Millionaires Now Control Half Of The Worlds Personal Wealth: Report - Sensationalist Headlines

Yeah, because that's what I was talking about. Because the only thing I'm bitching about it is "I want more for me", and not "The system isn't balanced". You're the one making this about whoever chooses to complain as only wanting to enrich themselves. That's literally never been what I've been saying. God forbid you just admit the thing you started this argument with might have been an overstep.

God forbid you admit you misinterpreted my line of argument and just ran with it even when you stopped making sense.

I think that anyone can talk about these issues, and I think that most people when they talk about these issues aren't saying "I Want 5 fucking hot dogs even though most people only had 1". I think you turning to such absurd ways to disregard the people you're talking to is straight up stupid on your part. I think that if you want to call people entitled for wanting to talk about these issues, you should come right out and say so. Don't dance around it. You seem to think that if someone complains about the status of wealth inequality as a person who isn't hungry every night, that would make you entitled. I would assume that you base this on your "I want 5 fucking hot dogs" level of discussion in regards to wealth inequality. That isn't the discussion most people are having, nor the one that I ever wanted to have. If I failed to make sense, it's because I was trying to make sense of a view point that genuinely doesn't seem at all rational to me.

My position was simply that a beneficiary critical of the system they propagate because they don't have more money is an entitled shit. You never directly addressed or challenged my statement so you never got the clarification you were clearly missing. You just forced the argument to be about interpersonal bullshit and only tangentially approached the actual statement I made. You having a strong reaction to a misconstrued argument isn't my burden to bear bucko.

No, actually upon your clarification right here, I had your intentions down pat. If someone isn't on the bottom of the barrel, they can't complain without being an entitled shit. That isn't a rational view held by many people, nor is it one that really makes way for intelligent or informed decisions going forwards. It's exactly what I thought it was.

I forgot that the average person was a rational, pragmatic thinker. If you don't agree with the majority, and if your argument cannot be countered, you're wrong! https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/107231/8be1e660-8169-4da6-aa64-d0388844487d/image.png Also... you had my intentions down? So you knew that my belief was this the whole time a beneficiary critical of the system they propagate because they don't have more money is an entitled shit. ... and then you self-attributed yourself to that? Nice.

Hey man, keep trying to make it seem reasonable to write off literally anyone in the western world who complains about the status of our society You're doing a great job

Sure, I suppose the lower classes would be included in that injunction, but quite honestly the people who have fucked up the hardest were elites who thought they could build a yacht out of a rowboat. (See: The 20th Century).

Upper echelon, wtf dude I was homeless just a few months ago and I eat for like 50€ a month and might lose my apartment at any moment due to not having enough income lol. Upper echelon my ass.

You forgot to mention the part where I pointed out that you're literally saying contradictory things Are you afraid I'm going to undermine the petty bourgeoisie Facebook post?

You have to realize that the exact same line of thinking is what was used to justify all manner of abhorrent practices in the past, for instance racial segregation. "Well yeah sure it sucks that you guys are being treated unfairly but that doesn't mean we should do anything about it because who knows what could happen if you rock the boat???? Really you should just be grateful that you're even allowed to ride at all!"

No I'm literally trying to talk to you. What am I saying that's contradictory here? 1) I'm concerned about wealth inequality 2) I accept that I'm not at the bottom of the barrel 3) I think that just because I am not at the bottom of the barrel doesn't invalidate my complaints, or anyone elses 4) I am not asking for "5 hot dogs while everyone else has none" 5) I do not think the majority of the people who want to talk about wealth inequality want "5 hot dogs while everyone has none" 6) I do not think that wanting to discuss the issues that affect our society while not at the bottom of the barrel makes me an "Entitled Shit" to quote you exactly. Can you explain to me what you think I think, why you've been absolutely nothing but dismissive since your very first post?

SGman will be weeping tears of envy and impotent rage tonight, for he knows even he will never be able to start an argument as asinine and mindlessly conratian as the one SKS has just started.

I never said change wasn't need, but rather that it ought to be pursued slowly and carefully so as to not accidentally happen upon another state-driven disaster. The civil war didn't happen right away, it happened after the law was set straight. If people flipped the table every time something isn't ideal we would never have gotten here in the first place. Ultimately, we are complaining about the same thing, we just disagree about how to best minimize unfair treatment.

You're not allowed to argue against wealth inequality if you benefit from it because that makes you a hypocrite, and you're not allowed to argue against wealth inequality if you don't benefit from it because you're just selfish and want free money. Therefore, no one is allowed to argue against wealth inequality. Fantastic logical gambit libertarians have come up with, isn't it?

