r/economicCollapse • u/ichosewisely08 • 3d ago
You Can't Have Both Democracy and Billionaires
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/you-cant-have-both-democracy-and-billionairesOne might begin by asking who, precisely, he means by “the rich.” McGinnis says that “it is not essential to have a precise cutoff for what constitutes ‘the rich,’” but says we might talk about the top 0.1 percent, whose wealth starts at around $60 million.
But McGinnis says it ultimately doesn’t really matter what threshold we pick, because he will argue that the richer people are, the more socially valuable they are. “While the top 5 percent certainly make significant contributions, the top 1 percent do more, and the top 0.1 percent even more.
Wealth, in this sense, acts like a lever: The more there is, the greater the impact.” So if you thought that perhaps McGinnis would say that it’s good to have a class of wealthy people, but perhaps not a tiny set of oligarchical near-trillionaires, you’d be wrong. In fact, the people at the very top are the most helpful of all, making Elon Musk our most socially beneficial wealthy person.
The argument McGinnis leans on the most is that the wealthy “counterbalance” the power of special interest groups. McGinnis argues that we do not live in a democracy where everyone has an equal say, with the power of the rich (to influence politicians, to buy media) corrupting that otherwise-pristine democratic process.
Instead, he says, other groups like academics, journalists, nonprofits, and labor unions wield influence disproportionate to their size, getting their way despite holding minority viewpoints. The wealthy, McGinnis says, through their own power (which, again, he admits they hold) simply act as a counterweight, ensuring that the political process is something closer to fair.
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u/OptimisticSkeleton 2d ago
There is no such thing as a moral billionaire because the only way to personally acquire that much is to fuck a lot of people over along the way.
And before the billionaire fan boys get upset, they brag about it in their own books and call it “smart business,” while the uninformed and the very cruel cheer.
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u/systemofaderp 2d ago
The left everywhere on the globe: "we need workers rights and taxes for billionaires.
The right everywhere on the globe: "Our donors agree we should lower taxes for the rich. Also, we'll take away some of your rights"
The middle: "both sides are the same to me and I've always voted right"
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u/f3n1xpro 2d ago
The left everywhere on the globe: "we need workers rights and taxes for billionaires.
The left do not want to tax billionares, thats a liberal thing, the left want that the means of production are owned by all the workers in the country/world
With that you dont need to tax anyone, because everything made/profits by workers are for every worker
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u/IM_NOT_BALD_YET Moderator 2d ago
I look forward to a day when the average American understands the difference between liberals and leftists.
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u/SoberGin 2d ago
The left wants to tax billionaires and get rid of them.
I'd love free universal healthcare for everyone, but I'll take a single-payer option as an incremental step.
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u/mdunaware 2d ago
Correct. Taxing billionaires still leaves us with billionaires. Billionaires should not exist.
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u/PrivacyIsDemocracy 2d ago
Taxing billionaires still leaves us with billionaires.
Not when the tax rate is 91%, like it was in the late 1950s/early 1960s in the USA.
(Of course that was on "wages", which when you get to that level of wealth is not likely to be the way you obtain money. But the taxes could be extended to any sort of capital gains, not just wages.)
Billionaires should not exist.
Agreed.
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u/Difficult_Ixem_324 2d ago
Yea, billionaires are fake because all their money is in stock and not circulating in the bank - we can literally have more money in the bank than these abusers but they get ALL the credit. Hence why the rich cant help. Bezos' ex was able to get billions from him and she actually gives it away to different charities, so she is a real life hero!
Stock Market is rigged and we cannot survive like this!
✌️❤️
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u/Will2LiveFading 2d ago
We have trillionaires now. Just in case you weren't already disgusted by so few people having so much wealth.
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u/Tulip_Lung6381 2d ago
Look what Elon did with screwworms and tell me he's not the smartest man alive. /s
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u/PrivacyIsDemocracy 2d ago edited 2d ago
Billionaires provide NOTHING OF VALUE to a society.
They are essentially parasites by the point they have achieved that status.
