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Billionaires are indeed citizens and no one is taking away their rights, per se. However, it is my opinion that as a class of people they should not exist (astu

Billionaires are indeed citizens and no one is taking away their rights, per se. However, it is my opinion that as a class of people they should not exist (astute readers know how to flag clear opinions so they need not always be noted as such for the sake of brevity). In 2018 the median household income in the US was $63,179 (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N; numbers from other sources vary a bit but all around that point), and of course most people don’t have much for savings. $1B : $63,179 :: $15,828 : $1. My household income is quite a bit above the median and puts me in the top few percentiles, depending on how one adjusts for location. I pay a fair bit in taxes. I feel plenty incentivized to work hard; I would like to earn more and have a bit more money. At the same time, I have been incredibly fortunate in a variety of ways. It is difficult for me to see any credible policy rationale for why anyone should have 10,000 times more money than the median American household (and that’s for a modest billionaire). The extralegal advantages that come with such wealth are considerable, and worthy of pejorative usage.

golemotron 6y ago
People shouldn't be allowed to be too tall either. No one deserves to be 6'3 when the average height is 5'7. The extralegal advantages that come with such height are considerable and worth correcting.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Aside from the fact that Elon was born into a wealthy family (which is vaguely like having tall genes, I guess?), he can discard his massive wealth at any moment with considerable ease compared to the task of somehow reducing your height from 6'3" to 5'7". He actively chose to accumulate wealth and hold onto it, there are plenty of successful businessmen who aren't billionaires or aspiring billionaires. Are you really going to pick height as a comparison point for being a billionaire? Did tall people take their height from short people? Is height taxed?
- brandonr49 6y ago
  I think this is a fantastic analogy, except instead of 5'7 and 6'3 it's 5'7 and 50,000' tall. You bet society would start to have some pretty interesting laws if there were a bunch of people running around that were ten thousand times the size of the median person. It would be agreed that people of this size, while capable of incredible things, present a significant problem for the general population and they consume A LOT of resources. Certainly the population would prefer if they were only 1000 feet tall, after all, it's impossible to maintain perspective if your head is in the clouds, far from the median person.
  - fragmede 6y ago
    https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ is a great visualization of just how wealthy one particular billionaire is. We're all closer to being millionaires than Jeff Bezos.
    - ntumlin 6y ago
      > We're all closer to being millionaires than Jeff Bezos. This is true in terms of orders of magnitude, but gets hilariously true when looking at the absolute numbers. The difference in wealth of a homeless person and a (barely) millionaire is about a million ($1,000,000). The difference in wealth of that millionaire and Jeff Bezos is about a Jeff Bezos ($138,999,000,000).
    - dmitrygr 6y ago
      That website rubs me the wrong way in so many ways - the premise of "what could we do with X% of $what_someone_who_is_not_me_owns" with no concern for the owner, and "no person deserves this much wealth" with no concern given to the very important question of: Who can judge what anyone "Deserves"?
      - bennyelv 6y ago
        The premise of your objection to it is that there is nothing of a higher moral status than protecting ownership of property. Why is that more important than any other moral axiom?
cft 6y ago
Should Isaac Newton have existed? He did more for humanity than an "average household" did by the same factor that Bezos is richer than an average household. Bezos allowed my (and millions of others') elderly parents to get food without leaving the house during the epidemics. Should he not be proportionally remunerated? Musk started electric car industry, that will help us to get off the oil. Was this a bit more than you did (since you are using your wealth as a yardstick in your reply)? Posts like yours are driven by envy.
- Slartie 6y ago
  Actually they wouldn't have needed Bezos for that. Online shops have been a thing before Amazon existed, and even today Amazon is not the only online shop, it's just the first that comes to the minds of most people. Do you also thank the marketers that made "Kleenex" a common word for paper towels to wipe your nose when you have a cold? Given Amazon's theoretical inexistence, others would have undoubtedly filled that void instantly, just like if Kleenex never existed. If anyone, thank Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the World Wide Web, without which none of the aforementioned online shops could exist. And last I checked he didn't become a mega-billionaire from that invention.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  The great man theory is overrated, and this case in particular because many of Newton's discoveries would have been found by his compatriots anyway- Leibniz already invented calculus independently of Newton, Hooke had developed theories of gravity at the same time of Principia Mathematica as well. If not Bezos, you'd be thanking the Waltons or Sol Price. If not Musk, then Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning- the engineers who actually founded Tesla.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > The great man theory is overrated It is more complex than you are making out. Cultures that denigrate the great men don’t produce as much or innovate as much as those that revere them.
    - 6y ago
Krustopolis 6y ago
What do you propose should happen in Bezos' case? Let's assume that he doesn't have $139B in the bank, but most of his wealth is the value of his Amazon stock. Should he be forced to give up his ownership in the company he built? I have heard people opine that people like Bezos should be taxed at 90%, but what if he doesn't sell his shares? If he wants to sell $10M or so to buy a nice house and a new car, do you think he doesn't deserve to do so? Where do you draw the line?
- dmitriid 6y ago
  With 139 billion he can buy a 10M home every day for 38 years straight. So yeah. A line can and should be drawn somewhere.
- josefx 6y ago
  > Should he be forced to give up his ownership in the company he built? How do you even picture that claim? Is it Bezos literally building every warehouse with his own two hands? Is it him being at a thousand places at once dealing with paperwork, marketing and packaging all by himself? For every billionaire out there there are thousands of workers that were denied their share of the success. I would say the only way someone could be a honest "self made" billionaire is by mugging an other billionaire in a dark alley.
  - anchpop 6y ago
    There's a colloquial sense of building something that doesn't require that you do 100% of the work yourself. For example, when people say they're building a house, almost always they're just hiring someone else to actually build it and all they've contributed was money. Besides that, there are some billionaires that did get their wealth honestly in my estimation, like JK Rowling and Markus Persson.
    - josefx 6y ago
      > JK Rowling A good point. I wasn't aware that she was a billionaire and she apparently gave most of it away by now, dropping her well bellow a billion again. > Markus Persson. I remember that there was a lot of controversy around Minecraft, but I can't accurately recall the details to counter that.
tirant 6y ago
Why shouldn't they exist? Are you really claiming that by accumulating certain amount of health you become harmful to society? If that is the case what would be that amount that you mention? $1,000,000,000 and what about $990,000,000? The accumulation of wealth by a single individual is not inherently harmful for society, it all comes down to the intention for which accumulation happens and how is that spent.
- concordDance 6y ago
  Accumulation of wealth by a single individual is a very inefficient distribution of resources (from a maximizing utility perspective) due to the diminishing value of each additional $.
  - tirant 6y ago
    That's a very strong assumption to make. Because you are putting a limit on the capabilities of an individual and the cost of the problems and projects thet may work on.
  - fidelramos 6y ago
    I don't think the accumulation is inefficient per se, it would depend on what the individual does with that wealth. Bezos or Musk invest that capital in productive enterprises, which arguably benefit society. Edit: typo.
- piva00 6y ago
  Accumulation of wealth can never be analysed in its own vacuum, because it does not exist in a vacuum. Present day accumulation of wealth creates a huge power imbalance, billionaires are citizens, just as I am, why should they have more power, as a citizen, than I do? If you defend that billionaires should exist then, in my opinion, it's required to design a way to protect the rest of society from this class of people amassing more and more power. The problem isn't money, it is our power structures. Right now, being a billionaire is almost inherently bad, every billionaire is a policy failure.
  - 6y ago

