2 ms·
>Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in povert
by cool_dude85 2y ago
>Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation?
If we recognize that broadly the same pile of money would exist absent Zuck, and instead belong to Tom or Joe or Jane, this provides us a nice justification for not letting Zuck have quite so much money anyway. He's the guy who hit the lotto. It's not such a bad thing to say the government is going to take a lot of it and spend it on poor people.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Manuel_D 2y agoNo, I'm not seeing the logic behind this at all. If someone invented assembly line production before Ford, that person would accumulate an immense fortune. But said hypothetical person didn't invent assembly line production. Ford did. The lotto ticket is a great analogy. If other people picked the winning numbers, they'd have won a lot of money too! But they didn't. Does that create an obligation for the real winner to compensate all the hypothetical would-be winners?
- cool_dude85 2y agoNo. But if the tax man came and the winner said that he shouldn't have to pay because he was simply better at picking lotto numbers than all the hungry chumps out there, we'd recognize it to be a farce.
- Manuel_D 2y agoSure, tax evasion is bad! But even after taxes, they'll still be making a lot of money. Is your allegation that Zuckerberg or Musk has engaged in tax fraud? That's a totally different statement than insisting that by simple virtue of having amassed a lot of wealth, they must have deprived others of wealth.