3 people in America each have several times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of America. It’s ok to have a ceiling nobody contributes 400B to society. For reference that is more than every teach and every doctor make in America. Does anyone believe that Elon is individually more valuable than the either profession?
“doesn’t put a ceiling on wealth”
eeeeehh. maybe we fucking should?
increased privatisation is happening all over the Nordics. I don’t know how much in Norway compared to here in Finland, but being in my fourth decade I can definitely see it happening and intensely. I can’t get a fucking public dentist anymore. Hell, children aren’t given free dental care anymore.
The whole point is that the floor is the important thing. In Scandinavian countries, they have a fairly firm upper bound. But they don’t suffer when people above that upper bound flee to avoid taxes
The critical part is the lower bound
In Scandinavian countries, they have
Sounds like you don’t actually live here.
We don’t have a “firm boundary” on people being rich. We just don’t have multi-billionaires. Or if we do, they’re the silent type, not the Musk/Bezos type. And even those are pretty different.
But like, how many multi-billionaires do you know from like Minnesota, Louisiana, Oregon & Oklahoma?
The progressive taxation we have is for income, not capital gains. So essentially you can never get rich by working, but if you’re just profiting from having a lot of capital (renting properties etc, even airbnb, and tons of other ways for rich people to shift their income from “labour income” to capital gains), then you have a flat 30% tax rate. And if you’re actually a billionaire, you’d just shift it all to a tax haven to avoid even the 30%.
Sure, yeah, I agree there’s a certain type of bottom — insofar that we don’t allow people to die to starvation or the elements — but that’s a fucking low bar, don’t you think?
I bet you’re one of those people who actually believe Finland is the happiest country in the world. (It’s like North Koreans talking about freedom lol.)
I’m of the opinion that that doesn’t go far enough
We need to put hard limits on personal wealth (and the wealth of companies too). After 10 million networth in wealth, all your income should go to taxes 100% until you’re below that limit… something similar should exist for companies
Same goes for power and fame. I don’t want or need a president, or a CEO that directs billions of dollars
Keep everything small, keep everyone small. Mega projects can still be done by multiple companies together, for example
End the rich!
You can’t just tax wealth, you need to tax net controllable assets and cap that.
After 10 million networth in wealth, all your income should go to taxes 100% until you’re below that limit…
This would be trivially easy to circumvent if it was put into place, just so you know.
I honestly don’t think the problem is that Capitalist’s don’t understand that concept; they very much do.
They also understand that the money for raising that floor would likely come from taxes on them; and so keeping the floor low means that they can keep even more profit.
It’s not a lack of understanding. It’s pure unadulterated evil.
I think its more than that, they already have all the money, but wealth is relative so if they can make everyone else twice as poor then their wealth relative to everyone else just doubled.
The rich capitalists sure, but there are plenty of poor capitalists being fed misinformation, in order to maintain the status quo. And when it is the many vs the powerful few, then the more we have on our side the better
There are definitely bad actors out there trying to convince people of misconceptions, and I’m sure they have a non-zero amount of success. I recall being told some overly simplifying misconceptions of socialism when I was young.
this is the reason social democracy rarely works in practice.
Depends. I actually fully support putting a ceiling on wealth.
The analogy I always come back to is nuclear weapons. We don’t let private individuals own them. We don’t make you get an atomic bomb license. We don’t tax nukes heavily. We don’t make sure that only the kindest and most ethical people are allowed to own nukes. We simply say, this is too much power to be trusted to one individual. No one should have that level of power.
And yet, would anyone doubt that someone like Bezos, all on his own, can cause an amount of damage comparable to a nuclear bomb? If Bezos had it in for an entire city, could he not destroy it? Could he not buy up the major employers and shut them down? Could he not buy up all the housing and force the citizens into penury? Could he not buy up and shut down the hospitals? I have no doubt that, if he wanted to, Bezos could single handedly destroy a city. And how many lives would that take? How many would drink themselves to death or die by their own hand after Bezos came in and destroyed their entire lives? How many would die from lack of resources and medical care, etc?
Bezos could absolutely, if he wanted to, single-handedly cause a level of destruction and human misery comparable to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
And that is a power no one should have. The only way anyone should have that level of power is through democratic elections.
