You get to keep only enough to maintain a very modest lifestyle in a low-cost-of-living area, the rest of it has to go towards improving the world in some way.
Edit: Given the previous rules that you must maintain a very modest lifestyle in a low-cost-of-living area, would you rather choose to opt out and not have the money at all?
Great idea! But what happens then? There’d be some fear, but more importantly, a certain vacuum of power. How could you make sure another power-hungry, sociopathic populist wouldn’t rise? Or, again more importantly, make sure people cannot fall into these traps again, which only happens due to a lack of ideology, generalized ignorance and a belief in ‘moral relativism’ (among other issues)?
Btw, Frank Herbert explored this in Dune… it requires a virtually immortal prophet! 😅
People who seek power being more scared that being exploitative has consequences, so they limit exploitation.
It took hundreds of years of revolts to get from absolute monarchies to representative systems in most European countries. You could argue the French revolution failed because it was succeeded by Napoleon. You could also understand it as an important step forward.
Take another example in Europe. Initial plans were to create an US style capitalism in Western Germany after WW2. However it was understood this would create a large class of disenfranchised and poor people. This would have given communism a chance to become the dominating ideology in Europe. So instead capitalism had to be coated with social security, access to opportunities by education, access to home ownership… Structures that were subsequently damaged and destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union as now the ruling class thought themselves to be able to exploit people with impunity. Something that will fail eventually, but get much worse until then.
It is like brushing your teeth. Yes they will get dirty again. But not having the perfect solution to keep them clean forever cannot dissuade you from brushing them regularly. On the contrary it makes it all the more important to keep brushing them.
Or you just bias the power vacuum to be filled with even more paranoid and ruthless nutjobs, because the more sensible psychopaths choose to avoid the consequences you are proposing. We see this fairly consistently when authoritarian governments get coup’d - the person most likely to take the place of a bloodthirsty dictator who knows he could get assassinated at any moment is an even more bloodthirsty future dictator.
When authoritarian governments get coup’d and there is external influence seeking to further destabilize. Also every authoritarian dictator needs a class of people loyal to the regime, who fall into the category of people wanting power but also staying alive.
We also see many dictators that got more paranoid over time as they ruled too long, because there was no opposition to keep them in check until things exploded fully.
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Not my problem because I would have to die too.