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"They deserve their wealth because you keep buying and using their products." Their products or the products of the people who work for them?

Workaccount2 4y ago
It's their products. Fixing wealth inequality doesn't necessitate throwing out the entire legal and economic system we have. Workers can form unions if they they are not being recognized. There is no need to topple capitalism so that amazon can become a nationalized business with an inverted pay hierarchy.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "It's their products." Amazon as we know it today wasn't made by Bezos, but by the thousands of people that work for him. It's their company, not his. If anyone has a right to Bezos' billions it's them. He, of course, deserves a nominal fee... maybe on par with the lowest-paid worker at Amazon.
  - Workaccount2 4y ago
    Legally, no. The company belongs to investors and the workers signed a contractual agreement with those investors. Any single one of those workers could have spun off and sold their value to any other buyer willing to pay the price they(the worker) wanted. Most don't do this though because they are willing to take a lower pay in order to (greatly) mitigate risk. Also, as you might be surprised to learn, workers already keep the majority of value they produce. Quick example: Gold mine owner lets workers keep 90% of everything they mine. Gold mine owner doesn't mine at all, but is by far the wealthiest person in the operation.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  > Fixing wealth inequality doesn't necessitate throwing out the entire legal and economic system we have I don't think anyone's suggesting that. More likely they are advocating for higher taxation on the highest earners and perhaps on the largest businesses (notably, we already had this in the 60s/70s/80s). This would leave us with largely the same economic system, except with a counterbalance to a key a flaw in the current setup: that in a given time period, those who already control capital can typically turn that into more capital with much less effort than those who don't start out with that capital.

Workaccount2 4y ago

It's their products. Fixing wealth inequality doesn't necessitate throwing out the entire legal and economic system we have. Workers can form unions if they they are not being recognized. There is no need to topple capitalism so that amazon can become a nationalized business with an inverted pay hierarchy.

pmoriarty 4y ago
"It's their products." Amazon as we know it today wasn't made by Bezos, but by the thousands of people that work for him. It's their company, not his. If anyone has a right to Bezos' billions it's them. He, of course, deserves a nominal fee... maybe on par with the lowest-paid worker at Amazon.
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  Legally, no. The company belongs to investors and the workers signed a contractual agreement with those investors. Any single one of those workers could have spun off and sold their value to any other buyer willing to pay the price they(the worker) wanted. Most don't do this though because they are willing to take a lower pay in order to (greatly) mitigate risk. Also, as you might be surprised to learn, workers already keep the majority of value they produce. Quick example: Gold mine owner lets workers keep 90% of everything they mine. Gold mine owner doesn't mine at all, but is by far the wealthiest person in the operation.
nicoburns 4y ago
> Fixing wealth inequality doesn't necessitate throwing out the entire legal and economic system we have I don't think anyone's suggesting that. More likely they are advocating for higher taxation on the highest earners and perhaps on the largest businesses (notably, we already had this in the 60s/70s/80s). This would leave us with largely the same economic system, except with a counterbalance to a key a flaw in the current setup: that in a given time period, those who already control capital can typically turn that into more capital with much less effort than those who don't start out with that capital.