5 ms·

>"Being a billionaire is inherently immoral." No it isn't, and that's no a self-evident assertion. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created a

>"Being a billionaire is inherently immoral." No it isn't, and that's no a self-evident assertion. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created and led for the past 20 years is an insanely productive business. People want to own shares in his company and that is why his holdings are worth so much. >"without underpaying or overcharging others" This is an impossible standard to meet. In a system as massively complex and chaotic as an economy there is no way for any business to pay/charge the "right amount". Not only is the fair amount an unknown value, anything resembling a fair price is only discovered through overpaying/underpaying until prices regress to some middle ground. And then something inevitably happens in the world that necessitates finding a new value and the process begins again.

unethical_ban 5y ago
I would argue that's the baseline disagreement right there. "No it isn't, and that's not a self-evident assertion" - I would say those on the further left think it is. The premise being "Is there an amount of wealth one person or family can have, that is so exorbitant in comparison to the average citizen that it is unjustifiable on its face?" - and the easily marketable answer is "billionaire". Do you think there is no moral limit to the amount of wealth one person can have in society, while millions around him suffer?
- zachthewf 5y ago
  The immoral part is "while millions around him suffer", not "the amount of wealth one person can have," and billionaires don't actually have all that much to do with that.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  >"Do you think there is no moral limit to the amount of wealth one person can have in society, while millions around him suffer?" This is an intriguing premise. My personal answer is 'no'. This is because I see this as a personal value judgement and not something that can be applied as a moral standard. It is analogous to the question of taxation and what counts as "someone's fair share", because you will never get an agreement as to what constitutes a "fair share" of someone's income. We can certainly agree that people should contribute something via taxes, but we will never arrive at a satisfactory rate of fairness. Compounding the problem is the second part of the question, "while millions around him suffer". Maybe I'm just too influenced by Buddhist philosophy, but I see suffering as an inescapable aspect of life itself. It could be said that my personal wealth, as modest as it may be for a middle class American, is of a similar magnitude of inequality to the average Burundian citizen. In practical terms, I'm basically a billionaire compared to the world's most impoverished individuals.
- padastra 5y ago
  If you take the premise that there is a set amount of wealth, and that it changes hands from one person to another, then that is fair. However that's a false premise. The act of labor (including the act of organizing the labor of millions of people in a productive way) creates net new wealth. Now, we can argue about Jeff Bezos specifically and we can debate what percentage of his equity is by creating new wealth versus what percentage was a transfer from e.g. underpaying his workers, but that's very different than saying being a billionaire is itself morally wrong.
- breuleux 5y ago
  If personal ownership of the whole or part of a corporation is possible, and that this ownership can be traded or sold, the existence of multi-billionaires follows rather directly. "Not allowing" billionaires to exist essentially amounts to dispossessing founders from their company whenever it starts getting successful enough. I'm not necessarily against that, mind you, but it's important to see that such a policy would have wide-ranging effects on the stewardship of many companies, and to think it through: if the result of the law is to force founders to sell off most of their stake to other capitalists in order to spread their "wealth", their companies could become even more immoral or exploitative as a result. I think it might be better to simply nationalize something like 0.5% of every company every year, but that may also have unforeseen consequences.
UtopiaIsBadOk 5y ago
> Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created and led for the past 20 years is an insanely productive business. People want to own shares in his company and that is why his holdings are worth so much. Ah yes, like any other warehouse that has kept stagnate wages for decades, but still manages to squeeze even more efficiency out of its workers, i.e. underpay, overwork, and exploit its workforce (70% of its workforce are, essentially for all intents and purposes, warehouse workers)[1]. Have you worked in a warehouse before? Have you worked at an Amazon warehouse before? Have you atleast read any of the, some may say shakey, news coverage on Amazon warehouses? It's immoral. It's inhumane. It kills the soul, and keeps poor people with no other options in a tragic 10+ hour death march 5 days a week. There's little time or energy to find a better job, you're too exhausted from working all day to even think. Even if you could, when would you find time for an interview? There's an obvious unwritten rule within this type of work that: 1). You're not getting a day off 2). If you take a day off, management will start looking to replace you for someone more "reliable." > This is an impossible standard to meet. In a system as massively complex and chaotic as an economy there is no way for any business to pay/charge the "right amount". Not only is the fair amount an unknown value, anything resembling a fair price is only discovered through overpaying/underpaying until prices regress to some middle ground. And then something inevitably happens in the world that necessitates finding a new value and the process begins again. These are a very handy-wavey 3 sentences. It's not impossible to figure out whether or not you're underpaying workers. It's pretty simple: who makes up the bulk of your workforce? Are they people with options or people without? People without options will take anything. [1] https://assets.aboutamazon.com/01/fb/29cebd144ec59269fe8ffda1ea07/amazon-2020-consolidated-type-2-eeo-1-report-r2.pdf https://assets.aboutamazon.com/01/fb/29cebd144ec59269fe8ffda...

