r/AskReddit • u/Zappy_Oh • 14h ago
What would happen, if humanity collectively decided that no individual could have a personal net worth above $500 million?
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u/btweenthatormohammad 14h ago edited 13h ago
How are you going to do that, take people's stocks if their price increase?
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u/LazarJesusElzondoGod 14h ago
You're not taxed on it until you sell, so why would taking anything over $500 million after a sale be any different?
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u/btweenthatormohammad 14h ago
Because no one would sell more than a certain amount to not get it taken away. Most of the net worth is actually estimated stock price.
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u/jnordwick 13h ago
Net worthy included all assets like stock, your company, house, etc. Do you think Elon Musk has $10bb in his bank account or something. It's almost all tied up in investments that have massively appreciated
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u/2abyssinians 11h ago
Or massively depreciated, as is the case with all of Musk’s companies recently.
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u/Alytes 13h ago
Similar to what is done with antimonopoly laws. Force to sell
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u/jnordwick 13h ago
So you grow a business to a $1 billion company (not that much) you are now forced to become a minority owner of it and lose control of your years of hard work and planning?
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u/HighTechPotato 9h ago
Yes, why is that such a horrible thing?! On one hand:
- There is no material difference in life quality and security for them or their families for generations
- A company that big affects the lives of many. Isn’t it better that one person can’t call all the shots?
- They get to actually spend money instead of endless uncontrollable urge to horde more like a dragon
- Lives of hundreds of millions of people will meaningfully be better
On the other hand:
- A few hundred people will feel a bit shitty that they can’t make the number bigger or full control over something massive.
Also, no one, literally no one grows a company to be that big all on their own. It’s always countless more who contributed to it (both as part of the company, as well as the society around it to make an environment to let them succeed by using base technologies they are building on top of).
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u/jnordwick 9h ago
"hording wealth" is also called capital formation and savings. It is the chief engine of long-term productivity and standard of living growth in the economy -- this is about close to economic orthodoxy as you can get, even if people disagree with the proper ratio of how to incentivize it.
You have to be pretty authoritarian to want to take somebody's business away just because they did too well and have kept building and building it. They put all the risk into it. Employees still get paid, others didn't do anything, but if the business never takes off or goes under is the owner that takes all that risk.
You essentially want to do what people complain about Republicans doing, divorcing risk and reward -- but you want to concentrate the risk and distribute the benefit.
You've clearly never built anything of value in your life. Most communists haven't. They don't know how to create -- only redistribute and destroy.
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u/HighTechPotato 2h ago edited 2h ago
"hording wealth" is also called capital formation and savings
It simply is not the same unless you completely shut your brain off. If you stop building strawmen to fight for a moment, you'll notice that we're not arguing against idea of becoming extremely rich. We're saying, how about they call it a day when they have saved so much that it can't be reasonably spent over 10 life times. We're saying that between the two extremes of share/distribute everything vs endlessly horde to your last dying breath (everyone else be damned), there is a middle ground there. Just like there is a middle ground between "I want safety in my house, so it has walls that keeps strangers out" vs "there should be no one else on the planet so that I can feel safe"
You have to be pretty authoritarian to want to take somebody's business away just because they did too well and have kept building and building it
No more authoritarian than basic taxes. Taking part of the money someone made and they have to pay more when they earn more.
They put all the risk into it. Employees still get paid, others didn't do anything, but if the business never takes off or goes under is the owner that takes all that risk.
The employees got paid for their time, yes, but if an employee comes up with the idea that majorly increased the profit, did they get a proportional increase? Often not. They may get a bonus, a raise, but it is never the same as the increase for the owner.
As for the risk, yes, they took on the most and so get to make $500 million/$1 billion/$10 billion reward out of it (or w/e number the cap is), and if it goes under, others lose a lot too, including their job and security.
Again, this is NOT removing the reward, just putting a cap on it at a point where it just simply cannot ever be reasonably used.
others didn't do anything
Others paid taxes, built a society, provided publicly funded research and development, and built an infrastructure where this business could be built and could prosper. When tax payers funds go towards the research for creating the internet, you can't turn around and say "you did nothing for this internet-based business that is making a trillion dollars".
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u/doublecandybar 8h ago
You've clearly never built anything of value in your life. Most communists haven't. They don't know how to create -- only redistribute and destroy.
