The thing about capitalism, is that there used to be a lot of things like say - stock buybacks that were implicitly immoral or against norms.
JD Rockefeller aside from starting a monopoly had deals with the railroads most people at the time found immoral and this was either against or before the concept of common carrier.
So like - there are a lot of ways in which - I want to be a sort of economically conservative capitalist. I want to live in a world where we have a set of rules that create a level playing field. But we’ve had this slow drip of deregulation and norm breaking over the past 100 years, and yet debates of socialism vs capitalism still sort of come down to oversimplified debates of “are you meritocratic or not”.
And then cap this off with the fact that business wealth is extremely concentrated in the magnificent 7; capitalism isn’t capitalism without competition. I forget the name of the group, but there are even though leaders on the right that see that like wealth is not currently distributed the way any reasonably moderate person - left or right - idealizes it to be. It feels like we are so far from the colloquial definition of - “someone has a good idea, invents it, sells it to people, and gets rewarded”.
On some level, if Elon musk sold 100 million cars and pocketed 10k each, I might not care if he was a trillionaire, but we need to realign incentives with tangible value and not financial games.
Yes, I have nothing against rewarding merit. I just also believe that those who are rewarded have a sort of a duty towards the rest of society.
And you can't really say that, because instantly you're attacked with "so you want Elon's money!" - I don't. I'm not even a US citizen. Not even a resident. But I also see the Starlink trails from my balcony and there are three Teslas parked in front of the building I live in right now. It's global.
I just believe owning $100B+ worth of assets, paying less % in taxes than the average Joe, while taking out loans against said assets is... corrupt. Not legally, but morally.
I really like Porsche. Then again, I made friends with a homeless guy a couple corners away. He's been on the streets for two years, can still make his way back.
I can't imagine sitting in a 911 without having first made sure he has a roof over his head.
And I'm not trying to signal virtue here, this is an anonoymous account after all.
JD Rockefeller aside from starting a monopoly had deals with the railroads most people at the time found immoral and this was either against or before the concept of common carrier.
So like - there are a lot of ways in which - I want to be a sort of economically conservative capitalist. I want to live in a world where we have a set of rules that create a level playing field. But we’ve had this slow drip of deregulation and norm breaking over the past 100 years, and yet debates of socialism vs capitalism still sort of come down to oversimplified debates of “are you meritocratic or not”.
And then cap this off with the fact that business wealth is extremely concentrated in the magnificent 7; capitalism isn’t capitalism without competition. I forget the name of the group, but there are even though leaders on the right that see that like wealth is not currently distributed the way any reasonably moderate person - left or right - idealizes it to be. It feels like we are so far from the colloquial definition of - “someone has a good idea, invents it, sells it to people, and gets rewarded”.
On some level, if Elon musk sold 100 million cars and pocketed 10k each, I might not care if he was a trillionaire, but we need to realign incentives with tangible value and not financial games.