• 0 Posts
  • 28 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle



  • My parents never could’ve either but $500k household net worth only puts you in the top 20% of households so it’s not like they were exceptionally wealthy and we don’t know if they borrowed to invest or what exactly their specific situation was. Miguel Bezos was a Cuban refugee and then worked as an engineer for Exxon and Jackie Bezos was a secretary so i mean this is pretty middle class IMO.

    That doesn’t mean that all billionaires clawed their way to the top as i mentioned above, or that we shouldn’t make progressive changes to the tax code. It’s just important that we separate truth from fiction to make educated decisions.





  • huge_clock@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldHard times
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    So is it okay to steal from your slightly richer neighbour? What about stealing from your parents who have more wealth than you and are not sharing it with you? If someone starts a small business should we just ransack it the moment is starts doing well?

    What if people on the street rob and steal from you? Does it matter if it’s by violence?

    Are people happier in countries where there is more theft? Are the societies more equal?


  • huge_clock@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldHard times
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I guess to go back to my earlier point what I’m trying to get people to think about it is this idea of a categorical imperative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative?wprov=sfti1

    In a nut-shell, if you believe stealing is okay under certain circumstance due to some subjective morality you hold, you cannot condemn others holding the same belief based on their own subjective mortality.

    For example you believe stealing is okay because the target is a corporation. Maybe someone else believes stealing is okay if it’s from someone outside their cultural group. You say, “hey it’s not right to steal from someone just because of some subjective value that you hold!” But it’s a contradiction because you believe stealing is okay based on your own subjective morality regarding corporations (which are recognized as people under law). Same goes for people that steal from the government, their parents, etc.

    This isn’t a slippery slope argument, this is a question of ethics. What I’m saying is stealing is unethical, and not by contrast immoral.







  • So what hasn’t been true for decades then?

    Your question isn’t a bad question though so I’m gonna answer it in good faith. Basically when regulators look at whether industries are competitive a huge factor they look at is whether firms have pricing power and their market share. There are a couple other things they look too like purchasing power with suppliers.

    If you look at a firm like Facebook (META) it has both high margins (>30%)and between Google has 80% market share in online advertising. That’s an industry that is oligopolistic and possibly a case for antitrust measures.

    In a nut-shell the question is “how much of the pie is consumer surplus vs producer surplus.”

    If you look at grocery you’ll see the market share is really broken up so yeah they’re doing a lot of volume but you have a lot of choice. Volume itself doesn’t really tell us anything about competitiveness.

    As you’re thinking about this ask and still disagree ask “what would a good objective measure be for competitiveness?” We need some actual quantifiable metric, so what would your counter-proposal be then?