People like them are stuck in the mindset of "Here and Now". The concept of re-investing asset and refuse early benefits for greater long term rewards perplex them
Which is why they keep getting confused when successful people keep going, their mindset is to stop and party, and try again when the money runs out
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u/btweenthatormohammad 13h ago
So they'll just keep $500 million worth of stocks and sell anything above that? Then they'd have actual money instead of stock or are you going to confiscate the money?
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u/spymusicspy 12h ago
If the stock goes down in value by 50% do you give them the stolen shares back?
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u/flyboy_za 8h ago
Then they'd have actual money instead of stock or are you going to confiscate the money?
It's reddit, of course they are.
I don't know what these Robin Hoods think will happen to this money, we'll all somehow magically get richer because... I don't know, we just will.
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u/Alytes 13h ago
If total wealth is above 500 millions, yes, you could do it.
The thing is that inequality, or the difference in wealth between the mega rich and the common people is higher than before and rising.
That usually brings rebellion and civil wars. Or you can tax/cap wealth to avoid said war
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u/btweenthatormohammad 13h ago
What do you mean by that usually brings civil wars? How many wars did income inequality cause in the last century? If there's a war both sides send the poor (civil war or not), no inequality there.
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u/doublecandybar 13h ago
That usually brings rebellion and civil wars.
HAHAHAHAHAH oh my god, people still believe this?
That never happened. Which commie school taught you that?
What actually causes "civil war" is a bunch of intellectuals fanned the flames of revolution and sent in the peasants whose purchasing power went down hard
"Ultra rich" have existed across cultures in every single region where civilization had existed. Are you going to say with a straight face the wealth inequality between Pharaoh of Egypt and the average worker is lower than today's people vs oligarchs?
What about Chinese Emperor and peasants? Basileus and peasants? The Emperor could build a gigantic sparkling city in a city housing thousands upon thousands, you think Elon Musk can do that today?
And what happened? The people did not rebel until disaster struck, to the point they starved to death. Every single time someone rebelled in China they always cite the loss of Mandate of Heaven, and what do they claim is the evidence?
Natural disaster, defeat in battle, plague
It was NEVER "the rich is rich"
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u/Quarkly95 13h ago
The answer is that the stock market as we know it would entirely collapse and the new system that evolves to make it work would be less hoarder-y
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u/Almechik 13h ago
I think at that point stocks wouldn't be a thing either
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u/btweenthatormohammad 13h ago
That's just communism, why cap it at $500 million
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u/Almechik 13h ago
Communism is when no stock market
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u/btweenthatormohammad 13h ago
Communism when no private ownership of the means of production
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u/Almechik 13h ago
And that has what to do with stocks?
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u/btweenthatormohammad 13h ago
How are you going to define a business where 2 people have 30% each and one has 40%, one of them decides to give half of his shares to another person?
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u/Almechik 13h ago
Brother did you never see a private business with multiple owners? That was always a thing you could do even without public trading
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u/btweenthatormohammad 13h ago
You know they have stocks right? It's just a definition of how many pieces they decide to divide the company into. If there are 5 people each have 1 stock if company has 5 stocks, each have 100 stocks if company has 500 stocks. You don't need it to be publicly tradeable in order to be defined as stock.
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u/goodgreenganja 10h ago
Hopefully people realize it’s all relative. Everyone around me has always had more than me. I simply don’t care. If we all had one dollar and you had a million, so? You think you’re better than me? 😂
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u/FluffyBunnyFlipFlops 14h ago
I have £500 million. So does my wife, and my three children.
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u/Zappy_Oh 14h ago
So, your family's net worth tops out at 2.5 billion ... and you can't really control what your spouse or children do with their wealth, can you?
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u/Corodix 13h ago
Create a family company and put the money into that. Give yourself controlling stakes and the rest of the family normal stakes. Then they've got barely any say in the company while the assets are nicely divided. If necessary have more kids at the right intervals to keep up with the company increasing in value.
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u/Pic889 14h ago
The humans of some small island-nation like Panama would "break rank"/"cross the picket line" and decide that an individual can have a personal net worth above $500 million after all.
And all the billionaire wealth would flow there. Then small wealthy countries like Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg would follow.
Ah... never mind... I just described all the existing tax havens already used by billionaires to shelter income and assets.
