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> they really embody this notion that every billionaire is a policy failure. If only more people realised this. Instead we do the opposite and worship the syst

> they really embody this notion that every billionaire is a policy failure. If only more people realised this. Instead we do the opposite and worship the system which make them happen. Very inspiring overall. I've always heard good things about the company but never knew of the founder. There's something about seeing one carry such dignified ideals throughout their life, without wavering to societal expectations, that is so admirable.

bergenty 4y ago
I don’t think so. The very rich can really try things and build industries that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Elon musk wouldn’t have been able to do anything he did without the money from PayPal. Same thing with the Rockefellers and the Hearsts in the early 20th century.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Maybe needing to be vastly rich to to cool things is the actual problem? Suppose there were higher levels of general financial security such that people could take more risks. Open source software generates huge positive externalities without fairy godparents.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    You just can’t achieve really big things with a medium amount of money. You can have the government do it but you never really see that much innovation. There’s a reason you don’t see a huge amount of innovation coming out of Europe.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      But in return, everyone has a decent quality of life. In America, the innovation comes at the cost of grinding everyone not wealthy till death. Just be upfront that’s the trade off for “innovation.” The economic environment that allows for such enormous wealth aggregation comes at a cost.
      - bergenty 4y ago
        Yeah I’m in the camp where I want to see rapid progress above a decent quality of life for everyone. I feel like we’re rapidly approaching a point where technology can realistically solve all of our basic problems and want to get there as quickly as possible even if it means pain in the short term (probably our lifetimes). Obviously not everyone will agree with me but in the US even a grinding life isn’t all that bad relatively. You won’t go hungry, if you’re not drug addled you’ll rarely be on the streets for very long, if you have a mental condition or disability you get money from the government, minimum wage jobs are very, very easy to get, we have a problem with cops but on the whole our justice system actually lets anyone get justice etc.
        svnt 4y ago
        I am really confused. Could you provide some data to back up your position that basically nothing is a big problem unless you are “drug addled”? How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem? I would be more convinced if you could also link to studies showing how early family life and local history have no impact on developmental brain processes and don’t create culture traps.
        LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
        > How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem? Prescription drugs, used according to the bottle/doctor. Hard drugs mixed in with softer ones. Intentional drugging. Many ways.
        prottog 4y ago
        We would also need studies showing how additional government intervention in the family helps prevent the culture trap. What can the government do to make people value education and delayed gratification, which are perhaps the two traits best shown to enhance individual outcomes?
        svnt 4y ago
        Most of the work on delayed gratification has been shown to not be measuring capacity for that but instead trust in potential future gains and personal security. What the government could do to enable what you’ve called out is help ensure more people meet the necessary lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy so that when kids show up to stuff marshmallows in their mouths they can feel secure enough in the probable truth of the statements and even simply the return of the researcher to assign any probability to the appearance of a second marshmallow. Step one is something like don’t let babies be raised in abandoned projects where everything they have gets stolen regularly from before they can remember.
    - svnt 4y ago
      We have no idea what innovation might have come because it was overrun by earlier deliberately monopolistic efforts driven by the aggressive and arguably unnecessary consumption of marginal human lives. Just because the fastest way of building something can win doesn’t mean we should do it that way. In fact, we almost always shouldn’t do it that way, upon inspection.
    - sophacles 4y ago
      Funny you say this on the internet, an innovative (at the time, now it's just taken for granted) communications network funded by the US government for it's first decade. On that network you are using a technology (http/html) that was inveted at CERN (a large government funded research institute) in Europe. These two things together have widely been credited with changing the world.
      - prottog 4y ago
        Inventing a technology and building a profitable business on top of it are very different things that require very different skill-sets. Besides, there is no evidence to suggest that private money cannot fund basic research of the type that the government does.
        PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        > there is no evidence to suggest that private money cannot fund basic research of the type that the government does. The evidence is that it doesn't. Pharma companies rake in the money a ton but they're not the ones discovering new drugs, they're just the ones who ferry it to market.
        LunaSea 4y ago
        Current machine learning state of the art would like to disagree.
      - isleyaardvark 4y ago
        I couldn't help thinking about the space race, myself. That was a puzzling assertion.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    No amount of general financial security would get me what I need to start a company that can land rockets. Even if I can get the group of people I need for free (because all their expenses are paid) I still need land, materials, etc.