This is why I support wealth caps. I would personally set the maximum allowable wealth at 1000x the median household income. In the US, this would be about $80 million USD. That’s about the maximum fortune a person that actually works for wages can amass in a lifetime, if they’re a very high earner, live very frugally, and marry someone of similar status. 1000x median household income is the limit of what I consider to be an honest fortune - one made primarily through your own work, rather than sponging off the labor of others.
Excellent points. I like your analogy of economic power to nuclear power.
We’ve already seen Musk throwing his economic weight around like a nation, threatening to turn Starlink on and off over war zones based on his own needs, and not the national security of any of the nations involved.
When Sociopathic Oligarchs with Hoarding OCD, start accumulating such economic power that they can compete with nations, then they have reached their limit. It will only get worse, as more and more of them start negotiating their own deals, possibly to the detriment of the very nation of which they are a citizen.
Then it’s only a matter of time before these Oligarchs start building private Armies, and then form alliances that can really throw their weight around. Or worse, start wars with each other over private beefs, that catch innocent citizens in their crossfire.
These things are easily predictable, if something isn’t done to blunt the power of these out-of-control fortunes. Otherwise, we will be sitting here in the not-so-distant future, wondering why we didn’t do something about these psychopaths when we had the chance.
To be more succinct, the way I always describe it is wealth is not just money, money is too abstract. Wealth is power and that degree of power should not be so concentrated in so few private individuals.
Bezos could single handedly destroy a city And Musk actually did this with Boca Chica.
Also the power to launch a nuclear strike is shockingly consolidated. The president can if they decide to, and they’d likely get positive support from military command.
Anyways, I’m in full agreement even if I’m poking at your examples and metaphors.
Where do that money come from
In Norway, Healthcare is fund with the Government Pension Fund. Its an investment of petrolum benefits, but nowadays, its wealth is mainly due to speculation. In short, people in Norway benefits of the capitalist exploitation elsewhere.
From an international perspective, it does lower the wealth of workers anywhere but in Norway.
On the other side, in france healthcare was only funds by the workers, and does not participate in imperialism. It’s maybe why the french state is so direct for securing its economics interests. Capitalism is note one issue, it is many issues
France may not participate directly in imperialism these days, but it sure as hell has neocolonial and exploitative structures in place. E.g. see this Jacobin article.
Maybe I was confuse, sorry : the French is an imperialist state, directly and violently. The french army never leave the Africa, from special operation to another. Politics from African countries are so close to the french one, that a lot of them have a flat in Paris, and were in the same school. Until they disagree, and then “their plane crashed” or the small armed group of their country suddenly got a lot of ressources and make the regime fall. This sort of things happen many times, but some specific example have to be known :
- A several month strike of workers in Tchad have failed because the french state send billions to the Tchad state; at the same time in france, the retirement pensions were questioned because billions where missing to fund it
- Ore firm couldn’t begin it’s exploitation in Tchad because of the mobilization of the people. An airstrike killed them. Hundreds died. French army is the only known air force in the area.
- Fascists in the french army make children say nazis salute or slogans. In centrafrica, they participate in child prostitution
- An airstrike killed hundreds of people during a wedding in the barkan operation area.
- Egyptians targeting smuggler (allegedly) have been possible thanks to the surveillance of their Eastern borders by the french military intelligence
A lot of things will be discovered in the futur, like it was for the implication of the french state in the Genocide in Rwanda, or for the war in Libya (in order to kill the dictator that fund the campaign of the president of that time). Those things have an impact elsewhere. Military involve in “corruption” in Tchad now work for bosses in france order to watch workers mobilization ( see the movie “Merci Patron”), or people in the intelligence service involved in africa, could then be send in Kanaky (Nouvelle Calédonie) to scam separatists. It’s not a surprise that soldiers imply in regular murders, get out from theirs barracks to smash people that riots against the murder by b policeman (Nahel riots).
I know that a lot of countries feel that france did not fall under far right gouvernent. The truth is that the macron government has a lot of far right policy on a lot topics, and that the social organization of a colonialist (not neo) state worsen those policy. Not only the French state is directly imperialist, but that imperialism turn to fascism
US billionaires:
“Wait, you mean to say that we can keep our current quality of life, dabble in our little space projects, and that those we employ won’t suffer???”
