You opened with an assumption that your described audience (“progress studies people, economists, techno-optimists, anarcho-capitalists, proper libertarians”) largely doesn’t share. Why should people be equal? What sense of equality do you have in mind?
More generally, you make a bunch of undefended claims, e.g.
You say that when one side has bargaining power over another, that’s bad per se, but it’s not explained why
You say that when there is more wealth concentration, that leads to less freedom “empirically” but you don’t present any empirical evidence
You give Elon Musk buying Twitter as an example of the negative influence of billionaires, but in fact the Twitter Files reveal an apparently more serious threat to freedom from the state, whose power is actually counterbalanced by wealthy individuals
I do not plan to defend all the claims that I make, and neither do people outside of mechanised proofs.
Beyond this, I think you have misread the article! I believe that your examples are in fact not examples of unsubstantiated claims, but of you misidentifying what are the actual claims!
For easy reference, I quoted you in bold, and myself in italics.
You say that when there is more wealth concentration, that leads to less freedom “empirically” but you don’t present any empirical evidence
I have used “empirically” only twice, namely “Capitalism empirically leads to wealth concentration.” and “Plutocracy is empirically not conducive to liberty and democracy.”
I expect these two to be pretty uncontroversial. The latter should be obvious. The first one is why there is so much redistributive taxes and progressive tax systems everywhere.
I am not saying all these taxes are good, I am saying they result from the wealth concentration that happens when there are more investment opportunities for people with more money, r > g, higher RoI on capital than on labor past a threshold, etc.
But more importantly, I did not say that “when there is more wealth concentration, that leads to less freedom empirically”. This is why I am making a case in the first place! Else, I would have just said that!
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You say that when one side has bargaining power over another, that’s bad per se, but it’s not explained why
I do not say this! I specifically oppose mere power from bargaining power, explaining that power is much stronger. And the article starts with an explanation for why power over another is bad.
When someone has power over us, they can compel us. Power is the ultimate form of bargaining power: it morphs compromises and trade relationships into compulsion and coercion. This is the logic behind big stick ideology and gunboat diplomacy.
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You give Elon Musk buying Twitter as an example of the negative influence of billionaires, but in fact the Twitter Files reveal an apparently more serious threat to freedom from the state, whose power is actually counterbalanced by wealthy individuals
“negative influence of billionaires”?? I know billionaires who do good things! That’s not the type of things I would write!
Elon Musk buying Twitter is an example of how wealth concentration (billionaires) can lead to power concentration (economic power → media & political power) through the fungibility of money! This is one of the core theses.
Let me actually quote the article:
From the perspective of the Enlightenment Philosophy, Elon Musk is a great example of the type of power concentration we ought to avoid in a single person.
He became a billionaire, with outsized economic power.
Then he used that economic power to buy Twitter, acquire a massive amount of media power, and use it to steer the discourse where he wanted.
Finally, he leveraged all of that to get himself into a close alliance with Trump and get massive amount of political power through DOGE.
[...]
This is not about the personality of billionaires. Some are mean, some are nice. Some are evil, some are good. But that’s beside the point. The point is that separation of power is a core principle of the Enlightenment Philosophy. Defeating kings was not about them being bad people, it was about splitting the levers of power so that no one may wield them them unilaterally.
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I wanted to go through the exercise of answering comments a couple of times.
There were several comments like yours, and I was wondering if I was going crazy, because these didn’t read like responses to what I had actually written.
I don’t have a confident understanding of what’s happening. My best guess is “People get triggered online and answer what they’ve been used to seeing, as opposed to what’s actually written”.
You opened with an assumption that your described audience (“progress studies people, economists, techno-optimists, anarcho-capitalists, proper libertarians”) largely doesn’t share. Why should people be equal? What sense of equality do you have in mind?
More generally, you make a bunch of undefended claims, e.g.
You say that when one side has bargaining power over another, that’s bad per se, but it’s not explained why
You say that when there is more wealth concentration, that leads to less freedom “empirically” but you don’t present any empirical evidence
You give Elon Musk buying Twitter as an example of the negative influence of billionaires, but in fact the Twitter Files reveal an apparently more serious threat to freedom from the state, whose power is actually counterbalanced by wealthy individuals
Yup!
I do not plan to defend all the claims that I make, and neither do people outside of mechanised proofs.
Beyond this, I think you have misread the article! I believe that your examples are in fact not examples of unsubstantiated claims, but of you misidentifying what are the actual claims!
For easy reference, I quoted you in bold, and myself in italics.
I have used “empirically” only twice, namely “Capitalism empirically leads to wealth concentration.” and “Plutocracy is empirically not conducive to liberty and democracy.”
I expect these two to be pretty uncontroversial. The latter should be obvious. The first one is why there is so much redistributive taxes and progressive tax systems everywhere.
I am not saying all these taxes are good, I am saying they result from the wealth concentration that happens when there are more investment opportunities for people with more money, r > g, higher RoI on capital than on labor past a threshold, etc.
But more importantly, I did not say that “when there is more wealth concentration, that leads to less freedom empirically”. This is why I am making a case in the first place! Else, I would have just said that!
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I do not say this! I specifically oppose mere power from bargaining power, explaining that power is much stronger. And the article starts with an explanation for why power over another is bad.
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“negative influence of billionaires”?? I know billionaires who do good things! That’s not the type of things I would write!
Elon Musk buying Twitter is an example of how wealth concentration (billionaires) can lead to power concentration (economic power → media & political power) through the fungibility of money! This is one of the core theses.
Let me actually quote the article:
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I wanted to go through the exercise of answering comments a couple of times.
There were several comments like yours, and I was wondering if I was going crazy, because these didn’t read like responses to what I had actually written.
I don’t have a confident understanding of what’s happening. My best guess is “People get triggered online and answer what they’ve been used to seeing, as opposed to what’s actually written”.