    - banannaise 4y ago
      No, we still need land, materials, etc. Accomplishing things becomes a problem of cooperation instead of acquisition. Instead of "Can I buy the things and pay people to do work" we have "Can we agree to allocate resources and work together". You're assuming that one lone visionary is essential to success, and that a level of coercion is necessary so he can make people do the work. We're software people here. We should know to reject "visionaries". They're just idea guys, the same guys we laugh at when they say "Here's my app idea, you build it and we can split the profits 50/50".
  - tracerbulletx 4y ago
    Software is one thing. Getting people to build ships that can transport tons and tons of materials around the world, dig lithium from a mine, send things into space, or clean the office buildings, or dig the fiber trenches, or run the power plants is a another. If money was too diffuse, then economic decision making would be too diffuse to be an organizing principal. Whether the people who end up with the capital required to make those decisions actually deserve it or are especially good at it vs anyone else is a whole different matter.
- smt88 4y ago
  Wielding that amount of money/power is most often used for evil. Even if it were only used for good, it should be democratically controlled. It's nice that Bill Gates uses his billions for tackling diseases, but he shouldn't be able to decide the fates of millions of people unilaterally. He's an individual wielding nation-scale power, and that's dangerous for everyone else. The same is true for Musk, and it's especially true for the billionaires who are distorting our democracy (Thiel, Bankman-Fried, Bloomberg, Koch, Hastings, etc.)
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic, and I also think it’s good that there are a diverse set of philosophies determining how philanthropy should happen. I don’t know that I love the idea of billionaires being the solution to those two problems, but I do think that some part of our resiliency as a nation is because the government doesn’t have total control over those things. Not to mention the obvious conundrum that this may be great when the party you support is in power but not so great when they’re not.
    - ryan93 4y ago
      They are not a “solution” they are private citizens engaging in activities that are not if your business.
      - mikkergp 4y ago
        Did you mean to say that are none of my business? I’m not sure what you are getting at here.
    - banannaise 4y ago
      > I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic If your assertion is that nobody should wield nation-scale power, then I agree, and welcome to anarchism! If your assertion is that billionaires are an effective check on governmental power, I'm... not seeing it. Particularly given how much power billionaires have to influence the government itself.
- adrianN 4y ago
  People generally like the idea of democracies. Why shouldn't we let democratically elected representatives decide what cool things we want to do instead of leaving those decisions to individuals that happen to be very rich.
sokoloff 4y ago
They created a company that people willingly buy over $1 billion of product from every year. Why shouldn’t creating that much value in the world result in the owners collectively benefiting? If that happens to be a million different people each having a $1000 stake or 1 family having a $1B stake, I don’t have a problem thinking that either is a valid outcome. IMO, we should look at the value created and celebrate that rather than jealously fret over the concentration of the number of people who own it. To be clear: I think what they did is admirable on both the building and the recent transaction. I respect them greatly for both parts.
- criddell 4y ago
  > a million different people each having a $1000 stake or 1 family having a $1B stake Money is power. Do you see no difference in a million people have a little power vs one family having enormous power?
  - marcusverus 4y ago
    If you want to reduce the influence of money on politics, you're not going to achieve that by punishing billionaires, or by destroying the incentive structure that allows them to exist. If you want to reduce the influence of money in politics, you'll have to understand the specific mechanisms that create said influence, and address them by law. Wealth is good. People acquire wealth by adding value. We want to incentivize people to add value. Of course, the "billionaires shouldn't exist" crowd understand little and less, and would happily have us destroy this system of incentives without even achieving their stated goals, because they, much like the "defund police" crowd, are more interested in appearing virtuous than in actually solving problems.
    - kasey_junk 4y ago
      > Wealth is good. People acquire wealth by adding value. Those are axioms presented without evidence. It’s trivial to find counter examples. I’m no radical redistributionist but the idea that wealth in and of itself shows added value is clearly wrong.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
randyrand 4y ago
Having a billion pieces of paper does not matter. Literally paper. Digits on a computer. The supply of this paper is not even fixed. It only matters when billionaires convert that paper into food, housing, jets, etc, for themselves does it actually affect anyone. But, by a huge margin, the largest expense billionaires have is investment in other people and companies. If billionaires squandered their wealth on short term self indulgence that would be one thing, but they don't. They typically give it all away. I don't see the big policy failure here, or why that is a currently a problem that needs solving.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  They typically give it all away. They do? The Kennedys, Rockefellers, etc certainly haven't. Those families have been massively wealthy for several generations.
- svnt 4y ago
