Joel Kotkin on the non-profit sector; Lorenzo Warby on beliefs as status markers; Jon Haidt is on substack; Lee Booth makes the bullish case for nuclear power;
"I honestly don’t know what to do about this. A wealth tax would transfer more power to politicians. I wish that we could raise the status of profit-seeking enterprises."
As much as I agree I think this is just fighting the against the tide of innate folk marxism. I don't necessarily have some great constructive plan, but would say we should look in the direction of the mimetic desires and social contagions of the uber wealthy. Elon Musk is doing more to point Jeff Bezos fortune toward the stars than anything else. Figure out a way to appeal to the vanity, ego, and desire for immortality of name and tie it to Desalination plants in California and nuclear power plants. Make the warm glow of the billionaire altruist coterminous with high social benefit projects.
When great fortunes given away, they are given away by the wives of entrepreneurs and not the entrepreneurs themselves. This is partly true while they are living, but especially true when they are dead, which is nearly always before the wife dies.
Or as someone put it to me, it’s insanely easier to run an endowment for a girls school then a boys school, because women do all the donating.
Storage of solar and wind energy is definitely a problem. I don't know how well it will be solved. I doubt anyone does.
That said, comparing batteries to fossil fuels or uranium is stupid. Such a comparison is clearly made by someone who either has no clue or is trying to fool others. They aren't intended to do the same thing and in most respects they don't. Batteries are reusable many times for rather short term storage. FF is one-time use. Nuclear fuels are a bit more complicated but more like FF than batteries.
While the claim that battery technology might improve as much as computing seems wildly unrealistic, that hardly matters. Batteries don't have to improve nearly that much to become increasingly viable. Will they? There's the question.
Note: Computing would still be immensely beneficial even if it were currently many orders of magnitude less powerful than today.
I am not sure I understand the difficulty. If "ultra-rich" leftists want to support leftist policies, isn't that their right? It seems the thing to do is for the ultra-rich right-leaning (or libertarian-leaning) folks to support their favored policies.
My temporary Anglicisation was funny at so many levels, so I was amused rather than offended. But thanks for the correction. (The next Worshipping the Future essay will touch on wrong word glitching.)
"I honestly don’t know what to do about this. A wealth tax would transfer more power to politicians. I wish that we could raise the status of profit-seeking enterprises."
I think defining "this" a bit more clearly would help - the article is titled "the nonprofit threat", but most of the meat is that inherited proceeds of successful (possibily monopolistic) capitalist endeavors are being used for anti-capitalist purposes. Those are 3 distinct problems, and each has different solutions (or at least mitigations).
Limiting non-profits would help a whole effin' lot on that front. It's way too easy, and too ... profitable ... to be a non-profit, even if the goals aren't directly and obviously humanitarian. Cut this back massively, and figure out a way to limit deductability of donations.
Fixing inheritance tax loopholes (including donations to nonprofits) would help a TON on that front as well. Stepped-up basis is completely insane - all capital gains should be taxed at liquidation OR ownership transfer time.
I don't have a good solution to the fact that capitalism is becoming less popular, and that the death of a billionaire will generally cause that financial/political force to revert to the mean. That's perhaps built into the world, rather than a problem to solve.
Re:. Nonprofits:. Don't worry about them, and certainly don't measure their revenues in terms of GDP. A brief thought exercise, a non profit hosts a fundraising dinner at $1,000 a plate, and then takes the proceeds of that dinner and buys 1,000 laptops wholesale, and then turns around and resells at a 50% discount those laptops to an inner city school. The computer company is making profits (but their sale isn't a part of GDP), the catering company makes profits, the delivery company etc, etc. The final revenues go to the non profit but the total production is the same if the government raised a levy and paid full wholesale for the laptops.
My suggestion of what to do about the larger power of non-profit seeking sector is to increase the minimum distribution requirement of endowments. Section 4942 of the Internal Revenue Code requires private foundations to distribute 5% of the fair market value of their endowment each year for charitable purposes. Instead of a flat 5% rule, I would instead index the rate to the IRS long-term loan applicable federal rates (AFRs) + a fixed amount like 2% or more.
This would help ensure that, over time, risk adjusted rates of return would not exceed mandatory distributions. Therefore, over time, endowments would decline unless they raised additional donations. This would increase spending in the short run, but reduce institutional capture, increase institutional accountability, and I think likely make for fewer effectively immortal institutions unmoored from donor, customer, and market accountability.
