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I find this kind of thing maliciously obtuse. It's malicious because it's designed to breed resentment through unintentional or intentional ignorance. Using Be

I find this kind of thing maliciously obtuse. It's malicious because it's designed to breed resentment through unintentional or intentional ignorance. Using Bezos as an example - an interesting proportion would be something like: how many customers (eg, people who find his work valuable) does Bezos have versus an average American? How many people has Bezos employed and made successful (or at the very least, gave them a better job than they would have otherwise?) vs an average American. To wit, it doesn't make sense to compare "wealth" without also talking about "impact" in a case like Bezos. The other ignorant thing is this makes it seem like his wealth is some sort of zero sum game where if he has a dollar that means you don't have it. The reality of his wealth is something like this: he owns a chunk of Amazon, AND Amazon has grown to be valuable and valued. The same guy, had Amazon gone nowhere, would have nothing. The mechanism of him becoming rich is primarily the world collectively deciding that the thing he has built is valuable, rather than him taking dollars out of your pockets. Why does this bother me? Because I find things that breed resentment in the world to be a detrimental evil.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
Wealth isn't quite zero sum but it is adversarial. If someone has a lot of it they can use it against you. Use it to propagandize against your class interests, use it to manipulate the political environment to your detriment. The wealth may not be zero sum but the power it represents certainly can be. "How many people has he '''made successful'''" is a fuzzy and already biased metric, how do you decide on that one? Why not "how many people would have had a better job if not for his company" or "how many liters of urine in soda bottles because of his policies?" Wealth is concrete and measurable. People can differ on what exactly the consequences of wealth inequality are but I think nearly everyone will agree that it measures something worthwhile to know.
- adriang133 3y ago
  Ridiculous. The ONLY way to build wealth in a capitalist system is to provide value to other people. Case in point: Bezos and every other billionaire in the US. You are missing the point. The only way Bezos can take a cent from you is if you willingly give him the money. In contrast, in a socialist system, the government takes money from you regardless of whether you want to give it or not. Spoiler: no one wants to give it. Governments are 91283128391823918293819381x more evil than billionaires.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    It's revealing that in your stripped down little illustration it's just me and bezos. Bezos all alone, no one to help him, I just give him, personally, the money for the things I want. In my understanding labor is the resource billionaires extract their wealth from, worker exploitation is the mechanism they use to do it. Between the two of us I don't think I'm missing the point here. I've seen your point before but it's a red herring. Allowing power to accrue so dramatically to individuals is the problem, not whose micro-decisions allow them to claim a sliver more of it.
    - adriang133 3y ago
      Bezos wasn't holding guns to the heads of Amazon employees. To the contrary. The existence of Amazon created more demand for workers which resulted in more options for them, as well as better pay and working conditions. Where do you get your worker exploitation from? That is absolute nonsense.
      - giraffe_lady 3y ago
        ok
Kapura 3y ago
You should resent your masters, the people who can afford to spend huge sums of money to suppress minimum wage increases, or benefits for gig workers, or greater public oversight. These people are making every other person's life worse, except for those who can also isolate themselves in a wealth bubble. The policies of wealth and unbridled capitalism in the USA have stifled wage growth, increased homelessness, and driven down life expectancy. You should be mad about this. You gain nothing by trying to hold a moral high ground.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  The fact that you conceptualize of people with more wealth than you as "masters" totally explains your stance on this topic. I struggle to feel how Bezos "enslaves me" or makes my life worse (and on the flip, I can easily name 3 ways he makes my life better.) I suspect one's perspective on this depends a lot on one's a-priori sense of victimization and it's just not what I lead with. So yes, I can see that how you feel makes you think what you think, but it's not for me.
  - wackget 3y ago
    > I struggle to feel how Bezos "enslaves me" or makes my life worse That's great for you! But have you considered the radical notion that other people with different circumstances to you exist? Do you know anyone who works for Amazon? How are they treated? Do you know anyone who works for a company who supplies Amazon? How are they treated? Do you know anyone who purchases products from Amazon? Who delivers those products, and how are they treated?
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      I perceive that folks are more or less lining up to work for Amazon even in the roles you're describing, meaning it represents meaningful opportunity for them in contrast to their other alternatives. The Amazon delivery guys I interact with seem pretty happy. I read the same things you read about the horrors of warehouse work but it's pretty hard to know how much of that is spin vs real vs normal. Again, presumably if it was the worst people won't work there.
jawns 3y ago
I think this challenges us to consider two questions: 1) Does he deserve this money based on the things he did? 2) Should any one person, regardless of how much they deserve it, hold this much wealth? This comments section shows that people disagree strongly about both #1 and #2. But I think even if you answer YES to #1, you can still build a reasonable case that the answer to #2 should be NO. And if that's the case, I don't think the resentment comes from the fact that he's got all this money and didn't properly earn it. Instead, it comes from the fact that when you have one person with this nearly unfathomable amount of wealth (and power), there are a lot of second- or third-order consequences that are undesirable. I am a distributist, of the classical type represented by G.K. Chesterton, and believe that society works best when the ownership of productive property is widely distributed. That doesn't mean I believe in robinhoodism (i.e. forcible redistributions of wealth), but that concentrated ownership is to be avoided, and public policy should reflect this.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  What's great about the free market is that your and my concept of "deserving" is irrelevant. We can have totally opposing moral compasses and intellectual opinions on all manner of topics, but the buyers determine who deserves what. And the market determined he deserved it. If you want that money, you make a better product in the market. I think that's what drives leftists crazy - that no matter how much they hem and haw, they can't force the market to bend to their own version of morality. If you want to dethrone amazon, then create something better that free people choose with their own wallets.
  - notaustinpowers 3y ago
    The concept of the free market does not exist in modern American society. Free market relies on the concept of supply and demand being the sole basis of an economic system. Amazon's lobbying efforts to congress. Strongarm tactics for establishing warehouses in small towns with promises of high pay (effectively forcing a large population of a towns workforce to leave local jobs, building a reliance on Amazon within that community as few other businesses can provide what Amazon provides). Amazon has the money and the power to bend the market to their own will. That's not a free market. They have the supply, and they'll force your demand to them one way or another.
Spivak 3y ago
Sure but I think when you get down to it, the thing people take issue with is the fact that companies can be owned like this in the first place. It creates real-estate like dynamics on a thing that can expand indefinitely. The idea that I can own 50% of a company and that I retain 50% ownership when the company (in the band of people sense) grows to be 100,000x the size is in a lot of ways really dumb. If my sole proprietorship goes from 1k to 1M annual revenue then it's easy to argue that I absolutely earned all that money. If a bunch of people join the company on that journey to 1M then it's a lot less clear how much I did and what work I have a legitimate claim to the fruits thereof. I think we're so used to the current state of employment contracts just being contractors with 401k's that we don't consider that it could work differently.
liampulles 3y ago
I largely agree - I have no personal issue with someone earning a lot of money (good for them) and I'm not convinced it comes at the cost of other people's real earnings or living conditions. Indeed Amazon and similar services are very convenient, and allow me to focus my attention on more meaningful things (i.e. Terraria). I must say though that I do worry about people having enough money to bend the "rules" of the market. I.e. paying for lobbying, having an outsized say on regulation, or wielding influence over politicians to give special tax favors, etc. The direct problem there has to do with laws, not wealth - but it must be said that increasingly massive wealth does unlock corrupting influence that would be otherwise infeasible.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

