
Ask HN: What can we do to stop the rich from getting richer? - pedro1976
The current political developments indicate that the Anacyclosis [0] theory is true, the political caste is closely engaged with big business and the small voter has almost no influence in changing this development . Same is true for the media, which are with a few exceptions by globalists, so the fourth estate is, to check those in power. Morover, in germany - as an example - flat market prices are dictated by a few coorps too [1].<p>Are we doomed to watch the system evolve into an oligarchie&#x2F;dictatorship or are there some bottom-up approaches to stop it?<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Anacyclosis
[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;translate.google.com&#x2F;translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=y&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nachdenkseiten.de%2F%3Fp%3D46219%23h18&amp;edit-text=&amp;act=url
======
alan_wade
What can we do to stop the healthy from getting healthier?

What can we do to stop the smart from getting smarter?

I've heard that 99% of the gallery paintings were created by 1% of the
painters, and 99% of the best-selling books were created by 1% of the writers,
and 99% of inventions were invented by 1% of the scientists. If we don't stop
this, there'll be no paintings/books/inventions left for us regular folk, and
then what will we do oh god what will we do.

------
nieksand
I don't care if the rich get richer, provided that the quality of life for the
rest of us keeps going up too.

~~~
CamTin
Wealth isn't just about purchasing power, but about control. A small class of
people controlling most of the wealth means that they can manipulate/buy the
government and make our lives worse in ways that "quality of life" measured in
something like the CPI can't fully capture.

~~~
winstonewert
It seems to me that we would should focus on is how to break the link between
wealth and political power. If we could do that than a) we wouldn't care if
some people were wealthier if we were all better off and b) the wealth
couldn't make themselves wealthier by changing the rules of the game in their
favor.

~~~
kgwxd
By what means? Money easily gets around law.

~~~
winstonewert
I don't know. Maybe there is no way. But if you can't do that, all other
potential reforms are irrelevant.

------
charlesism
In America, you would first need to improve the political system (ie: ranked
choice voting, no more gerrymandering or disenfranchisement, prohibitions on
lobbyists), and improve K-12 education.

To accomplish that, you would need to exert more pressure on politicians than
the lobbyists, who fight against such things, do. Since the lobbyists have
more money, it would have to be social and peer pressure. Also, you would have
to pressure individuals (ie: influential people, not their companies.
Influential politicians, not their entire party).

With that done, the obvious is possible. Raise taxes on the rich, crack down
on tax havens, gut military spending, expand public heathcare, improve
infrastructure, etc.

~~~
basch
at the end of the day, even if you fixed voting, gerrymandering and lobbying,
as long as people can own newspapers/radio/tv, and amplify their voice; they
will always be able to control: who is on the ballot, and who people vote for.
MOST people dont have a substantial time invested in nuanced policy stance,
they form an opinion based on what the tv or paper (or friends) says, and vote
accordingly.

democracy will always reduce itself to who can yell the loudest, who can
create the most fear, who can be the most persuasive to the mass (even if not
a sound factual argument.)

and then every blue moon you will have a Trump, that finds a way to amplify
their image on the cheap, by getting everyone to talk ABOUT them. all press
being good press, and the bad press is free.

~~~
charlesism
There's a lot of truth to your comment. My hunch is that with less corruption,
and better education, America would lessen inequality considerably. But catch
me on a pessimistic day, I might say otherwise. As you suggest, just because
something is a majority opinion, doesn't mean it's a good idea.

------
msiyer
Trying to effect large-scale changes without rectifying fundamental issues is
futile. We all want to change the system, but the system is only a large-scale
reflection of individuals constituting the system.

------
mLuby
Developing a society where the _accumulation_ of wealth is anathema would be
good. Could be accomplished by low taxes on income and high taxes on net
worth, encouraging lots of spending but not much hoarding.

But you might actually be more concerned with accumulation of _power_ , in
which case let's address that directly.

~~~
winstonewert
That would be terrible: it would encourage everyone to operate entirely on
short term thinking rather than long term thinking which we already don't do
enough of.

~~~
mLuby
It would put rich people in the same long-term position as poor people, so
_everyone_ would have an incentive to create a robust societal safety net.

------
alexashka
You already know, what you personally can do - nothing.

Imagine asking what you can do, to stop the sun from rising tomorrow. Your
question is not too far off.

