Where'd the money come to invest in the first place? Magic?
No, it came from working or from inheritance. Just because you earned money in the past though, that doesn't mean that any money you make in the future has also been earned.
And how is investment - taking calculated risks or paying someone to manage those risks for you - not earning the income you make?
Earned Income vs. Unearned Income
Did you think I was just making those terms up or something?
You put your currency on a risk hoping it pays off in a certain term. It's a risk. There's a chance you might lose it.
Is it though? What's the risk to a billionaire if they lose a $1m on a bad investment? There's no actual risk whatsoever. It's like me throwing a penny away.
Given your propensity for communism, I can see how you'd think that people don't deserve to keep what they make off of trades. If you want communism, go start a commune. Stop trying to ruin my platform.
It's not your platform and communes are not communism. I'm not a hippy and I'm not living in the the 20th century. Automated labour and Matrix like VR through brain-computer interfaces is the way to achieve communism. I don't need to do anything but wait a couple of decades. We'll all be god like entities at that point capable of creating anything we want just by thinking. All your wealth will be worthless and you'll have the same power as everybody else.
Let me know when you can create matter from nothing. I'm sure the Venus Project is going to make communism work this time.
What's the Venus Project got to with anything I just said and why would I need to be able to create matter out of nothing? Do you not know what VR or brain-computer interfaces are?
Let me guess: machines will be able to provide for use while we're plugged into the Matrix, right? Each according to his needs?
No, not each according to his needs. Each according to their wants. Beach side mansions may be limited in this world but they're not in VR. In VR everyone could have a beach side mansion - they could have their own planet if they want. You may not be able to go paragliding or mountain climbing in this world for whatever reason but you could do that whenever you wanted in VR.
If you're living in fully immersive and completely realistic VR, you don't need any physical possessions. You don't even need your body - just your brain. There have been numerous experiments over the last 150 years were severed heasd have been kept alive with a simple pump to feed the brain with the necessary fluids. So, why waste resources maintaining an obsolete body when you can just maintain the brain and fit it with a BCI?
Who maintains the brains? Where do those resources come from?
Machines obviously. Where do those resources come from? Machines obviously. Now, those machines could be AI controlled or they could be controlled directly by the brains with the BCIs. This has already been demonstrated as possible with people controlling telepresence robots over the Internet with just their thoughts.
So machines would harvest the scarce resources necessary to keep people alive. Who controls the machines that produce the other machines?