Wealth isn't quite zero sum but it is adversarial. If someone has a lot of it they can use it against you. Use it to propagandize against your class interests, use it to manipulate the political environment to your detriment. The wealth may not be zero sum but the power it represents certainly can be. "How many people has he '''made successful'''" is a fuzzy and already biased metric, how do you decide on that one? Why not "how many people would have had a better job if not for his company" or "how many liters of urine in soda bottles because of his policies?" Wealth is concrete and measurable. People can differ on what exactly the consequences of wealth inequality are but I think nearly everyone will agree that it measures something worthwhile to know.

adriang133 3y ago
Ridiculous. The ONLY way to build wealth in a capitalist system is to provide value to other people. Case in point: Bezos and every other billionaire in the US. You are missing the point. The only way Bezos can take a cent from you is if you willingly give him the money. In contrast, in a socialist system, the government takes money from you regardless of whether you want to give it or not. Spoiler: no one wants to give it. Governments are 91283128391823918293819381x more evil than billionaires.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  It's revealing that in your stripped down little illustration it's just me and bezos. Bezos all alone, no one to help him, I just give him, personally, the money for the things I want. In my understanding labor is the resource billionaires extract their wealth from, worker exploitation is the mechanism they use to do it. Between the two of us I don't think I'm missing the point here. I've seen your point before but it's a red herring. Allowing power to accrue so dramatically to individuals is the problem, not whose micro-decisions allow them to claim a sliver more of it.
  - adriang133 3y ago
    Bezos wasn't holding guns to the heads of Amazon employees. To the contrary. The existence of Amazon created more demand for workers which resulted in more options for them, as well as better pay and working conditions. Where do you get your worker exploitation from? That is absolute nonsense.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      ok