“Lol naw fuck that.”
Exactly. The cruelty is the point. They enjoy making people suffer.
I feel like it’s a means of creating a further distance between the rich and poor when conventional means have reached their limit, though i imagine there is likely at least some sadistic pleasure they derive from it (and there are very likely some that get a lot)
Here’s a comparison that came to mind for me: when i make dinner, i like to make my wife and i a salad but I’ll go out of my way to make a very nice presentation of the various ingredients on my wife’s salad. I will have the exact same ingredients for mine, but intentionally slop them onto the plate with hasty abandon and even take measures to try to make it look even worse. I like to argue that my wife’s salad is the better of the 2, that there is a hierarchy that’s immediately distinguishable–even though it’s the exact same stuff. That her salad is actually even better than if they both had been presented the same way–that i can make that basic salad even better than previously thought possible by creating a severe inequality in its presentation to the other one. Of course, that’s a very harmless comparison but i think there’s something in it.
I mean, it’s like the rich can only be so pleased with their riches and the luxuries it affords them. Not to mention a lot of that stuff probably becomes trite/commonplace even if it’s a giant yacht or fancy food or living space or whatever. They can only be so happy, and sustaining that happiness is probably not easy when you’ve burned through the conventional happiness-granting activities. It would seem that they find more nuanced, and perhaps even perverted means of pressing the happiness button. I suppose Epstein’s Island really kinda drives home that whole disgusting “someone has to suffer in order for me to be happy” kinda dynamic.
It’s disgusting to think people derive pleasure from making others suffer like this, but it’s not the least surprising to discover. 🫠
I notice a lot of wealthy people spiral out with drugs or plastic surgery, they’re just desperately grasping to get the magic back.
There also seems to be a distinct lack of meaning for life for the wealthy. Any changes they could effect with their money means they wouldn’t have the money anymore, so they stop caring about any problems their money could fix (which is a lot of them). Ultimately leading to complete callousness over human suffering.
They are already at that point when they decided to invest all of that money that was sitting for 30+ years into AI instead of humanity’s problems.
Unfathomable wealth isnt enough, they also need to rule.
Yeah… It’s like the mobile f2p games. The paying players need the f2p players so they can stomp on them.
You mean, instead of having $ 99.9, I would only get 99? Over my cold, dead body!
Eh, no reason to discard the idea of putting a ceiling on the rich. Even if you took away all of the money people had that was over 1 billion dollars, that wouldn’t cause any of those people to suffer.
You’re thinking of wealth of a person. There’s not even a tax on capital yet.
1000x the median household income. That should be the cap. It’s a nice round number; people can understand it. And it indexes automatically with inflation.
Moreover, this is about the maximum lifetime fortune achievable by someone who actually works for a living. In a US context, 1000x median household income is about $80 million USD. That’s still an incredible amount of money, though just barely achievable by actually working for wages. It’s the kind of fortune two neurosurgeons could amass if they both worked long careers, lived extremely frugally, and invested everything they made. 1000x median household income is what I consider the largest possible ‘honest’ fortune. In order to earn beyond that level, you have to earn your money not through your labor, but the labor of others. You have to start a business and start sponging off the surplus of your employees. 1000x median income is about as large a pile as you can get without relying on exploiting someone else’s labor. And that seems like a reasonable place to set a cap. Still high enough to provide people plenty of incentive to work hard, get an education, better themselves, etc. But no so high that people amass fortunes that are threats to national security.
Indeed, whilst it’s more difficult to raise a floor, it’s certainly a good idea to have a roof close enough to it to keep the heat where the people exist
What if we just burn the rich as firewood instead?
It would probably be environmentally friendly even
no reason to discard the idea of putting a ceiling on the rich.
There is a very good reason to discard the idea of assigning an arbitrary ‘maximum wealth’, two actually:
- it’s effectively impossible to actually enforce
- it will cost us more to try to enforce it, than we will gain in revenue
It would be tremendously expensive resource-wise, logistically, to even reliably determine if one has reached that ceiling (net worth figures for individuals that you see in the media are guesses, not the result of actual auditing), much less calculate with any degree of certainty how far over the ceiling someone is, and that ‘research/enforcement cost’ is practically certain to completely cancel out (and then some) any potential added revenue, especially because it’s also trivially easy to circumvent by creating debt, etc.