  This is a presentation of money that assumes there is no problem with other people not having that money. The major issue is systemic instability and unnecessary poverty. It is popular to presume that everything is not zero sum, but this is not the case. I don’t see any good reason we should allow excessive potential energy to become the property of a class of people who want nothing more than excessive potential energy.
  - bumby 4y ago
    >The major issue is systemic instability and unnecessary poverty. Jon Stewart once put it in a different frame: he called better policy "revolution insurance". At least that frames it in a way as to what the rich have to gain instead of solely focusing it on what they have to lose.
    - pjmorris 4y ago
      The Fed is housed in a building named for a former chair, Marriner Eccles. He said something similar to Stewarts' formulation: "It is utterly impossible, as this country has demonstrated again and again, for the rich to save as much as they have been trying to save, and save anything that is worth saving. They can save idle factories and useless railroad coaches; they can save empty office buildings and closed banks; they can save paper evidences of foreign loans; but as a class they can not save anything that is worth saving, above and beyond the amount that is made profitable by the increase of consumer buying. It is for the interests of the well to do – to protect them from the results of their own folly – that we should take from them a sufficient amount of their surplus to enable consumers to consume and business to operate at a profit. This is not “soaking the rich”; it is saving the rich. Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment." [0] [0] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/marriner-eccles-on-the-need-to-save-the-rich-from-themselves.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/marriner-eccles-on-t...
avalys 4y ago
Do you realize that your statement is logically equivalent to: "Every person who ever created a successful company and retained ownership of a lot of it is a policy failure". Would you support that statement?
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  I don't get the hate for billionaires, but the two statements are not logically equivalent. A statement implied by the GP comment would be: "Every person who ever created a successful company and retained ownership of a lot of it, causing them to become a billionaire, is a policy failure". Presumably the GP only has a problem with that process when it results in someone becoming a billionaire. My guess is that they think people will still found successful companies even if it doesn't result in billionaires, or that the benefits from successful companies will come about some other way.
  - throw149102 4y ago
    My version of the statement reads more like: If an entity manages to obtain a massive amount of wealth, far surpassing its own needs, and there is a definite need for that money elsewhere, then that is a policy failure. The obvious example is a single person who's a billionaire - a person doesn't need a billion dollars for a house and some food. But it could also extend to a company, or even a subsection of the government. It's just in that case measuring the need becomes several orders of magnitude harder (what should an F-35 cost anyway?) As far as definite need, the GP probably had these needs in mind: Healthcare, food, housing, and an uncontaminated environment. I think the US is failing in these aspects in such a big way that I would agree and say "billionaires are policy failures".
    - avalys 4y ago
      When Amazon stock goes up by 10% and Jeff Bezos' net worth goes up by $16 billion, where did that money come from? Who did he take it from? Where did those dollars come from? Trick question! There is no money, no dollars. This is purely notional value, and you can't feed or house or decontaminate anyone with it. And that's the problem with your statement. Most "billionaires" are billionaires because they (or, yes, their grandparents) built an incredibly successful organization which is now "worth" multiple billions and they still own some of it. But they didn't become billionaires by taking dollars from other people - they became billionaires by creating this value literally out of thin air, taking it from no one and depriving no one of housing. Consider these two scenarios: Person A is a sleazy businessman and manages to insert himself as an intermediary in every financial transaction in the US through bribing legislators. Over the course of a few years, he extracts $6 from every citizen of the US while paying only $20M in bribes. Yes, this person now has literally $2B in dollars, and I agree he is a policy failure. Person B is a scientist who develops an idea for a more efficient airplane engine. He obtains venture capital funding and starts a company. 10 years later, he retains 25% ownership of the company, which is selling jet engines to Airbus and doing $500M per year in revenue on $450M in expenses. He re-invests the profits in R&D and employs thousands of people. The accountants say he could sell his company to GE for $5B. Person B does not have a billion dollars, yet the media would characterize them as a "billionaire". This person is not a policy failure. We should make it harder for Person A to exist. We should make it easier for Person B to exist.
grecy 4y ago
I think it’s very interesting to see Americans are starting to realize that having the most million and billionaires is actually not a good thing for a society. Those people got that rich by profiting wildly off the backs of others labor, instead of increasing the wealth and quality of life for everyone. Countries like Australia and Norway don’t have many wildly rich people, and they also have very few extremely poor people.
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  Norway has more billionaires per capita than the US, which is pretty surprising. https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-ranked-by-billionaires-in-proportion-to-population-2015-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-ranked-by-billiona...
FredPret 4y ago
The individual is the ultimate minority. Every government with the scope and ambition to place financial limits on private lives is a policy failure.

