4 ms·
>if it makes a person worth ten million times as much worth twenty million times as much. But that never happens. Ten million multiplied by twenty million is 2
by perl4ever 6y ago
>if it makes a person worth ten million times as much worth twenty million times as much.
But that never happens. Ten million multiplied by twenty million is 200 trillion. You can't make 200 trillion dollars by taking a dollar away from a million people. Nobody has ever made 200 trillion dollars from anything, but if they did, it makes no sense to think there's some way it could be done by impoverishing a million people who have almost nothing. It sounds as illogical as the Matrix use of humans as batteries.
- chrisdirkis 6y agoI think you misparsed that sentence as "20 million as much [as 10 million as much as one of those people]", where it should be "20 million as much [of one of those people]". An x2 multiplier, instead of an x20 million one.
- perl4ever 6y agoWell, ok. Does it make any more sense? Trying to put it in concrete terms - Jeff Bezos has maybe $180B. One ten-millionth is $18K. So the scenario is, suppose Bezos got his $180B by taking $1800 each from a million people, who relied on that capital to live, and somehow multiplied it by ten. Since nearly everyone rich has less than Bezos, anything that happens a fair amount would involve smaller numbers. It's not as absurd as making $200 trillion, but it still doesn't sound to me like a thing that happens to the extent that it says something about economics or utilitarianism or whatever. It seems like a contrived trolley problem to me.