Sam Seder: We Should Ban Billionaires! (Is He Right!)

[DFW]

12. I looked at your post

I have a problem with caps, period. If a Warren Buffet or a new Beatles (or whoever/whatever) invents their field's version of a better mouse trap, and the world wants it, well, in today's economy, SOME of them will become billionaires. I have no problem with that. Warren Buffet never made any moves indicating he wanted to rule the world or deprive under-privileged people from anything.

I have a problem with people wanting to impose these limits on others. They will necessarily be people who have no hope of attaining the same level of financial success, and the issue of jealousy rears its ugly head. "Why should YOU have it? We will spend it better than you ever planned to. Whaddya mean, 'who says so?' We do!," and we're off to the races. Here in Germany, this is a familiar tale. The story of the 1942 Wannsee Konferenz is in all the history books. Sons of generals, bureaucrats, politicians and industry titans--none of whom ever rose to the level of their successful fathers--thought out the Endlösung, or the Final Solution. That was to eradicate the Jews, and, not incidentally, confiscate all their wealth.

It never works out. Confiscate every cent Bill Gates has, and you get to distribute something like $358 to every man, woman and child in the USA. Once. It won't take long to eradicate America's billionaires that way. And then what? Give control of their organizations to committees appointed by...., well, SOMEONE, anyway. You don't want to destroy the companies, because you don't want to put 25,000,000 people out of work tomorrow.

The reason extreme solutions never turn countries into better places is that they are simplistic, and never work out for the masses. Despite some aspects, sometimes not insignificant, that are positive (Cuba's health care and education programs, e.g.), the overall result of government confiscation of concentrated wealth into its own hands has been inefficient, corrupt government. I was invited by the post-Ceauçescu government in Romania to review a tiny part of what the socialists confiscated from the people when they took over in the 1940s. Good old Nicolae kept it all for himself, and it was so vast that a week of inventorying for their Central Bank barely made a dent in listing it all.

The number of Floridians fleeing to Cuba, the number of South Koreans fleeing to North Korea, the numbers of Hong Kong Chinese fleeing to the Mainland, the numbers of West Germans "fleeing (it was never necessary)" to the former East Germany--history doesn't lie. No one likes a thumb on their back, and where it was mostly feudal lords a thousand years ago, it is governments today. Benevolent governments exist (the name Biden springs to mind), but they meet with stiff resistance from the extremes, and are never allowed to try out their most fervent wishes for the good of their people. The jealous under-performers, whether the German generals' sons with their Swastika lapels, or the sycophants licking the boots of the Eastern European "socialists," are always there to stifle the best of intentions. Mitch McTurtle and Kevin McCarthy embody the worst aspects of both, in that they display no empathy whatsoever. They may hide behind the skirts of moneyed backers, but in a position of absolute power, they wouldn't hesitate to confiscate their benefactors' wealth, just like their NSDAP and Soviet role models did before them. I wouldn't say that about Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. The job of any true democrat (small d) is to recognize this and never give up the effort, while realizing he/she will never see complete success in their lifetimes. Jealousy is just too powerful a driving force. That doesn't mean we must give in to it, but we should realize it for the powerful negative influence it exerts, both over those who have no pretense of doing good, and those who hide behind every pretense of doing good, while intending either no such thing, or at best superficial gestures to show what populist heroes they are.

Ironically, the most successful governments these days--to the extent that there are any--are the ones with the most internal dissent and complaints. That would be right here in Europe. The biggest complaints about the British come from the British people. The biggest critics of France are the French themselves. My wife and her friends roll their eyes at the nightly news and sigh "typisch deutsch." (Typically German). Even the Danes, the Dutch and the Swiss are like that, and there are few peoples more content than they are.

Given the chance, Napoleon will always take over from, and eliminate, Snowball. That holds true not only for four-legged fictitious creatures.