I’m not talking necessarily about some market elements for how we get things. A lot of capitalism works better than other systems that have been tried, blah blah blah.

But re: income inequality, the more I think about how money translates to power, the worse it all gets.

Why do we have people like the Mercers – billionaires backing Trump, or the Koch brothers & Sheldon Adelson, who’ve fueled the GOP for ages? What right do they have to have this *wildly* disproportionate impact on our country & our government & our rights? This is so far removed from any rational definition of a democracy that it’s absurd, and what’s it come down to? Money.

I read about folks like Jennifer Lopez giving a million bucks to the relief efforts in Puerto Rico, and I think, “That’s awfully nice of her, but why does she have the *ability* to give a million bucks to PR, and why should anyone have the power to make a call with that much impact arbitrarily?”

It’s not just the folks I don’t like who are doing things I don’t like. It’s folks that I do like, doing things I do like. Why should so much power rest in the hands of folks like Mark Zuckerberg, or David Benioff? They aren’t humanitarian experts. They aren’t policy folks, or community experts. I’m glad they’ve done some of the things they’ve done, but it’s *insane* to me that we’ve given them the power, effectively, of *millions of people* and concentrated it in the hands of just a few folks.

I keep going back to the idea someone said of, there should just be no way for any person to have more than $X. Where X was floated at 100 million, but I’d suggest could *easily* be lowered to $10 million with almost no practical impact on capitalism other than we cut off the top top top end of concentrated wealth/power *without* disincentivizing say, the materialism that drives folks to amass more and more.

What happens beyond $10M? I dunno. Maybe it’s just taxed at 100%, and it’s all funneled into education or infrastructure. I’m sure there are folks that have better plans and models that show how these things could work.

But what is the *point* of someone having more than $10M? It’s practically-speaking more than most people can spend in their entire lifetimes, and it guarantees a level of indefinite financial security. Particularly if we get to some sort of universal healthcare. And it’s even a fairly absurd number, right? It protects the fantasy that people have that one day they might hit it big, but reins in things that are fundamentally absurd. Can you say, realistically, that boy, cutting me off beyond $10M really negatively impacts my…? Anything? Ability to buy a private island? Great. You shouldn’t be able to have a private island or private beachfront property. Fuck off if you think you should own that shit.

But yeah. I dunno. It’s just weird. Celebs donating giant piles of money to causes – that power shouldn’t rest in the hands of individuals. Jackasses funding bigotry and hate? Why should your ability to say, run a hedge fund let you basically control abortion rights? It’s nuts.