- it will cost us more to try to enforce it, than we will gain in revenue
That sounds to me like an assertion that has no basis in reality.
It would cause them to move to a country without such regulation. Maybe somewhere in Africa or Southeast Asia, or South America. Though maybe there they lose a bunch of their money to corruption so overall it’s a win.
If billionaires decide to leave the country then the factories and businesses run by workers producing the billions they made will remain. You can’t pick up a building and take it with you.
This what they so to literally every positive economic policy ever discussed and yet every one of those places still has rich people and overinflated companies. Maybe we should stop believing their lies?
It’s exceedingly rare that they actually do this because they don’t want to live in a third-world country. The irony, ofc, is that their actions are turning the U.S. into one.
If that were true, they would have already done it.
They scream about taxes and such, but they know that they are in the very best country in the world to get super wealthy. It’s relatively easy to get access to money, systemic corruption is relatively low, and legal bribery is build into the system. The government is literally based on Capitalism.
Sure, they threaten to leave if their billion dollars is threatened with a 1% increase in taxes, but they won’t, because they know that the American economic system is what gave them the billion dollars in the first place. They’re just being whiney little bitches.
These people will lie to you to make you help them get what they want, at YOUR expense. You aren’t obligated to believe them, or help them.
The issue is a bit more… circular than that.
Certain things, certain ventures, need more money than that. And in a free, capitalist society you want people to be able to achieve such goals and ventures.
Problem is, once you pool that wealth into a company (the very meaning of the word, like companion, meaning “together”, or more literally “with others, in a multitude”), imbalances will occur. What if you start it out as a group of 5, each putting in a billion, then the company, without employees, becomes successful, but due to how it worked out, one person was the main brain behind the success so they get a bigger share? Suddenly the company is worth 25 billion, 15bn belonging to the genius, and the rest having 2.5bn stake. How do you regulate that?
Also what if that money is truly for operating costs, because this company is setting up a brand new town, so they’re literally paying dozens of construction crews, establishing shops and whatnot for people to use once they move in, and so on? Do you just take any excess wealth away?
Or do you let them continue operating knowing full well that someone in the company will try to use the operational funds as their personal bank account?
The idea of a wealth limit in an optimal society is good, but in our current imperfect crap, it’s never going to work, because it will put limits to what we can achieve in general.
Mind you I do agree that billionaires shouldn’t exist and should be taxed out of existence but that’s not done with a wealth ceiling.
Companies shouldn’t be creating towns, period. If we need new cities, their locations and forms should be chosen by the people. By elections. Not by some lone asshole whose only urban planning qualification is that he happens to have a large pile of money.
Towns were just an example of scale - a more realistic example would be, albeit futuristic, is whatever space-faring vessels we’ll build, and I don’t mean Musk and his rocket toys he keeps blowing up, I mean actual interplanetary and deep space ships, which will cost about the same to build as a small town.
Do you want the right to building those to be retained by the government only? Or would you prefer if the right people with the appropriate resources could do it too?
Suddenly the company is worth 25 billion, 15bn belonging to the genius, and the rest having 2.5bn stake.
This doesn’t just happen. How did the value go up so much? Are their sales not taxed? Will the liquidation of this value not be taxed?
The core of literally any anti-billionaire economic policy needs to be the taxing of loans made on potential valuations. With that, the numbers you gave are effectively irrelevant because there’s no more infinite money glitch. They have to liquidate assets to spend money, and must pay taxes on that.
Man, so interesting. Why do we have to pay those workers to build something that society needs? Is it because the workers need to eat? Why are the workers starving? Is it because the food they need is locked away in a hoard of wealth that only gets distributed by people who own the hoard? Why won’t they just feed people? Oh they only feed people if it means they’ll make a profit?
Hmm. How does a system this cruel stick around? What’s that? 90% of the wealth of the world is owned by a vanishingly small number of people who will only deign to feed people if it makes them a profit?