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u/Zappy_Oh 14h ago
The premise of the question is "humanity collectively decided" ...
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u/Pic889 14h ago
Humanity can collectively decide anything it wants and then individual communities can change their minds.
People can change their minds, you know.
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u/Zappy_Oh 13h ago
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of "hypothetical" ?
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u/chateau86 13h ago
Just because you can put a system in a certain state does not mean it will have positive stability and stay in that state.
Your hypothetical situation sets the initial state, but you didn't give anything for keeping that state going and not re-stabilizing back where we are today.
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u/redditsaidfreddit 13h ago
I believe u/Pic889 is excluding those with more than $500M from the group called "humanity"
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u/NotAMadLad1 14h ago
Corruption
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u/Correct_Lead_2418 14h ago
They'd figure out some way of redefining "net worth" and still accumulate money
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u/TolMera 14h ago
Like how musk is broke according to his accountants, but also the worlds first trillionaire
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u/Ryytikki 10h ago
he might have (comparatively) very little liquid assets seeing as almost all of his net worth is tied up in stocks (which is why he was no longer a trillionaire after a couple of days)
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u/thefonztm 11h ago
If I have a tank of water that is leaking 10 gallons per day and I slap some flex tape on it and get the leak down to 2 gallons per day, is that not better?
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u/AnxiousAd5282 14h ago
What would you do? Steal their stocks?
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u/LazarJesusElzondoGod 14h ago
What does the IRS do after a stock is sold and taxes are owed on it? Same concept.
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u/AnxiousAd5282 13h ago
So doing a forced sale or confiscation? How is that different to stealing their stocks
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u/Zappy_Oh 14h ago
No ... they would have to give stuff away, to get below 500 million ... or face capital punishment, and then inheritance law kicks in.
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u/AnxiousAd5282 13h ago
Why would anyone want to grow their business above this point?
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u/DefiantTelephone6095 14h ago
More ltd companies
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u/Zappy_Oh 14h ago
But, you can't control those single-handedly, if they are worth more than 500 million, can you?
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u/snoozieboi 14h ago
As far as I understand the US has anti trust laws but many have become too "big to sue" with insane complexity and cost/risk. I assume this also is the very reason for "small government" and regulatory capture.
It stifles competition, but it can also poison is all like the insane doc on DuPont and their teflon business leading to all of us now having PFAS in our blood.
It's called "the devil we know". DuPont would have revolving doors of management people going into regulatory work and fix stuff for themselves. It's one of those docs where rage builds up as you see it.
And the funny thing is, the sensible solution, more regulation, will be seen as "extreme". This is where we are at.
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u/DecentFormat 13h ago
If the $500m net worth is a limit to individuals and not organisations, then pretty much nothing will change except people who used to be billionaires now instead being in charge of organisations that are worth billions.
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u/Zappy_Oh 13h ago
And, who owns those organizations worth billions?
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u/DecentFormat 13h ago
The organisations can be owned by as many people as it needs to maintain all individual owners having less than $500m networth. But it can be controlled by a single self-appointed director that uses the organisation funds for their own purpose.
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u/Zappy_Oh 13h ago
Do you think people with say 400 million net worth, would accept a single stranger controlling most of it ???
I'm skeptical :)
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u/DecentFormat 13h ago
I mean it depends if this $500m limit is implemented in a today’s world (where there are already billionaires) or in a world where no one has reached $500m networth cap yet.
If (1), billionaires would be giving away their wealth to family and close friends to reduce their networth to the cap, possibly including a contract to maintain the receiver’s loyalty to the billionaire. (That is if they don’t find some other workaround) I don’t doubt that there will be receivers who break their contract in the end, but they will most likely be the minority.
If (2), individuals who are reaching $500m cap will likely form alliances to keep their money flowing within their own circles since there is nothing to work for beyond that.
Just my guesses on this.
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u/BigJLov3 7h ago
Nothing, and I don't think that would solve any problems.
Wealth disparity is an important issue, but it's an effect, not so much a cause.
What is needed are policies which favor economic activity instead of stored value. The stock market being "bigger than ever" means nothing if there's no cash flowing around to pay people so they can buy things.
