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.
> Billionaires are prescriptive. "I will solve this problem".
That's good, and that's sort of the point of getting money, is it not? We should encourage those who are rich to pursue goals beneficial to everyone. They have the ability to achieve things no "democratic" groups (and countries) can, because the latter are plagued with coordination problems.
I'll take your "very rich" and primarily include billionaires and the extremely affluent in my following statement:
Billionaires shouldn't exist. They shouldn't. We should re-implement proper progressive tax rates (like the US had in the 50s), and ensure that that type of wealth can never happen again.
> Billionaires provide value as alternate sources of power to the state.
Billionaires are the state. They would not exist if the state didn't specifically provide them with the mechanisms to amass such wealth at the expense of the rest of us.
What I am saying is that billionaires get rewarded disproportionately more than their actual contribution. They also get listened to way more than they deserve.
Let me rephrase this: i don't think people saying 'billionaires shouldn't exist' are against their existence, but against the disproportionate amount of power they have.
In my opinion, the problem isn't that people hate on Billionaires for philanthropic acts, but increasing wealth gap. In other words - very fact that billionaires exist.
> Billionaires" are the few people who can afford tackling large projects
I disagree: What billionaire "tackled" the Manhattan project, or the US interstate highway system?
Even if we exclude governments/taxpayers for some arbitrary reason, that also leaves corporations consisting of lots of sub-billionaires.
If it seems like only billionaires can do such things these days, perhaps that indicates that other options have been politically neutered by somebody for some reason.
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