6 ms·

No one should be a billionaire

18 points by gilad 7y ago

sandstrom 7y ago
“Is anyone willing to defend the idea that any human being is really able to provide society with labor that is 300 times more useful than another's?” Not too hard to come up with examples. A Western Medicin doctor (vs. some homœopathy ditto). An inventor of something useful, etc. It’s also weird to compare a few CEOs with all farmers and ask who we’d miss more. A fair comparison would be a to compare the same amount of people in the two groups and ask who you’d miss more. There are some intriguing issues around inequality. I think there are some obvious problems with how the US and other countries are wired, but this article isn’t intellectually honest enough to provide an interesting argument.
- VvR-Ox 7y ago
  While I think you are right about this comparison, I still believe the initial hypothesis is a good one: "Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?" No matter what the rest of the article tells us or asks (because there is just no definitive answer) we have to see if there is moral/logical arguments why people should have so much more than others in a world where people still starve and children can't afford to go to school. Some of those super rich people didn't even earn that money themselves, others don't deserve it just because of the way they got it.
  - hgjhghkjgk 7y ago
    Well, the question could be asked - "does anyone deserve a million dollars?" Even if we agree that no one should have a billion dollars, where would we draw a line here? half a billion? 100 million? 1 million? 100 thousand? I feel such arguments are so superficial. Billionaires are economical human anomalies. While they are easier to point and say that they are the cause of human greed and they need to do more for the society - IMO, the better question to ask is 1. how can we uplift the bottom echelon of the society and fix the systemic issues that put them in the poverty cycle. 2. Would we shit on billionaires and millionaires less if overall poverty in the world declines? 3. How can government programs become more efficient? I just feel asking questions like 'should billionaires exist' do not push forward the discussion about bringing in systemic changes. Targetting them only gives a superfical understanding of what's wrong and gives an easy way out of the discussion.
    - VvR-Ox 7y ago
      I agree. The main reason for over-population is the lack of enough wealth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility) and I think this is important for the ongoing inheritance of poverty. 1. The systemic issue is that there is no one on earth who stops powerful companies and individuals from the reckless exploitation of the poor (and those who really think they aren't poor). No police, no government etc. seems to take care of this issue. Instead the majority of them is just a step-stone on the way for rich entities to gain much more power and wealth. 2. Of course it wouldn't be that obvious as an imbalance. It's a problem of distribution of wealth and the most important thing here is the ratio: - How many poor vs. how many (super) rich? - How much is the difference of their wealth and what consequences occur in their lives because of that? As long as children starve because they don't have food in my opinion it's perverted and ugly that people have money they don't even know what to spend on. From the view of "overall fairness" it's so unfair that it's unbearable to keep that thought in your mind for a longer period if you have moral integrity (most humans have that in some way). 3. Government Programs huh? They aren't designed to be efficiently and they aren't backed by science. That's the case on most places on earth. Govt's seem to be controlled or at least influenced in many dimensions by "big money". When you look around the world, especially at democracies who demand to be democratic (wow!) you'll see the more wealth entities have, the more they can influence any political decision. I don't know how to break this devil's circle but if it doesn't happen I see a lot of (innocent) blood in the near future. There has been discussions about the change of systems, governments and society for so long but the development is not happening in the way some big minds and honest people have hoped for. E.g. everything that can be tagged with "social reforms" will be drowned in pseudo-arguments: * social = socialist = communist (even today you evoke fear with that in most US citizens and also parts of EU) * social = non-productive (no goods to sell); Too many have this micro-economic view and disregard the macro-economic effects * social = expensive when done in a proper way; I could go on with this but it tires and saddens me to even think about it. I had to watch this the most of my life and while the elders had enough to live when I grew up today I see them scavenging in the city. It just get's worse and while this political way doesn't seem to work I think some day we'll reach a critical mass of hungry and angry people who will just take what they deserve.
- sliken 7y ago
