I have to always push back against such comments, as it feeds into the "take all the billionaire's money" communist madness that currently floats around.

First, billionaires don't have "money", they have net worth. Only a tiny portion of that money is actual cash, much of the rest is stock typically, which simply means control.

So what you are really protesting is that one person controls a lot of companies. And by extension, as this is typically the way, that people controlling large companies is even possible.

Yet here we have a situation where that control may slip, thus, what is the problem really?

Well, I believe I know. Jealousy.

Now, this may not be the case. Yet I assure you, a significant percentage of readers are thinking this.

But it's easier to sell that billionaires should not exist than it is to sell that we shouldn't seek to profit over each other, given how profitable it is for a few and how much some people hopelessly seek wealth.

This isn't just relegated to billionaires. Depending on how you define "consumption", up to 70% of the U.S. economy is consumer driven. Now I wouldn't call all this "unproductive" but it's probably selectively unfair to claim only the uber-rich are spending money on items they don't need.

And? How does your comment contribute to the discussion? Your position that billionaires are all criminals because you personally cannot conceive of anybody making that kind of money the legal way is bullshit, however you wish to dress it up.

Your position on “Billionaires” is idiotic since it classifies people into a cohort that you deem must all be guilty purely by a measure of their wealth.

I’m making the point that if I were to classify you similarly with no regard for your individual contributions to society or how you choose to live your life, but instead by your association with companies I deem “evil”, you will protest the unfairness as you have.

So thank you for making my point for me, I’m glad you see the irony in how your viewpoint shifts when you’re on the receiving end of similar “judgement through grouping”

I assume you object to billionaires because they use a disproportionate share of the world's resources? Spending even more resources on them doesn't seem like it would make that better?

Are you forgetting the thousands of employees that are enabling them to become obscenely wealthy?

And I don’t buy the “deterrent effect” argument. IMO discouraging billionaires from acquiring more is a good thing and opens the door for other people to step up.

> Rather, most of us are lazy and selfish by nature at best, self-destructive at worst.

"Speak for yourself."

I think most arguments for/against the existence of people with such wealth are basically capitalists saying they deserve it for creating value or that we need to incentivize wealth creation, and socialists arguing past them saying that it's just wrong for anyone to have so much more than anyone else.

This is the first time I've heard anyone making a good argument that actually, even IF you are a staunch capitalist, and you only consider people who made their money without leaning on government to bend the rules in their favor, maybe billionaires don't deserve all their wealth.

2. Conversations about the 1% often betray an underlying pathology of envy. Many hate billionaires because they're envious of what they have. Why would inequality of material goods be a problem per se? You can see that it isn't when you compare someone with an upper middle class household income with a billionaire. Does that upper middle class family really have a reason to shake their fists at the billionaires when it comes to income? No, of course not. Who cares if some guy makes X times as much as you? (If you have a problem, then perhaps you ought to check your envy.) The problem isn't inequality. It's poverty. And the boorish worship of Mammon.

3. The belief in zero sum wealth is utterly false. Everyone who understands basic economics knows that the economic wealth of the world today far outstrips any other epoch in history. The idea that billionaires only have what they have because they effectively stole it from you is exactly the kind of agitation that communists would engage in in Soviet Russia and Maoist China and the tumultuous years that led to their creation. It's the politics of envy and it's a hideous affair.

4. There are of course problems associated with billionaires that is not intrinsic to the wealth they possess. For example, the influence billionaires have over politics and society through the media, through education, through lobbying, and so on. They may be dealt with in various ways, such as actual committed and personal involvement in improving your local community in some way instead of raging ineffectually on Facebook and Twitter. A lazy, effeminate populace that only knows how to complain, and yell, and emote deserves what it gets.

5. While socialism is a tyranny, a grotesque perversion (and no, the Scandinavian countries aren't socialist), rapacious and ideological capitalism is likewise unnatural and perverse. By "rapacious and ideological capitalism", I really mean one that is laissez-faire in a doctrinaire way, where the market is the dominant social institution and the consequent ethos one of consumerism and commodification of everything, one dominated by powerful corporations unanswerable to government or public opinion, doctrinaire about the minimalization or elimination of social welfare institutions even in the absence of a sensible private alternative, and globalist of a kind that is opposed to corporate and individual loyalties to the nation state.

