#ingrid robeyns

[bestbookcover]

round 1, poll 488

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which cover do you like best?

Limitarianism the case against extreme wealth by ingrid robeyns

Swordbird by Nancy Yi Fan

Voting ended onFeb 3

remember, you're voting for the cover, not the author or the book!

[thehardveneer]

Political philosopher Ingrid Robeyns tells host Sean Illing that we need to cap the amount of wealth a person can accumulate. They talk about how extreme inequality affects democracy, the role of money in politics, and why limiting personal wealth benefits everyone, including the super rich.

[slowpocalypse]

Ingrid Robeyns, "Is it bad that Elon Musk has a trillion dollars? Yes, and here's why" (The Guardian, 17 Jun 2026)

"[W]e need a paradigm shift when it comes to thinking about the negative effects of extreme wealth concentration."

[redshift-13]

Why Economic Inequality Should be Central to Strategies for the Future

ABSTRACT

In this article, I develop and defend the claim that we, humanity, will not be able to get significantly closer to a world in which there is ecologically sustainable human development if we do not tackle economic inequalities head-on. This implies that we should focus not only on poverty but also on the entire distribution of income and wealth, including extreme wealth concentration. For national and international policymaking, this means that reducing economic inequality must be one of the central priorities rather than assuming that it is indirectly covered by other social goals such as poverty reduction or formal equality of opportunities, or assuming that it is a problem that will solve itself over time under globalised neoliberal capitalism.

...

The above article is open access.

[emustelidae]

today, we like to believe that we are the authors of our own destiny and should be held responsible for how much - or how little - we can win for ourselves. But this is foolish. It's not just that lucks plays a major role in our lives, or that we owe our ability to make money in the first place to our fellow humans, both past and present. It's that our very character and wants are to a large extent shaped by the society we live in. Today's society uses all manner of neoliberal capitalist tricks to turn us into self-centered consumers with limitless desires; creatures whose sole goal is to fulfill those desires; who can live happily while others around us languish in misery. But it doesn't have to be like this. There are much better lives availble to all of us, including the rich and super-rich, if we can liberate ourselves and our imaginations from the neoliberal capitalist spell.

Limitarianism: The Case against Extreme Wealth (2024) by Ingrid Robeyns

[emustelidae]

Thanks to the spread of neoliberal ideology, people in many countries no longer regard themselves as citizens who have a civic duty in jointly governing the political community, but rather see themselves as consumers, as people with professional identities, and as private individuals with families and friends. Too many of us have become depoliticized. Too many of us have no experience of activism and organizing, and hence do not know what enormous potential there is in acting together to fight for justice or to defend a common interest.

Limitarianism: The Case against Extreme Wealth (2024) by Ingrid Robeyns

[emustelidae]

In a powerful speech that he gave at the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit in July 2021, [Jeffrey Sachs] addressed several of the ills of global inequality. In just seven minutes, he made clear how much damage has been done. Sachs reminded his audience that the US has a long track record of installing politicians in power in countries that are important either because the American dominant class needs natural resources or because it nees something else from the Global South - cheap labor without much regulation that protects workers, for example. He then criticized rich countries for not looking at the actual financial needs of the poor, but instead promising very modest amounts in financial support. It almost looked like rich countries were motivated to do this only because they had to tick a box to say that they'd given something. Instead, the world needed a change of attitude, and to give a sum of the right order of magnitude, adequate to meet people's actual needs. But then where would this money come from? Here's what Sachs had to say: The rich indiviuals are increasingly hoarding everything. If the billionaires want to go to space, they could at least leave their money on Earth to solve the critical Earthbound problems. We not have an estimated 2,775 billionaires with a combined net worth of around $13.1 trillion. I have it on good authority that you don't need more than $1 billion to live comfortably. Even if every billionaire kept $1 billion, that would leave around $10 trillion for ending hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction. We should be taxing the vast and rapidly growing billionaire wealth to help finance a civilize world. This is, exactly, the limitarian argument (although $1 billion is putting the threshold too high).

Limitarianism: The Case against Extreme Wealth (2024) by Ingrid Robeyns

[emustelidae]

Among conservatives and neoliberals, there is a mantra that it doesn't help to "throw money" at a problem, since most problems cannot be solved simply by increasing the budget. "More money" doesn't make people more responsible. "More money" doesn't address harmful societal issues such as endemic corruption. What people need is to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. What countries need is a government that does not interfere in its citizens' lives. Frankly, this line of reasoning is usually just an excuse for doing nothing. It enables the super-rich to continue being stingy and uncaring. It's true that most problems require more than just cash. For a few problems, money may not be the most urgent or most important thing that is needed; think of issues such as granting LGBTQ+ people equal rights. But for almost all problems that go beyond grantings rights where rights are due, the smartest, proven solutions also require funding.

Limitarianism: The Case against Extreme Wealth (2024) by Ingrid Robeyns