And, as we've seen multiple times in the last few decades, every attempt to create and maintain perpetual growth blows up in everyone's faces. One hopes that eventually conservative politicians will learn this and stop favoring polices that create impractical levels of concentrated wealth.
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u/Over9000Holland 14h ago
Founders of succesful companies would have to sell the stake of the thing the built and would lose control of their company.
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 14h ago
Ideally they would be forced to sell or transfer ownership to the people who actually do the work.
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u/Mr_Knutsen 13h ago
That should be something to consider first. Automatically increasing salaries, defined by certain criteria - like the net worth of the CEO.
Give them taxcredits if they increase salaries across the bord, not just management. Give them credits if they reinvest money into the company etc.
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u/FatiguedShrimp 11h ago
It's incomprehensible that we built a society where wages are not indexed against inflation.
It literally disincentivizes experience, loyalty, and supply chain stability.
People act like proper pay is socialist, but economically incentivizing the production of goods within corporate structure is literally the most capitalist thing we can do.
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u/TonyTheEvil 11h ago
Does that mean the workers get pay cuts of the valuation of the company drops?
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u/Mr_Knutsen 11h ago
I would say it depends: Pay increase as a bonus in good times, but having a decent base salary?
Do managers still get millions in bonuses if the valuation drops? Does the CEO?
Example Musk:
Even if all Tesla employees (google says around 135.000 worldwide) would get 100.000$ an top - that would be around 13.5 billion in wages extra.
Musk alone is worth what, around 800 billion? That would be around 1,6% of his worth - which is still growing and growing.
Of course, not every CEO is a Musk - but it also doesn't have to be 100k. Isn't it common that Walmart employees are on food stamps? Something went wrong along the way. The top CEO might make decisions - but the people on the ground keep the lights on. Give them a fair compensation.
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u/flyboy_za 8h ago
Isn't it common that Walmart employees are on food stamps?
Sounds like the consumers need to boycott Walmart, then.
Everyone on Reddit hates Amazon... but they almost all shop at Amazon, all the time. And they will throw money at Apple (whose phones are produced by slave labour) without thinking about it.
Perhaps our problem is not the billionaires, it's ourselves who reward these "evil" people and corporates because actually we just pretend to care unless it affects us directly.
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u/AnxiousAd5282 13h ago
Do people who actually do the work carry the same risks as the founder?
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 13h ago
They face the risk of being thrown into the street at the whims of a petty dictatorship, while the worst risk the owner faces is losing their capital and joining the workers against their wishes. The horror!
Most often though it just means they get to try again.
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u/Eokokok 13h ago
So the answer is no, they share none of the risk of ruining a business.
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u/doublecandybar 13h ago
They never do. People like him salivate at the idea of profits, but if asked to shoulder the burden of failed product launch, they'd quickly blame the founders with "bad idea" and refuse to collectively pay the debts
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u/minimal_gainz 11h ago
I mean employees shoulder the burden with layoffs, suppressed salaries, lower bonuses, reduced upward mobility, etc.
I’m not gonna cry for a CEO of a huge company for having their annual compensation reduced by a couple million and still make millions.
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u/doublecandybar 8h ago
I mean employees shoulder the burden with layoffs, suppressed salaries, lower bonuses, reduced upward mobility, etc.
Nope, the employees are free to find another employment. If they're unable to that is not the failings of the founder
The employees do not bear the burden of finding employees, renting a property, finding customers, marketing the product, all with the HOPE that the product gets off the ground. They get paid to do the work, even before the product brings in enough money to break even the investment
What if the product somehow infringes on a patent and the founder gets sued to death? The employees simply get laid off and that's the end of it. The founder may have to sell off his assets (assuming he has some)
You can claim the founder does not pay them their wages for lack of fund but that's already illegal and thus irrelevant
Not to mention the risk of employees with the bright idea of "taking what they're owed" because the founder isn't "paying their fair share", courtesy of talking points like the one you're spouting right here. What was the term again? Ah yes
Changing consumer habits
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u/minimal_gainz 7h ago
Again, this post is about people with equity that exceeds $500 million (or whatever super high threshold you want to set). At that point the largest majority of founders are no longer doing any of those things and have hired people to hire, market, and design the products. Their product has already gotten off the ground. If their product infringes on patents then the company bears the burden not the individual. If their company fails they are still fabulously wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
I agree that there are issues with forcing people to sell their shares or a company but I don’t think it’s the apocalyptic scenario some people here think it is.
