Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Serious politicians building a brand on a wealth tax indicates that a significant populist contingent wants to strip-mine the American dream, and that’s depressing enough. But worse, imo, is that so many of these people think human beings are fungible — how do you live like this?

I’m really confused about this one. I have spent a lot of time the past few years with billionaires. Like, traveling the world with one in particular.

I’ve known him since he was a mere multi millionaire. And he hasn’t changed in any material way as I watched his wealth grow after the IPO and as the stock continued to multiply. He passed the threshold of countable material wealth and after that he stopped even looking.

He bought and sunk a yacht. He bought a plane. All before he even hit HALF a billion. The fortunes we’re talking about are completely abstract; they can’t be spent. As he puts it “i have enough money to ruin my grandkids’ grandkids’ lives” He cannot materialize his wealth.

And if he can’t access it, in a sense, in a REAL sense, after a certain point, it can’t be taken away from him. Because he never had it anyway. It’s just… potential. So it’s never his anyway. So whose should it be? What should it be for?

Did he do TWENTY THOUSAND TIMES more output than me over the past five years to earn it? I was there, I assure you he did not. Maybe 10x or even 100x. I could be convinced of 1000x if it meant I could have 10x myself. But the truth is more like… 5x? 3x?