golemotron 6y ago

People shouldn't be allowed to be too tall either. No one deserves to be 6'3 when the average height is 5'7. The extralegal advantages that come with such height are considerable and worth correcting.

kevingadd 6y ago
Aside from the fact that Elon was born into a wealthy family (which is vaguely like having tall genes, I guess?), he can discard his massive wealth at any moment with considerable ease compared to the task of somehow reducing your height from 6'3" to 5'7". He actively chose to accumulate wealth and hold onto it, there are plenty of successful businessmen who aren't billionaires or aspiring billionaires. Are you really going to pick height as a comparison point for being a billionaire? Did tall people take their height from short people? Is height taxed?
brandonr49 6y ago
I think this is a fantastic analogy, except instead of 5'7 and 6'3 it's 5'7 and 50,000' tall. You bet society would start to have some pretty interesting laws if there were a bunch of people running around that were ten thousand times the size of the median person. It would be agreed that people of this size, while capable of incredible things, present a significant problem for the general population and they consume A LOT of resources. Certainly the population would prefer if they were only 1000 feet tall, after all, it's impossible to maintain perspective if your head is in the clouds, far from the median person.
- fragmede 6y ago
  https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ is a great visualization of just how wealthy one particular billionaire is. We're all closer to being millionaires than Jeff Bezos.
  - ntumlin 6y ago
    > We're all closer to being millionaires than Jeff Bezos. This is true in terms of orders of magnitude, but gets hilariously true when looking at the absolute numbers. The difference in wealth of a homeless person and a (barely) millionaire is about a million ($1,000,000). The difference in wealth of that millionaire and Jeff Bezos is about a Jeff Bezos ($138,999,000,000).
  - dmitrygr 6y ago
    That website rubs me the wrong way in so many ways - the premise of "what could we do with X% of $what_someone_who_is_not_me_owns" with no concern for the owner, and "no person deserves this much wealth" with no concern given to the very important question of: Who can judge what anyone "Deserves"?
    - bennyelv 6y ago
      The premise of your objection to it is that there is nothing of a higher moral status than protecting ownership of property. Why is that more important than any other moral axiom?

cft 6y ago

Should Isaac Newton have existed? He did more for humanity than an "average household" did by the same factor that Bezos is richer than an average household. Bezos allowed my (and millions of others') elderly parents to get food without leaving the house during the epidemics. Should he not be proportionally remunerated? Musk started electric car industry, that will help us to get off the oil. Was this a bit more than you did (since you are using your wealth as a yardstick in your reply)? Posts like yours are driven by envy.

