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If what you say is true, billionaires who inherit their money should also be among the most ethical. Is that what you believe?

KozmoNau7 5y ago
Everyone who inherited that sort of wealth was brought up and raised by billionaires, they were literally brought up in that worldview from the day they were born. There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire, that's the whole problem, that such wealth can only be amassed by unethical means.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  What did JK Rowling do that was unethical? How about Paul McCartney? Oprah?
  - davidcbc 5y ago
    Kept more money than they could ever possibly need while others starve.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Then you agree that "such wealth can only be amassed by unethical means" is not correct.
- qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
  Is there such a thing as an ethical thousandaire? Millionaire? If you think there is, why can't there be ethical billionaires? An ethical billionaire is just an ethical millionaire who kept working to make the source of their income grow until it grew 1000x as large. Big businesses are generally more ethical than little ones -- subject to more customer and regulatory scrutiny. It's much easier for a small business to get away with flouting environmental regulations or treating its employees harshly. (When's the last time the manager at a tiny roadside restaurant got fired for sexually harassing his employees?) This increased level of scrutiny means it is easier to bring to mind examples of unethical behavior by large businesses even if the actual rate is about the same. The media is biased to cover misdeeds by billionaires due to billionairephobia, the same way it is biased to cover misdeeds by Black people due to racism.
  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    The only way to amass that sort of wealth is to exploit the labor of others. There are countless examples. Amazon warehouse employees not being allotted time to go to the bathroom, while Jeff Bezos buys a $165 million mansion in LA, not to mention the endemic underpayment and disregard for physical and mental stress. Richard Branson forcing his employees on 8 weeks of unpaid leave, while he's sitting comfortably on a fortune that means he doesn't have to care. Steve Jobs building the wealthiest company in the world and becoming a billionaire, while their subcontractors install suicide preventing nets on their factories. Simply the fact that some people are amassing such wealth, while millions of people in the world starve and cannot access even basic education or healthcare. That alone makes being a billionaire unethical, by default. > "The media is biased to cover misdeeds by billionaires due to billionairephobia, the same way it is biased to cover misdeeds by Black people due to racism." Excuse me, but did you just compare literally the most privileged human beings to ever exist in all of history, to people who have been historically downtrodden and subjugated for hundreds of years due to their ethnicity? The mind boggles at what a temporarily embarrassed billionaire can delude themselves into thinking.
    - qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
      "Excuse me, but did you just compare the number 1 to the number 1000 by pointing out that they are both positive integers?" The point I am making is simple. There are approaching 3,000 billionaires worldwide. Suppose 90% are upstanding and 10% are unethical. That's 300 unethical billionaires. Suppose each unethical billionaire does just 1-2 unethical things per year, that is plenty of "unethical billionaire" stories for journalists to write about an unethical billionaire every day if they want. You write: "The only way to amass that sort of wealth is to exploit the labor of others." Then you cite a few examples of billionaires behaving, in your view, unethically. That's very nice, but to prove your claim, you need to show that every billionaire has done this. You mentioned 3 billionaires. With about 3,000 worldwide, you are about 0.1% of the way there. But the examples you've provided so far don't even pass the sniff test. Example: "ABC News[47] and The Economist[48] both conducted comparisons, and found that although the number of workplace suicides at Foxconn was large in absolute terms, the suicide rate was actually lower than the overall suicide rate of China[49] or the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides#Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides#Analysis >Simply the fact that some people are amassing such wealth, while millions of people in the world starve and cannot access even basic education or healthcare. That alone makes being a billionaire unethical, by default. This argument only applies to billionaires who haven't signed the giving pledge. Those I will agree with you on. However, it would be highly unethical to tax away the wealth of those who have signed the Giving Pledge, in order to provide even more goodies for Americans who are already quite wealthy by global standards.

KozmoNau7 5y ago

Everyone who inherited that sort of wealth was brought up and raised by billionaires, they were literally brought up in that worldview from the day they were born. There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire, that's the whole problem, that such wealth can only be amassed by unethical means.

WalterBright 5y ago
What did JK Rowling do that was unethical? How about Paul McCartney? Oprah?
- davidcbc 5y ago
  Kept more money than they could ever possibly need while others starve.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Then you agree that "such wealth can only be amassed by unethical means" is not correct.
qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
Is there such a thing as an ethical thousandaire? Millionaire? If you think there is, why can't there be ethical billionaires? An ethical billionaire is just an ethical millionaire who kept working to make the source of their income grow until it grew 1000x as large. Big businesses are generally more ethical than little ones -- subject to more customer and regulatory scrutiny. It's much easier for a small business to get away with flouting environmental regulations or treating its employees harshly. (When's the last time the manager at a tiny roadside restaurant got fired for sexually harassing his employees?) This increased level of scrutiny means it is easier to bring to mind examples of unethical behavior by large businesses even if the actual rate is about the same. The media is biased to cover misdeeds by billionaires due to billionairephobia, the same way it is biased to cover misdeeds by Black people due to racism.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  The only way to amass that sort of wealth is to exploit the labor of others. There are countless examples. Amazon warehouse employees not being allotted time to go to the bathroom, while Jeff Bezos buys a $165 million mansion in LA, not to mention the endemic underpayment and disregard for physical and mental stress. Richard Branson forcing his employees on 8 weeks of unpaid leave, while he's sitting comfortably on a fortune that means he doesn't have to care. Steve Jobs building the wealthiest company in the world and becoming a billionaire, while their subcontractors install suicide preventing nets on their factories. Simply the fact that some people are amassing such wealth, while millions of people in the world starve and cannot access even basic education or healthcare. That alone makes being a billionaire unethical, by default. > "The media is biased to cover misdeeds by billionaires due to billionairephobia, the same way it is biased to cover misdeeds by Black people due to racism." Excuse me, but did you just compare literally the most privileged human beings to ever exist in all of history, to people who have been historically downtrodden and subjugated for hundreds of years due to their ethnicity? The mind boggles at what a temporarily embarrassed billionaire can delude themselves into thinking.
  - qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
    "Excuse me, but did you just compare the number 1 to the number 1000 by pointing out that they are both positive integers?" The point I am making is simple. There are approaching 3,000 billionaires worldwide. Suppose 90% are upstanding and 10% are unethical. That's 300 unethical billionaires. Suppose each unethical billionaire does just 1-2 unethical things per year, that is plenty of "unethical billionaire" stories for journalists to write about an unethical billionaire every day if they want. You write: "The only way to amass that sort of wealth is to exploit the labor of others." Then you cite a few examples of billionaires behaving, in your view, unethically. That's very nice, but to prove your claim, you need to show that every billionaire has done this. You mentioned 3 billionaires. With about 3,000 worldwide, you are about 0.1% of the way there. But the examples you've provided so far don't even pass the sniff test. Example: "ABC News[47] and The Economist[48] both conducted comparisons, and found that although the number of workplace suicides at Foxconn was large in absolute terms, the suicide rate was actually lower than the overall suicide rate of China[49] or the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides#Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides#Analysis >Simply the fact that some people are amassing such wealth, while millions of people in the world starve and cannot access even basic education or healthcare. That alone makes being a billionaire unethical, by default. This argument only applies to billionaires who haven't signed the giving pledge. Those I will agree with you on. However, it would be highly unethical to tax away the wealth of those who have signed the Giving Pledge, in order to provide even more goodies for Americans who are already quite wealthy by global standards.