6 ms·
A more or less capitalist system is more or less self correcting. Yes, billionaires gain their wealth, and yes, workers, businesses and even governments can hav
by 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
A more or less capitalist system is more or less self correcting. Yes, billionaires gain their wealth, and yes, workers, businesses and even governments can have a poor experience with it in the process of the billionaire's company succeeding. The exploitation is real and should be discussed and appropriately addressed.
A couple of thoughts...
New, billion-dollar business are, many times, transformational. Amazon, Uber, AirBnb, DropBox and Stripe all transformed the market they profit from. For sure, it is difficult if not impossible to foresee how the business activities will impact the general population et al. Without foreseeing that impact, it's also difficult to mitigate the impact that the billionaire may genuinely have a moral reaction to. Is it not the nature of the beast to grow as fast as possible, damn all torpedoes, while investors and boards of directors push the business leadership forward? Running at an all out sprint means you have no opportunity to identify these moral slights, let alone address them. Perhaps the boards of directors needs a 'Moral Consequence Committee' to keep an eye on it on behalf of the CEO. I am not asking that rhetorically, by the way. Give it some thought.
The second thought is that in order for the business to prevail, it must provide real value to many, many customers and make their world a better place. Uber transformed the taxi experience and yes, may have wound up in the 'vehicular maintenance arbitrage' business for a while, but anyone with faith in market capitalism should believe that this will eventually balance out and Uber and its drivers will reach a mutually acceptable compensation level.
- camgunz 6y agoThey're not, really. They lend themselves to monopolies and oligopolies, and lead to high levels of capital concentration and thus income inequality. Government intervention is required to correct this, but hasn't in over 40 years. I'm more or less making an appeal to authority to Piketty here but, people generally agree with him.