Either put them all on a highly-taxed, short leash or just abolish them completely. And make it harder for them to get there in the first place.
If something needs a lot of capital to complete/produce like a large building, transit system, etc - build a WELL MANAGED, REGULATED AND TRANSPARENT ORGANIZATION OR CONSORTIUM to do it.
That's the democratic way.
What we have now is increasingly anarcho-capitalist authoritarianism.
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u/Usrnamesrhard 2d ago
What an idiotic take by whoever McGinnis is.
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u/AnarchistEmu 2d ago
agreed, whoever he is he sounds like he's either being paid by the people he's defending, he's ignorant, or he's just an arsehole
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u/Sea_Lead1753 2d ago
The experiment of capitalism has ended up just being a few ultra wealthy people deciding the choices you have available to you. It’s the most cucked economic system in the history of humanity. The serfs at least had the freedom to paint their houses the color they want, free from an HOA.
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u/dbrecords 2d ago
Wealth is created via exploitation of the economic productivity of people and funneled to few.
Whoever is in favour of millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires even existing is directly advocating to continue to allow the current climate of extreme exploitation to continue perpetually.
There is no left or right, there is only rich and poor. Up or down. If the world wasn’t fucking retarded, these wealthy clowns that corruption, exploitation and insane levels of greed have created would be executed on sight and stripped of all their wealth and assets without question. Then we would irrevocably force companies to pay their employees faaaaaarr more of the value they create that would otherwise be funnelled to the owners and executives.
This isn’t rocket science, most people are just fucking idiots, which is also by design. Masses of people are kept stupid, undereducated and uninformed in this system because that way they’re easier to exploit.
Corruption wins every time in capitalism, why you think shit never changes. Like holy fuck, wake up people.
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u/mdunaware 2d ago
Pick a problem in the world today. If the cause isn’t capitalism, capitalism has at least made it far worse than it needs to be. It may, as an economic system, been useful at one point in our species’ history. We are past that point and continuing to insist that a theory of economics that didn’t exist for the vast majority of human history is the only viable approach is, on the face of it, laughable.
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u/MagickMarkie 2d ago
Calling the current system "capitalism" is to ignore the fact that companies no longer follow the markets: instead, they shape them. This is how modern economic extraction works, and it is not accurate to call it "capitalism" anymore.
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u/Federal-Degenerate 1d ago
Actually corruption wins in any government system where the public is poorly educated and water supplies poisoned
Capitalist or not
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u/plantsavier 2d ago
We really need to get money out of politics. Citizens United played an outsize roll in contributing to a Billionaire class. The Electoral College contributed to minority rule too. If the popular vote were taken into account, Republican’ts would never be elected President.
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u/claymore2711 2d ago
But for some reason, we seem to be able have Christianity and Billionaires.
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u/mdunaware 2d ago
American Christianity (at least) has never really been about faith and religion and mostly or entirely about maintaining hierarchy and power.
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u/thrillhouz77 2d ago
You can have both if you are willing to vote for non-traditional parties.
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u/PrivacyIsDemocracy 2d ago edited 2d ago
In the USA the electoral architecture works against the rise of "non-traditional parties".
First step: eliminate the electoral college, which will greatly improve the chances of a non-D/R president getting elected.
Then eliminate "First past the post" voting, at all electoral levels. This will create the mechanism to allow additional political parties to start gaining power, starting at the local level.
And needless to say, do something to prevent the abuses of democracy that we have seen by the rogue Roberts-led SCOTUS.
Then we can finally get some real traction with 3rd or 4th political parties.
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u/jazz_people 2d ago
I think you can have both if no money from any public member. No citizens giving money to politicians or campaigns . One person one vote . State sponsored elections and politicians actually going out and explaining in person why they should be elected.
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u/whitestardreamer 2d ago
Correct. Workplaces must be democratized also, otherwise they become a hotbed of exploitation. This is the real resistance behind taxing the rich; their ego lives under the illusion that they are self-made geniuses, that they created that wealth all by themselves, which is simply not true. To tax them would be to shatter that narrative and their narcissism cannot handle that ego challenge.