The world is going to go, the way it's going to go. If you've ever tried to
get a relative or friend, or _gasp_ yourself, to cease a harmful habit or pick
up a good habit (getting in good shape, quitting smoking, etc) - you'll know
how much or how little you can do to stop anyone, from doing anything.

So really, the answer to your question is - pick something you know you should
do, but aren't doing, and go do that with any consistency. Something that is
unquestionably positive - not something along the lines of changing others. If
you can stick with it, do one more, or do one less of what you know you
shouldn't do. Repeat.

If you can do that with any consistency - you'll quickly become a role model
to some, and have a positive impact on society as a whole, which's what you
seem to really be after.

There's a path of violence - that appeals largely to young people, and then
the path of peace, that one gets around to, usually when there's no more you
can accomplish with violence, and lots to fix. Path of violence is thinking if
only others were more like me, the world would be a better place. The path of
peace is realizing that's a delusional thought, and that if you want to get
along with others, that's a counter-productive way of living your life.
Everyone wants to get along with others - not everyone is smart/wise/whatever
enough to realize the place (violence) their attempts are coming from, is at
least half the problem.

------
nostrademons
Stop buying their products.

It's that simple. The rich are rich because you give them money. If you and
everyone else makes it a point to try out startups rather than always buying
from the established company, buy from local businesses instead of big chains,
buy fresh local produce instead of processed foods, rent from individual
families instead of big corporate apartment complexes, invest your money
yourself or stick it in Vanguard instead of paying a fund manager, and so on,
the rich will become less rich.

New people will become rich instead, but you don't expect to eliminate the
whole concept of wealth, right? (The corollary is that if _you_ want to become
rich yourself, don't spend money and invest your time in activities that will
cause other people to give you money.)

~~~
onion2k
_It 's that simple._

That's fine for things like food and drink, but for everything else there's a
huge amount of "stealth consolidation" over the past few decades. For example,
if you want a pair of glasses there is literally _one_ company that make them
- EssilorLuxottica[1]. They own _everything_ around glasses. All the
differentiation is false - they're just brands owned by two mega-corporations.
The same is true of cars (14 giant corporations owning 60+ brands), food and
drink (a few hundred giant corporations owning thousands of brands), etc.

[1] A good read about them [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/10/the-
invisible-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/10/the-invisible-
power-of-big-glasses-eyewear-industry-essilor-luxottica)

~~~
detaro
Although they are massive, they don't own literally everything, at least
internationally. At least here in Germany I think avoiding them wouldn't be
hard, but of course there's other large companies owning many of the other
players, so leaving them != supporting small companies.

------
BugsJustFindMe
You use the phrase "fourth estate", but do you know where it comes from? Look
up "third estate" and you'll see the previous solution.

------
sebazzz
Personally probably not much. But I was thinking: What if there was a upper
cap on an individual wealth. For instance, 1 million dollars? And everything
over that cap should go to "the community" (to be defined, maybe fix poverty,
put it into scientific research, something to save our earth).