Man. Real “imperfection” you got there. I’m sure we can fix it with some reforms though once we learn more about economics…
15bn belonging to the genius
Oof.
Anyway…
The regulation part is absurdly easy: they get a tax bill, they sell their shares, they pay the tax bill.
Operating costs don’t have anything to do with personal wealth. The company pays the operating costs. If the company’s revenue is greater than its costs, it pays dividends or reinvests and in theory, the stock prices goes up. See above.
The problem isn’t the logistics: point gun, take money. That’s pretty straightforward. The problem is ramifications. If billionaires can no longer grow their wealth, what would happen? Well, for one their control over these companies would wane. If Musk can’t own more than a billion, then he’d have to sell a bunch of stock, which means he would have less control over the board, and thus less control over decision-making. But is that such a bad thing? Are the skills and personality that cause a company to go from zero -> public the same ones you want once the company has grown to a large size? Idk, maybe ask Zuckerberg about Oculus Rift and the Metaverse.
I don’t think anyone actually knows what would happen. But we do have a lot of data on what happens if you significantly increase the marginal tax rates for upper income brackets, and it sure seems to benefit society as a whole, but depends on what outcomes you’re targeting. And that doesn’t actually target the ~900 billionaires in the United States because most of them earn money through capital gains rather than regular income.
It is kinda done with a wealth ceiling if you tax the higher wealth more, but yeah let them make infinite money somehow if they are at the top end paying 99% of it back into society.
If a company gets so big that it “needs” billions of dollars to build its own town then that company’s profits and decisions should be split among its stakeholders (i.e. all of its employees).
If someone starts a company then they should be rewarded with profits if it succeeds. Contrary to capitalist arguments. The big brains behind companies don’t do it to make 15 billion dollars. They do it instead to get obscenely rich, and despite our completely warped views with companies like Tesla and Amazon, “obscenely rich” starts in the hundreds of millions of dollars maybe a billion dollars if someone was an idiot.
On top of that there are thousands of examples throughout history that show that people don’t invent things solely to make money and the original big brains behind company innovations were not necessarily profit motivated.
worth noting how norway is rich off of oil
True and the Nordics have plenty of poverty themselves once people look closer.
(This is just saying it exists, nothing more)
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Not even a successful society is perfect. It certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It’s still better than what most of the rest of the world is doing.
It certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Nobody said we shouldn’t. The point is, we shouldn’t look away from the issues in a country just because they are doing better than others in some cases.
It means that when people advocate for improvements, YOU SHOULD STOP IMMEDIATELY PLAYING CRAB BUCKET.
Let better be better and then sure raise some issues. Your comment seems intentionally obtuse.
It means that when people advocate for improvements, YOU SHOULD STOP IMMEDIATELY PLAYING CRAB BUCKET.
…your argument is that we literally should not criticize ideas until they’re actually implemented and proven to be lacking? How does one establish that something is better without open critique?
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You’re seeing a motivation behind my comment that isn’t there, so you really shouldn’t call me obtuse. Is Norway doing pretty good? Yes! Could they also do better? Yes! I’m not playing crab bucket, but I’m also not sticking my head in the sand here.
Maybe next time open with the “pretty good” stuff. Before this comment everything cooking was negative which sure looks like crab bucket (not just from you, but also from you) and I’m still leaning toward obtuse by omission tbh.
I’m sorry I didn’t spoon feed my comment for you, mister obtuse.
Norway relies on the exploitation of billions in the global south, as all of the western world does.
What does that even mean? For those of us who aren’t in the know like you are, that phrase doesn’t mean anything to us.
And if you’re open to a friendly suggestion, nix the “western world” propaganda; focus on explaining the “exploitation of billions in the global south” part.
Norway doesn’t produce cocoa beans. Norway doesn’t produce cotton, or bananas, or iron ore, or cobalt, or gold, or most basic raw materials you need to run a society. Neither do Spain, or Germany, or France, or the USA. Instead, these countries focus on the production of high value-added goods and services, which they can do because they are historically highly industrialized, developed, and have high levels of education, infrastructure and concentration of productive capital.
