I consider it poor form to disguise a veganism argument as being about something else.
Eneasz
Karma: 3,794
Ok, thank you for the feedback. I feel I was at least no more out of line than “if they can’t get by on 10M boo hoo I don’t know what to tell them,” but I’ll try to adjust a bit away from talking down going forward.
But the dogma that there is no way to create enough value to become a billionaire honorably is exactly what I’m fighting against, so someone who takes the opposite as an axiom needs to be talked down from that point first.
Oh wow, the inferential gap here is much greater than I expected. I cannot bridge this in the breadth of one comment. I recommend staying active on Less Wrong and ACX, and over time you’ll be exposed to all the standard evidence for the destructiveness of unchecked government interference. Economists (and by extension, rationalists) are well aware of the problems of negative externalities and how governments can correct for them, and the market failures to provide public goods and how the government can provide them. So it’s not an “all government bad” position. But the govt being what it is, all power given to it is exploited to the maximum extent to favor the powerful and the population now is utterly strangled by the tools that were meant to protect it. OSHA and the EPA are IMO pretty good examples of good ideas that now do more harm than good! There are entire books written about these things if you want me to recommend them. If you prefer bite-size chunks over time maybe follow Noahpinion or Reason Magazine?
The world got along just fine without them prior to 1919.
Ah yes, the golden age of pre-1919. Returning to the economic conditions of pre-1919 in exchange for eliminating billionaires seems like just hurting everyone alive so some people can be hurt even more. If material prosperity nowadays is greater than 1919, maybe the existence of billionaires is a part of that?
I do think every dollar a person gets that pushes their bank account balance past, say, $10 million USD constitutes an obscene amount of personal wealth and should be automatically taken from them
Siiiiigh.
OK. Say the average founder can capture 10% of the value he creates. That’s a preposterously high amount, but we’ll use it to make the math easier. This means that once he creates $100M of value there is no reason for him to use his various gifts to create more. Any additional value he creates will get him a reputation of obscenity, and he’ll be ritually stripped of his portion of it by a spiteful populace. Why would anyone do that? I would make sure to keep my contributions to humanity very small and local, only benefiting myself and my community at most, so that I wouldn’t be in danger of helping too many people and becoming obscene.
If they can’t get by on $10 million, boo hoo, I don’t know what to tell them.
That isn’t what money is for once we get out of the realm of personal finances. People with wealth of that level don’t use money to “get by.”
There’s no excuse for letting them hoard that much wealth and evade taxes when the money is so desperately needed in the economy. Powering the economy is what money is for.
OK, yeah, this definitely says you are new to the world of economic thinking. That’s fine, it’s not intuitive. When someone is worth billions of dollars it’s not because they took a billion gold coins and buried them and now no one else can use those coins. It’s because they own a large fraction of a company that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. They aren’t “hoarding” anything—the company is right there, doing what it does every day! Delivering products or providing services or whatever. Powering the economy is ALREADY what they are doing. In fact, the reason they are so wealthy is BECAUSE they are powering the economy in exactly the way you say you want to encourage! The reward for having powered the economy by hundreds of billions of dollars a year is getting to own a small fraction of what they built.
That’s why we advocate for NOT destroying the people who do this. It would be destroying the system that created these engines that power the economy. Powering the economy is indeed what money is for, and this is a major component of how money does that. 🙂
Thank you for this, I appreciate it. I should clarify that I agree with you completely, and why I do, and what that means about my original point. 🙂
First, I strongly agree that many industries, such as Pharma (and real estate) are incredibly unfair and not a level playing field at all. I think health insurance is the worst of all of these, many people have written about how the US Healthcare system somehow manages to incorporate the absolute worst equilibria of every possible system. In these cases (and nearly all similar cases) the common denominator is how much distortion and interference there is by the government. The worst parts of the economy are the ones most regulated/distorted/corrupted by the government. 🙁
That being said, like you pointed out, a government is required to set the ground rules (What is property? How are contracts enforced?). So the hope is that we can enable a government that creates a strong, well-considered foundation, without trying to take over and directly manage the market. The government needs to create a ground for the market to work on, and then stop trying to geoform it into some alien configurations, because that always just makes the ground incredibly un-level. And then the assumptions about wealth being created honorably don’t apply anymore. Or apply less in proportion to how un-level the ground has become.
That being said, I don’t hold the maximally-naive position that our world is the ideal of “capitalism is somehow producing inordinate wealth via an “Honorable Code” because it supposedly aggregates free choices.” I am pushing that this is DESIRABLE. And that we can have this! And in a number of places, we’ve managed to get pretty close!
