Limitarianism!

 "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." 

- Honore de Balzac

What if someone wrote an entire non-fiction book based on that quote? But what if instead of a blistering takedown of a particular business empire and its origins, a mostly humorless & judgmental schoolmarm give you a drab and somewhat unfocused moralizing guilt-trip of a lecture that seemed burdened with more irrelevant examples than those germane to its central thesis? Tragically, the latter description is much more descriptive of "Limitarianism" by Ingrid Robeyns.

I'll start with my bias: I was really excited to read this book so perhaps my disappointment is amplified by my high hopes. I'd read a couple of reviews in the usual places a middle-brow person like myself finds them. I should have noticed that the reviews mostly presented the *idea* of limitarianism rather than this actual book. And I will be clear: I thought this book was not good. It is flabby and shallow, judgmental and moralizing (though I suspect she would consider those compliments), naive in the extreme and as guilty of being as unaware of the reality in another segment of society as it accuses its super-rich class of being. It wastes far too many pages to hold forth on how basically every fortune is (more or less) ill-gotten while also conflating *corporate* and individual wealth. And after reading the entire thing, it's not at all clear to me that she understands there can be a difference between a publicly traded company held primarily by institutional shareholders like Boeing and a company like Koch Industries, which truly is a wealth engine for its founders. It's sloppy and undercuts her argument that there should be a limit on *individual* wealth accumulation.

Along the way, there is an astonishing level of political naivete apparent. The breezy way she implies that the newly bulging treasuries of the EU, US and other rich countries would simply send large percentages of that money to the Global South is almost literally unbelievable. But probably the most wild proposal is where she draws the "riches line": 10 million euros/pounds/dollars and she further argues that ethically nobody should ever have more than 1 million of any currency. It makes for a nice round number, I'll grant her that.(Sorry Canadians!)

Perhaps this should be expected from someone that would have us believe that her totally normal 12 year old son, upon seeing a homeless person supposedly for the first time in his life, spontaneously proclaims, "I’m ashamed that as a society we treat people this way." Either this is the most empathetic and precocious 12 year old I've ever heard of or she made this up. The only other alternative is she spoon fed her child this line and encouraged him to regurgitate it just like kids are encouraged/compelled to do at school board meetings, interviews, etc.

But her implied proposal of confiscating fortunes >$10M from the EU and US and then giving a massive share of the resulting pot of money to the Global South is something out of a stoned anthropology students dorm room conversation. It's simply a non-starter.

She also confuses or conflates - it's not really clear her intent -  corporate fortunes with personal fortunes. While there are cases of publicly traded companies with individual majority shareholders, typically they are held by institutional investors via mutual funds, ETFs and so on.

The most tragic thing about this book is that the idea is very, very intriguing. Unfortunately, the book as executed is deeply unserious - typically resorting to the liberal fallback of guilt trips, soaring ideals and woefully short on detail.

Nevertheless... I was intrigued by the concept. After I read the initial reviews but before I read the book itself, I spent some time pondering where I would draw the upper limit on individual wealth. I quizzed my significant other who came up with $50M more or less on the spur of the moment. I did some veeeerrry quick & dirty looking at US household wealth statistics and distribution and came up with $150M. Both of these values represent sort of a "feeling" of a point that balances the motivating force of capitalism to get super rich with a cap that limits how much damage the current 0.01% really can do to the political system. I will hopefully add some comments with my messing about on some stats from the US on wealth distribution, #s of households, thinking about actual effects of my own "riches line", etc. Devil in the details and all that