People can have a computer or an internet-enabled smartphone, thus being able to post there, thus technically fitting into your definition of the "upper echelon of wealth distribution", without having things like a house covered, or even notion of stability for the next year. Hell, lots of people posting here are probably student-types or young adults recently supporting themselves. You can't even guarantee that they have a full belly every night, even if they don't fear hunger like people far less well off would. I think that's sort of the problem when people like @HumanAbyss say stuff like "things are getting worse." I consider myself absolutely in the "upper echelon of wealth distribution", but thats only because I have a roof over my head and I'm not starving. But I can't pretend that my housing is stable, or that I keep my fridge full all the time, or that I can even guarantee I'll still be living independently in a year. I feel that I can personally make comments on wealth inequality, especially in regards to the bigger picture, and that many people posting here probably aren't too far-off in that regard. I might very well me missing the point here, I'd be willing to admit that. But reading your posts rubbed me the wrong way, and maybe that makes this post and my opinions a bit reactionary, but I can't help but feel my very real struggles and my very real opinions that come from that are being a bit invalidated just because I'm not on the street.

There's a world of difference between middle class people here and the hyper rich who can and do dump money into politics to push policies that further concentrate wealth in their pockets.

If all change ever had been done "slowly and carefully" we wouldn't have democracies in the first place. Sometimes things have to change radically for them to improve. The current tendency is consolidation of power into the hands of a few. That's detrimental to the evolution of society because it means those few get to impose their will on the many, thus reaping all the benefits while ignoring the latter's needs. That can't possibly lead to "slow and careful" improvements in the long term. The more wealth is accrued by an elite, the less the population at large will be given a shit about. It's structurally unsustainable.

Not to mention, historically there have been many tipping points where wealth inequality drove the society to self destruct. I view Zens comments here as tantamount to leading to the destruction of our society through inaction. Wealth inequality destroyed the romans. Do we really think we're immune to those issues? Human history is littered with the events we're edging to the precipice of. They all go the same way. And we're just staring down the barrel waiting for the same thing to happen again.

or just the ones who cut political checks and or are running or currently are in political office, a government of the rich will only ever be for the rich

Concentration just makes expropriation easier

The whole point is that we now have a democracy and a system of law that ought to be considered blind. Whatever changes are made shall be slow by comparison unless you are suggesting an extra-legal and violent method of redistribution. The average people are considered equal under the law to anyone else, and the protections put in place in the last 100 years attest to that fact. We have gone from deathly conditions and malnutrition to a place where someone who is working can at the very least find access to guaranteed sustenance. Yes, this does vary country to country, but we can point to the more successful ones that achieved this without a coup and simply say that we must work towards that. Your pessimism as it pertains to wealth distribution is ultimately more a sign of local problems than it is of an overall trend towards poorer conditions for average people. I view your comments in the same light. They could lead to the destruction of society via a breaking down of the systems that have been put into a place in virtue of a process not unlike evolution. The changes that work have stuck around and those that don't are constantly getting whittled away. The Romans didn't collapse just because of wealth inequality, though I do recognize that local relative poverty is highly correlated with criminal activity. The Roman empire collapse due to various reasons ranging from that which you just mentioned to more simply having an empire that could not be consolidated under one rule. Various people pitted their chunk against the others, and the distant provinces were not controlled. The Romans could not adapt fast enough because they simply did not have the ability. We do. Today's situation is different for various reasons. Firstly, we have a system that aims to connect disparate parts of the globe under common law, not to mention large countries such as Canada or the US. Those connections are far stronger and binding than anything the Romans ever had. This, combined with the speed of communication allows for administration on a far vaster scale Secondly, the literacy of our people has gone up and creates a situation where people have a genuine chance at social mobility, and those that do not are (or ought to be in some countries) provided for. The problem with wealth redistribution is that you cannot control prices without ruining the economy, and if you can't control prices then there is nothing stopping any given person or company that provides a good from asking for an extra dollar on their price tag. The second interactions become anything but purely arbitrary and equal, inequality emerges. I have an apple and you have 2 dollars. I eat the apple, but you still have 2 dollars - we are now unequal. If you let that play itself out we will simply return to the state we are at now where a small percentage of people do a large percentage of the innovation and reap a large percentage of the profits. Are there laws we should implement to control or reduce this tendency? Maybe. If we do implement such laws then we must be careful of their effect - an effect that is only really understood by advance economists. That is a group that I presume you and I are not members of. Ultimately, if you are so adamant about revolutionary change, then please do provide an account of how it would happen and how it is different from, say, communist Romania, or the USSR, or Maoist China. Propose a method that is both 'quick' enough and effective enough, but does not create the exact scenario that killed more people than most conquerors throughout history, and I will be amazed. Ofcourse, you could side with me and say that you are not informed or trained to make such a call, and I will simply redirect you back to the elites that call themselves economists and the very people you so distrust.

