However, (powerful) politicians are a special case because 1) they have more influence on society and 2) I presume people would still be motivated to take the position even with the asset ceiling.
I don’t believe either of these is true, when comparing against (powerful) non-politician very-rich-people.
Wouldn’t the standard law enforcement people enforce it
I didn’t mean the end-enforcement (though that’s a problem too—standard law enforcement personnel can detect and prove murder. They have SOME ability to detect and prove income. They have very little ability to understand asset ownership and valuation in a world where there’s significant motive to be indirect about it. But I meant “who will implement it”, if voters today don’t particularly care, why will anyone define and push for the legislation that creates the limit?
I don’t believe either of these is true, when comparing against (powerful) non-politician very-rich-people.
Hm, maybe. Let me try thinking of some examples:
CEOs: Yeah, pretty big influence and I think smart people would do it for free. Although if you made a rule that CEOs of sufficiently large companies had to have asset ceilings I think there’d be a decent amount less entrepreneurs which feels like it’d be enough to make it a bad idea.
Hedge fund managers: From what I understand they don’t really have much influence on society in their role. I think some smart people would still take the job with an asset ceiling but they very well might not be smart enough; I know how competitive and technical that world is. And similar to CEOs, I don’t think there’d be many if any hedge funds that got started if they knew their traders would have to have asset ceilings.
Movie stars: Not much influence on society, but people would take the role for the fame it’d provide of course.
After trying to think of examples I’m not seeing any that fit. Do you have any in mind?
They have very little ability to understand asset ownership and valuation in a world where there’s significant motive to be indirect about it.
There might be things that are hard to prevent from slipping through the cracks, but the big things seem easy enough to detect: houses, cars, yachts, hotels, vacations. I guess they’d probably have to give up some rights to privacy too though to make enforcement for practical. Given how much they’re already giving up with the asset ceiling, the additional sacrificing of some amount of privacy doesn’t seem like it changes anything too much.
But I meant “who will implement it”, if voters today don’t particularly care, why will anyone define and push for the legislation that creates the limit?
I’m not optimistic about it, but to me it seems at least ballpark plausible. I don’t understand this stuff too much, but to me it seems like voters aren’t the problem. Voters right now, across party lines, distrust politicians and “the system”. I would assume the problem is other politicians. You’d have to get their support but it negatively affects them so they don’t support it.
Maybe there are creative ways to sidestep this though.
Make the asset ceilings start in 10 years instead of today? Maybe that’d be blatantly obvious that it’s the current politicians not wanting to eat their gross dogfood? Would that matter?
Maybe you could start by gathering enough public support for the idea to force the hands of the politicians?
I don’t believe either of these is true, when comparing against (powerful) non-politician very-rich-people.
I didn’t mean the end-enforcement (though that’s a problem too—standard law enforcement personnel can detect and prove murder. They have SOME ability to detect and prove income. They have very little ability to understand asset ownership and valuation in a world where there’s significant motive to be indirect about it. But I meant “who will implement it”, if voters today don’t particularly care, why will anyone define and push for the legislation that creates the limit?
Hm, maybe. Let me try thinking of some examples:
CEOs: Yeah, pretty big influence and I think smart people would do it for free. Although if you made a rule that CEOs of sufficiently large companies had to have asset ceilings I think there’d be a decent amount less entrepreneurs which feels like it’d be enough to make it a bad idea.
Hedge fund managers: From what I understand they don’t really have much influence on society in their role. I think some smart people would still take the job with an asset ceiling but they very well might not be smart enough; I know how competitive and technical that world is. And similar to CEOs, I don’t think there’d be many if any hedge funds that got started if they knew their traders would have to have asset ceilings.
Movie stars: Not much influence on society, but people would take the role for the fame it’d provide of course.
After trying to think of examples I’m not seeing any that fit. Do you have any in mind?
There might be things that are hard to prevent from slipping through the cracks, but the big things seem easy enough to detect: houses, cars, yachts, hotels, vacations. I guess they’d probably have to give up some rights to privacy too though to make enforcement for practical. Given how much they’re already giving up with the asset ceiling, the additional sacrificing of some amount of privacy doesn’t seem like it changes anything too much.
I’m not optimistic about it, but to me it seems at least ballpark plausible. I don’t understand this stuff too much, but to me it seems like voters aren’t the problem. Voters right now, across party lines, distrust politicians and “the system”. I would assume the problem is other politicians. You’d have to get their support but it negatively affects them so they don’t support it.
Maybe there are creative ways to sidestep this though.
Make the asset ceilings start in 10 years instead of today? Maybe that’d be blatantly obvious that it’s the current politicians not wanting to eat their gross dogfood? Would that matter?
Maybe you could start by gathering enough public support for the idea to force the hands of the politicians?