Kapura 3y ago

You should resent your masters, the people who can afford to spend huge sums of money to suppress minimum wage increases, or benefits for gig workers, or greater public oversight. These people are making every other person's life worse, except for those who can also isolate themselves in a wealth bubble. The policies of wealth and unbridled capitalism in the USA have stifled wage growth, increased homelessness, and driven down life expectancy. You should be mad about this. You gain nothing by trying to hold a moral high ground.

xyzelement 3y ago
The fact that you conceptualize of people with more wealth than you as "masters" totally explains your stance on this topic. I struggle to feel how Bezos "enslaves me" or makes my life worse (and on the flip, I can easily name 3 ways he makes my life better.) I suspect one's perspective on this depends a lot on one's a-priori sense of victimization and it's just not what I lead with. So yes, I can see that how you feel makes you think what you think, but it's not for me.
- wackget 3y ago
  > I struggle to feel how Bezos "enslaves me" or makes my life worse That's great for you! But have you considered the radical notion that other people with different circumstances to you exist? Do you know anyone who works for Amazon? How are they treated? Do you know anyone who works for a company who supplies Amazon? How are they treated? Do you know anyone who purchases products from Amazon? Who delivers those products, and how are they treated?
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I perceive that folks are more or less lining up to work for Amazon even in the roles you're describing, meaning it represents meaningful opportunity for them in contrast to their other alternatives. The Amazon delivery guys I interact with seem pretty happy. I read the same things you read about the horrors of warehouse work but it's pretty hard to know how much of that is spin vs real vs normal. Again, presumably if it was the worst people won't work there.

jawns 3y ago

I think this challenges us to consider two questions: 1) Does he deserve this money based on the things he did? 2) Should any one person, regardless of how much they deserve it, hold this much wealth? This comments section shows that people disagree strongly about both #1 and #2. But I think even if you answer YES to #1, you can still build a reasonable case that the answer to #2 should be NO. And if that's the case, I don't think the resentment comes from the fact that he's got all this money and didn't properly earn it. Instead, it comes from the fact that when you have one person with this nearly unfathomable amount of wealth (and power), there are a lot of second- or third-order consequences that are undesirable. I am a distributist, of the classical type represented by G.K. Chesterton, and believe that society works best when the ownership of productive property is widely distributed. That doesn't mean I believe in robinhoodism (i.e. forcible redistributions of wealth), but that concentrated ownership is to be avoided, and public policy should reflect this.

monero-xmr 3y ago
What's great about the free market is that your and my concept of "deserving" is irrelevant. We can have totally opposing moral compasses and intellectual opinions on all manner of topics, but the buyers determine who deserves what. And the market determined he deserved it. If you want that money, you make a better product in the market. I think that's what drives leftists crazy - that no matter how much they hem and haw, they can't force the market to bend to their own version of morality. If you want to dethrone amazon, then create something better that free people choose with their own wallets.
- notaustinpowers 3y ago
  The concept of the free market does not exist in modern American society. Free market relies on the concept of supply and demand being the sole basis of an economic system. Amazon's lobbying efforts to congress. Strongarm tactics for establishing warehouses in small towns with promises of high pay (effectively forcing a large population of a towns workforce to leave local jobs, building a reliance on Amazon within that community as few other businesses can provide what Amazon provides). Amazon has the money and the power to bend the market to their own will. That's not a free market. They have the supply, and they'll force your demand to them one way or another.

Spivak 3y ago

Sure but I think when you get down to it, the thing people take issue with is the fact that companies can be owned like this in the first place. It creates real-estate like dynamics on a thing that can expand indefinitely. The idea that I can own 50% of a company and that I retain 50% ownership when the company (in the band of people sense) grows to be 100,000x the size is in a lot of ways really dumb. If my sole proprietorship goes from 1k to 1M annual revenue then it's easy to argue that I absolutely earned all that money. If a bunch of people join the company on that journey to 1M then it's a lot less clear how much I did and what work I have a legitimate claim to the fruits thereof. I think we're so used to the current state of employment contracts just being contractors with 401k's that we don't consider that it could work differently.

liampulles 3y ago

I largely agree - I have no personal issue with someone earning a lot of money (good for them) and I'm not convinced it comes at the cost of other people's real earnings or living conditions. Indeed Amazon and similar services are very convenient, and allow me to focus my attention on more meaningful things (i.e. Terraria). I must say though that I do worry about people having enough money to bend the "rules" of the market. I.e. paying for lobbying, having an outsized say on regulation, or wielding influence over politicians to give special tax favors, etc. The direct problem there has to do with laws, not wealth - but it must be said that increasingly massive wealth does unlock corrupting influence that would be otherwise infeasible.