HN Reader

> Together, they now own three times more than the poorest half of humanity, or 2.8 billion adults. While the gap has stabilized since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has grown sharply over recent decades: Back in 1995, the 0.001% held "only" twice as much as the poorest half.

Important context: here debt is counted as negative. This means a person with no debt but zero wealth also owns more wealth than bottom 20% or so cumulatively because the debts of people cancel out with others wealth. I think this is misleading.

Yeah and if you make US median income you’re in the top 0.3% of worldwide income. I don’t see all these people giving away to the bottom 99.7%, hahaha.

The question is where this will lead and what, if anything will, should or can be done to put the brakes on this wealth (re-)distribution.

It feels as though over the last few decades, all we have seen is a continuing trend of increasing amounts of wealth being amassed by a smaller and smaller circle of people.

What I find incredibly hard to judge is the point at which the current system leading to this will face violent reorganisation.

We've had feudalism, communism and fascism (and even a few attempts at egalitarian democracies long before that), but they all failed. It is tempting to say they all failed because "they could have never worked". That's easy to say with hindsight.

Once the current experiment implodes, will we all be armchair experts, scoffing at the idea that this could have ever worked also? And if so, why isn't anyone looking at the system and trying to change something?

The other systems usually ended in world wars or violent revolution. Often the ruling class became too comfortable / belligerent, just to then be replaced by the same thing (but maybe with a bit of lag. See the 2nd world war's ending. The middle class thrived up until about the 70s/80s).

Would feudalism have stayed if they'd had the levels of surveillance and AI-powered control we are currently facing? How about communism? Could a planned economy work if that is suddenly super-charged with computers and AI (and the necessary oppression to achieve it)?

Capitalism mixed with strong safeguards ensuring that there is a return for productivity for everyone feels like the best attempt we've made at a system that works for everyone until all the safeguards began being dismantled in the 70s.

Can we return to that system or is regulatory capture irreversible and therefore capitalism will always inevitably lead back to feudalism? And what can be done about it once AI and automation ensure the hegemony can't be touched anymore?

I have no answers, only questions...

If you take any ancient or not so ancient civilization or kingdom, all the wealth including land and people's lives belonged to king/imperator which was appointed by god or something like that.

Isn't is exactly the same with the system we have now?

The question we have to ask is about 99% of population of peasants who work 8h a day same as they did in Mesopotamia. Do they have a living standard, healthcare, possibility to have social bonds, possibility to retire. Basically all the things to have a life.

If peasants are able to have all this, I really don't care if some King of ours has 20 trillion or 50 bazillion. In money or in gold.

Rich people having too much wealth is not necessarily that bad a thing because most of the investment is in productive companies.

It’s not like they are using their wealth on frivolous consumption. Which means redistribution would only change who controls the investment and not the actual consumption patterns of people. Implication is that poor people will consume the same as before after redistribution with perhaps some extra assets. So nothing materially changes other than some security. Poor people will continue to consume the same as before.

Bigger problem is it’s not so clear that redistribution is necessarily a good thing because I feel the people who made money are more likely to make better decisions on their own companies. I don’t know how companies would fare if for example Amazon were redistributed and run like some public company.