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> Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who believe it should be take

> Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who believe it should be taken away from them to justify that. This is a great example of status quo bias. You believe that the onus of arguing ethics is on the people who want to change the status quo when really, we should start by thinking about what society ought to look like from first principles. And then you absolutely do have to give arguments for why you want any inequality to exist in the first place, let alone billionaires.[0] > It's not a shame that there exist billionaires. It's a shame that there exist people with nothing. The former doesn't need fixing; the latter absolutely does. While I'd agree that the latter problem is more urgent, the former can't be dismissed so easily, either. For one, the existence of billionaires (and upper-range millionaires, really) is pretty antithetical to one of the foundational principles of democracy, which is "one person one vote". It gets even worse when you consider the possibility and practice of inheritance. And besides, some people might argue that if we didn't have the former problem, it might be easier to tackle the latter -- because when there is less inequality, there tends to be less focus on wasteful jockeying for social status overall, and then people might be more inclined to help those that are below themselves on the social ladder. [0] There are good arguments in favor of some inequality, but the degree of it is pretty important.

oldsklgdfth 9y ago
> And then you absolutely do have to give arguments for why you want any inequality to exist in the first place I'm not in favor of inequality, but I can't disregard the fact that it is naturally occuring in most realms. From geography, to agriculture, to education, to skill, etc. If there is one principle that I think is true is that in nature there is a complete lack of equality, yet there is balance. I understand that equality is an ideal that we aspire toward. But it almost seems arbitrary and forced when you consider that systems don't inheritely have equality built into them. Sorry if this doesn't make sense, just trying to spark conversation.
sergiosgc 9y ago
> You believe that the onus of arguing ethics is on the people who want to change the status quo when really, we should start by thinking about what society ought to look like from first principles. And then you absolutely do have to give arguments for why you want any inequality to exist in the first place, let alone billionaires.[0] Interesting challenge, taking a look at the need for inequality based on first principles. Let me attempt my hand at it. If you look at a capitalist economy as an optimization mechanism, large wealth concentrations are sources for large jumps in the solution space that escape local maximums. Explaining why: Start by ignoring the comfort providing aspect of wealth. At these levels, wealth is more about power to shape society than it is about personal comfort. On the personal comfort scale, you get diminishing returns as you spend more. In terms of shaping society, a billionaire has more power than a millionaire. Whereas, for a large project, a millionaire must convince other millionaires to share the risk, a billionaire may throw himself on a tangent all on his own. This single-mind behaviour, when compared to group-mind behaviour, produces solutions that are a lot different from the status quo. In terms of optimization, they are larger jumps in the coordinate space. Now, these large jumps in the solution coordinate space may be beneficial, may be dangerous, or altogether innocuous. Most are innocuous, some are wildly positive (Tesla pushing the auto market to move towards electric traction), some are wildly negative (Koch brothers capturing government). The question of whether the final balance is positive or negative is an extremely difficult question. We're talking about very rare events in the optimization of very complex systems. So, I have a very nice, useless theory :-)
njarboe 9y ago
Democracy should be a tool not a religion. I'm pretty glad Elon Musk had $100 million to save Space X and Tesla during the financial crash.
unethical_ban 9y ago
Equality of resources and status, or equality of opportunity? Some people are worse than others. Some people are less useful to society than others, though that doesn't make them worse. Some people, given large amounts of money, can do amazing things for the world. On a whim, I can think of Elon Musk. If he weren't allowed to have his fortune from Paypal because inequality is unethical... who would have gotten that money? A government? What would they have done with that money? And why is government/the public always the best decider of how wealth is spent? Your argument may be reasonable in degrees: Who needs $500 billion dollars? Should there be a legal requirement to invest that money in the public at a certain point, if it isn't taxed directly? I don't know. But I believe inequality is ethical and necessary.
- nhaehnle 9y ago
  Equality of resources and status, or equality of opportunity? Both, for two main groups of reason. The first one is that when the available positions in society are highly unequal, then equality of opportunity may simply not be enough for a fair outcome, as who ends up in the comfortable and high-status position ends up largely being down to mere luck. The second one is that (at least as long as families and inheritance are a thing) the two are linked anyway. Inequality of resources and status is the leading cause of inequality of opportunity, after all. You basically have to either go Brave New World or increase equality of resources in generation N in order to make serious progress towards equality of opportunity in generation N+1. And we agree that a lot of it is about a matter of degree -- I've said as much in my original post, after all :)

