The concept of wealth redistribution has plagued mankind from the time it learned to write. It’s objectively bad, right? Surely, it must at least be morally reprehensible? It’s theft! Turns out, as with most engineering problems: it depends on what you’re optimizing for.

Plato and Aristotle were among the first ones to write about wealth and its relation to power. Having been born amid strife and instability, their main concern was stasis. As highly intelligent men, they saw a pattern: wealth concentrates, political offices follow, marginalized groups organize, culminating in large, violent societal resets. For these men marked by the terrors of war it was a simple decision: optimize for stability, while preserving freedom of speech. Their approaches differed, but there were major overlaps, most notably both were heavily in favor of redistribution and hard caps.

The common libtard has witnessed this pattern too–or been made aware of it by an archlibtard–and… it’s true: the premises are sound, the feedback loop is correct, and the loop is in place. Could the solution be to seize wealth? Redistribute it? Impose penalties?

(no. probably.)

I will now make a case for why it’s a waste of time to prevent the accumulation of wealth from an incentives-first standpoint.

It requires an arbitrary threshold of what constitutes ultra wealth.

Obviously, but things that require arbitrary thresholds are usually bad. Not only do they result in copious amounts of tedious bikeshedding, there is NO right answer. What constitutes ultra wealth objectively? Given MMT is the ruling macroeconomic theory, how do we make this already arbitrary number dynamic? Do we use purchasing power parity? Do we track inflation? If we do select one of those, can we agree on what elements comprise these indices? How often should the redistributions take place? You could argue these could be easily determined democratically but the masses are often wrong, leading to a combination of tyranny of the majority and tragedy of the commons, given how, if weighed incorrectly, such a proposal could castrate the best operators in the nation.

It would be too easy to bypass.

Whenever complexity is introduced, so are ways to legally exploit it. Blind trusts and other such vehicles, dispersion to family members with the introduction of dual-class share structures with super-voting shares (see: the Zuck), exploiting other jurisdictions, and likely many, many more.

If it can be bypassed, it will, except now you have selected for wealthy people with a proclivity for crime. Curious how when complex structures are introduced, they may produce diametrically opposed effects than intended!

Valuations are not wealth.

Imagine you proclaim the magic number to be $10b. SpaceX is private, Elon raises a round at $10b and is now worth $7.5b being owner of 75% of the company. One year later, Elon realizes the valuation should be $100b but… if he raises at that valuation, he will likely be worth $50b and then… stock in excess of $10b might be confiscated and… liquidated? Distributed to the worst capital allocators in the country? Whichever it is, it would be extremely bad for the company.

So Elon chooses not to raise, limiting SpaceX’s growth.

Or he raises and loses control of the company whose share price could now plummet due to forced liquidation in secondary marketplaces.

Everything is -EV to the point where breaching your fiduciary duty to merely limit damage becomes the right move to make.

But there’s more! Valuations are bullshit. Even more so for private companies. You see, if it is deemed your company is worth $100b despite having only $1b worth of assets and you put it up for sale, there are 3 possible outcomes:

Indeed. Elon’s net worth has breached $600,000,000,000 dollars as of Dec 18 2025 but he does not have access to all that capital. For one, he is not diversified, meaning that creditors would be unlikely to go over 20% Loan-to-Value ratio against his wealth, especially given how influential he is within his own companies–his demise would deeply harm his stocks. At 20%, that puts his maximum liquidity at $120b.

Even then, it must be justified. Even the Twitter buyout required a roadshow to show the creditors that the asset being acquired is indeed valuable, so Elon was borrowing not only against his net worth, but also the asset being acquired. You read this right: the richest man in the world had to crowdfund the Twitter acquisition and then perform a leveraged buyout with the debt secured by Twitter’s assets and cash flows combined with his own personal equity in Tesla.

Suddenly, being worth $600b doesn’t feel like $600b anymore? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot, lot, but also a lot less ridiculous sounding than before.

Which brings me to my next and final point:

Why SHOULDN’T society cater to its best capital allocators and operators?

It’s an open secret that the masses contribute very little to the advancement of society. They are worker ants who follow instructions and are often replaceable by foreign labor, a situation which is only going to be exacerbated by 0 to 1 improvements in robotics in AI. It is those at the margins who drive all scientific progress and found the most resourceful companies.

So why shouldn’t our nations mold their policies after what allows their best performers to thrive in the global arena? Why must we insist on redistributing wealth to the worst allocators? Is it masochism? Envy? Fear about consolidation of power?

So what about the power consolidation problem?

Well… that will always be a problem. Even if you were to somehow arrive at a rational wealth threshold by determining the difference in political power that could be afforded by a $xb billionaire Vs. a $10xb one, there are many roads to Rome. Collusion between blocs of individuals will always be possible. “Oh, we will introduce regulations to cap donations at the individ-” Super PACs. “We will outlaw that too!” Ok, I will just redistribute my rich friends’ money to a large group of individuals and coordinate an equivalent amount of donations to the PAC. “We will introduce a donation ceiling!” Sigh. Do you see where I’m going with this? It’s stupid. When you analyze a problem and a gazillion little edge cases start popping up, each with its own solution, that’s your cue your system design is garbo and you need to take a step back and reevaluate everything. A system’s robustness is evaluated by how few edge cases exist and how well it can be modelled.

tl;dr: leave the UHNWs alone you envious poors