> It's anti-meritocratic for someone to invest their money intelligently in the stock market?
Absolutely. To achieve such results you need so much luck and such a headstart that any merits you might additionally have are drowned in everything else that contributes to "your" "success".
> How do you determine the threshold where on one side they're entitled to the wealth they earned, and on the other side their wealth is unfairly earned?
Rule of thumb. About $10 million.
But it's not about who deserves what. It's about how much influence can society safely let a single random primate have.
The actual number will be determined by the political process. It's a number that seems sufficiently unachievable for 51% of people so that they feel safe to vote to heavily tax those who hace that much.
Current barriers to that is that the very wealthy own the culture and they are selling poor people the illusion that everybody can be the rich and what they are doing is actually building value not extracting it despite the fact that trillions of dollars have been extracted from the control of democracy and market and placed exclusively in their hands.
> But it's not about who deserves what. It's about how much influence can society safely let a single random primate have.
You are severely overrating how much influence $10m buys you, and very severely underrating how much influence you can have without personally having $10m dollars.
And please feel free to have $10 million. Above that it's starting to look like you aren't into it just to secure yourself but rather control and impoverish others.
There are various ways of attaining influence. Money is just the easiest and least controlled. Morally and practically. So let's plug the biggest hole first then worry about the rest.
And why success should not be punished? Do you think people will voluntarily stay poor just because they might be taxed more if they reach 10 million?
And even if that would be the case. It's still good because inequality harms vast majority in the short term and everybody in the medium to long term so any disincentive to people getting rich at the expense of poor consumers is a win.
How would you solve the problem of wealth concentration in free-markets without incurring in greater wealth concentration under a closed-market?
> And why success should not be punished?
Because generally we want to reward and incentive the betterment of society.
> Do you think people will voluntarily stay poor just because they might be taxed more if they reach 10 million?
Maybe. It must be depressing to live in such a place. If you punish success, you reward mediocrity. But the thing is that those that reach 10 million or plus will always have the option to move their fortunes abroad, so it's the middle class that ends up paying the heavier burden in countries ruled by this mindset.
> How would you solve the problem of wealth concentration in free-markets without incurring in greater wealth concentration under a closed-market?
I'd have free market with punishingly progressive taxation and redistribute proceeds of this tax as a basic income.
> Because generally we want to reward and incentive the betterment of society.
Financial success is intrinsically rewarded and it's orthogonal to betterment of society. Tou can't really tell if a rich person improved society or damaged the society just by looking at their wealth. No additional rewards are necessary. And some pubishement would be advisable if the scale of this success causes harm to the system that spawned it.
> But the thing is that those that reach 10 million or plus will always have the option to move their fortunes abroad, so it's the middle class that ends up paying the heavier burden in countries ruled by this mindset.
The mere presence of those who have more than $10mln is the cause of the system collapsing. They price out the middle class out of the real estate that they hoard for investment purposes. And of other limited resources as well.
Rich are more than welcome to leave. Their leaving improves lives of everyone else.
Owning money just means that society owes you some goods and services.
If you move out and request that some other country pays this debt to you then the country of your origin is better of.
Wealthy can be beneficial to capital starverd countries because their people can trade the wealthy low tech services to amass capital necessary to buy technologies from abroad.
So to help african countries we shouldn't be sending them food. We should cast away our billionaires there.
The response is context dependent. If it is a non-response to you it is because you lack the expected knowledge. I was lazy as I'm gaining nothing from this. If you think his argument is better it's your right and fault.
I can't think of any case in history where a brain or capital drain would be a positive think. Historically the US benefited greatly from European drains. Such an absurd idea requires a fantastical level of evidence supporting it.
While I agree that capital starved countries would benefit from additional capital, it is a tautology, there's a reason why those countries are capital starved in the first place. Corruption, bad to make business, etc. Capital moves quickly when there are favorable conditions. Also any billionaire can live at country A, B and C while paying taxes at D and investing in E.
Also it's very simplistic and wrong to put all the blame of home shortages on billionaires. It's more complex than that. Demand is high but why supply is low?
Absolutely. To achieve such results you need so much luck and such a headstart that any merits you might additionally have are drowned in everything else that contributes to "your" "success".
> How do you determine the threshold where on one side they're entitled to the wealth they earned, and on the other side their wealth is unfairly earned?
Rule of thumb. About $10 million.
But it's not about who deserves what. It's about how much influence can society safely let a single random primate have.
The actual number will be determined by the political process. It's a number that seems sufficiently unachievable for 51% of people so that they feel safe to vote to heavily tax those who hace that much.
Current barriers to that is that the very wealthy own the culture and they are selling poor people the illusion that everybody can be the rich and what they are doing is actually building value not extracting it despite the fact that trillions of dollars have been extracted from the control of democracy and market and placed exclusively in their hands.