Slartie 6y ago
Actually they wouldn't have needed Bezos for that. Online shops have been a thing before Amazon existed, and even today Amazon is not the only online shop, it's just the first that comes to the minds of most people. Do you also thank the marketers that made "Kleenex" a common word for paper towels to wipe your nose when you have a cold? Given Amazon's theoretical inexistence, others would have undoubtedly filled that void instantly, just like if Kleenex never existed. If anyone, thank Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the World Wide Web, without which none of the aforementioned online shops could exist. And last I checked he didn't become a mega-billionaire from that invention.
Apocryphon 6y ago
The great man theory is overrated, and this case in particular because many of Newton's discoveries would have been found by his compatriots anyway- Leibniz already invented calculus independently of Newton, Hooke had developed theories of gravity at the same time of Principia Mathematica as well. If not Bezos, you'd be thanking the Waltons or Sol Price. If not Musk, then Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning- the engineers who actually founded Tesla.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > The great man theory is overrated It is more complex than you are making out. Cultures that denigrate the great men don’t produce as much or innovate as much as those that revere them.
  - 6y ago

Krustopolis 6y ago

What do you propose should happen in Bezos' case? Let's assume that he doesn't have $139B in the bank, but most of his wealth is the value of his Amazon stock. Should he be forced to give up his ownership in the company he built? I have heard people opine that people like Bezos should be taxed at 90%, but what if he doesn't sell his shares? If he wants to sell $10M or so to buy a nice house and a new car, do you think he doesn't deserve to do so? Where do you draw the line?

dmitriid 6y ago
With 139 billion he can buy a 10M home every day for 38 years straight. So yeah. A line can and should be drawn somewhere.
josefx 6y ago
> Should he be forced to give up his ownership in the company he built? How do you even picture that claim? Is it Bezos literally building every warehouse with his own two hands? Is it him being at a thousand places at once dealing with paperwork, marketing and packaging all by himself? For every billionaire out there there are thousands of workers that were denied their share of the success. I would say the only way someone could be a honest "self made" billionaire is by mugging an other billionaire in a dark alley.
- anchpop 6y ago
  There's a colloquial sense of building something that doesn't require that you do 100% of the work yourself. For example, when people say they're building a house, almost always they're just hiring someone else to actually build it and all they've contributed was money. Besides that, there are some billionaires that did get their wealth honestly in my estimation, like JK Rowling and Markus Persson.
  - josefx 6y ago
    > JK Rowling A good point. I wasn't aware that she was a billionaire and she apparently gave most of it away by now, dropping her well bellow a billion again. > Markus Persson. I remember that there was a lot of controversy around Minecraft, but I can't accurately recall the details to counter that.

tirant 6y ago

Why shouldn't they exist? Are you really claiming that by accumulating certain amount of health you become harmful to society? If that is the case what would be that amount that you mention? $1,000,000,000 and what about $990,000,000? The accumulation of wealth by a single individual is not inherently harmful for society, it all comes down to the intention for which accumulation happens and how is that spent.

concordDance 6y ago
Accumulation of wealth by a single individual is a very inefficient distribution of resources (from a maximizing utility perspective) due to the diminishing value of each additional $.
- tirant 6y ago
  That's a very strong assumption to make. Because you are putting a limit on the capabilities of an individual and the cost of the problems and projects thet may work on.
- fidelramos 6y ago
  I don't think the accumulation is inefficient per se, it would depend on what the individual does with that wealth. Bezos or Musk invest that capital in productive enterprises, which arguably benefit society. Edit: typo.
piva00 6y ago
Accumulation of wealth can never be analysed in its own vacuum, because it does not exist in a vacuum. Present day accumulation of wealth creates a huge power imbalance, billionaires are citizens, just as I am, why should they have more power, as a citizen, than I do? If you defend that billionaires should exist then, in my opinion, it's required to design a way to protect the rest of society from this class of people amassing more and more power. The problem isn't money, it is our power structures. Right now, being a billionaire is almost inherently bad, every billionaire is a policy failure.
- 6y ago