> Bezos and Musk would work just as hard if they only had 10% of the financial equity share in their companies that they have today.
This is absolutely not a given. Not because the value changes, but because it implies they no longer own a controlling interest in the company and have to answer to a board. Musk explicitly does not want to take SpaceX public because shareholders are terrible bosses for long term visions (colonizing mars).
One person deciding where all that money is invested is a sort of economic dictator. Trying to live on Mars is polluting our planet. If you don't agree with that use of resources, it's not a benevolent dictatorship.
It's far more democratic than that, at least insofar as people voluntarily gave the person money vs. it being collected in non-voluntary ways.
And yes, that may be non-binary in that some of Elon's money has likely come from the government where we have less choice about spending it, other money may come from voluntarily purchased Teslas and whatnot.
This. The problem is a dstribution of power most of all.
If power is concentrated in government, it's as bad if it's concentrated with an individual with his own private police force. Private espionage force etc.
All this strawman about the failures of absolute equality are just slight of hand to ignore the very obvious problem with a world where a single person have the power of a state.
The state legitimacy should come from the people participation in govering themselves. Not from some psuedo meritocracy. Concentrated power without checks and balances is the problem, not specifically "the state".
I wish all libertarians would wake up and see that very obvious threat to freedom.
Huh?
Never talked about "flat democracy" I consider a representative democracy to be a form of self governing.
You really missed the whole point of my post
> implication and conclusions don't need to be explicitly stated.
But you would do well to ask, because you got it totally wrong.
The commenter said that they are against this type of libertarian idealism. Because the result is that it isn't a flat democracy. Instead folks like Musk end up with huge amounts of power.
Specifically you need to understand what they said here:
"If power is concentrated in government, it's as bad if it's concentrated with an individual with his own private police force."
The implication is that the commentator wants power evenly distributed. The opposite of your wrong accusation of the commenter wanting power concentrated in a majority. Nowhere was flat democracy mentioned. You invented that line of thinking.
flat democracy in this case means no power concentration and everyone votes on everything.
as opposed to what the US currently has, which is a representational democracy where power is concentrated at the government level with people electing others to represent them (and to wield more power than they, themselves, do).
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If someone tells you power concentrated in the government is bad and power should be evenly distributed, they're talking about a flat democracy (aka direct democracy).
Which goes back to what I said initially. What if the people want slaves? What if they want segregated schools? Because at one point the majority actually did want these things.
People who argue for things like this imagine that only good will come from it. Not only is that not true, we have precedent that it's not true.
Never talked about evenly distributed power. Just not too concentrated.
A power differential is not inherently bad, I can't see a system working without it. But the size of that differential should be kept to a minimum that allow the system to work.
> If someone tells you power concentrated in the government is bad and power should be evenly distributed, they're talking about a flat democracy (aka direct democracy).
You're wrongly inferring that. No need to assume stuff when you can just ask the other person.
> they're talking about a flat democracy (aka direct democracy).
That does not describe a system where power is evenly distributed. Because of the already widely known problems you mentioned. Lots of folks learn this stuff in high school.
How does one evenly distribute power without giving the same level of power to everyone?
When you answer that you cannot do so, you're admitting to asking for a direct democracy.
"Oh, but what about this adaptation that ..." puts more power into certain hands than another. Maybe it's flatter, but it's not even.
It's sort of like saying people can fly. The second you add the requirement that it be actionable (aka, grounded in reality) is the same second you conclude people need something external to assist rather than flapping their arms really fast.
you can't get around that no matter how much you'd like to.
> The votes of elected officials in a representative democracy may not always reflect the will of the people. The officials are not bound by law to vote the way the people who elected them want them to vote.
hummm.... that sounds like more power in the hands of less people.
IOW, your argument is based in fiction. Which is cool, we need stories about people flapping their hands to fly. It's fun!
We just need to be clear earlier in the conversation on whether or not reality is part of the goal or not.
Bezos and Musk would work just as hard if they only had 10% of the financial equity share in their companies that they have today.