  Well sure, some people have outlandishly large benefits to the world. But those people depend on a huge pyramid of farmers, factory workers, public service workers, teachers, mailman, etc to enable them to spend their lives in whatever specialty. A billion $ is a pretty mind boggling amount of money, pretty foreign to the experience of most of us. Imagine buying a $75k luxury car every month... for 50 years.... on less than 5% of your money. Or even a $650k house, in every state, every year, for 25 years. Or both.
tty2300 7y ago
The article mentions that CEOs are not important to a company, if that was true why would they hire a CEO instead of 300 more full time employees. Obviously there must be some huge value to having a single person direct the company.
sliken 7y ago
If Elon musk wasn't allowed to be a billionaire would we have Tesla? SpaceX? Would Amazon exist? Companies like Amazon are efficient leaders in their segment. Was it just the first movers advantage? Or could a random parade of CEOs have achieved the same thing? I think a more useful question is, should we allow billionaire's that don't produce anything. Seems like inheritances, manipulating the stock market, and related aren't actually benefiting the world compared to Amazon or Tesla.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  Yes, these companies would still exist because people are driven by achievements and competition, and would presumably still be able to become extremely rich. If you have 50-100 million dollars, you've more than made it financially. So "no one should be a billionaire" should come with "where do you put the threshold?" It would also seem very difficult to prevent people from being shareholders in their own companies. Most of the wealth of e.g. Bezos comes from his Amazon shares.
  - sliken 7y ago
    Dunno. People thought it was crazy to start an electric car company. Electric cars were horribly impractical, and nobody has started a new car company in the USA in many decades. Now of course that Tesla has demonstrated that it can be done, there's many similar attempts (like Rivian). It's not clear to me that we could have a Tesla without having Elon much with a few billion in his pocket.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      Mmm, there were electric car companies in the US before Tesla, started within a decade of Tesla. AC Propulsion (1997) tried producing the t0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero In January 1996, Corbin Motors began work on developing an electric vehicle. The Sparrow passed final testing for Department of Transportation certification in April 1999. In September of that year, the Sparrow production line began manufacturing multiple vehicles in Hollister, California. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_Motors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_Motors They weren't successful, but that's different than your point about "nobody has started a new car company in the USA in many decades".
Isinlor 7y ago
No person is actually owning billions in the way a normal person is owning 100$. There is just no way to spend a billion dollars by consuming. There is no diner that you can eat that will cost a million dollars. So, what does it mean for a person to be a billionaire? It means that they control resources. Organizations, human resources, intellectual property, land, minerals. Controlling resources is freaking hard. A random, average person who wins in lotto will most likely lose their wealth as soon as they start trying to do anything ambitious with it because controlling big amounts of money is very difficult. Self-made billionaires are proven to be very, very good or even extremely good at controlling resources. They managed to change 100 000 dollars, into 100 million dollars, into 1 billion dollars. That means that other people decided to give them control over these resources (or may be willing to) in exchange for something that they considered equal value. They made and control something of value and are proven to be good at doing that. So assuming that market value is well aligned with more general societal wealth, I'm happy that billionaires do control resources. Not because it's fair or not fair, but because they are good at that. They are better than officials that we can elect or choose based on some other bureaucratic processes. Are they perfect? Certainly not. Is the market aligned with the interests of society? Generally yes, with big exceptions. There are some other conclusions, for example, children of billionaires are not proven to be extremely good at doing anything by being their children. Therefore, we may have some better ways of controlling billions that their parents controlled.
- locopati 7y ago
  Are you saying that because they're really good a controlling resources, even if they do unethical or horrible things with those resources, that's okay, because they're really good at it? I'd question whether "Is the market aligned with the interests of society?" is really true given, for example, unaccounted for externalities like global warming.
- viklove 7y ago
  > Is the market aligned with the interests of society? Generally yes, with big exceptions. I think recent history has shown us that the answer is "Generally, no."

