Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
Richard Epstein takes on the growing obsession with billionaires, wealth taxes, and economic “justice,” arguing that making the rich poorer will not make the poor richer. Using Elon Musk’s hypothetical trillionaire status as a jumping-off point, Epstein explains why great fortunes are usually tied up in productive enterprises, not bank vaults, and why efforts to confiscate or redistribute them often destroy wealth, drive capital out of high-tax states, and leave everyone worse off. From California’s tax experiments to New York estate taxes to the politics of envy, Epstein makes the case that prosperity—not punishment—is the better path to helping the poor.
Discussion (5)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
One man's productive endeavor is another group of people's demise.
Elon Musk has decided as our future his convoys of self driving vehicles that will eliminate the need for weary commutes to try and stay awake while their self driving Teslas handle the driving for them.
But as those individuals applaud the smart car future, some quarter of a billion people across the globe will see their delivery jobs vanish as teams of drones and smart vehicles replace them.
Delivery drivers who had never envied Musk in a malicious way prior to being laid off will view Musk differently when they no longer are earning a living.
If this had happened a dozen years ago, the road to re-employment might have simply involved going back to school and getting a degree. Or learning a trade.
But AI is going to make many of those careers obsolete as well.
Musk is heavily involved in AI as well. And of course, he did initially fight against the AI future. He had serious doubts about the AI route being an ethical one. But finally, in the end, he realized 7 or 8 other Americans were going to push it through, so better to get in on the industry while there still are trillions of dollars to be made.
The future is fraught with peril, as it is being designed by semi-autistic types who simply shrug when presented with human suffering. In their minds, the sooner all flesh and blood is replaced with droids, the better.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute would say this is predictable deflation from automation. If the government money went up in value instead of down, there wouldn't be this suffering.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
In this case, the Mises Institute would be wrong. The reason that the AI situation will lead to inflation is not only over the loss of jobs issue but the capture of prime farming land, plus oodles and oodles of water and resources like electricity being seized by the data centers while the costs are passed on only to the local residents.
From an ethical standpoint, Mises Institute should be concerned about this. Especially since the only gain to the public that I can envision from the big, continually online data centers is our own surveillance.
And again, the idea that the public will only be facing a loss of jobs is one thing> misses a huge big point. The fact remains we will also see higher food prices, Plus should one of these gargantuan data center takeovers occur near any one of us, we will be facing heightened water restrictions, increased costs for using water, as well as exploding utility costs.
At least in Florida there are now laws being considered that will stipulate that the data centers themselves must pay for the resources they're glomming on to. Hopefully those wise considerations will spread to the other 49 states.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I'm underwhelmed.
I agree with you. They already print too much money in the face of any ineluctable deflation, so they will have to print money for the welfare they are creating.
How is it seized? Be specific.
So the residents will pay for all of this, and the politicians won't do anything about it?
The power problem is solved with compact nuclear reactors, which we are too stupid to put up. Big utilities are gigantic rip off machines.
The surveillance is a problem that is up to the political system to police. There are otherwise all kinds of good things that happen from it if we would just give up printing money.
So your point is, all of these data centers will eat up the farmland and everybody's going to get poorer. I don't buy it.
So the politicians will let all of the benefits, go to the data centers stockholders and all of the costs go to the people. This is preposterous.
This is what is going to happen. Relax.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
All the current and proposed AI data centers put together would occupy only a tiny fraction of one percent of America’s 1.37 million square miles of farmland, assuming they would all be built on arable land, and even assuming each one would occupy a square mile (640 acres).
This reminds me of the idiotic flap over the price of eggs a few years ago. Except this time the Chinese hope the scare will cripple the US while they continue to build data centers.
If automation causes unemployment then it should have done that already, when we went from 97% of the population engaged in agriculture to 3%.