Billionaires should not exist?

[legendary]

Bernie Sanders famously said this a few weeks ago.

And at first, I just felt too much of a stretch to me; after all, we as a society do glorify Billionaires and many portray them as the geniuses who come to humanity's rescue at the eleventh hour. 

But upon some contemplation, it got me thinking, why would someone need a Billion Dollars (Pounds, Euro) for their personal life? There is no way they and their family are ever going to spend that much money in their lifetime. And if they really love what they do, do they need to be incentivized this much?

AOC made a great point in an interview a few days ago, that no one ever makes a billion dollars, but you can only TAKE a billion dollars, through a massive redistribution of wealth.

Would people really be deterred from creating a business or from changing the world if there was a ceiling to how much wealth they could amass? 

[Tanz]

Well whatever exist EXIST. Saying something should not exist is denying a piece of reality. A proper statement would be. We should be more conscious and create a society that would allow more people to thrive. 

[Annoynymous]

I think having too much billionaires running around the world indicates the dysfunction of Intetnational and domestic economic system. The more the number of the billionaire grows the more economic inquality emerges,  since economic prosperity depends on the creation of products and redistribution of wealth.

If a capitalist owns most of a particular production then he  gets to accumulate large share of the weath and thus, we witness inequality.

A conscious,  well functioning society needs more production and equal distribution. Too much capatalism riggs the game in favor of the capitalist thus billionaire emerges. So to me, a billionaire is born out of the unconscious rules of presnt day economic system.

In order to build up a conscious society, we need to balance the system in a way that it favors all of its member by thinking about the welfare of everybody.

Edited February 22, 2020 by Annoynymous

[Bodigger]

Building a conscious society begins within ourselves.  Forcing others to see it, and do it our way will hurt the collective as well as ourselves.  How can we balance the system if we are not balanced.  

[RareGodzilla]

Of course people should own more wealth if they work more. Even in USSR more work yielded more money, nobody is proposing equal money for unequal work that's ridiculous. 

But does a billionaire really work a billion times harder than a cleaning lady? Does he really produce a billion times more value? 

[Joel3102]

@Husseinisdoingfine that’s too simplistic. You’re espousing Marxist Labour Theory of Value here which has been debunked by most economists. You’re missing the wealth generation role that productivity gains and capital play

[Forestluv]

On 2/21/2020 at 8:09 PM, legendary said:

Would people really be deterred from creating a business or from changing the world if there was a ceiling to how much wealth they could amass? 

I think a better question is who would be deterred from creating a business or changing the world if it meant they will not earn a billion dollars.

For example, if there was a rule that someone starting a business can only personal profit to the tune of $999 million dollars, what type of person would say "nope, I'll only do it if I can find a way to make $60 billion in personal profit". That gets into toxic capitalism zones. As a society, wouldn't we want to screen out people that are hyper-focused on accumulating obscene personal profits at the expensive of others? Consider what it takes for a person to accumulate 60 billion in personal profits.  

[Vladz0r]

Realistically I mean, hitting $900 million dollars is pretty incredible. I'm all for hierarchical structure (see Jordan Peterson), and yeah it's fine for CEOs and owners to make millions per year, especially when they're creating a lot of jobs and making big moves. A lot of these people though, as some people said here, are making money through how they utilize their assets, info they get on stocks, providing high interest loans or credit cards, etc. (See Amazon's credit card system). The money they own winds up compounding and slowly but surely exponentially increasing. I'm not sure about a wealth limit, and I'm not sure about going the way of Spain and making the CEO make only at max 8x their lowest paid employee's (rate?). That would mean that Jeff Bezos would only be making a few hundred thousand a year at most, which would make huge business expansions pretty much impossible without basically hiring a ton of people that team up and all agree on expansions. I guess that could work and still have hierarchical structure. I don't know where I'd cap it or if I'd cap it to begin with, but at some point it becomes lopsided when the people at the top own billions and the people at the bottom are making minimum wage with no benefits, which is a poverty wage, arguably below poverty depending on cost of living. I think if we moved towards systems that Bernie and Yang has proposed, where employees gain a stake in the company, and people can team up and vote for different types of expansions and quality of life things for the company, is a step in the right direction, and would make people become less of a cog in the machine. I'm at a big company and we're slowly but surely starting to get some autonomy, no stake in the company yet though.

[mateogon]

First of all, Billionaires don't have their wealth in a pool of gold like some people believe, it's invested somewhere, generating jobs, giving value to people. So if you tax them a lot, you're affecting all the people working for them, etc.

This goes along the idea of the "Cake". The money is a fixed cake, a sum 0 game, and if they have more, I have less. That is also wrong. 

If someone discovers a cure for cancer, and becomes a billionaire from it, I wouldn't mind. After all he's benefiting everyone.

[kag101]

26 minutes ago, mateogon said:

First of all, Billionaires don't have their wealth in a pool of gold like some people believe, it's invested somewhere, generating jobs, giving value to people. So if you tax them a lot, you're affecting all the people working for them, etc.

Yes!

 

 

[Annoynymous]

@mateogon

23 minutes ago, mateogon said:

First of all, Billionaires don't have their wealth in a pool of gold like some people believe, it's invested somewhere, generating jobs, giving value to people. So if you tax them a lot, you're affecting all the people working for them, etc.

