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why is hoarding an appropriate word to describe what extremely rich people are doing with their wealth? is jeff bezos hiding a huge company in his basement?
by leetcrew 6y ago
why is hoarding an appropriate word to describe what extremely rich people are doing with their wealth? is jeff bezos hiding a huge company in his basement?
- danaris 6y agoBecause the only way to have that much in the first place is to decide "I will be keeping this, rather than using some significant portion of it to make the world a better place." Like, for instance, by paying all Amazon workers enough, hiring enough that you don't have to schedule them so strictly that they don't have time to pee, not deliberately copying and undercutting independent products sold on Amazon...
- leetcrew 6y agoI see what you're saying in a "squint hard enough" sort of way, but I still don't think "hoarding" is a good way of describing it. "hoarding" is holding onto some useful thing, but without using it yourself or allowing others to do so. if I converted all my savings to cash and hid it under my mattress or owned a house that I neither lived in nor rented out, that would be hoarding. I don't think this accurately describes owning a huge amount of company stock. I'm sure jeff bezos tries to keep his assets in use as much as possible. the issue is not that he is "hoarding" them, but rather that he is not choosing to use them in the way that you or I would prefer. mere semantics perhaps, but I suspect a lot of people read these sorts of sentences uncritically and come away with the impression that billionaires are just sitting on massive piles of idle cash.