bergenty 4y ago

I don’t think so. The very rich can really try things and build industries that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Elon musk wouldn’t have been able to do anything he did without the money from PayPal. Same thing with the Rockefellers and the Hearsts in the early 20th century.

anigbrowl 4y ago
Maybe needing to be vastly rich to to cool things is the actual problem? Suppose there were higher levels of general financial security such that people could take more risks. Open source software generates huge positive externalities without fairy godparents.
- bergenty 4y ago
  You just can’t achieve really big things with a medium amount of money. You can have the government do it but you never really see that much innovation. There’s a reason you don’t see a huge amount of innovation coming out of Europe.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    But in return, everyone has a decent quality of life. In America, the innovation comes at the cost of grinding everyone not wealthy till death. Just be upfront that’s the trade off for “innovation.” The economic environment that allows for such enormous wealth aggregation comes at a cost.
    - bergenty 4y ago
      Yeah I’m in the camp where I want to see rapid progress above a decent quality of life for everyone. I feel like we’re rapidly approaching a point where technology can realistically solve all of our basic problems and want to get there as quickly as possible even if it means pain in the short term (probably our lifetimes). Obviously not everyone will agree with me but in the US even a grinding life isn’t all that bad relatively. You won’t go hungry, if you’re not drug addled you’ll rarely be on the streets for very long, if you have a mental condition or disability you get money from the government, minimum wage jobs are very, very easy to get, we have a problem with cops but on the whole our justice system actually lets anyone get justice etc.
      - svnt 4y ago
        I am really confused. Could you provide some data to back up your position that basically nothing is a big problem unless you are “drug addled”? How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem? I would be more convinced if you could also link to studies showing how early family life and local history have no impact on developmental brain processes and don’t create culture traps.
        LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
        > How does one become “drug addled” if nothing is a problem? Prescription drugs, used according to the bottle/doctor. Hard drugs mixed in with softer ones. Intentional drugging. Many ways.
        prottog 4y ago
        We would also need studies showing how additional government intervention in the family helps prevent the culture trap. What can the government do to make people value education and delayed gratification, which are perhaps the two traits best shown to enhance individual outcomes?
        svnt 4y ago
        Most of the work on delayed gratification has been shown to not be measuring capacity for that but instead trust in potential future gains and personal security. What the government could do to enable what you’ve called out is help ensure more people meet the necessary lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy so that when kids show up to stuff marshmallows in their mouths they can feel secure enough in the probable truth of the statements and even simply the return of the researcher to assign any probability to the appearance of a second marshmallow. Step one is something like don’t let babies be raised in abandoned projects where everything they have gets stolen regularly from before they can remember.
  - svnt 4y ago
    We have no idea what innovation might have come because it was overrun by earlier deliberately monopolistic efforts driven by the aggressive and arguably unnecessary consumption of marginal human lives. Just because the fastest way of building something can win doesn’t mean we should do it that way. In fact, we almost always shouldn’t do it that way, upon inspection.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    Funny you say this on the internet, an innovative (at the time, now it's just taken for granted) communications network funded by the US government for it's first decade. On that network you are using a technology (http/html) that was inveted at CERN (a large government funded research institute) in Europe. These two things together have widely been credited with changing the world.
    - prottog 4y ago
      Inventing a technology and building a profitable business on top of it are very different things that require very different skill-sets. Besides, there is no evidence to suggest that private money cannot fund basic research of the type that the government does.
      - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        > there is no evidence to suggest that private money cannot fund basic research of the type that the government does. The evidence is that it doesn't. Pharma companies rake in the money a ton but they're not the ones discovering new drugs, they're just the ones who ferry it to market.
        LunaSea 4y ago
        Current machine learning state of the art would like to disagree.
    - isleyaardvark 4y ago
      I couldn't help thinking about the space race, myself. That was a puzzling assertion.
- bombcar 4y ago
  No amount of general financial security would get me what I need to start a company that can land rockets. Even if I can get the group of people I need for free (because all their expenses are paid) I still need land, materials, etc.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    No, we still need land, materials, etc. Accomplishing things becomes a problem of cooperation instead of acquisition. Instead of "Can I buy the things and pay people to do work" we have "Can we agree to allocate resources and work together". You're assuming that one lone visionary is essential to success, and that a level of coercion is necessary so he can make people do the work. We're software people here. We should know to reject "visionaries". They're just idea guys, the same guys we laugh at when they say "Here's my app idea, you build it and we can split the profits 50/50".
- tracerbulletx 4y ago
  Software is one thing. Getting people to build ships that can transport tons and tons of materials around the world, dig lithium from a mine, send things into space, or clean the office buildings, or dig the fiber trenches, or run the power plants is a another. If money was too diffuse, then economic decision making would be too diffuse to be an organizing principal. Whether the people who end up with the capital required to make those decisions actually deserve it or are especially good at it vs anyone else is a whole different matter.
smt88 4y ago
Wielding that amount of money/power is most often used for evil. Even if it were only used for good, it should be democratically controlled. It's nice that Bill Gates uses his billions for tackling diseases, but he shouldn't be able to decide the fates of millions of people unilaterally. He's an individual wielding nation-scale power, and that's dangerous for everyone else. The same is true for Musk, and it's especially true for the billionaires who are distorting our democracy (Thiel, Bankman-Fried, Bloomberg, Koch, Hastings, etc.)
- mikkergp 4y ago
  I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic, and I also think it’s good that there are a diverse set of philosophies determining how philanthropy should happen. I don’t know that I love the idea of billionaires being the solution to those two problems, but I do think that some part of our resiliency as a nation is because the government doesn’t have total control over those things. Not to mention the obvious conundrum that this may be great when the party you support is in power but not so great when they’re not.
  - ryan93 4y ago
    They are not a “solution” they are private citizens engaging in activities that are not if your business.
    - mikkergp 4y ago
      Did you mean to say that are none of my business? I’m not sure what you are getting at here.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    > I don’t know the way around this, but I do think it’s good that power is not centralized in one governmental structure, even if that structure is Democratic If your assertion is that nobody should wield nation-scale power, then I agree, and welcome to anarchism! If your assertion is that billionaires are an effective check on governmental power, I'm... not seeing it. Particularly given how much power billionaires have to influence the government itself.
adrianN 4y ago
People generally like the idea of democracies. Why shouldn't we let democratically elected representatives decide what cool things we want to do instead of leaving those decisions to individuals that happen to be very rich.

