I mostly ignore the billionaire demonization debate but an argument that they shouldn’t exist because their riches are primarily due to luck caught my eye Is there a coherent moral argument that society should confiscate the fruits of risky gambles?
There's definitely an argument for why they shouldn't: If you lop off the top of possible rewards, you decrease the amount of risk people are willing to take. http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html
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i get the idea, but does behavioural science back that up? lots of studies show suprising things... wonder if there is a study that shows behaviour based on know you can't get the top 10% of the exponential win curve..
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Probably depends on how much is lopped off...
End of conversation
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In earlier evolutions of human society, individuals still took high risks for prestige / non-monetary reward since productivity capped monetary rewards beyond a point. US is lose-lose right now, capped risk (paid by all) for capital owners, unbounded risk for the poor
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Is all money either with the poor or rich — or is some yet to be acquisitioned (unmined resources) or in a shared pools (government)?
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It seems that for a few decades there has been a disconnect between broader economic success and the lived reality of people's lives. There's an argument that a smaller economy, but one on which the 90% are wealthier is better than a bigger one, where they're poorer.
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Paul, your assumption here is that all the rewards are monetary or measurable ("lop off the top"). Was Einstein a risk taker? There is an entirely orthogonal motivation: the creator seeks freedom of thought and action and the satisfaction in pursuing ideas to a conclusion.
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If you read the essay, it's clear I'm only talking about the financial risk/reward tradeoff.
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Yeah, I get the utilitarian argument, both for and against, but I don’t think idealists make utilitarian arguments so I was trying to understand where they were coming from
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Bit of a straw man I think. There is no argument against gains form risky gambles. The real argument is do those risky gambles lead to an unfair advantage that is propagated through generations. Do we really need the top 1% to have 50% of the wealth to encourage risk taking?
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