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Calculated "wealth" isn't actually liquid money that can be distributed. It's a low resolution estimation of how much of the economic machinery said billionaire owns using an assumption of instant liquidation not affecting prices.

That is to say... wealth for billionaires is mostly like a piece of paper saying how much A owns and how much B owns. Scribbling at the bottom "Now X, Y, Z own everything instead of A and B" doesn't actually do anything in the physical world!

When most people think of wealth distribution they think a billionaire should fully liquidate their assets into cash and distribute it.

after all, if A sells to B the machinery still is running. no harm done to the machinery and billionaire still has lots of leftover cash to live and stuff

However if you take 300 billion(roughly musk + bezos) and divide that amongst 300 million people(US pop.) What you get is ... 1000 dollars. That's *very* similar to the 600-2000 stimulus idea and that doesn't seem particularly sustainable long term.

It doesn't "kickstart" the economic machinery but is just a temporary punt to stave off business starvations.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1341482365432942592 …

What it *does* do however is it increases inflation and debases faith in the U.S. dollar globally. It is also like an earthquake for the existing social hierarchies that are based on wealth and power.

Billionaires themselves may not directly hold the world on their shoulders but there is ~~something~~ to ideas in Atlas Shrugged. The hierarchies of value that they head DO have outsized effect on the world. (and this is Pareto principle more than than Evil Illuminati)

The 1% are obviously biased here but there *is* something to the idea that a simple redistribution of wealth will *not* have the desired effects on creating a fairer society and may have unexpected negative downsides. e.g:

If you fully equalize the world and have have seen how hard and how smart people in China and India are working then you will realize that full equalization will NOT end well for the U.S. and many other rich countries.

Billionaires and the "rich and unfair cabals" they lead are the equivalent of nuclear weapons in a world where economic warfare is the main form of warfare. The resulting hierarchy of value IS tyrannical in various ways.

But so are the more meritocratic ones in the places like China and India. It's a huge pressure cooker, both socially, academically, and in the status signaling rat race. Being "better" than "them" allows "us" to *not* have to live like "them"

From a global perspective there is also probably a minor effect on slowing down market growth since market machinery has been turned into useless cash. e.g. the mechanism that makes (life saving?) goods cheaper across the world slows down a bit.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1341269410686726144 …

again, probably a very small effect since even billionaires are small relative to the size of the entire system. all this implies that the super rich can't really solve said problems even if they have benefitted from the setup.

One can WIN at monopoly but be helpless to change the rules since everyone insists on playing it. Why? Because people care about WINNING and monopoly allows for easy constant winning once you have enough capital.

The board game is also entirely luck based so it's "fair" for all. High IQ can only get you so far! Many of the most successful wealth managers of the world are not quantum physicists. From a human perspective, this stability of "making it" is VERY tempting.

So aside from the problem of incentivizing risk exploration and innovation in the future there is still a *present* problem of how to fix the problem of people stuck in dead economic constant survival loops w/ no future.https://twitter.com/SylvanaquaFarms/status/1339876785962569728?s=20 …

This is *especially* true for the "complacent" people in rich societies. The cost of living is high and in a globally connected society where more and more work is information work, they have NO competitive edge.

They're effectively handicapped relative to the competitiveness of the global workforce. Maintaining their lifestyle requires literal hand-outs unless they fix the problem of being non competitive or the problem of cost of living.

Digital nomadism and trading on Robinhood are not as escapist or dumb as you might think at first glance. They are very intuitive reactions against how the system is currently setup. If you *know* monopoly is a boring game, your house rules will change to make the game interestin

Moving to a cheaper country lowers COL while skills r equalized in gambling. No amount of PHDs is going to help you win a coin flip contest. (and there is actually an edge for momentum trading since young blood has more accurate coolness radar)

So while it can be tempting to believe the biggest players can do something about *gestures around pointing at everything*, often times they too are very small players relative to the size of the whole system.