sokoloff 4y ago

They created a company that people willingly buy over $1 billion of product from every year. Why shouldn’t creating that much value in the world result in the owners collectively benefiting? If that happens to be a million different people each having a $1000 stake or 1 family having a $1B stake, I don’t have a problem thinking that either is a valid outcome. IMO, we should look at the value created and celebrate that rather than jealously fret over the concentration of the number of people who own it. To be clear: I think what they did is admirable on both the building and the recent transaction. I respect them greatly for both parts.

criddell 4y ago
> a million different people each having a $1000 stake or 1 family having a $1B stake Money is power. Do you see no difference in a million people have a little power vs one family having enormous power?
- marcusverus 4y ago
  If you want to reduce the influence of money on politics, you're not going to achieve that by punishing billionaires, or by destroying the incentive structure that allows them to exist. If you want to reduce the influence of money in politics, you'll have to understand the specific mechanisms that create said influence, and address them by law. Wealth is good. People acquire wealth by adding value. We want to incentivize people to add value. Of course, the "billionaires shouldn't exist" crowd understand little and less, and would happily have us destroy this system of incentives without even achieving their stated goals, because they, much like the "defund police" crowd, are more interested in appearing virtuous than in actually solving problems.
  - kasey_junk 4y ago
    > Wealth is good. People acquire wealth by adding value. Those are axioms presented without evidence. It’s trivial to find counter examples. I’m no radical redistributionist but the idea that wealth in and of itself shows added value is clearly wrong.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

randyrand 4y ago

Having a billion pieces of paper does not matter. Literally paper. Digits on a computer. The supply of this paper is not even fixed. It only matters when billionaires convert that paper into food, housing, jets, etc, for themselves does it actually affect anyone. But, by a huge margin, the largest expense billionaires have is investment in other people and companies. If billionaires squandered their wealth on short term self indulgence that would be one thing, but they don't. They typically give it all away. I don't see the big policy failure here, or why that is a currently a problem that needs solving.