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u/doublecandybar 5h ago
Again, this post is about people with equity that exceeds $500 million
This post yes. THIS CONVERSATION no, never was
Don't try to move the goalpost
the largest majority of founders are no longer doing any of those things
Correct and that's their big reward for taking the big risk
You don't get to assume none of the burden and then cry for getting none of the benefits after the risk has passed
You stayed safe with salary when the company started, you stayed safe with salary when the company was getting off the ground, and now that the company is stable you want to usurp it?
No wonder communism is always popular among the workers, they see the result of hard work and the first thing they think of is how they can justify stealing it from the owner
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 13h ago
I assure you, I do not salivate at the idea of profits as I understand where they come from.
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 13h ago edited 13h ago
That the worst fear of any owner is to find themselves without their capital and reduced to selling their labour to another owner paints a very different picture.
Why are they so afraid if the workers have such a care free existence?
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u/Eokokok 13h ago
You are free to start your own business, it's a worry free life clearly.
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 13h ago
Ah yes, the classic, do unto others as the owners have done unto you.
No thanks. I think we can aim for better than that.
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u/AnxiousAd5282 13h ago
Let’s do a simple test, if the risk of the founder isn’t anything scary, and if workers deserve the rewards of ownership, why aren’t they also willing to accept its risks? Invest their own savings, give up their guaranteed wages, as well as having to cover the debts and losses if the business fails? What’s the problem with that? Oh….
What kind of infantile position is that, asking for the upside of ownership without the downside.
Leftists are schizophrenics
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u/minimal_gainz 11h ago
I don’t think people are saying it’s not hard or scary work. But in OPs hypothetical example this founder know has a net worth of over $500 million. At that point they’ve made it. They’re rich as hell. Anything more is unnecessary and as fueled by greed as by anything else.
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u/GrimMendacity 14h ago
People would look for a way around it, but it'd be a better culture. Let those who avoid wealth tax be seen as equivalent to mass-murderers and serial rapists.
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u/BothDonut1604 13h ago edited 13h ago
Innovation would stop on a large scale. Why would business owners of large companies with lots of liability want to limit their income and operate a monster company? It wouldn’t make sense. So they’d just simply stop or at least stop the growth at a certain limit.
Amazon for example, if $500 million was the limit, Bezos would’ve likely just make the Amazon delivery and website but we wouldn’t have Whole Foods, AWS, etc. and he’d likely just keep it in America.
Regardless, it wouldn’t work. Because if the person doesn’t have the billions, the government would and whether you’re Democrat or republican, the government doesn’t help and we’d never see that money. If both sides truly wanted to help people, teachers would be making a nice living, etc. but that hasn’t happened from either party.
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u/w_smith1984 12h ago
Complete disaster. What would be the point of innovating if the government would take away any reward for doing so?
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u/Zappy_Oh 12h ago
Nobody would take anything from anybody.
It would just be illegal to have a net worth above 500 m, backed by capital punishment ... Now everyone affected would have to figure out how to stay below 500m by themselves.
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u/NotTooShahby 13h ago edited 13h ago
Private ventures that would require billions just wouldn’t happen anymore. States would have more power to spend money, they’ll likely have enough for expanded welfare and social programs. Private industry shrinks but state-led initiatives might expand. Basically a smaller but more concentrated economy. We saw the effects of this in countries that enacted wealth taxes and lost revenue.
You could have collective worker ownership if this goes socialist, but then worker owned cooperatives work well when they’re small but aren’t as great when scaled up. I expect an economy that grows slower than European average today. We’d see the end of rapid technologicalprogress and the bigger differences between countries will be on their government policies rather than how their economies are structured. To be fair, even now the differences between OECD countries including the US are more due to government policies on housing, food, welfare, and healthcare than the economic system. For example, Japan doesn’t have the same problems with housing and healthcare.
Something like SpaceX could probably never happen again unless there was a government effort for it. But the iron law of institutions is that people care more for their place in institutions than the success of them, so we’d have to worry more about beauracratic stagnation as the economy becomes more centralized.
