A yacht could transfer from a single owner’s luxury item to a public owned means of production though.
Instead of a billionaire taking it out a handful of times a year for intimidation parties (because of the implication) it could instead be used to generate wealth for the public purse by being used daily for cruises or a multitude of other things.
Doctors Without Borders use large boats as mobile hospitals to go to places most in need, if you’re really determined it must be used for healthcare I’m sure some renovation to an existing super yacht is cheaper and easier than building a boat from scratch.
You’re still making the best of a bad situation though. You’d rather the original resources were available. Seizing “wealth” won’t get you the full book value.
Who the fuck cares if we don’t get ‘full book value’ or ‘making the best of a bad situation’ when the implied alternative is not doing anything.
How about we do something? Given how badly the situation has gone, taking that wealth back and making the best use we can with what they’ve wasted money on is one of the best paths forward
That’s not an argument against removing billionaires though, right? You’d rather want to stop the spread of cancer instead of bemoaning the fact that we got sick at all. The best we can do is reposes their frivolously purchased assets and recycle them as much as it’s reasonable, and cast away what remains. It’s not all yachts, some of that wealth is locked in empty flats/houses, and giving those back to community would be very beneficial without needing to transform those assets further.
Yes, but not necessarily the way you put it. You may recall some of the lawsuits against Trump, where he massively (and illegally) elevated value of some of his properties (I think he elevated Mar-a-Lago by an order of a magnitude? might be wrong on that) while devaluing others, it depended on whenever he was supposed to pay taxes on something or leverage something to get better loan. Those billions they “have” are based in valuation that they often had opportunity to tamper with. For example, there are vast expanses of privately owned land that are undervalued - if you were to give that land back to the community and build housing there, its monetary value (and more importantly utility) would dramatically raise, thus leading to getting more out of the guillotine mileage than the original estimation might suggest. Alternatively, billionaire could have their assets valued as such due to having a gallery of modern AI art used to launder drug money, which would be otherwise completely worthless. And that, I think, is even more important point than the repossession of their wealth - we, as society, would benefit tremendously from making sure the rich can not manipulate prices of anything. If a guy with a “art” gallery is able to leverage it to get a massive loan, and then use it to buy a ton of housing, then you need to compete with their unearned billions with nothing else than the results of your honest work and whatever meager loan banks are willing to give you. It’s less important how much stuff is “actually” worth, and more what is the relationship between the purchase power of the rich versus the purchase power of regular folk. If they can outcompete all of us at once and we’re left without healthcare, food, water, housing etc. then they can more easily extort us for greater share of our paycheque (which again, is not exactly related to our actual work because very similar dynamics take place in job market), which makes us more dependent on them and more willing to be exploited in other ways.
tl;dr I agree it’s simplistic, but I think that getting a 1$ out of 1$ of removed billionaire is pessimistic estimation, and we would actually get far more, even if only long term.
A yacht could transfer from a single owner’s luxury item to a public owned means of production though.
Instead of a billionaire taking it out a handful of times a year for intimidation parties (because of the implication) it could instead be used to generate wealth for the public purse by being used daily for cruises or a multitude of other things.
Doctors Without Borders use large boats as mobile hospitals to go to places most in need, if you’re really determined it must be used for healthcare I’m sure some renovation to an existing super yacht is cheaper and easier than building a boat from scratch.
Yeah you can rent it for recreational use, no, it can’t be repurposed into anything else, they kinda suck as boats
You’re still making the best of a bad situation though. You’d rather the original resources were available. Seizing “wealth” won’t get you the full book value.
Who the fuck cares if we don’t get ‘full book value’ or ‘making the best of a bad situation’ when the implied alternative is not doing anything.
How about we do something? Given how badly the situation has gone, taking that wealth back and making the best use we can with what they’ve wasted money on is one of the best paths forward
That’s not an argument against removing billionaires though, right? You’d rather want to stop the spread of cancer instead of bemoaning the fact that we got sick at all. The best we can do is reposes their frivolously purchased assets and recycle them as much as it’s reasonable, and cast away what remains. It’s not all yachts, some of that wealth is locked in empty flats/houses, and giving those back to community would be very beneficial without needing to transform those assets further.
No. I wasn’t really arguing against anything. Just that “this guy’s worth $30B. Let’s take it and get $30B” is simplistic thinking.
You’re the only one who has said this.
Yes, but not necessarily the way you put it. You may recall some of the lawsuits against Trump, where he massively (and illegally) elevated value of some of his properties (I think he elevated Mar-a-Lago by an order of a magnitude? might be wrong on that) while devaluing others, it depended on whenever he was supposed to pay taxes on something or leverage something to get better loan. Those billions they “have” are based in valuation that they often had opportunity to tamper with. For example, there are vast expanses of privately owned land that are undervalued - if you were to give that land back to the community and build housing there, its monetary value (and more importantly utility) would dramatically raise, thus leading to getting more out of the guillotine mileage than the original estimation might suggest. Alternatively, billionaire could have their assets valued as such due to having a gallery of modern AI art used to launder drug money, which would be otherwise completely worthless. And that, I think, is even more important point than the repossession of their wealth - we, as society, would benefit tremendously from making sure the rich can not manipulate prices of anything. If a guy with a “art” gallery is able to leverage it to get a massive loan, and then use it to buy a ton of housing, then you need to compete with their unearned billions with nothing else than the results of your honest work and whatever meager loan banks are willing to give you. It’s less important how much stuff is “actually” worth, and more what is the relationship between the purchase power of the rich versus the purchase power of regular folk. If they can outcompete all of us at once and we’re left without healthcare, food, water, housing etc. then they can more easily extort us for greater share of our paycheque (which again, is not exactly related to our actual work because very similar dynamics take place in job market), which makes us more dependent on them and more willing to be exploited in other ways.
tl;dr I agree it’s simplistic, but I think that getting a 1$ out of 1$ of removed billionaire is pessimistic estimation, and we would actually get far more, even if only long term.