6. Sure, billionaires can run self-serving philanthropies. I doubt it stems from a feeling of guilt, but I don't know the individual consciences of billionaires (and conscience need to be formed to feel guilt, something that has been categorically discouraged by our culture along with shame and the concept of sin). Some may wish to genuinely do good. Some may be interested in their next conquest. Some may be afraid of the mob. Certainly, Zuckerberg's "free internet" plan for India was a patently obvious move to magnify his own power. The guy seems pathetically oblivious to how transparent he is. Social skills aren't his strong suit.

7.

Nobody is denying that the Sacklers are culpable for opioids, but what about Buffett, Bezos, Brin, Jay-Z, and Jerry Seinfeld? They’re all “billionaires” too, and it would be foolish to blame them m for obesity and opioids, and in turn, the falling average life expectancy.

>First, you seem to conflate being a billionaire with conspicuous spending or otherwise inefficient use of their capital. Once again this is a generalization and many billionaires don’t have these sports cars and estates that you describe.

Of course there might be some modest billionaires that lead relatively normal lives. Obviously my arguments do not apply to billionaires that sit idly in their wealth. I could try to make a different case for why that is an issue but I do not have major moral quarrels with that type of individual and have no interest in picking this fight. Though I assume you agree with me that this type of billionaire is a rare one.

>Secondly, you state “I just think the idea of many humans spending their lives in order to satisfy a single human is absurd”...

Excellent point and I can not stress enough how much I agree with you. To be clear, I am not arguing that the principle of the division of labor is bad. Obviously some people need to be software developers and other line cooks. But I am deeply bothered by the fact that I will average 40 hour weeks affording me a great deal more leisure than the person who assembled my laptop, farmed the bananas I eat and sewed the shirts I wear.

This does not mean that the solution is for me to live in the forest and sustain myself on berries. I recognize that this inequity is the result of different economies being in different stages of industrialization. My participation in the global economy will most likely help rather than hurt countries in earlier stages of development. I expect my global peers to join me in a relatively painless and happy life full of leisure as developing countries reach a more mature economic stage. If you tell me that this will never happen and this inequity is permanent, I might have to seriously re-examine my personal moral beliefs.

I have the same attitude towards billionaires. I recognize the historical trajectory that brought them here and for the cheap access to information and technology enabled by the industries that minted the latest set of tech billionaires I consider the deal to be quite good. I can still hold the belief that its morally wrong to have a billionaire class while not advocating for violently dismantling the current societal structure. I want society to become more equitable but I think the more realistic time-frame is in the span of hundreds of years, just as most social progress over the last millenia.

>You also state that “If the billionaire holds majority stakes within prominent industries we are delegating important decisions to opaque power with unknown agendas that we can not hope to influence in meaningful ways.”...

Good point. It can be argued we are better off due to undemocratic decision taken by key industry leaders. By democratizing every decision growth would likely be stifled. But there are middle-grounds. I for example would like some democratic influence over google without necessarily nationalizing it or forcing it into a co-op. Google is the de facto information aggregator for the half the worlds population that has internet access. This is a good thing and is due to decisions by democratically unchecked business leaders. However, its model for delivering information is highly incentivized to maximize ad revenue rather than providing the highest quality information. Philosophically, I believe that when something becomes ubiquitous to a large group of people, those people should have a say in that thing. I think a more democratic google is a moral necessity here which will likely be in detriment to the profit incentives of the shareholders. What this entails in practice is something we could probably argue about for a long time. (I understand that Pichai is not a founder nor a single majority holder of google and barely a billionaire. I choose google to highlight the drawbacks and advantages of democratic vs undemocratic power. Our discussion is about billionaires and not corporate decision making though I hope you can see how my reasoning would apply to undemocratic yet helpful decisions made by billionaires. )

Finally, I would like to state that my desired end goal is not complete 100% mathematically verified equality in all measures. I'm not a Pol Pot-esque collectivist who does not believe in the individual or individual differences. I actually believe a degree of inequity to be necessary for a dynamic society. A billionaire is a different beast than a multi-millionaire. I'm not advocating for a revolution to topple the billionaires. I'm advocating for a conversation about how extreme wealth might undermine the health of our society.