If you read my other comment, basically I've heard from other commenters online that some collective bargaining agreements restrict individual bargaining. That would suck. If the union only sets floors instead of absolutes or ranges, that is another thing entirely and something that I'm very much in favor of.
It's ridiculous.
Numbers are funny, anyway. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's net worth is closer to yours and mine than it is to Elon Musk (Forbes list currently placing them at ~100 bill and ~250 bill respectively). But that's only in absolute terms. In reality, Jensen's got like 8 or 9 orders of magnitude more wealth than I do depending on how far into the month we are, and on the same order of magnitude as Musk.
Either one losing 99% of their wealth would still be above a billion.
Oh I agree that even 2 billion is too much, but my reasoning is that proponents of capitalism often make the claim that capitalism drives innovation (you try to fill some market niche in order to get rich) so if they are right, then 2 billion should be enough that this still works.
I had yachts depreciating to zero in my example because it's estimated that you have to spend about 10% of its' purchase price annually anyway, so anyone keeping a 20 year old yacht around is going to be spending a lot of money on it that will fuel other parts of the economy.
Okay, that's actually a good thing. I've heard unions in the US apparently often restrict individual bargaining, as that would undermine the collective bargaining of the union. So in that case, your coworker who's been working for 20 years, will make twice as much as you do at your 2 years, despite the fact that all he does all day is scratch his balls, while you bust your ass off. And you have no way of earning more than them.
Either way it doesn't affect me because I'm in Estonia and in a field where we generally get paid well enough even without unions. But I also know this won't last forever, because right now there's way too many unemployed software engineers.
Any billionaire can lose 90% of their wealth and have above 100 million left.
Many can lose 99% and have above 100 million left.
Some can lose 99% and still be billionaires.
The 100 millionaire will still have a million or more left after losing 99%, but that's not "live like hogs in the fat house forever" money at least. It's just "I don't have to worry if I lose my job" money.
A hundredbillionaire can lose 99% of their money and not make any perceptible changes in their lifestyle.
I propose the following:
Gap individual wealth at 50000x the national median annual income. Max wealth anyone in the US could have is, at present, under 2 billion. Other countries will vary, but generally it's plenty enough to motivate people to innovate, but nobody gets to be Bezos or Musk wealthy. Yachts should count towards this wealth gap, at a depreciation rate of 5% a year off the build cost. Primary residence doesn't count unless it's also used for generating income. You get to have one car, regardless of price, that doesn't get counted towards it, and the other ones count at market value. So you can have your classic car that appreciates in price, and a daily driver - without having to worry about the classic car's effect on your wealth limit.
Side effect is that now suddenly rich people near the gap will be a lot more interested in paying better wages to the working class. Why? Because then they'd get to keep more of their money. And to raise the median efficiently, you need to be raising wages for the poorest among us first and foremost.
This is where city planning comes in.
As city gvt gives out permits to build high rises, they need to build the other infra around it.
Also, said rich developer cunts want to maximize their profit. People will pay more to be near where they need to be, be that public transport stops or schools, so they're already incentivized to build where there's good infra. As they start building more where there's no infra, the city will develop infra there.
The high-density buildings attract more people, which increases the tax base of the city, so there's more budget for infra.
If looking at American examples, look at NYC vs... Any big city in the south or mid-west, I guess? Idk, I'm not American. NYC is one of the very few cities in the US with actual good public transport. There's plenty of schools and hospitals too.
What failed business model? This isn't all because of AI.
I'm not gonna answer that question. I don't have the perfect answer ready for you.
Instead I will tell you what happens when you vote third party in FPTP. Okay, you have a .nl TLD so I guess ssyou're either in a much better electoral situation or just picked it because it's cool, but I will use the example of the upcoming US presidential election.
Now, let's say the race is really even and it's over. Flipping just one of several key battleground states would've placed Harris in the lead, but unfortunately, Trump won. You look at the votes in your state: Trump won by under 600 votes. Nearly 100,000 people voted for a third party candidate that's actually to the left of Harris. They would've preferred Harris, but because they voted third party, they elected Trump.
If this sounds familiar, that's what happened in 2000. Al Gore could've won. Should've won. But 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader was further left of him and received a bunch of votes that needed to go to Gore. In Florida, he had nearly 100k votes, and the difference between Bush and Gore was literally triple digits. And it wasn't even the only state where Gore lost because of the Spoiler Effect
It's an inherent flaw of the FPTP system and yes, it sucks. It means a vote for a third party is a wasted vote.
And yet (at least from an outsider perspective) libertarians are closer to democrats than republicans
I'm an outsider too, but here's my take on this
For the most part (certain exceptions exist, like guns), democrats seem to be about individual freedom from government, but they want government to regulate corporations.
Republicans are more about corporate freedom from government, but they want government to regulate people they don't like (women, LGBT, immigrants).
Libertarians ideally want corporate AND personal freedom from government, but a lot of people only want personal freedom from government if it applies to "their kind". So they're really republicans.
And while the church wanted a tithe, the manor lord required you to work one or more days per week on his field, using your own tools. This was rent. There might've also been monetary rent in addition to work rent. And in addition to the church tithe, the manor lord wanted a tithe too. You couldn't choose to rent somewhere else, either - while the manor lord didn't own you, he owned the piece of land you lived on, could dictate your terms, and you'd have to pay a fine for moving away to another manor lord's service. If he sold the parcel of land, you'd have to do all the same to the new landlord. If you could manage to hide in a city for a year + one day, you'd be free. But if you got caught, you'd be imprisoned until your lord came and picked you up.
These were the general rules in my area, others would differ. Obviously they changed over time and so on. And much of this is from the chronicles and those were written by the Order, so the real situation might've been worse even.
There's plenty wrong with our current situation and we seem to be sliding back towards serfdom, but serfdom is definitely worse than what we have now and we can NOT afford to go back.
Yeah. Case in point: Ghost riders in Motorcycle racing.
Motorcycles also tend to fall down when stationary, yet stay upright without the rider at speed.
Also makes me wonder if just the bike crossing the finish line would be enough to win if you fell off in first place just before the line.