<div dir="auto"><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 10:24 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org</a>> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat<br>
....<br>
Subject: Re: [ExI] thought experiment part 3<br>
<br>
On Wed, Nov 26, 2025 at 8:54 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br>
>>... OK cool, now let’s think about the extreme case where one guy somehow ends up with all the damn money in the world...<br>
> Is that really what happens?<br>
<br>
>...Of course not. If one person owned literally all the money in the world, that money would immediately become utterly worthless for anything beyond scrap value. People would invent other money, or barter. <br>
<br>
YES! Adrian that is where I was going with this thought experiment, and you got there ahead of me. You beat me to it.<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Our money isn't a finite resource like gold or Bitcoin. Rather in our monetary system money is created and destroyed on demand. Money is simply IOUs created by any individual who can prove to a bank a high probability of being able to make good on that IOU. When a bank is satisfied money is created. When it is paid back, the money disappears.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So even in the event one person accumulated all the circulating dollars, anyone could go to a bank, get a loan, and then there would be new dollars in their account which they could spend.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">And so, the government could still go into further debt to spend money on its programs, kids could still get loans to pay for college, credit cards would still buy groceries, houses could still be bought and sold, by mortgage, etc.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">When you get a loan, you give the bank an IOU, and in exchange, the bank gives you an IOU (issued by the bank). What we trade as money are these bank-issued IOUs that were created when any person writes an IOU to a bank.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So the idea of one person holding all the dollars and there not being any left for anyone else, doesn't work in a debt-based monetary system.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Jason </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
No problem however, for I have an attitude of gratitude, to match the season. I am not annoyed at all!<br>
<br>
Dammit.<br>
<br>
{8^D<br>
<br>
You got it right however. Right on the money as they say, Adrian me lad! OK so here's where I go next. Estimate the value of all the money in the world. But don't ask me for I am not a world traveler. Went to England summer of 24, briefly visited a place they call Frawnz. I don't know why they don't just say it the way it is spelled, but they don't. The locals all call it Frawnz. Seems like they should change either the pronunciation or the spelling. Anyhow, we went there and visited the places where BillK's lads invaded, along with a bunch of Yanks. That was most moving.<br>
<br>
So don't ask me about what the planet is worth, but let's look at a subset I kinda understand a little better, the USA. Last I heard the US population is about 340 million and you figure about 3.4 proles per house is a good single digit estimate and if so, it means 1E8 homes. If I go to Zillow and just look at the estimated home values, about $1e5 per house is a conservative estimate, for the average is probably higher than that. OK so the value of just the homes is about 1E13, or ten trillion bucks, by my conservative estimate.<br>
<br>
Does Musk or Ellison owning nearly half a trillion cause the collective value of all the homes in the USA to go down?<br>
<br>
I would say no, not at all, in fact it causes the collective value to go up. Reasoning: look at just the Telsa factory alone, just that Tesla factory. Now look at Santa Clara County and Alameda County, population 1.8 million and 1.6 million, total 3.4 million (I didn't rig that, just a cheerful coincidence really.) 3.4 million in those two counties alone, 1% of the population of the USA in about a million homes. The Tesla factory is right there. One can commute from anywhere in either of those counties and work at that factory.<br>
<br>
OK then, about a million homes. I do challenge anyone to look at Zillow or your favorite real estate site and come up with any estimate for the average value of homes in those two counties less than about 1E6 bucks. I think it is probably higher than that, but we can go with 1E6 homes at about 1E6 bucks is a trillion in real estate in just two fortunate high-tech counties, with only 1% of the USA population, within driving distance of the richest man in the world. Somehow... that doesn't sound a bit like a bad thing. It seems to have helped the regular proles like me and my neighbors. As rich as he is, Musk couldn't buy all the homes in either of those counties.<br>
<br>
Having a few really rich people doesn't take away from the rest of us regular people. It adds to. Consider another really rich guy Bill Gates. Bill didn't harm us by having all that loot. He helped us. He gave us Microsoft Win... OK bad example.<br>
<br>
Ellison didn't harm us by amassing his fortune. He lives around here somewhere, but the fact that I don't know where and have never been there is kinda my point: I don't need to go around his property. I don't know where it is or how big, but it hasn't impacted me negatively. And if I get right down to it, neither has Bill Gates. If I consider Excel and all the stuff I have done with that system, it makes up for Windows. Bill didn't harm me at all. I am a bit pissed over all that global warming hype, but meh, let bygones be bygones. He gave it up.<br>
<br>
The S&P 500 total market cap is about 50 trillion bucks last I heard, and most of those 500 companies are in the USA I heard. So now we are at 5E13 bucks for most of the companies, about 1E13 for the homes, or about 6E13 bucks.<br>
<br>
All these estimates are for the cash value of the USA. I don't mind a bit if Musk owns almost a percent of that. He didn't take it away. It's all still here, even if he owns it or controls it. He didn't burn any of that money, didn't load any of it on a Starship and blast it away into space. His money circulated around down here, contributing to the duffle bags of $20s we ordinary proles own, specifically those who designed and built those Starships. Musk's owning 1% of all the money in the USA didn't reduce the remaining 99%. It added a lot more to that 99%. The 99% left after he took his cut is bigger than the 100% would have been without SpaceX, TwitterX, BoringX, TeslaX, and whatever other Xs I forgot. <br>
<br>
I have no idea how to estimate the value of the rest of the world, haven't seen it, haven't been there, haven't done that. But Adrian saw my point: being rich is good. Being richer is better. Being the richest is best, if you can get there.<br>
<br>
But if you don't get to be the richest guy in the world, no one here is starving. Only four centuries ago, people were celebrating not starving. They thought it just grand, this whole not starving business. Everyone here is not starving, and if you are strict dieting, that doesn't count as starving. It makes my point really: if you are strict dieting, it is because we were not starving before. How lucky we are for not starving. Dieters, best wishes with that reduction, and notice that even the very poor among us are not literally starving: most places have a food bank. I know of this, for I help restock the place with food donations I collect with a scout troop. We collected over 1000 pounds of food donations this year. <br>
<br>
Look at what we have, my ExI friends. Look at what is right in front of you right now, and all the cool stuff you can get to thru that portal sitting right there in front of you while you don't starve. We have it freaking made.<br>
<br>
Celebrate gratitude. Happy day of celebration of this powerful emotion, this attitude of gratitude. May we all have everything there is to have, on this side of the singularity if at all possible. <br>
<br>
spike <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
extropy-chat mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat</a><br>
</blockquote></div></div></div>