4 ms·

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

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.

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.