The narrative I am horrified by is the very loud, oft-repeated position that there is no such thing as Honorable Wealth. That every Billionaire is a Policy Failure. That such people are by necessity evil and exploitative. This is extremely wrong. In a fair system, the existence if Billionaire is both expected and good. One cannot eliminate billionaires and retain a functional system. So I am pushing very hard that one can, indeed, have Honorable Wealth. And anyone claiming Billionaires Shouldn’t Exist is the evil one, for this reason.
The fact that we have quite a few places where there isn’t a level field and that normal people pay a hefty price for this is not lost on me. Those places should be fixed. And the best way to fix them is to return those landscapes to places where Honorable Wealth is once again possible, rather than requiring corruption and graft. 🙁
I’m a little confused, what do you think is the core assertion that my argument relied on?
This is how people in poor countries view people in rich countries as well. And how people in grievance cultures view the outgroup they hold a grudge against when that outgroup is doing better than them. It’s just incredulity combined with prejudice.
This. “loot the outgroup” is evil behavior.
I don’t care if it can sustain huge amounts, actually. It shouldn’t have this even if it’s sustainable.
No, that misses the core argument. “Letting people keep their stuff if it was earned honorably” is a vital component of the engine. You can’t remove it and keep the engine working.
You hit actual counter argument here—“People are already coordinated around the notion that billionares are not “honorably wealth” and are net negative for society.” I agree that is the case for some billionaires, and where that is the case they should be punished and their wealth confiscated. But that must be demonstrated, it cannot simply be assumed to be true because they are billionaires.
The organizer of the march (Derik) specifically spoke about buy, borrow, die in interviews with the press, and in his closing speech, as a loophole that exists and must be closed. The marchers were not without nuance (except Annie ofc.… >.>) I’m less concerned than most, partly because it requires a low-interest environment (this was a much bigger deal during the era of 0% interest rate) and partly because “die” is a crucial part of it. Seems like a losing strategy to me on it’s face, and one that won’t last much longer as we fix aging. But regardless, this can and probably should be fixed by eliminating the step-up basis on extremely large estates.
If the 3.4%-8.2% number comes from counting unrealized capital gains, which the phrase “most billionaire wealth comes from unrealized capital gains” leads to me believe is the case, then the 3.4%-8.2% number is simply a lie.
The latest episode of the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast is a discussion of this post (starting at minute 31).
https://www.thebayesianconspiracy.com/2026/01/253-the-seven-vicious-vices-of-rationalists/
Guys who care about openness and honesty should continue to be open and honest; and the women who are turned off by this are best avoided by us, tbh. Unless you (as the guy) are also into non-consent, the sex with someone who isn’t visibly/legibly into you isn’t great.
I’ve done audio for Ben’s HPMoR/Disco Elysium crossover story. It’s here—https://hpmorpodcast.com/?p=3476
It’s not ideal, I think next time I’ll get someone with a voice much closer to the narrator for the game. But here is my shot at an audio version of this. https://hpmorpodcast.com/?p=3476
Jealous rage is terrible. I disagree that it’s a clinging love, which is what I would associate with jealous rage. This is a protective love.
I agree that acting on this desire would often be sub-optimal, but I’m not advocating acting on it. I’m saying that it’s there, and it’s good to acknowledge, and honestly I think it’s good that it’s there even if it is sub-optimal in many parts of the modern world.
The point of the post is that much of what we believe is acquired from social proof (Everything Everyone Says vs Science Illiterate Jerks), plus we update on synthetic data (via Fictional Evidence) all the time, esp when that evidence aligns with social proof. The few counter observations we personally make are easily overwhelmed by the weight of everyone who is smarter and more numerous + the true observations we make that confirm + observations we make on synthetic data.
I’ll address your individual points below, but you seem to be making the same mistake you accuse me of making. You say I was just making excuses for not seeing things and defending my past self as being reasonable instead of identifying how I could have gotten the correct answer. Then you go on to list individual things and demanding to know what my excuse is for nothing seeing those things. Calling me to defend my past ignorance. I’ll go ahead and do that (because, full disclosure, I already wrote that part, then realized it’s useless crap, but didn’t want to delete an hour of typing), but it won’t be satisfying because it’s exactly what you say you don’t want more of.
My thesis remains that the preponderance of evidence available to me supported the consensus of my social milieu, and this was not an accident. I was presented with a false world, explanations for the seams in the presentation, with strong incentives to accept confirming evidence and discount the relatively sparse disconfirming evidence. How could I have gotten the correct answer? By withdrawing from the social reality that guided my interactions with the world and being exposed to a social reality with a different narrative to explain the same observations. This is, in fact, how I eventually got to the correct answer. The post was pointing out that this was what happened.
