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> They made billions from excellent businesses on which the world relied during a time of crisis. What would people have done without the likes of Amazon and fa

> They made billions from excellent businesses on which the world relied during a time of crisis. What would people have done without the likes of Amazon and fast delivery of nearly everything? They've been rewarded enough already. Sometimes enough is enough, it's obscene.

pb7 5y ago
So where do you draw the line? What's the number? And when that number is reached, what happens exactly?
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  100x the poverty line. Excess earnings goes to taxes.
  - mym1990 5y ago
    RIP innovation if the bar is that low
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      Innovators gonna innovate, they don't need ginormous returns to get out of bed.
      - mym1990 5y ago
        This comment is pretty hand wavy, but generally speaking the innovator is not the only part of the puzzle. Our world is still largely driven by investment and risk and something has to balance the scales. I agree that intrinsically motivated people probably care less for the money piece, but there are plenty of innovators that are both extrinsically and intrinsically motivated.
    - thundergolfer 5y ago
      The world's greatest 20th century innovators, such as Einstein and Shannon, did not do their work to get rich. It's more than a little crazy that "innovation" has become so closely associated with ECommerce entrepreneurship, and is assumed to be driven by greed.
      - mym1990 5y ago
        My outlook has almost nothing to do with being paid, but rather having the proper rewards for taking a proper risk. For someone like Musk, the reward from PayPal enables him to pursue even greater innovation, which he is doing marvelously. I would bet a large sum that he would not be where he is now if his gains were capped at 100x poverty level.
- dpcx 5y ago
  This seems like a pretty good place, really. https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1241843944238923777?s=20 https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1241843944238923777...
gameman144 5y ago
The thing is, most of the net worth of these people isn't just sitting around in a big bucket of cash; the wealth of these people is overwhelmingly due to their ownership of their businesses. If I own a mom-and-pop sandwich shop worth $1 million, and I take a $50k salary, I imagine most people would be fine with that. If I grow this sandwich shop into a national franchise worth $1 billion and still take a $50k salary, I still am in possession of just as much spendable cash, but suddenly I'm a billionaire on paper. It seems incredibly immoral to strip my own business from me because it's been too successful, and that type of ownership expropriation seems extremely likely to stifle entrepreneurship. Tax people when they sell stock. Tax people's income. Tax collateralized assets. Tax the hell out of them if they're making boatloads of cash. But to wrest ownership of someone's creation from their hands because they've done too good a job creating it seems like a recipe for disaster.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > If I grow this sandwich shop into a national franchise worth $1 billion It's very unlikely that you personally, singlehandedly would be able to build your sandwich shop into a billion dollar franchise. The value of Amazon is not a trillion dollars because of Jeff Bezos alone. He helped get it there, sure, and he deserves to be rewarded for that, but so did 800k other people. Can an Amazon driver afford a house, 2 cars, and to put 2 kids through college on a single income today? My dad could working for UPS for 30 years starting in the 80s. He's retired now with a pension. Why can't Amazon provide that kind of life for their workers? They're certainly richer and more profitable than UPS ever was. One key difference is that UPS is unionized, and then you start to realize why Amazon really, really, really, doesn't want their workers to unionize. Bezos' wealth is not a problem in a vacuum. It's a problem in a world where he's using his wealth to fly to space, while others (even people who work for him) are being evicted from their homes during a global pandemic, and there are more than enough homes to house everyone. That's the backdrop for all of this outrage. IMO an example of what would be incredibly immoral is if your ownership stake in your national sandwich chain reaches $1 billion, and your workers aren't making a living wage that can cover rent, food, and healthcare for their families. Yes we want to encourage entrepreneurship, but we cannot do so at the expense of workers. I think we've gone too far in one direction and now the backlash is forming.

pb7 5y ago

So where do you draw the line? What's the number? And when that number is reached, what happens exactly?

jonny_eh 5y ago
100x the poverty line. Excess earnings goes to taxes.
- mym1990 5y ago
  RIP innovation if the bar is that low
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    Innovators gonna innovate, they don't need ginormous returns to get out of bed.
    - mym1990 5y ago
      This comment is pretty hand wavy, but generally speaking the innovator is not the only part of the puzzle. Our world is still largely driven by investment and risk and something has to balance the scales. I agree that intrinsically motivated people probably care less for the money piece, but there are plenty of innovators that are both extrinsically and intrinsically motivated.
  - thundergolfer 5y ago
    The world's greatest 20th century innovators, such as Einstein and Shannon, did not do their work to get rich. It's more than a little crazy that "innovation" has become so closely associated with ECommerce entrepreneurship, and is assumed to be driven by greed.
    - mym1990 5y ago
      My outlook has almost nothing to do with being paid, but rather having the proper rewards for taking a proper risk. For someone like Musk, the reward from PayPal enables him to pursue even greater innovation, which he is doing marvelously. I would bet a large sum that he would not be where he is now if his gains were capped at 100x poverty level.
dpcx 5y ago
This seems like a pretty good place, really. https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1241843944238923777?s=20 https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1241843944238923777...

gameman144 5y ago

The thing is, most of the net worth of these people isn't just sitting around in a big bucket of cash; the wealth of these people is overwhelmingly due to their ownership of their businesses. If I own a mom-and-pop sandwich shop worth $1 million, and I take a $50k salary, I imagine most people would be fine with that. If I grow this sandwich shop into a national franchise worth $1 billion and still take a $50k salary, I still am in possession of just as much spendable cash, but suddenly I'm a billionaire on paper. It seems incredibly immoral to strip my own business from me because it's been too successful, and that type of ownership expropriation seems extremely likely to stifle entrepreneurship. Tax people when they sell stock. Tax people's income. Tax collateralized assets. Tax the hell out of them if they're making boatloads of cash. But to wrest ownership of someone's creation from their hands because they've done too good a job creating it seems like a recipe for disaster.

ModernMech 5y ago
> If I grow this sandwich shop into a national franchise worth $1 billion It's very unlikely that you personally, singlehandedly would be able to build your sandwich shop into a billion dollar franchise. The value of Amazon is not a trillion dollars because of Jeff Bezos alone. He helped get it there, sure, and he deserves to be rewarded for that, but so did 800k other people. Can an Amazon driver afford a house, 2 cars, and to put 2 kids through college on a single income today? My dad could working for UPS for 30 years starting in the 80s. He's retired now with a pension. Why can't Amazon provide that kind of life for their workers? They're certainly richer and more profitable than UPS ever was. One key difference is that UPS is unionized, and then you start to realize why Amazon really, really, really, doesn't want their workers to unionize. Bezos' wealth is not a problem in a vacuum. It's a problem in a world where he's using his wealth to fly to space, while others (even people who work for him) are being evicted from their homes during a global pandemic, and there are more than enough homes to house everyone. That's the backdrop for all of this outrage. IMO an example of what would be incredibly immoral is if your ownership stake in your national sandwich chain reaches $1 billion, and your workers aren't making a living wage that can cover rent, food, and healthcare for their families. Yes we want to encourage entrepreneurship, but we cannot do so at the expense of workers. I think we've gone too far in one direction and now the backlash is forming.