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@BioMan@awful.systems
Post #3842639
2026-07-15 21:25 UTC
Comments in FAVOR of billionaires being those who seize control of the entire universe at the expense of everyone else (!) are appearing.
Land reform / redistribution is always popular with the populi, but per your other point, unless you somehow forbid them from selling or leasing it, it will inevitably end up in the hands of those better able to use those resources pretty shortly. And I will argue that this is a good thing, at least in a capitalist and non-coercive society - much like people think of heiresses leaving their floofy little dogs mansions and million dollar annual stipends as wasteful, leaving an equal proportion of the cosmic endowment with a bunch of v1.2 murder chimps who were so unsuccessful that they couldn’t even buy any of it is a colossal waste of that matter/energy. Much like land today is much more valuable to people / governments who have money, the cosmic endowment will be no different.
Today we waste something like 99. nine 9’s percent of our sun’s energy. If we’re the only conscious and intelligent life in the universe, every other star is wasting 100% of their energy. That energy is going to be similarly wasted in the hands of average people, just like the mansions and stipends are wasted on the dogs. “Well lease it out and profit share!” I bet you’re saying.
But what will a base human even DO with that energy? It’s like the dog. Most “regular” people who remain human will be eaten by digital Infinite Jests, where they can the be tippy top of made up status hierarchies and live out their wildest, meaningless dreams 24/7. You probably barely need $10k a year to do that in terms of matter energy budgets.
Sure, let’s guarantee a really generous UBI, Scotts $1-$2M per year in today’s wealth equivalent. That’s fair. But the cosmic endowment is many, many orders of magnitude more than that, and allocating it to a bunch of floofy dog equivalents is a huge waste.
Replies (2)
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Most “regular” people who remain human will be eaten by digital Infinite Jests, where they can the be tippy top of made up status hierarchies
This person has a remarkable lack of self-awareness
Open ##3845434
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I should probably be grateful that this sent me down the road of learning about pet trusts, the actual legal vehicle for leaving large sums of money to an animal. But that’s less because it’s relevant to the point here and more because I’m a fucking nerd. Notably the money is controlled by a trustee who is empowered to pay for the animal’s food, healthcare, etc. I imagine that an enterprising trustee in the most famous cases could make some very compelling arguments about the necessity of maintaining, say, a big house for the cat to roam around in that they and their family would coincidentally live in as well, but I don’t care enough to look into it in-depth. If the animal dies before the trust runs out of money, then the remainder is distributed according to either the trust instructions or applicable state laws (in the US, at least). Of course the cases of people putting millions into pet trusts are usually less about the pet trust and more about spiting the other presumptive heirs, a sort of disinterestance with a more spiteful edge.
To the actual argument here, however, all I can say is that nobody without a large estate has ever made the allegedly absurd decision to dedicate their estate to the care and keeping of their pets. Every single case where that has happened has been because of a member of the supposedly-enlightened moneyed classes being fucking weird and having too much money.
Open ##3876591