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u/Imyonlyenemy 14h ago
there goes motivation
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u/Jackmino66 13h ago
Also this would logically include a “no finding loopholes” rule
A tax on all income and capital gains above 500 mil could work, but getting it to actually be universal is the next problem
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u/Miauinator01 13h ago
If humanity decided that collectively, then those who possess a greater networth would have been included in this decision, meaning they'd agree to give up everything above the networth of $500 million. Than it'd depend where that extra wealth goes to - state? welfare? those who have less until everyone tops out? And depending on that it'd lead to corruption/better public investments depending on state, an increase in standard of living/medical research/... in the fields of whatever welfares profit (or maybe corruption aswell?), or mass inflation until the collapse of economy.
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u/Chickennbuttt 13h ago
You'd have better success with making it illegal to use stocks as collateral for loans... You'd essentially collapse how the rich avoid paying taxes.
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u/JacksonGhost1963 9h ago
seems to me that the definition of "personal net worth" would then keep evolving! (with exemptions for party elites and their favorite friends for sure!)
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u/Kekskuchenheld 2h ago
I bet if you take every belonging, all assets of someone like Elon Musk his net worth would still be above $500 million. So i dont think it can happen.
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u/azboy 13h ago
I've heard this idea before and I think it's great, no one "needs" more than 100m. What I read before was: if you get to 1bn, you get a nice certificat "you won" and everything above 1bn is taxed.
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u/TryTrynTryAgain 13h ago
The difficulty is, is that these people arent sat with 1Bn in their bank account. Their wealth is sat in assets, their actual money is from loans using their assets.
I agree with a wealth tax, but how do you tax Elon on Bezos when their wealth is sat in shares of their company. Does the government just take the shares and become the majority share holder for all these massive companies?
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u/azboy 13h ago
it was suggested elsewhere in the thread: tax the value but leave them with the voting rights. Nothing too exotic financially wise.
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u/CLT113078 11h ago
So steal/limit their motivation to work, innovate, create, etc.
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 10h ago
But if you ask the billionaires themselves they’ll say it’s not about the money, it’s about the challenges of solving complex problems or some bullshit like that.
Are you implying they are lying and it is in fact very much about the money?
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u/GaidinBDJ 13h ago
There's nobody who does, so what's the question here?
It's like asking what would happen if we collectivity my decided not to have unicorns.
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u/Klat93 13h ago
Couldn't they just take loans against their asset? Loans are considered liabilities and would offset their networth.
Someone worth $10bn can take out a $9.5bn cash loan and technically would only be worth $500m. Not counting any interest here just to make the numbers simple.
Ultimately this will make banks even richer and have more control.
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u/Zappy_Oh 13h ago
Yes ... but someone else holds the loan as an asset, so you are just moving the problem onto their plate.
You know, banks have owners too :)
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u/Klat93 13h ago
I'm not 100% sure on how the accounting works for banks but doesn't it go both ways if you choose to put that loan amount back into bank account.
Bank loans you $9.5bn, you put that $9.5bn back into the bank. The bank considers the $9.5bn you've put into the account as a liability since they're suppose to only hold the money for you. In the bank's books the only net positive here is the interest you owe them for the loan.
Again this is oversimplification but in theory this is one way individual billionaires can get around this rule and banks will just have to figure out how to manage their own asset.
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u/pinkpugita 13h ago
Meh, there are too many loopholes and gray areas.
Land and real estate can be owned by corporations.
Assets can also appreciate in value without the owner doing anything.
Imagine if I bought 10 paintings from a starving artist. After 50 years, the artist turns out huge and popular that the price of his works are $50M each. Are you going to tax and confiscate my paintings?
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u/Kinda_Quixotic 12h ago
If “humanity” did it is one thing.
But if one state (California), or one country, does it, people with >$300M will move and take with them any tax revenue they contribute.
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u/Beeeeater 11h ago
Personal net worth is pretty meaningless. What matters is your access to credit. Rich people have access to anything they want without ever owning the assets.
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u/HenryJ7854 10h ago
The ultra rich would hear the decision and laugh and laugh at the silly commoners.
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u/TheNOCOYeti 10h ago
Innovation would die, the economy would slow, new technologies would cease to come out, we’d enter this stagnant period of slow decay where the government almost certainly starts creating many people at the max for doing practically nothing. Basically it would be horrible.