oldsklgdfth 9y ago

> And then you absolutely do have to give arguments for why you want any inequality to exist in the first place I'm not in favor of inequality, but I can't disregard the fact that it is naturally occuring in most realms. From geography, to agriculture, to education, to skill, etc. If there is one principle that I think is true is that in nature there is a complete lack of equality, yet there is balance. I understand that equality is an ideal that we aspire toward. But it almost seems arbitrary and forced when you consider that systems don't inheritely have equality built into them. Sorry if this doesn't make sense, just trying to spark conversation.

sergiosgc 9y ago

> You believe that the onus of arguing ethics is on the people who want to change the status quo when really, we should start by thinking about what society ought to look like from first principles. And then you absolutely do have to give arguments for why you want any inequality to exist in the first place, let alone billionaires.[0] Interesting challenge, taking a look at the need for inequality based on first principles. Let me attempt my hand at it. If you look at a capitalist economy as an optimization mechanism, large wealth concentrations are sources for large jumps in the solution space that escape local maximums. Explaining why: Start by ignoring the comfort providing aspect of wealth. At these levels, wealth is more about power to shape society than it is about personal comfort. On the personal comfort scale, you get diminishing returns as you spend more. In terms of shaping society, a billionaire has more power than a millionaire. Whereas, for a large project, a millionaire must convince other millionaires to share the risk, a billionaire may throw himself on a tangent all on his own. This single-mind behaviour, when compared to group-mind behaviour, produces solutions that are a lot different from the status quo. In terms of optimization, they are larger jumps in the coordinate space. Now, these large jumps in the solution coordinate space may be beneficial, may be dangerous, or altogether innocuous. Most are innocuous, some are wildly positive (Tesla pushing the auto market to move towards electric traction), some are wildly negative (Koch brothers capturing government). The question of whether the final balance is positive or negative is an extremely difficult question. We're talking about very rare events in the optimization of very complex systems. So, I have a very nice, useless theory :-)

njarboe 9y ago

Democracy should be a tool not a religion. I'm pretty glad Elon Musk had $100 million to save Space X and Tesla during the financial crash.

unethical_ban 9y ago

Equality of resources and status, or equality of opportunity? Some people are worse than others. Some people are less useful to society than others, though that doesn't make them worse. Some people, given large amounts of money, can do amazing things for the world. On a whim, I can think of Elon Musk. If he weren't allowed to have his fortune from Paypal because inequality is unethical... who would have gotten that money? A government? What would they have done with that money? And why is government/the public always the best decider of how wealth is spent? Your argument may be reasonable in degrees: Who needs $500 billion dollars? Should there be a legal requirement to invest that money in the public at a certain point, if it isn't taxed directly? I don't know. But I believe inequality is ethical and necessary.

nhaehnle 9y ago
Equality of resources and status, or equality of opportunity? Both, for two main groups of reason. The first one is that when the available positions in society are highly unequal, then equality of opportunity may simply not be enough for a fair outcome, as who ends up in the comfortable and high-status position ends up largely being down to mere luck. The second one is that (at least as long as families and inheritance are a thing) the two are linked anyway. Inequality of resources and status is the leading cause of inequality of opportunity, after all. You basically have to either go Brave New World or increase equality of resources in generation N in order to make serious progress towards equality of opportunity in generation N+1. And we agree that a lot of it is about a matter of degree -- I've said as much in my original post, after all :)