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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

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.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    The giving pledge is blatant fraud, pure and simple. 0% of billionaires are upstanding, they are all exploiters and vultures. The signees haven't even made any moves towards actually giving away a significant fraction of their wealth, their collective wealth has more than doubled over 10 years. Add to this that the majority of donations have been given to private foundations[¤], and that donations to charity are tax-deductible, means it really is no more than a giant tax scheme, under a thin veil of "charity". [¤] Often family foundations, which pay salaries to family members of the donors and don't disclose where the donations actually go. Once again, it is impossible to amass such wealth (a significant fraction of any country's GDP) and keep it, without extracting an extreme excess of value from the labor of others. You cannot become this rich by simply "working hard", you cannot amass such wealth through any kind of individual labor. It can only come from the mass exploitation of the labor of others, from not paying people the fair value of their labor. Pretending to give away a tiny portion of that to charity, after the fact, is like putting a Hello Kitty band aid on a massive gaping chest wound. Ineffective at best, and in reality an abject insult. The fact that we know that we could make the world better, by taxing corporations, capital gains and inheritances much higher, yet refuse to do so, is a scathing condemnation of the callous and inhumane nature of capitalism.

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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  The giving pledge is blatant fraud, pure and simple. 0% of billionaires are upstanding, they are all exploiters and vultures. The signees haven't even made any moves towards actually giving away a significant fraction of their wealth, their collective wealth has more than doubled over 10 years. Add to this that the majority of donations have been given to private foundations[¤], and that donations to charity are tax-deductible, means it really is no more than a giant tax scheme, under a thin veil of "charity". [¤] Often family foundations, which pay salaries to family members of the donors and don't disclose where the donations actually go. Once again, it is impossible to amass such wealth (a significant fraction of any country's GDP) and keep it, without extracting an extreme excess of value from the labor of others. You cannot become this rich by simply "working hard", you cannot amass such wealth through any kind of individual labor. It can only come from the mass exploitation of the labor of others, from not paying people the fair value of their labor. Pretending to give away a tiny portion of that to charity, after the fact, is like putting a Hello Kitty band aid on a massive gaping chest wound. Ineffective at best, and in reality an abject insult. The fact that we know that we could make the world better, by taxing corporations, capital gains and inheritances much higher, yet refuse to do so, is a scathing condemnation of the callous and inhumane nature of capitalism.