2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[crazy canuck]

Interesting that two of the wealthiest people on this forum are defending the unending pursuit of vast quantities of assets.

Unending?  You realize the debate is over the claim that all billionaires are by definition bad people?

Some of us here, more than two, have worked with people who were or who became billionaires because of the investments they have made.  In my experience all were just lucky that what they were working on caught fire and they were in the right place at the right time.  There are a lot more people for whom investments and business ideas they had went nowhere or had moderate success. 

Our system depends on taking the chance that something might work, despite the odds that most things don't work out.

What we do in terms of taxing that wealth is a separate question.  But no one has yet put forward a good argument for why someone who acts ethically throughout and just has a great idea that becomes very successful, by definition becomes a bad person because, by virtue of their shareholding in the company they start to develop their idea, they become wealthy.   

I'm not sure how we can given your starting principle that some people just luck themselves into billions.

I don't follow.  If you win the big lottery in the US, are you a bad person the next day?

[Barrister]

I'm not sure how we can given your starting principle that some people just luck themselves into billions.

I don't follow.  If you win the big lottery in the US, are you a bad person the next day?

I think you'd find behind any and all successful people there are varying degrees of both hard work and luck.  Bill Gates was by all accounts a smart programmer and businessman, but he was in the right lace at the right time to be able to sell DOS to IBM. 

I didn't study philosophy in university (other than a single formal logic course) - I was a science guy.  But in law school  I did take a course in Jurisprudence, which was really a legal philosophy class.  It was perhaps my favourite class of all time - it was taught in the staff lounge and the professor brought wine.

But anyways, two of the thinkers that were taught (and contrasted) were John Rawls and Robert Nozick.  Garbon is taking a very Rawlsian-type position, that we ought to try and structure society so that luck doesn't play much of a role.  CC is taking a position similar to Nozick that as long as the steps taken to get to the society are all considered fair, then the ultimate result is also fair even if there are disparities in the end.

Obviously that's a gross simplification.  But this is a debate long-argued.

[crazy canuck]

I'm not sure how we can given your starting principle that some people just luck themselves into billions.

I don't follow.  If you win the big lottery in the US, are you a bad person the next day?

I think you'd find behind any and all successful people there are varying degrees of both hard work and luck.  Bill Gates was by all accounts a smart programmer and businessman, but he was in the right lace at the right time to be able to sell DOS to IBM. 

I didn't study philosophy in university (other than a single formal logic course) - I was a science guy.  But in law school  I did take a course in Jurisprudence, which was really a legal philosophy class.  It was perhaps my favourite class of all time - it was taught in the staff lounge and the professor brought wine.

But anyways, two of the thinkers that were taught (and contrasted) were John Rawls and Robert Nozick.  Garbon is taking a very Rawlsian-type position, that we ought to try and structure society so that luck doesn't play much of a role.  CC is taking a position similar to Nozick that as long as the steps taken to get to the society are all considered fair, then the ultimate result is also fair even if there are disparities in the end.

Obviously that's a gross simplification.  But this is a debate long-argued.

Actually I think my position is entirely in line with Rawls.  The system works best when the winners are not predetermined and upward mobility is not only possible but likely.   

Rawls never suggested luck plays no part in success nor that there should be no disparities.  Rather he argued, to the extent anyone can discern what he meant in practice, that the system be fair.

[garbon]

Interesting that two of the wealthiest people on this forum are defending the unending pursuit of vast quantities of assets.

Unending?  You realize the debate is over the claim that all billionaires are by definition bad people?

Some of us here, more than two, have worked with people who were or who became billionaires because of the investments they have made.  In my experience all were just lucky that what they were working on caught fire and they were in the right place at the right time.  There are a lot more people for whom investments and business ideas they had went nowhere or had moderate success. 

Our system depends on taking the chance that something might work, despite the odds that most things don't work out.

What we do in terms of taxing that wealth is a separate question.  But no one has yet put forward a good argument for why someone who acts ethically throughout and just has a great idea that becomes very successful, by definition becomes a bad person because, by virtue of their shareholding in the company they start to develop their idea, they become wealthy.   

