Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke, whose company commands a market capitalization near $154 billion, told his social media followers this week that a tax-tiered voting system—one that would strip voting rights from anyone who pays no income tax—would be a “good system.”
That two-word endorsement, dropped into a viral thread, has reignited a debate over wealth, power, and democracy that most Americans thought was settled more than a century ago.
The proposal would invert the founding American principle of “no taxation without representation” into something closer to “no representation without taxation”—and specifically, high taxation. Reactions online split sharply: Some framed it as a provocative thought experiment about aligning fiscal responsibility with political voice, while others called it a naked attempt to legitimize plutocracy by giving billionaires and multimillionaires a formal, multiplied vote over the laws that govern everyone else.
But it also revealed that America is grappling with a political economy debate, as a frozen housing market and an entrenched wealthy baby boomer demographic have many, not just Lütke, arguing that something big needs to change
At this point, their necks practically beg for the guillotine’s blade. They keep reminding us:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of . . . tyrants.
-Thomas Jefferson in November 13, 1787, letter to William Stephens Smith.
That’s literally the problem, United Statesians just believe money is the only thing that matters. Rape children, bomb civilians, pollute water and air — no, that’s not a problem, we can look past that. If you make lots of money you are a good person, the more the better. That’s just very literally how our society aligns itself.
Like it’s so absurd, oh you took a sabbatical and had zero income, no vote for you! Like did the renaissance NOT happen? What is going on in our country??
If you make lots of money you are a good person, the more the better. That’s just very literally how our society aligns itself.
Gotta love the prosperity gospel. It is, in fact, God that makes you rich if you’re a good person. Not exploitation of labour. And God makes you poor or gives you bad health if you’re a bad person.
one that would strip voting rights from anyone who pays no income tax
So he’s in favor of stripping the voting rights of billionaires?
i think thats his argument. make billionaires pay tax to compete for policies. basically calling bribes tax or real life p2w, which it is currently but legal.
My take is, sack all of these billionaires and idiots on an remote small little island and let them figure out how they wanna govern themselves.
Like atlas shrugged? i like it! If we use the Randian framing they’ll probably eat it up!
“nooo dont leave whatever will we do without someone to boss us around noooo please dont isolate yourself on a remote island pleeeeeease”
and then just not let em back in if they try
The self-serving “anarcho-capitalist” whore that died dependent on Medicare and social security.
HEY! Don’t do whores dirty like that.
Since they shit and cum so hard over that book, I’m surprised they haven’t just done it yet. Honestly.
Me too, but you know, its probably because somewhere deep down they know it wouldn’t work. Or maybe they did try, maybe that was exactly what epstein was trying to do on that island (+ the child raping).
It’s rare for something to give me such a visceral reaction, but reading that last bit had me exclaim my disgust loud enough that my dog woke from his nap on the balcony to come check on me.
Eugh. We need more queen of hearts in the world.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
They tried and failed.
Edit: there’s also SeaLand, of course. Which apparently still exists and has one whole resident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand?wprov=sfla1
T. Rump is pretty much establishing the government for that timeline.
Even better, let them do it at the bottom of the fucking ocean
Its where they keep the sexiest children.
Yup. Trust me billionaires it is so great down there you should risk it all to get down down there!
That’s not his argument. He, like all billionaires, think they pay too much. They still end up paying social security and Medicaid. It just ends up being less than 1% because it capped. He would still get to vote in his new proposed system.
Does one vote matter if you can buy thousands?
Because he’s a Fascist worth $154B. Mystery solved.
Other ledgers have him under worthless
Tobias Lütke is a German born Canadian. Why is he commenting about US elections at all? He has never voted in the US.
Because he makes money from it, capitalism and fascism have no borders.
Edit: and I’m sure he’s voted with his dollars.
Because he hates democracy everywhere, and thinks the US might be the next to fall, if it hasn’t already.
Never having a history of voting in an election is insufficient to the determination of excluding a voter for ineligibility.
Yet another reason for me to dislike Shopify.
I already hated that all the small retailers I use have migrated to it and it pushes you to set up an account so that it can connect all my purchasing habits together from what should be independent retailers.
Technofeudalism is real.
Perfect example as to why wealthy people shouldn’t exist. Why should this unelected idiot have this much social power to even propose this?
Yeah, billionaires should not exist
hell, I don’t think people should have more than a few million at most. Just enough to perhaps buy ONE house and afford food. Billionaires have no place when there are people starving and barely managing to survive. They really are scum, aren’t they :/
(gonna add me again, Admiral Patrick?)
But everyone pays taxes, even the unemployed. Every purchase has taxes on it. For this proposal to work as he wants, the entire tax burden will have to be transferred to the income tax. Enjoy the tax hike and labor crisis.
captain logical you got em.
Because thats how the rich see the 99.8% that isn’t them, duh.
Because the rich think they’re better than us and have stopped fearing us
How about no vote if your net worth is above 100m and you pay less than 25% in tax annually
I’ve always liked the idea of once you hit $999,999,999 net worth, everything above that is 100% taxed and you get a little trophy that says “Congratulations on Winning Capitalism” and you get your name of the wall of a local bar.
I don’t hate this, but my main concern has always been I don’t think people who own companies should be forced to sell their shares in what they built.
Maybe there are other fixes like taxing loans against equity as if the shares were sold (at whatever rate, like you propose)… That way you can hold more than a billion in net worth, but you can’t really access it.
??? The richest people wouldnt vote. They pay no income tax, famously.
I wonder if this is what he meant but somehow I doubt it
The problem here is that we have confused “financial success” with “merit”.
They are almost always mutually exclusive.
I want to make an analogy with cars.
Many people think that driving fast and being rude makes them good drivers because they can control their cars and possibly display how good their reaction time is. Like F1 drivers.
A good driver actually follows the rules, prioritize other people safety. But they look slow? They are even perceived as an obstacle.
Currently following the rules is seen as weak and unsuccessful for some reason.
Financial success should prpbably be measured as how good you are with your budget, paying your taxes… Etc. Dare I say employee retention if you are a business owner.
Instead it is measured with possibly the worse data point, total value of assets.
Honestly going back with my analogy it’s as if we measured how good of a driver you are based on how fast you go from A to B while ignoring everything else.
In the game of money the simplest performance meter you could think of is the quantity of money you have. I doubt this can be changed.
Okay, but if you’re going to do that, those who pay more in taxes as a ratio to their net wealth should have more votes.
Also fuck shopify.
I think he may be onto something.
Perhaps there’s some way to tie the weight of your vote to the ratio of taxes paid divided by wealth?
So, if you have billions in assets+wages, but pay less taxes than a guy earning minimum wage, your vote would essentially be completely ignored.
The problem is that combines with progressive taxation to fuck over the poor. It would prioritize high income low investment people
I’d just cap the voting power bonus at ~1.5
If you pay taxes you should’ve higher voting power but not tremendously higher
Even simpler for me. Everyone gets one vote. You paying into social security? You get one more vote. We could break this down further to “is more than X% compensation social security payments”, but let’s keep it simple.
As much as we gripe, billionaires don’t influence votes as much as we think (they simply lobby whoever gets in later). Politicians influence votes and focus on the demographic who votes the most. Who happen to be the people who don’t need to plan around 8 hours of work in order to get to the polls. And those who won’t be around to see the fruits of their labors 20+ years later. Let’s reward those who work and need to face their future.
Under that idea, what happens to the vote of people who make too little to pay taxes? What if they don’t have taxes because they don’t have a job? What if you don’t pay taxes because you’re homeless and don’t have an address?
Well clearly, for those people the only fair way to handle it is to default to a vote weight of 1.0
