[UweSchmidt]

While we're bashing economics, something I truly miss is that no new high level economic systems are being discussed prominently. As important as fusion in physics or cancer treatment in medicine, we badly need to explore and discuss something beyond the heavily ideologized systems of capitalism, communism and feed this to politics to communicate these potential options to the voters. Say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism, which is old and half forgotten. It appears as economics is kind of muted, students and professors beholden to an ideology themselves or feeling the need to appease potential employers who are usually politicized institutions with no room for intellectual curiosity. What else remains in terms of practical economics besides determining the inflation rate (oops, that one is also politicized)?

[abeppu]

People love to talk about ideology, but is what what economics should be about? Every major economy on the planet is a mixed economy. In China, government expenditure and revenue are 33.1% and 25.5% of GDP respectively. In the US, the corresponding percentages are 38.5% and 32.9%. Neither totally free markets nor planned economies seem to work, and empirical research obliges economists to look at the economies we actually have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

I think Piketty does kind of do what you're talking about -- and though he makes a good case, I think when he argues for concepts like universal inheritance, that's more an act of political advocacy than economic scholarship. It's for the economist qua economist to study/analyze the conditions under which the rich get richer, or where class mobility decreases, etc -- but it's up to people and governments to choose what they want society to look like.

[johnnyanmac]

My impression is that economics is like voting. We have a dozen different alternative structures that aim to fix many of the most obvious issues from centuries of use. but no government system has an incentive to shake things up to such a degree.

We have a gigantic broken window, but the house still works. And ofc my government system has generally had a reactionary response rather than a preventative one; nothing gets done until it's too late and many people die.

[marxisttemp]

I was hoping that link would be to Georgism! The list of notable Georgists is a testament to how convincing an idea it is.

[shadowerm]

This post is complete nonsense and you obviously haven't looked very hard.

You could start with the work of W Brian Arthur.

Unless by "discussed prominently" you mean youtubers who don't know what they are talking about. Then you would be correct.

[amelius]

Yes economic system is highly flawed.

Elon Musk owns $400B. Earth will become uninhabitable after 1 billion years from now (when the heat of the Sun becomes too large for us).

This means that Musk, if he lived that long, would be able to spend $400 every day until the death of all life on Earth.

This is 15 times the current average daily income worldwide.

If this is not insane, then what is?

[kiba]

I think access to that much capital as assess to strategic resource, not as wealth for individuals.

At that level of wealth, it doesn't make sense to think about fancy cars and mansions and living an extravagant and luxurious lifestyle. At that point, you got it made.

However, if you're talking about building something meaningful, that's a different matter entirely. That requires far more capitals than what is required to sustain a person indefinitely. There are shows that I would love to revive and reboot, such as Stargate. There are researches I want to do or fund, such as research into 3D printing, or do long term research grants so that people can do meaningful work.

The money's not for living. It's for projects. If your personal projects don't require that much money, you can always give it away to fund other people's projects.

[superluserdo]

You're mixing up years and days there. It would be about $1 a day, not 400.

[d3ckard]

Except he does not. His assets are valued at 400B, provided that he pinky swears not to try to actually sell them, in which case they will be worth much, much less.

[goatlover]

The (US) economic system isn't economics, anymore than the (US) political system is political science. You're conflating the instance of one particular system with the study of those systems. You're also confusing economists with actual representatives who pass laws. Might as well blame climatologists for climate change.

[shikon7]

That's why he works so hard to colonize other planets.

[efitz]

This is not true and is a very common misunderstanding of modern wealth.

Elon Musk owns hundreds of billions worth of stock.

First, the value of those stocks varies from day to day. He can gain or lose billions of dollars in "net worth" on any given business day.

Second, he is not free to sell that stock however and whenever he wants; he has to get approval from the boards of his various companies and is limited in the timing and amounts he can sell. Additionally, selling large amounts of stock causes the price to drop, AND dilutes his ownership in, and therefore control of, those companies.

I think a lot of people have this stupid idea of Scrooge McDuck swimming in pool of cash, when they think about billionaires. That's not how it works, for most billionaires (I'm not sure about middle eastern oil royalty).

In reality, businessman billionaires have most of their wealth in stock, and it is not liquid, and they borrow against the stock (i.e. use the stock as collateral for personal loans) and sell small percentages of it to finance their lifestyles.

If you created a company, and it became wildly successful, and it was publicly traded, who should "own" the company? Should you be forced to divest, and therefore cede control to people who had no involvement in the company's initial success? Is that good for founders or for companies? How does it benefit society?

Also note that profitability influences stock price, so taking away control from the people who made a company profitable, has a high likelihood of making the company less profitable, which in turn will almost certainly result in each stockholder becoming poorer. Remember that most stockholders aren't Elon Musks, they're John Q. Publics with a 401(k).

[narrator]

You're looking at the world as a poor person. If you had Elon's brilliance you'd probably quit after you made $5 million dollars or so and definitely after you sold Zip2 back in the 1990s and spent the rest of your life on the beach. The only reason he's still working as hard as he does is not because he wants to spend that on himself. He wants the glory of going to Mars and having a positive impact on humanity and that requires control of the activities of large companies like SpaceX, etc. which requires ownership stakes in those companies that are valued in the billions.

One of the reasons that he campaigned so hard for Trump is that Kamala's proposed wealth taxes on unrealized capital gains were going to take his companies from him and he'd have to sell to Vanguard or Blackrock, who would give control of the companies to Boeing-tier mediocrity which would mean that we'd never get to Mars. There have been so many companies where the founders sold out and retired because they had enough money and they got bought by big conglomerates who destroyed those companies with mediocre management and neglect. This is the great thing about Elon, he just keeps building and leveraging all that money to create bigger and bigger companies using his creativity and management ability to achieve his goal of launching an era of space exploration.

[fdschoeneman]

In answer to your question, it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much money musk has, or you have, or bezos has, or the government has. What matters is where that money is invested.

If musk was using his money to bang hookers on solid gold yachts, fine, complain about it. But he isn't. He doesn't even own a house.

Stop worrying about another man's dollar and start worrying about being a better and less covetous person.