I'm not sure how we can given your starting principle that some people just luck themselves into billions.

I don't follow.  If you win the big lottery in the US, are you a bad person the next day?

No I began this by saying sustained wealth.

[crazy canuck]

No I began this by saying sustained wealth.

Ok, another hypothetical then.  Let's say you win 500 million, are concerned about climate change and so invest all of that money into various companies looking for financing to develop tech which will save us all.  You have the good fortune that one of those companies develops a technology that will be very helpful and can be rapidly scaled up - bingo you become very wealthy.  But you see more needs to be done, so you reinvest in other ventures that will save us all and you help even more companies succeed.  You keep rinsing and repeating.

Are you still a bad person?

[Zoupa]

A clarification on my previous post: when I wrote unfettered capitalism, I was mostly referring to the cost of polluting being zero for the polluter, for hundreds of years and in 99% of cases. Even today, the fines slapped by regulatory agencies are laughable.

Those regulatory agencies have either dropped the ball, been defanged or have always been irrelevant, and I draw a direct link between late-stage capitalism and the undermining of those agencies. The environment has always been an afterthought, because profit is the numero uno priority now and forever. And that includes state-owned entities nominally non-capitalist.

As to the private sector, why on earth would we think salvation could come from there? There is no money to be made in carbon capture, which is the only real way to stop the cascade. There certainly is no money to be made in reducing emissions.

[crazy canuck]

A clarification on my previous post: when I wrote unfettered capitalism, I was mostly referring to the cost of polluting being zero for the polluter, for hundreds of years and in 99% of cases. Even today, the fines slapped by regulatory agencies are laughable.

Those regulatory agencies have either dropped the ball, been defanged or have always been irrelevant, and I draw a direct link between late-stage capitalism and the undermining of those agencies. The environment has always been an afterthought, because profit is the numero uno priority now and forever. And that includes state-owned entities nominally non-capitalist.

As to the private sector, why on earth would we think salvation could come from there? There is no money to be made in carbon capture, which is the only real way to stop the cascade. There certainly is no money to be made in reducing emissions.

No argument with your first two paragraphs.

As to your third paragraph, there is lots of money that is now being made and that will be made in relation to both reducing and eliminating emmissions.  Why do you think there isn't, and how do you explain the growth of all the companies who have developed and continue to develop power generated by non fossil fuels? Its big business.

[Valmy]

The main goal is making lower emissions profitable. Once you do that, you see pretty dramatic growth. I can point to the explosion in renewable energy in Texas as an example.

[Zoupa]

From what I could google, renewables accounted for 11% of energy consumed in 2019. It's too little too late, and it's not going to magically reach 100 % by 2030 even if there's a buck to be made there. China is still opening dozens of coal plants, and we're still subsidizing fossil-fuels and approving new pipelines, drilling etc. It's stupid.

The built-in CO2 infrastructure and upcoming releases are IMO insurmountable. We're not able or willing to reduce emissions in a significant way, so let's science our way out of this by carbon capture is the only way to somehow mitigate the apocalypse.

[garbon]

No I began this by saying sustained wealth.

Ok, another hypothetical then.  Let's say you win 500 million, are concerned about climate change and so invest all of that money into various companies looking for financing to develop tech which will save us all.  You have the good fortune that one of those companies develops a technology that will be very helpful and can be rapidly scaled up - bingo you become very wealthy.  But you see more needs to be done, so you reinvest in other ventures that will save us all and you help even more companies succeed.  You keep rinsing and repeating.

Are you still a bad person?

I guess in this hypothetical it depends what you are doing with the earnings. Are you actually investing all of that back into other ventures or are you keeping a good portion to live a fabulously wealthy lifestyle?

Anyway my statement wasn't based on hypotheticals but the reality of our world today. I think Sheilbh's post bears repeating as that's a well stated argument that I'm sympathetic to. I don't think we have a world where people innocently come into and maintain great amounts of wealth where they have fellow citizens who are struggling to meet basic human needs (and ofen failing).

I personally feel implicated when I think about my standard of living versus those of my neighbors in my largely working class (though due to be displaced) neighborhood. And I don't have an obscene amount of wealth that I could never manage to spend in multiple lifetimes.

