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@melfie@lemmy.zip

Post #2824529

2026-05-16 13:15 UTC

Everyone “being a billionaire” and having a huge pile of worthless metal won’t increase anyone’s standard of living to the same degree as nobody being a billionaire and nobody hoarding resources.

Replies (3)

  • @osanna@lemmy.vg 2026-05-18 02:59

    Yep, we’d just end up like Zimbabwe was. Where a loaf of bread costed trillions or whatever

    Open ##2824528

  • will there be advantages for daily life if gold is trivially affordable? probably, it’s a good material for many applications. and is extremely rust resistant. Coating all exposed metals with gold would be trivial. [Skip a few paragraphs of technical world building. ] it’ll be an increments tech step without any changes in inequality and a minor change in the public quality of life.

    Open ##2828844

  • It’s funny that people can understand every person having a lump of gold won’t improve their standard of living, but at the same time refuse to understand that owning a piece of a factory or a company they work at also does not directly change the standard of living. Reducing the fraction of the factory output that goes to the owners instead of the workers could. This can be done directly with raising the minimum wage or indirectly via taxes. But in the end, even the most pessimistic calculation I was able to make on how much the owners take was only about 50% of the output. Probably more like 30%. So the billionaires owning too much is IMO a distraction. Pushing politicians to implement policies that would improve quality of life would have much bigger impact on peoples lives. Consumer protections, walkable cities, good public healthcare, social safety nets, better education, reforming how stock market works, … And it does not involve the massive risks of trying to switch to a differwnt economic model that always collapsed before. Perhaps it’s the modern obsession with fairness. People don’t want to even consider that in reality they may have better quality of life in an unfair system (where billionaire kids get everything on silver platter) than in a fair system. Because in reality, system change, fending off corruption, laziness, authoritarianism, etc. have large costs.

    Open ##2833528