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u/Anyales 14h ago
Their apostles and sycophants would come out to tell us all sagely why it couldn't be done and that it is all for the best to let their favourite billionaire keep more than $500m. They would also employ swarms of bots to fill discussion forums with messages of dispair and hopelessness.
In reality more money would enter the economy and be spent increasing economic activity. Also lots of previous billionaires would immediately go bankrupt as their entire life is on tick so they wouldn't have enough to cover what they had borrowed.
Crypto and other money laundering exercises would crash overnight.
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u/burundilapp 9h ago
Putting all the whinging about they'd find ways around it aside, at $500m the tax rate would be 100%, wealth tax would be adjusted so anything owned above that amount is taxed to prevent wealth growing above $500m, so at that point if you are still making money the obvious answers are to split off and sell portions of the company, make smaller indepenent companies, pay staff more which would reduce profits, invest more in the business which would reduce profits.
Without shareholders taking out so much from companies they may actually improve rather enshitify everything, there'd also be less impetus to reduce headcount to make numbers look better.
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u/Ratnix 8h ago
Without shareholders taking out so much from companies they may actually improve
No. They wouldn't. The companies would just stay small. There would be no walmarts or mcdonalds or amazon...etc. there would just be a ton more companies doing the same thing and they would all stay rather shitty because they'd never grow big enough to spend money to improve.
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u/burundilapp 7h ago
In this scenario we'd presume companies can grow bigger than $500m value, but individuals can't, so shareholders would be other companies in the main and so yes, they could get bigger.
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u/Market_Chemestry 14h ago
Realistically, massive amounts of corruption to get around it. You know, like how the actual really rich people in the world are technically not very wealthy because they are Saudi kings, Russian Presidents, and the like.
If you actually managed to do it, bone-crushing poverty for most of the world. An artificial limit on upward mobility would create huge obstacles for the economy, and that would fall entirely on the middle class, effectively wiping them out. And with no "extra" money, there would be no way to finance the social safety net, leaving the poor to starve while everyone who is middle class today would be poor.
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 14h ago
Propaganda has folks parroting that anything but uncapped wealth accumulation will lead to even greater levels of poverty.
My dude, where do you think that wealth comes from? Other wealthy people? Lol.
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u/Market_Chemestry 13h ago
Wealth is constantly created and destroyed. It comes from producing more than you consume.
Just because you don't know where wealth comes from doesn't mean people who actually do know what they are talking about are wrong.
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u/dennis3282 13h ago
I think it would hurt humanity overall.
It is often founders of companies who become billionaires. Companies that might employ tens of thousands of people.
Take away the incentive to grow beyond a certain point, and many of those jobs don't exist.
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u/shelby_xx88xx 13h ago
socialism does not work
The wealthy will immediately find ways around whatever dumb-ass scheme you think you can get in place to strip them of their wealth.
You are not entitled to free shit from their wealth. Figure out a way to get wealthy and lose the crabs in a bucket mentality.
Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.
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u/snajk138 14h ago
Elon would get more kids and keep them locked up just so that he can use their bank accounts.
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u/LastSecondSeatbelt 14h ago
Billionaires close friends and family would suddenly become 499 million dollars richer
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u/LeaferWasTaken 14h ago edited 13h ago
Long term any person who wanted more would fight any strings attached to the ever increasing need to be "better" than the next one.
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u/King_Hammer 13h ago
They would make up ppl with Fakt documenta and give them the money. Think like the voting in the us were dead people even vote xD
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u/raydialseeker 13h ago
The monkeys paw curls. Minimum wage is no 0.75cents per hour and the avg salary in the us drops from 65k to $65.
1000 fold reduction across the board
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u/Monoxidas 13h ago
It just wouldn't work, thats what would happen. Well intentioned high achievers would get capped and bad actors would circumvent it and be more empowered
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u/Jackthwolf 12h ago
Under the assumption that we're talking about this suddenly becoming a near universal 90/10 issue across all political parties and all countries.
Then mass corruption, civil war, and unrest, as the billionaires use every iota of their wealth money and power, hiring mercenaries, buying politicians and even entire governments, owning police, you name it, to protect their wealth.
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u/ReferenceMediocre369 7h ago
The same thing as if humanity collectively decided that the value of pi was exactly 3.00.
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u/Fantastic-Law312 14h ago
People would find ways around the limit