In this manner, Germany imports iron ore from poor countries in the global south at low prices, and exports cars at high prices. In the international market, therefore, one hour of German/French/Norwegian work is exchanged often for tens of hours of work from India, or Congo, or Mexico. This is unequal exchange, and is the pillar of neocolonialism.
Through political, economical and military powers, the western world has ensured that the global south remains underdeveloped. IMF predatory loans and neoliberal policy impositions, support for fascists or monarchists, coups, or outright military invasions are some of the most common tools the west uses to maintain these countries underdeveloped and with cheap labor.
Care to give some sources to that?
With quick google-fu Nordics seem to be in pretty comfy positions in world wide rankings. Not at the top but certainly in the best 20%
Also there is huge difference in the sense that even if you are poor in the nordics you still have right to healthcare and education. At some places you would just be fucked.
There are people who slip through the cracks (usually those with mental health/drug issues), and that the “basic level” of support hasn’t caught up with inflation…
But regardless, it’s 10000x better than the US system/the system in most other countries.
Worth noting that most of the time oil (newly discovered natural resources really)makes a country poorer than richer. See Venezuela and such.
So good on Norway to not give in to unbridled corruption and out that money on a public fund to make its own citizen wealthy
Well yes, Norway’s leader wasn’t assassinated by the US, followed by sanctions and throwing money and weapons at militant factions. I wonder why…
This is bad analysis. Natural resources don’t make countries poorer, they make the US/UK/France/Spain/Italy invade you.
Libya, rich in oil, was the richest country in Africa (and highest Human Development Index) until the west bombed it and triggered a civil war. Iran was on the way to use its oil for its own profits by nationalizing it under the democratically elected leftist government of Mosaddeq until it got blockaded and couped by MI6+CIA and a corrupt monarch got reinstated. Venezuela took millions of people out of poverty until US sanctions came in an attempt to kill the socialist government and put millions through hardship. Saudi Arabia, having a government very cozy with the US, gets away with no US coups, but has 70% of the population being effectively slaves.
There was a full-blown civil war in Libya well before the intervention of NATO (which had unanimous support from the UN security counicl).
There was a full-blown civil war in Libya
And how did the bombing help exactly? Not to mention the western participation in the formation of the civil war itself, with its constant meddling and sanctioning against the Libyan government.
Not unanimous, but not vetoed either (Russia and China abstained from voting).
Sarkozy’s personal interest in the matter also make me doubt France’s wouldn’t have been different under any other government
Edit: I’m not disagreeing with the whole “the UN allowed it”, and the general unrest in Libya before the intervention. Just adding context
Sorry, got confused with the unanimous vote before it, which sanctioned Libya.
Worth noting that most of the time oil (newly discovered natural resources really)makes a country poorer than richer. See Venezuela and such.
Hmm, somebody should let the Middle East know that they’re poor.
More likely, the discovery of oil attracts the worst kind of industrialists, who will exploit the workers into abject poverty, and take all the wealth. It isn’t the oil that makes the people poor, it is the government who sells them out.
I don’t get your point? The US is one of, if not the wealthiest, country in the world. We made money off of slaves, oil, gold, child labor and now taking advantage of our working class without paying for healthcare. It also used to be innovation, but that’s going away. We should be doing even better. How many of the wealthiest in the world live here?
The argument isn’t that the US can’t do it, it’s that there are only a few countries that ever could. It’s pitched as some sort of universal fix, but can’t be done without a vast amount of pre-existing wealth.
It’s pitched as some sort of universal fix, but can’t be done without a vast amount of pre-existing wealth
Right, which we have. There are also enough wealthy countries and the EU that could stop causing chaos in developing countries while supporting our own, that would make everyone’s lives better.
You were the first person in this comment chain to mention the US (important to note that the post doesn’t, either). Nobody said the US couldn’t do this, they just explained the reason Norway can.
Worth noting that the Nordic model made Norway, and other Nordic countries, quite rich even before they discovered oil.
It is replicable, and continued to make Nordic countries without oil, rich as well.
And Trump asked recently, why don’t we have immigrants from Norway?
It’s mind blowing, the lack of self awareness.
Norwegian here: the floor is getting more and faulty and it is dependent on the imperial mode of living generally and oil and arms exports specifically
Didint you guys just find one of the biggest rare earth minerals deposit in the world?
