Limitless Power

"Limitless wealth". Is there such as thing? Examples?

 

Assuming a no wealth, or wealth limitation, what happens to our individual right to work for our needs? Adam Smith's (economist and philosopher) theory is that it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. If we all regard our own interest for wealth or substance, why (how?) would the species ever change? Usage, ownership and production would all have to be redefined under your limited wealth concept.

Why not eliminate wealth, currency and work credits and provide for all the species one and the same? This seemed to be an theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Everyone owned the means of production and took what they needed.

I do believe that wealth influences power, but wealth limitations would not necessarily limit power. In this case, maybe power would be defined by the person/country with the biggest gun; just like it is now.

This should be enough for now to prompt some discussion and/or rebuttal.

 

I think that wealth is a being unto itself. You kill off the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the world, I guarantee you that before the dead corpses hit the ground, there will be a new legion of zombie elites in which wealth(power, whatever you want to call it) will exhibit its image. This power is magnified with improving techonolgy and increasing population.

It's sort of like corn in America. Are the humans the controller of corn, or are we the unsuspecting dependent distributors of living product that is kicking nice person in the evolution race? Corn in itself doesn't hold the genetic specifics that allows its seed to spread persay, but because of its nature(grows tons of raw foody building blocks for its dependent slave americans), from an evolutionary POV, it's dominating as a plant class. Its genetic code it doesn't have very many defense mechanisms, but we as humans will pay a very dear cost to defend its existence(like a fat imobile queen ant).

 

Burritos, that point you are making is scary - and almost feasible.

Corn isn't even actually "food"... it's mostly indigestible, is a very common allergen, and has a great deal of negative effects on people "not allergic"... even so far that, if you follow the research, "corn-fed" beef has a much higher incidence of e coli contamination. It's one reason that grass-fed beef is gaining in popularity - the incidence of e coli is significantly less (no, I will not go find a link for this. I'm going off my memory here. I'm also extrapolating as I type. YMMV).

Since humans can be considered mobile hosts for bacteria colonies, who's to say that corn isn't a particular bacteria's preferred food - or, perhaps the corn itself is a source for a bacteria that is trying to colonize a larger population?

You are scaring me, bud.

 

Not to take the discussion too far off topic - limits to power are well worth discussing - but the food scare deserves more. GMOs are largely sterile. No more saving seeds - it's practically illegal now - so if either Monsanto or the monoculture gets wiped out, where will we get our food? It's not just corn, and it's no longer capable of evolution. Lifeforms essential to human survival have been patented and neutered.

 

In the 70's, there was the real possibility of food shortages for the world's growing population. This is generally not an issue now due to increased yields per acre...those same horrible bred/modified plants are keeping the world's people alive.

Regarding wealth limits, I'd recommend reading Atlas Shrugged.

 

I agree with you, that's why I classified corn as foody building blocks.

Didn't mean to hj the thread, but I see the 2 as similar phenomena. Wealth and corn when in extreme abundance serves itself and the propagation of itself. Yes there are many pawns(us) in play and if you eliminated the pawns the 2 would just as vanish as removing moisture in a tornado. Mind you, this is just my interpretation of what's happnening and of course I'd prefer things to be different(i.e. less wealth concentration, less overuse of corn products).

 

The food problem may easily come back. Oil is becoming expensive, and oil is used in production and transportation of food. Natural gas is used as fertilizer, but this should be in good quantity for awhile yet. The "green revolution" required the use of herbicides and fertilizers to become effective, but the cost of those products will make food too expensive for many poorer people in 3rd world countries to buy.

Water is an even bigger problem. Many of the most productive areas use a lot of water from aquifers, faster than they are being replenished. This is a problem for farmers on the Ogallala aquifer in the southern Plains states, but it's likely a critical issue in India - a lot of small farmers who can't afford to sink their wells deeper, and they're going to go dry in increasing numbers soon. You won't really know about it until a drought hits and they overuse the aquifer in one season and then they're out of luck for several years, which could lead to widespread desertification.

I don't want to say the sky is falling, but I think we might have become complacent, thinking past technology solved all of our population problems.

So are we the ant protecting the acacia tree? Not entirely, since we can switch from corn with a little planning. Some cultures are entirely dependent on rice, the Irish used to be dependent on potatoes (and we know how that worked out).

:focus:
That's an interesting thought experiment, but not one likely to happen anytime soon. Some northern European countries are close to that with very high taxes on upper incomes.

I don't think Twittel's concern that we lose ambition to work for a living, because this upper limit is well above what the middle class, or even the upper class, would be experiencing. Communism had some interesting ideas, but providing motivation was a big vacuum in their implementation of it.

Putting an upper limit on wealth is an interesting idea that I hadn't really considered before. Would this money be put into a special pool, world health for instance? Would it breed a new class of criminals circumventing this, or oligarchs pooling their money for certain projects?

What I would like to see is if we could vote (at least on some percentage) where our tax dollars go. Not so much on how much we pay, but where it goes, I think giving people some feeling of control on that would help. Of course, we'd need some limits on this so that the latest media event doesn't cause wild swings in funding things that require some long-term efforts.

 

As described, the first lost would be individual freedom. For the mechanism you described, we would have to some powerful individual(s) getting to decide who gets stripped despite doing no evil. However, the real problem is this: It would not take long for a arbitrary class division to arise of defining anybody just above the median to be in the "super-rich" needing to be "corrected". Lot's of history to back me up on this. Even your post left out what the cutoff would be....and how to prevent it from being manipulated.

That said, there is a great problem with our wealth distribution mechanisms, so I'm absolutely not supporting what is in place.

To me it is much, much smarter to construct a system (laws, financial regulations, etc.) to prevent the problem in the first place. Don't strip some individual who has followed all the rule, but change the rules so that the issue is not continually propagating. (e.g. Solve the problem, not the symptom.)

 

Good heavens! Limits on power and wealth? That strikes at the very heart of capitalism! Unbridled greed and wanton consumption are the cornerstones of truth, freedom, and the American Way. If there's no winner, why bother playing? How dare you question the foundations of the money religion.

 

We are in Peak Everything. We can no longer substitute oil for knowledge and industrial agriculture is largely based on oil. Solution? Slow food that emphasizes local economies, such that we know who and where our food is grown. When we make a food purchase, we support the local economy, not an economy 25,000 kilometers away. Time to apply the knowledge and support sustainable agriculture.

 

I say someone could earn a billion dollars after taxes, he'd have to make 10 billion to get though.