Is it unreasonable to accept the world we are presented with? I don’t think one has any other option. The best you can hope for is enough discernment to swallow the fruit of knowledge when you finally stumble upon it, rather than spitting it out and returning to the garden where it’s safe.
On to the excuses:
1. Sure, to an extent. I don’t think a toddler can beat up an adult. I do (did?) think Jackie Chan can beat up Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. And if Jackie Chan can do that, a woman with the right training and determination should be able to beat up an average man. Size isn’t everything, and I thought size was far less important back then.2. In my younger years I certainly had argued with people about this, and I thought I had won. Chyna could beat me up. Xena could def beat up teenage Eneasz, and maybe even current-day Eneasz (I have no experience in combat, I’ve never thrown a punch post-puberty). As for arguing with people re world cup… what would I argue about? The question was about pay for the womens vs mens teams. That’s mostly about men being too sexist to watch womens sports even tho they’re equally good (I thought). A match would be cool to see but it wouldn’t change their sexism, any more than the Battle of the Sexes in tennis did (yes, I now know why that match doesn’t represent a real contest. I didn’t know that before, and neither did David Letterman https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IfM9x2WxLFU ). Also I think people do talk about the world’s strongest woman and the world’s fastest woman and etc all the time. Like, I even thought that until reading your comment. They do, right?
3. So.… not really? Literally did not fight with any women, never had direct tests of strength. My female friends were all just as feminist as me. They did not ask for men to do things for them. When I moved I would invite my female friends to help move as well. They came and hauled heavy boxes back and forth with the rest of us. They helped move furniture, and didn’t complain. Likely they were working harder and I didn’t notice. If they preferentially took lighter loads I didn’t notice. You act like I had innumerable occasions to witness vast differences in feats of strength but how often do you and a female friend actually try doing the exact same physical feat sequentially? If it happens once or twice per year then even if you notice it you can chalk it up to a fluke. I was a nerdy out-of-shape accountant & video gamer, not a farmer. When I started working out in my 30s I definitely noticed I could do pullups in a way that astounded my gf/wife, but that already fit under “Men have a bit more upper body strength.” I could lift heavier things than her now, but that’s because I trained on lifting heavy things! She did not. Regular day-to-day outperformance was easily covered by “I’m now a person that works out to cultivate muscle, she’s still a person who doesn’t so she’s stuck back at the muscle levels of sedentary Eneasz.”
And yes, that sounds stupid to both of us NOW. That’s the point of the post. When all your evidence for 30 years goes one way, and then some small observable things trend against that later in life but all the other evidence (social proof, expert consensus, observed fitness levels) continues to support the old priors, who are you gonna believe?4. How did slaves that were physically far stronger than their owners, and outnumbered them, remain enslaved? Every single type of revolt you mentioned—how did the oppressed classes end up in that position? It wasn’t because the oppressors had a massive genetic advantage in grip strength and arm-reach. How does a single tyrant with tiny percentage of the population as loyalists keep an entire nation under a reign of terror for decades, sometimes centuries via dynasty? Honestly all you have to do is look at any leftist rhetoric about oppressors right now and see exactly the arguments they use. Why do the capitalists continue to immiserate the 99%, or whatever? I bought these arguments. Many people still do.
5. Men went to war because men are violent monsters. Women aren’t. Individual women could still fight if they really wanted to, and some did. We had plenty of hero women that hid their gender and went off to fight and did just as good as the men. The US military was less sexist than most and DID have female soldiers! There was a whole damn movie about the first ones let in that demonstrated the ones willing to dedicate themselves to it were just as good as the men, and plenty of glowing media coverage of the first women in combat.
I could have stayed in this mindset forever, and many people are still in it. This is why I value the rationalist community so much. There isn’t any social good here that’s so important that it overrides trying to be (eventually, cumulatively) less wrong.
No worries, and thank you for clarifying. :) I didn’t reply because I was leaving the next day for Vibecamp and didn’t have spare time. I’m back now and will post a reply tonight.
Hi, I checked out for a while, but I want to say thank you for writing this. I realize I probably didn’t deserve this much charity in reading, and I appreciate it.
I think we will continue to disagree on most points, so I don’t want to continue restating where we disagree. But I do agree that faulty safety equipment due to negligence is morally bad, and should be condemned and punished. (and approximately the same goes for pollution, and dishonorable business practices. Roughly a “what would Dagny Taggart do?” test would be an ideal that would create a wonderful world). I think the amount of such immoral acts is both claimed to be much higher than it is (they are the exceptions) and used to inflame widespread hatred using basically the genocide-style playbook which I find appalling.