Yes, we did. But with the current political climate I’m less and less sure that we’ll be able to handle it as well as we did with the oil.
If you want an example of an industry where we didn’t do a great job of spreading the wealth, you can look at our other major export: Salmon.
Salmon seems like a very different resource than oil or rare earth metals. My understanding is that with the oil, it was a resource that largely came out of nowhere. One day Norway had little oil. Suddenly you find this vast field of immense unclaimed resources. It’s a huge resource that no one has a claim to. Thus, it’s reasonably easy to divide it in an equitable way. But salmon? People have been harvesting that resource since the dawn of time. There must be centuries of various rules, laws, ancient royal decrees, relating to who can harvest how much salmon. And there’s going to be people that if you tell them how much salmon they can catch, they’ll point out that their family has been harvesting salmon for generations, and it’s not fair to…And on an on.
Oil seems like a much easier resource to divide equitably, simply because there’s not such a cultural and legal history behind the management of the resource.
The issue with this is that there’s plenty of rare earth minerals (they’re not rare) all around the world, it’s the refining process that is expensive and extremely polluting.
Doesn’t matter if Norway found decades worth of supply, when nobody but China is willing to build the processing plants. And China has more than enough rare earth mineral supplies themselves.
Hard to say. Current political view seem to be that EU wants to get rid of dependancy on china and great way to get free is to start mining our own.
There is pretty large deposits in Sweden, Finland and Norway so one effiecient, central refining plant could be churning virtually limitless amounts of materials, if only there would be enough funding to get the ball rolling. (Before anybody says i know Norway is not part of european union, but it is part of european economic area and part of EFTA) France already has a refining plant so the tech knowledge is already found inside the EU.
The issue is that nobody has found a way to refine it in a way that isn’t extremely polluting without the cost being extremely excessive and making it entirely pointless.
We could mine as much as we want, but the only country OK with refining this stuff is China. Unless we solve the issue of refining this in a relatively clean way at a somewhat competitive price, no refining will ever be set up in Europe.
Only sith deal in absolutes.
Caremag/Caresters plant in France is scheduled to open in 2026 and Solvay that is already running in France is trying to hit 30% of EU’s demand by 2030.
If we would start building the mines right now it would take close to 10 years to have the mines running. By that time the refining process in France should be pretty well tested and if there would be more minerals produced than they can process, building new facility with the know how they have accumulated and any progress in tech, is not that big of an leap anymore.
By the way this would be pretty close how Norway originally got their economy running with hydropower and later with oil. They waited until there was enough know how to make effective plants. Then they made deals with outside companies where the state would own part of the facilities, but the companies would make enough money to make a profit. After the deals would expire the state would get the now profitable facilities for them self, but the original companies had made enough money for the deal to be good for them.
It effectively puts a ceiling on wealth… but the ceiling is in hundreds-of-millions to billions, so who actually gives a fuck?
social democracy is the best form of capitalism but it’s still capitalism
exactly, it’s still exploitative, especially towards the people who can’t benefit from the social democracy (i.e. people living in the global south, who are victims of the north’s imperialism)
colonialism made the metropoles and its people rich, all made possible by the merciless exploitation and genocide of everyone on earth who wasn’t european. anyone talking about the benefits of colonialism in leftist spaces today would rightly be expelled for being a ghoul. but social democracy is just more of the same, you’re not eliminating the exploitation, you’re just moving it.
look at how labor laws in the global north fueled delocalization. companies couldn’t exploit people in their home countries as well anymore, what did they do? exploit other people elsewhere instead.
I think a ceiling would actually be healthy. I don’t love that we’re still pandering to the rich even with this summary. Still, it’s good to push any healthy message. I’m just saying it could be better. No one in the entire world needs more than 20 million dollars. No one. That should be the highest we allow, and even lower would be better.
Same here (Switzerland) but i disagree: inequality gets worse here too and a ceiling is the effective measure against it. We didn’t fix capitalism, we only slowed it down a bit.
Sadly, initiatives have to explain complex relationships against “but then the rich fucks leave; less jobs!” and so even taxing inheritance over a certain value lost. Yet again.
Guess that’s a weakness of democracies.
