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No one should have a billion dollars
by door19 6y ago
No one should have a billion dollars
- yogthos 6y agoI think a better way to put it is that nobody should have a billion dollars more than another person. The wealth isn't the problem if it's distributed evenly. The problem has always been inequality. It would be a fantastic world where everyone could do anything they wanted and have as much agency over their lives as possible.
- zozbot234 6y ago> The wealth isn't the problem if it's distributed evenly. Isn't that what these billionaires are doing? Giving their money away. The more billionaires donate, the closer we get to your world where everyone has as much agency over their lives as possible. (Including the donors, of course.)
- ilikehurdles 6y agoAre they? Is wealth inequality decreasing? Those are rhetorical questions, of course. The answers are no, and no. If billionaires overall do tend to donate significant portions of their wealth, then the fact that wealth inequality is increasing in spite of that practice is hard evidence that individual charity is an ineffective means of lifting people out of poverty. If the converse is true -- that they aren't donating their wealth -- then that too suggests that something like a state is necessary to force their hand.
- zozbot234 6y agoIn all seriousness, the way wealth inequality is measured wouldn't tell you that in the first place. You'd have to look at consumption inequality, which would include stuff like Larry Ellison's yachts (on the "high inequality" side) and perhaps poor people's final consumption resulting from these donations (on the "low inequality" side).
- ilikehurdles 6y agoI never considered this as a potential measure, but it would be really good to track. Is this something you came up with or has there been any other work done to explore this notion of consumption equality?
- warent 6y agoThis is probably true. But given that we presently live in a world where billionaires do exist I dont think it does any harm to know which ones we can feel appreciative of. At least, that's how I use a list like this.
- asdff 6y agoThis list is damning to me. So much greed. Who cares if you donated 36 billion if you are removing 74 billion from circulation at the bottom and sitting on top of your pile like Smaug in the Hobbit.
- ggreer 6y agoYou have a fundamental misunderstanding of how wealth works. Wealth isn't conserved. It's created and destroyed. No billionaire has a pile of money or a bank account with $1 billion in it. Their wealth is in equity in the companies they've founded and run. It's invested- used for productive purposes such as building better software and services. Or scaling the number of Whole Foods delivery staff. Or building contact tracing apps. Even if you're perfectly greedy, hoarding wealth as a pile of cash or gold is a terrible idea. You'll end up with far more money if you invest it.
- s1t5 6y agoThat's just arbitrary. Is 999 million okay? Or is the threshold different? And if someone's net worth crosses the threshold where should the extra money go?