unethical_ban 5y ago

I would argue that's the baseline disagreement right there. "No it isn't, and that's not a self-evident assertion" - I would say those on the further left think it is. The premise being "Is there an amount of wealth one person or family can have, that is so exorbitant in comparison to the average citizen that it is unjustifiable on its face?" - and the easily marketable answer is "billionaire". Do you think there is no moral limit to the amount of wealth one person can have in society, while millions around him suffer?

zachthewf 5y ago
The immoral part is "while millions around him suffer", not "the amount of wealth one person can have," and billionaires don't actually have all that much to do with that.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
>"Do you think there is no moral limit to the amount of wealth one person can have in society, while millions around him suffer?" This is an intriguing premise. My personal answer is 'no'. This is because I see this as a personal value judgement and not something that can be applied as a moral standard. It is analogous to the question of taxation and what counts as "someone's fair share", because you will never get an agreement as to what constitutes a "fair share" of someone's income. We can certainly agree that people should contribute something via taxes, but we will never arrive at a satisfactory rate of fairness. Compounding the problem is the second part of the question, "while millions around him suffer". Maybe I'm just too influenced by Buddhist philosophy, but I see suffering as an inescapable aspect of life itself. It could be said that my personal wealth, as modest as it may be for a middle class American, is of a similar magnitude of inequality to the average Burundian citizen. In practical terms, I'm basically a billionaire compared to the world's most impoverished individuals.
padastra 5y ago
If you take the premise that there is a set amount of wealth, and that it changes hands from one person to another, then that is fair. However that's a false premise. The act of labor (including the act of organizing the labor of millions of people in a productive way) creates net new wealth. Now, we can argue about Jeff Bezos specifically and we can debate what percentage of his equity is by creating new wealth versus what percentage was a transfer from e.g. underpaying his workers, but that's very different than saying being a billionaire is itself morally wrong.
breuleux 5y ago
If personal ownership of the whole or part of a corporation is possible, and that this ownership can be traded or sold, the existence of multi-billionaires follows rather directly. "Not allowing" billionaires to exist essentially amounts to dispossessing founders from their company whenever it starts getting successful enough. I'm not necessarily against that, mind you, but it's important to see that such a policy would have wide-ranging effects on the stewardship of many companies, and to think it through: if the result of the law is to force founders to sell off most of their stake to other capitalists in order to spread their "wealth", their companies could become even more immoral or exploitative as a result. I think it might be better to simply nationalize something like 0.5% of every company every year, but that may also have unforeseen consequences.

UtopiaIsBadOk 5y ago

> Jeff Bezos is a billionaire because the company he created and led for the past 20 years is an insanely productive business. People want to own shares in his company and that is why his holdings are worth so much. Ah yes, like any other warehouse that has kept stagnate wages for decades, but still manages to squeeze even more efficiency out of its workers, i.e. underpay, overwork, and exploit its workforce (70% of its workforce are, essentially for all intents and purposes, warehouse workers)[1]. Have you worked in a warehouse before? Have you worked at an Amazon warehouse before? Have you atleast read any of the, some may say shakey, news coverage on Amazon warehouses? It's immoral. It's inhumane. It kills the soul, and keeps poor people with no other options in a tragic 10+ hour death march 5 days a week. There's little time or energy to find a better job, you're too exhausted from working all day to even think. Even if you could, when would you find time for an interview? There's an obvious unwritten rule within this type of work that: 1). You're not getting a day off 2). If you take a day off, management will start looking to replace you for someone more "reliable." > This is an impossible standard to meet. In a system as massively complex and chaotic as an economy there is no way for any business to pay/charge the "right amount". Not only is the fair amount an unknown value, anything resembling a fair price is only discovered through overpaying/underpaying until prices regress to some middle ground. And then something inevitably happens in the world that necessitates finding a new value and the process begins again. These are a very handy-wavey 3 sentences. It's not impossible to figure out whether or not you're underpaying workers. It's pretty simple: who makes up the bulk of your workforce? Are they people with options or people without? People without options will take anything. [1] https://assets.aboutamazon.com/01/fb/29cebd144ec59269fe8ffda1ea07/amazon-2020-consolidated-type-2-eeo-1-report-r2.pdf https://assets.aboutamazon.com/01/fb/29cebd144ec59269fe8ffda...