18 points by gilad 7y ago

“Is anyone willing to defend the idea that any human being is really able to provide society with labor that is 300 times more useful than another's?” Not too hard to come up with examples. A Western Medicin doctor (vs. some homœopathy ditto). An inventor of something useful, etc. It’s also weird to compare a few CEOs with all farmers and ask who we’d miss more. A fair comparison would be a to compare the same amount of people in the two groups and ask who you’d miss more. There are some intriguing issues around inequality. I think there are some obvious problems with how the US and other countries are wired, but this article isn’t intellectually honest enough to provide an interesting argument.

VvR-Ox 7y ago
While I think you are right about this comparison, I still believe the initial hypothesis is a good one: "Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?" No matter what the rest of the article tells us or asks (because there is just no definitive answer) we have to see if there is moral/logical arguments why people should have so much more than others in a world where people still starve and children can't afford to go to school. Some of those super rich people didn't even earn that money themselves, others don't deserve it just because of the way they got it.
- hgjhghkjgk 7y ago
  Well, the question could be asked - "does anyone deserve a million dollars?" Even if we agree that no one should have a billion dollars, where would we draw a line here? half a billion? 100 million? 1 million? 100 thousand? I feel such arguments are so superficial. Billionaires are economical human anomalies. While they are easier to point and say that they are the cause of human greed and they need to do more for the society - IMO, the better question to ask is 1. how can we uplift the bottom echelon of the society and fix the systemic issues that put them in the poverty cycle. 2. Would we shit on billionaires and millionaires less if overall poverty in the world declines? 3. How can government programs become more efficient? I just feel asking questions like 'should billionaires exist' do not push forward the discussion about bringing in systemic changes. Targetting them only gives a superfical understanding of what's wrong and gives an easy way out of the discussion.
  - VvR-Ox 7y ago
    I agree. The main reason for over-population is the lack of enough wealth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility) and I think this is important for the ongoing inheritance of poverty. 1. The systemic issue is that there is no one on earth who stops powerful companies and individuals from the reckless exploitation of the poor (and those who really think they aren't poor). No police, no government etc. seems to take care of this issue. Instead the majority of them is just a step-stone on the way for rich entities to gain much more power and wealth. 2. Of course it wouldn't be that obvious as an imbalance. It's a problem of distribution of wealth and the most important thing here is the ratio: - How many poor vs. how many (super) rich? - How much is the difference of their wealth and what consequences occur in their lives because of that? As long as children starve because they don't have food in my opinion it's perverted and ugly that people have money they don't even know what to spend on. From the view of "overall fairness" it's so unfair that it's unbearable to keep that thought in your mind for a longer period if you have moral integrity (most humans have that in some way). 3. Government Programs huh? They aren't designed to be efficiently and they aren't backed by science. That's the case on most places on earth. Govt's seem to be controlled or at least influenced in many dimensions by "big money". When you look around the world, especially at democracies who demand to be democratic (wow!) you'll see the more wealth entities have, the more they can influence any political decision. I don't know how to break this devil's circle but if it doesn't happen I see a lot of (innocent) blood in the near future. There has been discussions about the change of systems, governments and society for so long but the development is not happening in the way some big minds and honest people have hoped for. E.g. everything that can be tagged with "social reforms" will be drowned in pseudo-arguments: * social = socialist = communist (even today you evoke fear with that in most US citizens and also parts of EU) * social = non-productive (no goods to sell); Too many have this micro-economic view and disregard the macro-economic effects * social = expensive when done in a proper way; I could go on with this but it tires and saddens me to even think about it. I had to watch this the most of my life and while the elders had enough to live when I grew up today I see them scavenging in the city. It just get's worse and while this political way doesn't seem to work I think some day we'll reach a critical mass of hungry and angry people who will just take what they deserve.
sliken 7y ago
Well sure, some people have outlandishly large benefits to the world. But those people depend on a huge pyramid of farmers, factory workers, public service workers, teachers, mailman, etc to enable them to spend their lives in whatever specialty. A billion $ is a pretty mind boggling amount of money, pretty foreign to the experience of most of us. Imagine buying a $75k luxury car every month... for 50 years.... on less than 5% of your money. Or even a $650k house, in every state, every year, for 25 years. Or both.