I think the point being made is that "investing" can potentially include perpetuating or amplifying exploitative and unethical activities - and once this is done at the scale of billionaires it is inevitable.

Personally I agree that "investing" - especially at scale - is not inherently value neutral or benign. I don't think it's a given that large scale investing is inherently unethical (are pension funds unethical), but it certainly could be in any number of cases.

Yeah I don't think it's about individual's morality or ethics, or a magic number that they cross, or even necessarily how they made their money. It's more like I don't think you could describe a lord in medieval or early modern Europe, or a gentleman in the 18-19th century as moral or ethical. If you don't think the system is ethical or moral, which I don't, then I think you inevitably say that the winners can't be. I also think people have that sense when you read about, say, a Nigerian or Indian or Chinese billionaire that there is a scepticism - perhaps with some justification. I'm just not sure that our billionaires who are the apex predators of global capitalism are significantly different or better - or that that level of wealth can be acquired or maintained without similar compromises.

And the reality is that this is, because of the nature of the world as it is (and as in every other period in human history), that we are all, to some extent, involved. I always think of that Walter Benjamin line that there is "no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism". The billionaires can perhaps live a life less entangled with those documents or artifacts, but are, perhaps perversely, more directly implicated in the barbarism.

I'd add that I also don't have a huge amount of sympathy with them giving away large sums. First and most obviously it is very good from a tax perspective. But also I think it plays into their own mythos of men who deserve and have earned that wealth through their talent or genius - and can apply that to solve x problem, but also know better how to use that wealth than a democratic, social process would. I think Bankman-Fried and the whole "effective altruism" thing are an example of that, but also even Gates. I have a friend in malaria research and while it is absolutely very, very good it has also queered the pitch in that research is aimed at what can get funding from the Gates Foundation which may be missing other avenues.

I think it's not a million miles from the sort of technopopulism of Bloomberg (which I think Trump is also linked to becase he plays a billionaire on TV) democratic processes and the messy reality of politics is the problem - a genius businessman applying their business nous to politics/global development/ending x disease is the solution.

Also not to get too much into therapising them But I think the altruism is an attempt to mitigate their soul - no different than patronage of a different age from Carnegie Hall to the Medicis to a noble paying to establish an almshouse. And ultimately they're in control of whatever philanthropic project they launch.

[Barrister]

A clarification on my previous post: when I wrote unfettered capitalism, I was mostly referring to the cost of polluting being zero for the polluter, for hundreds of years and in 99% of cases. Even today, the fines slapped by regulatory agencies are laughable.

Those regulatory agencies have either dropped the ball, been defanged or have always been irrelevant, and I draw a direct link between late-stage capitalism and the undermining of those agencies. The environment has always been an afterthought, because profit is the numero uno priority now and forever. And that includes state-owned entities nominally non-capitalist.

As to the private sector, why on earth would we think salvation could come from there? There is no money to be made in carbon capture, which is the only real way to stop the cascade. There certainly is no money to be made in reducing emissions.

Zoupa, you're quite right in that for a long time air pollution has been a classic "tragedy of the commons" scenario, with zero consequence.  While other forms of pollution have largely come under control in the west (remember how we took care of the ozone layer! ) that is still largely the case with greenhouse gasses.  But we're working on it.

You kind of out yourself with the term "late stage capitalism" however.

[HVC]

It's a shame the world turned its back on nuclear .

Where is the brain, btw?

[Zoupa]

You kind of out yourself with the term "late stage capitalism" however.

I mean, have you forgotten what my profile picture is? 

[Valmy]

From what I could google, renewables accounted for 11% of energy consumed in 2019. It's too little too late,

It is certainly dramatically higher than what we could have reasonably expected say in 2007.

The built-in CO2 infrastructure and upcoming releases are IMO insurmountable. We're not able or willing to reduce emissions in a significant way, so let's science our way out of this by carbon capture is the only way to somehow mitigate the apocalypse.

I agree carbon capture if going to have a play a big role. If we end up solving this problem it will be a combination of things.

[Valmy]

It's a shame the world turned its back on nuclear .

It is enormously expensive.