There are buckets full of ideology and policy between what we have now and communism. No one even advocated for forceful redistribution and bloodshed. You just came in here and laid down some red scare FUD that sounds lifted straight out of Jordan Peterson's mouth

I said change needs to be slow and steady. People disagreed. I simply was replying to that and pointing out the difficulty of 'Sometimes things have to change radically for them to improve.' (_Axel). Let's leave Jordan Peterson out of this, shall we?

It depends on what you call slow and steady. Wealth inequality has rapidly grown. How slowly do you intend on dealing with it? Two or three times the length of time it took for that wealth to be acquired? By that time period the wealth inequality will have spiraled well out of control and society WILL collapse.

To add on to this point: There is absolutely nothing stopping these people from just deciding to leave, with their money, and found a new nation. Then that nation would have 50% of the world's total wealth locked up.

The problem isn't objective poverty but rather relative poverty. People in rural china do not feel the pressure you mention because everyone around them has relatively the same condition. What causes problems is relative poverty. As society progresses, it is not the case that there are 100 coins in existence and one guy has 99 of them, but rather that at first there are 100 coins and then 50 more get created, 40 of which go to the person who enacted that growth. The top is skyrocketing but the bottom is also raising up steadily. What will collapse society is mucking with the machine that has allowed this progress with no concern for its actual workings. To go on some moral crusade simply because some people have a lot of money compared to others is silly if you cannot guarantee a method of distribution that is not only efficacious, but also stable. As I've said, we could divide the amount of money in the world by the amount of people and the distribution we have today would simply be remade as soon as natural trade takes off. Not only that, but the value of money would attain a questionable status, and the issue of property makes things all the more difficult. In an ideal world we would have an omniscient leader that could make perfect decisions. We do not have that now, and collectivization has failed every time it was tried by anyone less that perfect. Since we are not perfect, we must work with the boat we have and take steps that can prove themselves one way or the other quicker than it would take the boat to sink. What that means is slow and steady change.

I'm not arguing for collectivization. Stop acting like I am. I am acknowledging this problem exists, and that "Slow gradual change" to fix a problem that accrued in less than 50 years could perhaps be a less tennable solution than you're willing to realize. Stop arguing with a point of view I've never held.

If these people won't, as they are accused of, put their money into 'the system', then what makes you think they would put their money into some sort of commune between them? These people have a lot of money, yes, and perhaps their power should be limited, yes, but the way to go about that must be clearly planned and worked into the system we have. The answer might end up with a simple cap, or it might come out that any such redistribution would make a muck of the checks and balances we have now. We do not know and any change ought not to be 'radical' insofar as that means making the change based on emotion rather than careful deliberation.

There isn't going to be an easy method. There may not be a way to do it what so ever, it doesn't and never will change that these are complaints worth having and worth making publicly. The issue is complicated and I don't want to upturn society to fix it, but as you seem only willing to acknowledge society dies from changes poorly planned and implemented and you don't want to look at the reality that wealth inequality is an issue that leads to societal crisis and collapse historically it definitely seems worth bringing up without a solution in tow. I don't want to dismantle capitalism, I don't want to destroy the economy, I don't want to collectivize wealth. But I don't want wealth inequality to run rampant as it has over the last half century, and as all of our economic visions of the future predict, this trend is only going to continue without end. The poor will have food, sustenance, unlike the historical collapses the excesses of the wealthy will likely be subsistence for the under classes so the collapse may take longer. I understand fully the dangers in changing course as you have warned, but I am warning you continuing forward is just as dangerous, and just as volatile and just as depressing a future for humanity. I think that the worst future for humanity is one where the majority of it lives an indignant and substituent life while gross excesses occur above. That has been our entire history. To not seek a change for the better seems to me, a graver error in judgement than you have even begun to recognize in this argument. Yes, change is dangerous, and I do think it must be undertaken carefully. I do not think responses that jump to extremes like "so you just want collectivization eh?" are going to be conducive to discussions about it, even if that's something that likely is peddled. I want a tide that rises all ships as it were and we've made magnificent progress towards that over the last century. But we're currently mid stumble in that dash forward, and if we don't correct this stumble we will not see a brighter future. My point is that we have a chance to prevent a spiraling of wealth inequality and power disparity that could forever see the very essence of democracy damaged, and we have the duty to act. Failing to do so is going to render many of our dystopic visions of the world more than just a fiction.