Its time to seize the means of fast food production.

Really? He's the one who breaks down into ad hominems. You also don't seem to know what populist rage is with your own line of an attack.

Online forums: reducing grown men to children for 20 years.

Addiction and unwillingness to live by what you preach are different things. This is a typical kerowo post where there are no nuances in arguments and everything is black and white.

"Guys there's wealth disparity in the world. Gotta kill the rich!"

Same thing I said to micro applies to you. You're anti-intellectual. You railed about economics itt (and like micro you probably have **** all clue what actually goes on in uni) because you don't want to actually learn about wealth disparity you want to preach and shake your fists in anger. It's all the same thing that Trumpkins do.

Breaking into ad hominems always starts with you from your 'comrade Kerowo" to post 1231 with me. You don't go there because you're insulted, it's because you're frustrated that you got nothing else. You couldn't possibly carry on a 3 post discussion with anyone. It's why you're at war with everyone all the time and those of us who can have a discussion are only at war with, or ignoring, a few morons.

Capitalism: The Most Efficient And Stable System But Also A House Of Cards Built On A Rickety Table That Is Also Made Of Cards!

Even being the best slogan writer I don't think I'd be able to amass 150 120 60 billion dollars.

i approve of these 7 posts

LMAO, gtfo with "kill the rich," that's never what I said, and also LOL at their being much nuance when all of the opposition focuses on "no more than 20 million? There will never be investments again!" bull**** instead of talking about the basic issue of whether 1 person can accumulate too many assets, which is the first basic point that needs to be agreed to before any of the other discussions make any sense.

We get it, the Capitalists are going to nut-hug their system of choice and not hear a word spoken against it, it's your wall and you have to lean into it.

I'm pretty sure that I know what rage means. (It has something to with anger, right?) And you definitely seem like the angriest guy in this thread.

*IOU $1,000,000,000*
Congratulations, you now have 1 billion dollars.

Money has no more intrinsic value than the above IOU. It’s a tool we created to allow what at a fundamental level is a barter system to scale and function more efficiently.

Your model starts with a rolling ball. You need to account for what got the ball rolling in the first place: wealth creation. I.e., squirrel A makes an acorn pie from 10 acorns she gathered and trades it to squirrel B for 15 acorns he gathered.

Now tell me how we used to use clam shells for currency!

The real world is partly like unjustified claims on caves and it's partly like a fair trade in acorns where all the squirrels have acorns and it's partly like someone else gathered up all the acorns and made acorn pie.

I'm sure that I am going to regret asking these questions, but:

Is there any difference in your mind between rent-seeking and profit-seeking, or do all forms of profit seeking effectively amount to rent-seeking?

Do all forms of passive investment, whether equity or debt, amount to rent-seeking in your opinion?

What do you see as the difference?

Profit seeking theoretically can be mutually beneficial. Rent-seeking, as it is typically defined, cannot.

At what point does profit seeking stop being mutually beneficial? We've seen where prices for medicines have been increased to several times their previous selling prices. The buyer is still getting needed medicine but is that still a benefit when it starts affecting their savings?

Physical resources are scarce but the wealth we create from them is unlimited. Not like it takes much resource-wise to write a best-seller or create a million-dollar app. The only real scarcity in the modern economy is the lack of good ideas and the skills to develop and bring them to market.

The million dollar app or best-seller is another one of those "some people became billionaires so it's all fair and good" things. Only a handful of people can write best-sellers or create million-dollar apps. It doesn't matter how hard everyone tries or how talented they are, only a small fraction of people can win because they come up with something that depends on being famous or coming up with the platform that wins because of network effects.

All wealth is real stuff based on physical resources. It's just like Adam Smith was talking about with corn. The million dollar apps and best sellers are part of the equation for how we distribute corn. Now if an app makes corn farming more productive, then it generates wealth. But it's perfectly plausible and often the case that an app or best-seller does nothing to generate wealth, but still changes its distribution significantly. (I don't think I need to say this, but I'm not only talking about corn specifically - it's just what Smith was talking about as the wealth of nations.)

To state the obvious, it probably depends on the situation.

Sure, but it seems a little crabbed to define a mutually beneficial transaction so narrowly.

Assume that I pay you to teach me how to play piano. I pay you, not because I plan to make money playing piano, but simply because it I find it relaxing and enjoyable to play. That certainly feels like a mutually beneficial transaction to me, even though the economic transaction amounts to a pure transfer.

I can see how it sounds like I'm criticizing this, but I don't mean to. Just look at my response as a response to John's point about how there's a limitless potential for wealth generation. A corn farmer trading corn for piano lessons is awesome, but it's not generating wealth.

Lolololollllllllllll those Bezos text messages. These ****ing sociopaths are all the same. What a dope.

What happens to the wealth equation when the piano teacher eats the corn? It sounds like you’re saying that amazon inc is only worth the sum total of what its warehouses, equipment and inventory are worth.