tty2300 7y ago

The article mentions that CEOs are not important to a company, if that was true why would they hire a CEO instead of 300 more full time employees. Obviously there must be some huge value to having a single person direct the company.

sliken 7y ago

If Elon musk wasn't allowed to be a billionaire would we have Tesla? SpaceX? Would Amazon exist? Companies like Amazon are efficient leaders in their segment. Was it just the first movers advantage? Or could a random parade of CEOs have achieved the same thing? I think a more useful question is, should we allow billionaire's that don't produce anything. Seems like inheritances, manipulating the stock market, and related aren't actually benefiting the world compared to Amazon or Tesla.

mytailorisrich 7y ago
Yes, these companies would still exist because people are driven by achievements and competition, and would presumably still be able to become extremely rich. If you have 50-100 million dollars, you've more than made it financially. So "no one should be a billionaire" should come with "where do you put the threshold?" It would also seem very difficult to prevent people from being shareholders in their own companies. Most of the wealth of e.g. Bezos comes from his Amazon shares.
- sliken 7y ago
  Dunno. People thought it was crazy to start an electric car company. Electric cars were horribly impractical, and nobody has started a new car company in the USA in many decades. Now of course that Tesla has demonstrated that it can be done, there's many similar attempts (like Rivian). It's not clear to me that we could have a Tesla without having Elon much with a few billion in his pocket.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    Mmm, there were electric car companies in the US before Tesla, started within a decade of Tesla. AC Propulsion (1997) tried producing the t0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero In January 1996, Corbin Motors began work on developing an electric vehicle. The Sparrow passed final testing for Department of Transportation certification in April 1999. In September of that year, the Sparrow production line began manufacturing multiple vehicles in Hollister, California. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_Motors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers_Motors They weren't successful, but that's different than your point about "nobody has started a new car company in the USA in many decades".

Isinlor 7y ago

No person is actually owning billions in the way a normal person is owning 100$. There is just no way to spend a billion dollars by consuming. There is no diner that you can eat that will cost a million dollars. So, what does it mean for a person to be a billionaire? It means that they control resources. Organizations, human resources, intellectual property, land, minerals. Controlling resources is freaking hard. A random, average person who wins in lotto will most likely lose their wealth as soon as they start trying to do anything ambitious with it because controlling big amounts of money is very difficult. Self-made billionaires are proven to be very, very good or even extremely good at controlling resources. They managed to change 100 000 dollars, into 100 million dollars, into 1 billion dollars. That means that other people decided to give them control over these resources (or may be willing to) in exchange for something that they considered equal value. They made and control something of value and are proven to be good at doing that. So assuming that market value is well aligned with more general societal wealth, I'm happy that billionaires do control resources. Not because it's fair or not fair, but because they are good at that. They are better than officials that we can elect or choose based on some other bureaucratic processes. Are they perfect? Certainly not. Is the market aligned with the interests of society? Generally yes, with big exceptions. There are some other conclusions, for example, children of billionaires are not proven to be extremely good at doing anything by being their children. Therefore, we may have some better ways of controlling billions that their parents controlled.

locopati 7y ago
Are you saying that because they're really good a controlling resources, even if they do unethical or horrible things with those resources, that's okay, because they're really good at it? I'd question whether "Is the market aligned with the interests of society?" is really true given, for example, unaccounted for externalities like global warming.
viklove 7y ago
> Is the market aligned with the interests of society? Generally yes, with big exceptions. I think recent history has shown us that the answer is "Generally, no."