Probably very short-sighted, but interesting topic nevertheless.

~~~
Yetanfou
Just realise that the 'money game' is rigged, the deck is stacked and the
house will win no matter what you do. That leaves but one way to 'win' this
game and that is by not playing it. Yes, you need money but you do not need
limitless amounts of it. You most certainly don't _need_ many of the products
peddled by 'the rich' so that part of the game is easily avoided - just don't
buy 'm. Use your money to become more independent of future money by buying
land in an area which can support you and your family, either by producing
stuff yourself or by buying it from people close-by - thereby avoiding giving
money to 'the rich'. Don't buy into dependency through all sorts of long-term
contracts, loans, credit cards, needless insurances and other such things.
Given that you probably live in the USA I assume you need a car, what you do
not need is the latest and greatest and certainly not a new one every other
year. The same goes for all those electronic doodads which try to lure you
into spending more and more of your waking hours staring at their mesmerising
animations, all the while doing their best to serve their true masters. Home
speakers which always listen to every conversation in your house was used as a
dire prediction of times to come in novels like 1984, now it is supposed to
the 'the thing to have for smart people'. Well, I'll just flick that light
switch myself, thank you Alexa and Google and Siri. Mobile tracking beacons
which communicate with billboards to show you tailored advertising, it might
sound like something out of The Diamond Age but it happens right here, right
now. To get rid of intrusive nonsense like that you need to take a good, deep
look at that mobile device in your pocket and ask yourself how much of the
software running on it is serving you, how much of it serves someone else. I
could go on but I guess the gist of what I'm saying is clear: put your money
where your mouth and thoughts are. That way you do not need to resort to such
means as you suggest, you do not need to implement the next 'utopia' which is
doomed to fail - viz. Venezuela for the last example of where such ideas lead.

------
cheeko1234
This is the only way:

[https://www.thevenusproject.com/resource-based-
economy/](https://www.thevenusproject.com/resource-based-economy/)

This utopian idea from Jacque Fresco is practically impossible to implement
unless an all-powerful benevolant dictator type AI is in charge of everything.

------
candiodari
One of the few uncontroversial results of theoretical economics is that in
bigger markets, money ends up in fewer hands, because concentration of power
is inevitable.

So what can we do ? Roll back globalization. Heavily tax or outright prevent
international movement of goods and people.

------
tapiok
The elephant in the room is to focus on what motivates people to work, once
they have enough wealth to address their existential needs. When we look
closely, we notice that people desire wealth for social/psychological
signalling. This explains phenomena like: * why one billion people volunteer
their time to generate over a trillion USD/year in value, while not caring for
an economic reward, * why many extremely wealthy people live frugal lives
(Buffett, Ingvar Kamprad,...), * why many wealthy people give away (most of)
"their" fortune (Carnegy, Gates,...),

Another fact to note is, that economic inequality is a relatively recent
phenomenon. The hunter-gatherer system - where people shared equally all
economic "product", but exceptional contributors were rewarded with regard
(social signal) - lasted for tens of thousands of years.

These observations suggest how a system can be built bottom-up, that can
topple capitalism. It will look like the HG system, but will be held together
by apps running on personal computing devices to simulate the economic
transparency necessary for the system to work. Crypto currencies are a
caricature of such a system (the important parts are in place, but the
proportions are way off).

~~~
eesmith
I do not think that "social/psychological signalling" has a good meaningful
interpretation along the lines that you are using it.

That is, many people seek wealth, and signal it through a lack of frugality.
Look at the number of owners of super and mega yachts, and tell me how they
are frugal. There are a lot of such yachts, yes?

(You could say that they are frugal because they live well within their means,
but that's not what you meant when you singled out Buffett and Kamprad.)

Look at billionaries like the Koch brothers, or the DeVos family. Money gives
political power, and both of those families have used their wealth to push
their respective political agendas.

Thing is, that can _also_ be interpreted as "social/psychological signalling",
could it not?

So it seems like anything that a rich person does can be interpreted as
"social/psychological signalling".

I don't know what you refer to when you say "one billion people ... a trillion
USD/year in value." Does that include all of the people who sing for free in
their church choir, or who volunteer to organize a race, etc? Again, if you
say those are all examples of "social/psychological signalling", then I think
that definition is so broad as to be meaningless.

Much has been written about Carnegie's philantropy. Quoting Wikipedia, '"Maybe
with the giving away of his money," commented biographer Joseph Wall, "he
would justify what he had done to get that money."' Isn't that a rather
different interpretation than yours?

Note too that Carnegie was far from frugal.

Finally, you reference to hunter-gatherer systems (excepting the settled
hunter-gatherers) in what seems which reminds me of Marx's description of
"primitive communism." If I continue with a Marxian analysis, those hunter-
gatherer systems had no mechanism for capital accumulation, and it's that
accumulation which contributes to the social power imbalance we see now.

