Yes, because money == power, and lobbying is legal. If you had progressive taxation that would essentially prevent any entity from acquiring power to rival the state. The inherent weakness of democracies is that they require constant care and attention. If you look away for a second, there is going to be some corporation trying to re-write the tax code or do away with regulations.

> If you had progressive taxation that would essentially prevent any entity from acquiring power to rival the state.

We have progressive taxation. That doesn't matter because fixed costs are fixed.

If it costs $30,000/year to live, someone who makes $30,000/year will accumulate no wealth even if you tax them at 0%, because all of their income is going to food and rent and utilities. Whereas someone who makes a billion dollars a year will accumulate wealth even if you tax them at 90%, because the remaining 10% is still a hundred million dollars and after you subtract out $30,000, or even $250,000, there is still nearly the entire hundred million dollars left. Then that hundred million dollars collects interest every year going forward.

Trying to use taxation also ignores that the problem isn't actually billionaires. Corporations have more money than any individual, but the largest ones are publicly traded, so that would still be the case even if no individual shareholder had a lot of wealth. Because the corporation would, and its executives would thereby be in control of those resources and use them to capture the government.

It also ignores that you don't have to be a single entity to capture the government. For example, many professional licensing requirements purposely take a long time to satisfy (e.g. multi-year apprenticeship requirements) to create barriers to entering those trades. Not because General Electric wants to limit the supply of electricians, but because local electricians do, and together they represent a significant voting block. Landlords and homeowners capture zoning boards to inhibit housing construction, not because any of them individually have a monopoly, but because they all want housing prices to go up at the expense of people outside the local jurisdiction who have been priced out of the local area by the zoning restrictions and thereby don't get a vote.

> If you look away for a second, there is going to be some corporation trying to re-write the tax code or do away with regulations.

Why is it that the largest corporations and most corrupt organizations are the ones asking for regulations? DMCA 1201 wasn't enacted out of popular demand. The National Association of Realtors hasn't been lobbying to relax zoning rules. The telcos are the ones who want those laws prohibiting anybody from competing with them. Certificate of Need laws don't exist for the benefit of the public.

Corrupt regulations don't exist because of oversized corporations, oversized corporations exist because of corrupt regulations. If the megacorps didn't exist, all it would take is for some small organization with contacts to a powerful legislator to get something snuck into a bill, and soon the small organization is a megacorp with the power to keep those laws on the books. There were no trillion dollar corporations in 1913 or 1791, but there was Congress, so we don't have to wonder which came first.

What you need is to constrain the legislators from passing those laws to begin with, regardless of whether they start off at the behest of a billionaire or a trade organization or just the Senator's brother-in-law.

>We have progressive taxation.

In the US it stops at ~35. Lets go all the way to 100%.

> Then that hundred million dollars collects interest every year going forward.

The progressive capital gains taxes also need to go up to 100%.

>Corporations have more money than any individual, but the largest ones are publicly traded, so that would still be the case even if no individual shareholder had a lot of wealth. Because the corporation would, and its executives would thereby be in control of those resources and use them to capture the government.

That is why we have monopoly laws. The point isn't that corporations should not accumulate wealth, the point is that the state should not have a rival in terms of power.

>Why is it that the largest corporations and most corrupt organizations are the ones asking for regulations?

Sure, they want regulations that build a moat, they don't want regulations that reduce their wealth. I'm talking about the latter.

>What you need is to constrain the legislators from passing those laws to begin with, regardless of whether they start off at the behest of a billionaire or a trade organization or just the Senator's brother-in-law.

Yes, and campaign finance reform would reduce some of this donor/lobby culture. Fixed amount of ad-spend per candidate, no PACs, etc.

> In the US it stops at ~35. Lets go all the way to 100%.

What do you think the result of that would be? Anyone who can provide value to someone else in that tax bracket couldn't be paid for it, so they'd arrange to be compensated in some other way.

The most likely way is favors. That is not likely to reduce corruption.

> The progressive capital gains taxes also need to go up to 100%.

So now you're doing one of two things. If unrealized capital gains aren't taxed until the shares are sold (as is the case now), nobody would ever sell, because all of the money would be taken as tax. If they are, you have all the problems with trying to value a capital asset which is not being traded, and on top of that then people would establish their companies as a non-profit (since they can't keep the profits anyway) and we're back to compensation as favors.

> That is why we have monopoly laws.

But how do you enforce them once there is an incumbent monopolist using its power to corrupt the system? That is the problem already, you need some solution to it.

> The point isn't that corporations should not accumulate wealth, the point is that the state should not have a rival in terms of power.

That seems like a bad thing. Then what is the check on the state if it becomes authoritarian? All concentrated power is bad, not just corporations.

> Sure, they want regulations that build a moat, they don't want regulations that reduce their wealth. I'm talking about the latter.

They're more than willing to pay their lawyers to draft something which claims to be the latter and is actually the former. That is how the majority of such regulations are enacted. They don't call it the "reduce competition in telecommunications act" now do they?

> Yes, and campaign finance reform would reduce some of this donor/lobby culture. Fixed amount of ad-spend per candidate, no PACs, etc.

This was never really the problem. The reason politicians are beholden to Google or Apple isn't just that the company buys ads, it's that the company buys ad networks, and YouTube, and chooses which apps to evict which controls what constituents see and hear. A corporation can spend money lobbying but it can just as well spend money buying a major media outlet or social media site.

What you need to do is constrain the government from having the power to pass laws that constrain competition. Because otherwise they will. Politicians will never be angels, the best they can be is the subjects of the people instead of their rulers.