Evan on Farcaster

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I don’t know how many Marxist/Dem Socialists we have on FC, but there’s a convo I want to have (rather in person but): It’s presented by Bernie/Zoran/etc that there needs to be zero billionaires because their wealth should be redistributed. I heard someone else say “what if everyone was a billionaire?” I don’t think either are going to happen exactly (no billionaires vs all billionaires), but the decision sets if you make one or the other as the GOAL is fascinating, and I’d love to have that convo with people of many different viewpoints!

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I will note that currency debasement changes the semantics dramatically. if a house sells for $10,000, a millionaire is extraordinarily wealthy and would have considerable influence over local government. normally, this would be democratically checked, but political action and other advertisement is less regulated than housing development, for example. if everyone becomes a billionaire, we're hyperinflationary. if nobody is a billionaire, either we've crashed or we've magically rebased, which would have cultural repercussions (e.g. return of the "nickel store"). then again, becoming a fully liquid billionaire is pretty tedious, and the power is concentrated to a respective firm, or it becomes even more volatile. the concern should be focused on how other firms are insulated from hostile takeover. for everything else, grassroots and talent outweigh the paper number.

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But what if it’s not hyperinflation, but extreme growth, like finding an abundant and free source of energy?

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that should lead to certain cost collapses, which is great and raises all boats. this would even produce trillionaires, as certain commodities would trade like pre-Depression wheat, and that premium would be captured at the exchange. but how would everyone tag along as "free billionaires"? they'd still sink into elastic things like healthcare (unless we presume things of that nature also get the unlock). there'd still be a store of value, so hardcoded scarcity would adapt. otoh, would hardcoded law adapt as quickly? I doubt it, but that would be an interesting bottleneck to unravel. in terms of politics, I think soft power ratio of dollars-to-democracy would collapse. if people are less subsistently desperate, they're more free to progress more abstract ideals like justice and mobility. but there almost certainly would remain rivalrous goods over which the trillionaires would oligopolize the market, rendering billion as worthless as a dollar is now.

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