This goes along the idea of the "Cake". The money is a fixed cake, a sum 0 game, and if they have more, I have less. That is also wrong. 

If someone discovers a cure for cancer, and becomes a billionaire from it, I wouldn't mind. After all he's benefiting everyone.

This is purely naive.

What will happen if you get cancer and you can not afford the price of the medicine that cures it because the the pharmaceutical company has raisen the price to the level you can not afford? Surely you won't say then " they have discovered it, so then can set any absurd price they want, so let me die without the cure".

If we let someone become so powerful that they start to play around with the rule of society in a way that benefits only them then yeah, they will be given chance to act like a king.

They take away a LOT by playing with rules and give as little as nothing.

[mateogon]

13 minutes ago, Annoynymous said:

@mateogon

This is purely naive.

What will happen if you get cancer and you can not afford the price of the medicine that cures it because the the pharmaceutical company has raisen the price to the level you can not afford? Surely you won't say then " they have discovered it, so then can set any absurd price they want, so let me die without the cure".

If we let someone become so powerful that they start to play around with the rule of society in a way that benefits only them then yeah, they will be given chance to act like a king.

They take away a LOT by playing with rules and give as little as nothing.

When cellphones just appeared, they were expensive, and really bad compared to what they are now. Only relatively rich people could buy them.

The thing is people that could afford them, had money and could invest in researching and developing better technology.

Giving us today, the possibility to have cheap phones 10000x better than the first ones, available for almost everyone in the planet.

Do you want no smartphones for anyone? or wait a little to have good ones for everyone?
 

Now if they only cared about money, setting an absurdly high price would reduce the sales a lot no?

[Annoynymous]

@mateogon without answering to my reason, you just brought up an asymmetrical logic. Allright, i will answer you any way.

Smartphones are not the same as medication. Medications are necessary elements, of which's absence can be lethal for a person. On the other hand, though smartphones have contributed enormously to the human evolution, they are less important relative to medication.

There are various business models. In the smartphone  business model, as one (billionare) wants to make more profits from smartphone would definitely go for more units, less price, more customers, because it is not absolute necessity. So people will only buy smartphone if they are cheap/affordable. So billionares are not doing any "favor" by keeping it cheap, they are merely serving their want of more profits.

On the other hand, people will always try to buy medication even if the price is as high as the sky. So billionares in these case don't really care about price, they know that even with high price, they are gonna make high profit anyway. 

 Remember, business is there to serve people, not to rule over them. By making the price cheap they are not doing any favors to us - they are just cunning enough to do whatever it takes to make more profit.

It does not mean that all business are evil. Many businesses have good intentions and serving people well. But you have to understand, mainly a business is about survival and making profits. And Survival can be quite dirty. 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Annoynymous

[legendary]

Here's Mark Zuckerberg weighing in on the issue.

Basically, he agrees with Bernie, while justifying why he's a good billionaire.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/21/mark-zuckerberg-plea-biillionaire-class-anti-democratic

[Ero]

@legendary That was something that came to me as a realisation at a certain point. Should really billionaires exist, or are they a consequence of unregulated capitalism? A feature of it? What one can observe is that part of the ideological mechanisms that protect that system include the justification of billionaires. One that resonates with the idea of becoming a billionaire, is ideologically part of that system. I myself had such aspirations until I outgrew them to a far deeper sense of purpose. One in which as long in I'm in a place of abundance, rather than scarcity (something that should be available to every human being), I wouldn't care at all about all that luxury - it's appearance without substance. A serious redistribution needs to occur - and yes, it will be threatening to billionaires. But the amount of creativity and human potential that will be released from such a change, will be enormous - nothing we have ever seen up to date. Rather than thinking it from the justification paradigm, where to the ego seems like taking, think of it through the collective paradigm - giving to all those in scarcity through the so much discussed social politics. I'm not about socialism. But it's just laughable to see the justifications for progress and creativity from unregulated capitalism - this is one of the most ineffective systems in driving the human race.  

[Bodigger]

2 hours ago, Annoynymous said:

Smartphones are not the same as medication. Medications are necessary elements, of which's absence can be lethal for a person. On the other hand, though smartphones have contributed enormously to the human evolution, they are less important relative to medication.

If government would get out of the healthcare business things would be much more affordable because it would create a more competitive market.  It is not a rite to have cheap healthcare and medicine but I can certainly see a time where many people will push for the rite to have a smartphone.  However, it is nice to see the back and forth discussion.

[Arcangelo]

I am gonna paraphrase Joe Rogan on this one: If someone wants to be the Michael Jordan of capitalism let them be.

[mateogon]

@Ero so what system would be more effective? Remember that culture and spirituality doesn't matter at all to people when they are poor and starving. Maslow hierarchy of needs. Which system has solved the bottom needs for the most amount of people? Capitalism.

A similar question to this whole thread would be:
Should Lionel Messi be allowed to exist? He is too good compared to the rest of the population. Maybe we should cut him a leg so there is more EqUAliTy

[legendary]

Interesting Bill Gates Interview