minimal happiness whilst millions toil in a state of unhappy want.
This is tricky. An investment holds part of a company, and effectively provides income for the company that allows the company to invest - to start up, expand, fund R&D, etc. It is not, as such, wasted money. These therefore likely drive economic activity in the long-term. It is however certainly not money that is effectively being used for goods and services that drive economic activity and provide jobs in the here and now. This is the logic for why the government should borrow and fund jobs during a recession: by increasing work, earnings, and driving demand it should help prevent further job losses, increase business confidence, and end a slump. Chucking money at savers, however, doesn't achieve this.
I think he's subscribing to the ''Poverty isn't a lack of cash, but a lack of character'' school of thought.
"Should" can be a dangerous word. "Should" almost always comes with Monkey's Paw rules attached. I understand the sentiment of "we should spread happiness instead of letting the resources rot", but what you imagine should be isn't so easy. Like, you want to limit overaccumulating? Is a few hundred thousand dollars too much? If you start an online bookstore, and it explodes into the second biggest retailer on the planet, how does one limit the accumulation? Do you say "Amazon isn't allowed to be worth that much" and shut it down? How do you stock the accumulation of wealth, when wealth is an abstract, subjective, fluctuating number? Is owning a bunch of trading cards that appreciate in value, just from decrease in supply and increase in demand, qualify as accumulating wealth? If people bout bitcoin for pennies and still own a bunch, do you take it from them? If the value of bitcoin drops, do you give it back?
It actually started as "the hackers probably aren't communists, but the people who started that subreddit are."