How does "economic transparency", much less "apps running on personal
computing devices" , result in a major equalization of social power gained
from capital accumulation?

~~~
tapiok
> Look at the number of owners of super and mega yachts, and tell me how they
> are frugal...

I mentioned frugality only to hint that these folks must have non-economic
motives for working. I claim that the motive is signaling. And the megayacht
owners - what else might they do with their Veblen goods than signal their
status? Does Paul Allen need 50 bathrooms on Octopus (just guessing here, not
sure about the exact number) to address his physiological needs?

> Look at billionaries like the Koch brothers, or the DeVos family..

In my opinion signaling is a manifestation of a deeper motivational mechanism
that I call the modeling instinct. Basically we have instinct to build perfect
world model in our brains and one of the way we test its quality is by
creating goods and services. The difference between the Koch brothers and -
say - Buffet is that they test different aspects of the world models - that
part, which is interesting for them the most. We all carry unique, but
incomplete and distorted world representations and therefore tend to test our
model-building effort in various domains. Signaling plays however an important
role - it is a measure of how successful is our modeling effort.

> I don't know what you refer to when you say "one billion people ... a
> trillion USD/year in value

There is actually a research done in this field. See for example Salamon,
L.M., Sokolowski, S.W., Haddock, M., 2011. Measuring the Economic Value of
Volunteer Work Globally - Concepts, Estimates, and a Roadmap to the Future
(2011). Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics 82, 217–252.
[https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8292.2011.00437.x](https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8292.2011.00437.x)

In personal communication one of the authors confirmed that also FOSS
development has been included in the estimates.

> Re Carnegy.

Let's not focus on frugality. hopefully what I write above elucidates this
point sufficiently.

> Re hunters - gatherers.

The takeaway from this should be the fact, that a stable human society can
exist that is economically equal, if it maintains potentially unequal "merit"
signaling. This by the way nicely fits to the idea of how a just society
should look like according to Rawls.

> How does "economic transparency"...

The HG economic system fell apart once people lost ability to see what
material goods their neighbors acquired - simply put. This transparency must
be restored in order to build economically equal society. I believe technology
will play central role in re-instituting a HG-like economic system. The loss
of privacy in social networks, the (wiki)leaks of confidential information,
the cameras in our cities - that is a part of the pendulum swing toward a more
transparent society - which is a prerequisite to a more fair world.

Maybe I should conclude the main point of what I am trying to communicate here
- people can be completely happy (and economically productive) even if they
are economically equal, if their ability to signal their naturally unequal
abilities is unrestricted.

Thank you for the comments.

------
esaym
Start here at 1:30:30
[https://youtu.be/6G59zsjM2UI?t=1h30m25s](https://youtu.be/6G59zsjM2UI?t=1h30m25s)

and see all of nature follows a law of square roots. If you have 10,000
people, 100 will have all the money. If you have 10,000 music artist, only 100
will be getting their songs heard. This is a law of nature. Stop fighting
against it and spend some time understanding it.

------
RhysU
Start a better business and defeat all of theirs! But then you would end up
rich! Ahhhhh!

------
ivanb
Capitalism will keep small players comfortable because if most people are
comfortable with their existence there will not be a critical mass for a
change. We will be fed and entertained.

The equilibrium may shift due to individual greed of capitalists. If it gets
bad enough something may change for a generation or two.

------
diminoten
You're asking the rich how to stop themselves, I don't think that's going to
go the way you want it to.

------
RickJWagner
Wrong question.

We should be asking "What can we do to make becoming wealthy easier for
everyone?"

------
kim0
Convert some of your wealth to community cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Litecoin,
Monero...)

------
overlords
Persuade the Bill Gates, Warren Buffets, Mark Zuckerburgs to become the anti-
Koch brothers by supporting left-wing politicians.

Support the land value tax (Georgism). Much of rich people's wealth is tied up
in the land value of big cities.

------
simonebrunozzi
I think a good starting point is "Capital in the 21st century" by Piketty.

~~~
eesmith
FWIW, Piketty's proposal is a "progressive annual global wealth tax of up to
2%, combined with a progressive income tax reaching as high as 80%.

I'm fine with that.

------
onion2k
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution)

~~~
cryptonector
That did not end well.

The October revolution also didn't end well.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
It _went_ poorly, hello Terror, but the only sense in which it didn't _end_
well is that the French realized that they actually did want an empire-
building monarch after all, goodbye First Republic, hello Napoleon.

~~~
cryptonector
Did they? It's not like there was a referendum on whether to have an emperor,
and then an election for who should be the emperor, and then periodic
successive elections.

It was all a disaster through and through. From La Terreur to Napoleon and his
wars, it was a disaster.

Worse than that, La Terreur set a pattern that has been repeated (and, sadly,
"improved") in the many years since.

------
justmetoday
There's nothing beings flawed in the ways that lead to this state of affairs
(generally subsets of selfishness) can do but become the kind of beings that
aren't flawed in those ways.

So get busy changing yourself and raising new instantiations not thusly
flawed.