"I honestly don’t know what to do about this. A wealth tax would transfer more power to politicians. I wish that we could raise the status of profit-seeking enterprises."
As much as I agree I think this is just fighting the against the tide of innate folk marxism. I don't necessarily have some great constructive plan, but would say we should look in the direction of the mimetic desires and social contagions of the uber wealthy. Elon Musk is doing more to point Jeff Bezos fortune toward the stars than anything else. Figure out a way to appeal to the vanity, ego, and desire for immortality of name and tie it to Desalination plants in California and nuclear power plants. Make the warm glow of the billionaire altruist coterminous with high social benefit projects.
When great fortunes given away, they are given away by the wives of entrepreneurs and not the entrepreneurs themselves. This is partly true while they are living, but especially true when they are dead, which is nearly always before the wife dies.
Or as someone put it to me, it’s insanely easier to run an endowment for a girls school then a boys school, because women do all the donating.
Storage of solar and wind energy is definitely a problem. I don't know how well it will be solved. I doubt anyone does.
That said, comparing batteries to fossil fuels or uranium is stupid. Such a comparison is clearly made by someone who either has no clue or is trying to fool others. They aren't intended to do the same thing and in most respects they don't. Batteries are reusable many times for rather short term storage. FF is one-time use. Nuclear fuels are a bit more complicated but more like FF than batteries.
While the claim that battery technology might improve as much as computing seems wildly unrealistic, that hardly matters. Batteries don't have to improve nearly that much to become increasingly viable. Will they? There's the question.
Note: Computing would still be immensely beneficial even if it were currently many orders of magnitude less powerful than today.
"I honestly don’t know what to do about this."
I am not sure I understand the difficulty. If "ultra-rich" leftists want to support leftist policies, isn't that their right? It seems the thing to do is for the ultra-rich right-leaning (or libertarian-leaning) folks to support their favored policies.
My temporary Anglicisation was funny at so many levels, so I was amused rather than offended. But thanks for the correction. (The next Worshipping the Future essay will touch on wrong word glitching.)
"I honestly don’t know what to do about this. A wealth tax would transfer more power to politicians. I wish that we could raise the status of profit-seeking enterprises."
I think defining "this" a bit more clearly would help - the article is titled "the nonprofit threat", but most of the meat is that inherited proceeds of successful (possibily monopolistic) capitalist endeavors are being used for anti-capitalist purposes. Those are 3 distinct problems, and each has different solutions (or at least mitigations).
Limiting non-profits would help a whole effin' lot on that front. It's way too easy, and too ... profitable ... to be a non-profit, even if the goals aren't directly and obviously humanitarian. Cut this back massively, and figure out a way to limit deductability of donations.
Fixing inheritance tax loopholes (including donations to nonprofits) would help a TON on that front as well. Stepped-up basis is completely insane - all capital gains should be taxed at liquidation OR ownership transfer time.
I don't have a good solution to the fact that capitalism is becoming less popular, and that the death of a billionaire will generally cause that financial/political force to revert to the mean. That's perhaps built into the world, rather than a problem to solve.
Re:. Nonprofits:. Don't worry about them, and certainly don't measure their revenues in terms of GDP. A brief thought exercise, a non profit hosts a fundraising dinner at $1,000 a plate, and then takes the proceeds of that dinner and buys 1,000 laptops wholesale, and then turns around and resells at a 50% discount those laptops to an inner city school. The computer company is making profits (but their sale isn't a part of GDP), the catering company makes profits, the delivery company etc, etc. The final revenues go to the non profit but the total production is the same if the government raised a levy and paid full wholesale for the laptops.
My suggestion of what to do about the larger power of non-profit seeking sector is to increase the minimum distribution requirement of endowments. Section 4942 of the Internal Revenue Code requires private foundations to distribute 5% of the fair market value of their endowment each year for charitable purposes. Instead of a flat 5% rule, I would instead index the rate to the IRS long-term loan applicable federal rates (AFRs) + a fixed amount like 2% or more.
This would help ensure that, over time, risk adjusted rates of return would not exceed mandatory distributions. Therefore, over time, endowments would decline unless they raised additional donations. This would increase spending in the short run, but reduce institutional capture, increase institutional accountability, and I think likely make for fewer effectively immortal institutions unmoored from donor, customer, and market accountability.
Lawrence works well as a new name for Lorenzo!
Thanks once again, Arnold.