Yes we rich-eaters have been surviving on a mono-culture of rich folk and will surely starve without the rich who sacrifice themselves selflessly for our sustenance.
Most people are rich because they own stock that's valuable, because they made or did something that's valuable.
Collapse that chain and you replace value creation as a form of mild power with political ability as a way to access direct and high levels of power and things start going wrong fast[0][1][2].
> > Most people are rich ... because they made or did something that's valuable.
> This assumption is doing a LOT of heavy lifting here.
Value is determined by the people. I personally find Pokemon & MTG cards to be worthless, but other people do, and they're where that value is derived.
The power that flows from value creation is “mild”, whereas the power that flows from political acumen is “direct and high”? Man cmon. Power is power. Have you not noticed the entire lobbying industry and who pays for the majority of it?
> The power that flows from value creation is “mild”, whereas the power that flows from political acumen is “direct and high”? Man cmon. Power is power. Have you not noticed the entire lobbying industry and who pays for the majority of it?
The difference between the two is the number of sources of said power.
The power that flows from value creation is “mild”, because there are many avenues/paths for creating value. Value creation is inherently derived from what at least one person sees as valuable in of itself, as thus less concentrated. The changes brought by said value creation is limited to the people that see its value & congregate around it, and when a better/more valuable creation turns up, their decision to leave or stay with the existing creation is ultimately theirs.
The power that flows from political acumen is “direct and high”, is because that power has the ability to control everyone's lives, and that there is only one place where said power is allowed to accumulate: The State. Power inherently concentrates when only one apparatus is allowed to accumulate power. This makes manipulations & corruption of that power much easier to perform, since it inherently concentrates into few hands/figures.
He may not be personally running a farm. But if much of his wealth is invested as is usually the case for the richest people (no way it's just sitting around as cash), then he's indirectly supporting many productive endeavors. Even if it was all just cash deposited in a bank, it's not doing nothing. Farmers and others need loans, banks need deposits (well ... before QE)
Almost all of his wealth is in stock. Start taking that and it becomes valueless, because things that are legal to steal at any moment are not worth buying.
Right, so his true wealth isn't that liquid ordinarily, and he'd get a lot poorer if people started selling those stocks. His enormous wealth could be just that he's a beneficiary of the 'Stonks go up' stimulus/QE driven world we live in, and Elon Musk might just be one giant malinvestment, to be revealed if the market was actually 'allowed' to fail by the Fed, with an end to artificially cheap credit and cheap margin debt. Or he's truly onto something and he really is that valuable... I know which one I'd pick.