alistairSH 4y ago
They typically give it all away. They do? The Kennedys, Rockefellers, etc certainly haven't. Those families have been massively wealthy for several generations.
svnt 4y ago
This is a presentation of money that assumes there is no problem with other people not having that money. The major issue is systemic instability and unnecessary poverty. It is popular to presume that everything is not zero sum, but this is not the case. I don’t see any good reason we should allow excessive potential energy to become the property of a class of people who want nothing more than excessive potential energy.
- bumby 4y ago
  >The major issue is systemic instability and unnecessary poverty. Jon Stewart once put it in a different frame: he called better policy "revolution insurance". At least that frames it in a way as to what the rich have to gain instead of solely focusing it on what they have to lose.
  - pjmorris 4y ago
    The Fed is housed in a building named for a former chair, Marriner Eccles. He said something similar to Stewarts' formulation: "It is utterly impossible, as this country has demonstrated again and again, for the rich to save as much as they have been trying to save, and save anything that is worth saving. They can save idle factories and useless railroad coaches; they can save empty office buildings and closed banks; they can save paper evidences of foreign loans; but as a class they can not save anything that is worth saving, above and beyond the amount that is made profitable by the increase of consumer buying. It is for the interests of the well to do – to protect them from the results of their own folly – that we should take from them a sufficient amount of their surplus to enable consumers to consume and business to operate at a profit. This is not “soaking the rich”; it is saving the rich. Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment." [0] [0] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/marriner-eccles-on-the-need-to-save-the-rich-from-themselves.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/marriner-eccles-on-t...

avalys 4y ago

Do you realize that your statement is logically equivalent to: "Every person who ever created a successful company and retained ownership of a lot of it is a policy failure". Would you support that statement?

ChadNauseam 4y ago
I don't get the hate for billionaires, but the two statements are not logically equivalent. A statement implied by the GP comment would be: "Every person who ever created a successful company and retained ownership of a lot of it, causing them to become a billionaire, is a policy failure". Presumably the GP only has a problem with that process when it results in someone becoming a billionaire. My guess is that they think people will still found successful companies even if it doesn't result in billionaires, or that the benefits from successful companies will come about some other way.
- throw149102 4y ago
  My version of the statement reads more like: If an entity manages to obtain a massive amount of wealth, far surpassing its own needs, and there is a definite need for that money elsewhere, then that is a policy failure. The obvious example is a single person who's a billionaire - a person doesn't need a billion dollars for a house and some food. But it could also extend to a company, or even a subsection of the government. It's just in that case measuring the need becomes several orders of magnitude harder (what should an F-35 cost anyway?) As far as definite need, the GP probably had these needs in mind: Healthcare, food, housing, and an uncontaminated environment. I think the US is failing in these aspects in such a big way that I would agree and say "billionaires are policy failures".
  - avalys 4y ago
    When Amazon stock goes up by 10% and Jeff Bezos' net worth goes up by $16 billion, where did that money come from? Who did he take it from? Where did those dollars come from? Trick question! There is no money, no dollars. This is purely notional value, and you can't feed or house or decontaminate anyone with it. And that's the problem with your statement. Most "billionaires" are billionaires because they (or, yes, their grandparents) built an incredibly successful organization which is now "worth" multiple billions and they still own some of it. But they didn't become billionaires by taking dollars from other people - they became billionaires by creating this value literally out of thin air, taking it from no one and depriving no one of housing. Consider these two scenarios: Person A is a sleazy businessman and manages to insert himself as an intermediary in every financial transaction in the US through bribing legislators. Over the course of a few years, he extracts $6 from every citizen of the US while paying only $20M in bribes. Yes, this person now has literally $2B in dollars, and I agree he is a policy failure. Person B is a scientist who develops an idea for a more efficient airplane engine. He obtains venture capital funding and starts a company. 10 years later, he retains 25% ownership of the company, which is selling jet engines to Airbus and doing $500M per year in revenue on $450M in expenses. He re-invests the profits in R&D and employs thousands of people. The accountants say he could sell his company to GE for $5B. Person B does not have a billion dollars, yet the media would characterize them as a "billionaire". This person is not a policy failure. We should make it harder for Person A to exist. We should make it easier for Person B to exist.

grecy 4y ago

I think it’s very interesting to see Americans are starting to realize that having the most million and billionaires is actually not a good thing for a society. Those people got that rich by profiting wildly off the backs of others labor, instead of increasing the wealth and quality of life for everyone. Countries like Australia and Norway don’t have many wildly rich people, and they also have very few extremely poor people.

boeingUH60 4y ago
Norway has more billionaires per capita than the US, which is pretty surprising. https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-ranked-by-billionaires-in-proportion-to-population-2015-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-ranked-by-billiona...

FredPret 4y ago

The individual is the ultimate minority. Every government with the scope and ambition to place financial limits on private lives is a policy failure.