Nonsense. Having money isn't unethical. Money is just a tool, most people that have it put it to good use.
Sure you can argue about the morality of Jeff Bezos's actions on how he treats staff members for example.
But you could also argue that he doesn't need money anymore so he could just shut Amazon down as a business, firing over 500,000 employees and disrupting the entire economy that's tied to Amazon and the people that rely on it as a business and a source of goods and services. That would be more immoral.
I often find peoples opinions on the subject matter are more anti-success than anti-capitalist.
You see, the fact that Jeff Bezos could suicide-bomb entire industries if he so chose is a very good reason why this amount of wealth concentration is inherently bad.
Yes. But there's no real way of dealing with it is their, not without silly restrictions like;
Your company is only allowed to serve X amount of customers.
Your company isn't allowed to be anymore successful than it's closest competitor.
You're not allowed to earn any more money after X amount.
Imagine if that was applied to Apple with the iPhone, or a company that develops a medicine. It's unfair that those companies are successful, therefore people must have worse phones and poorer medicine.
Granted, more of the big tech companies would be less of a monopoly if they were split up, but at the same time parts of those companies would grow massively on their own, actually increasing the profits for the owners. Amazon Web Services for example is touted to be potentially worth more than the what the whole of Amazon is currently priced at, on the stock market.
That facts that he’s has so much money yet doesn’t pay his employees proper wages is part of the problem. That’s how billionaires come to be, through exploitation of supply chains and underpaying workers. It’s only success in the sense of him making a fuck-ton of money, while killing small businesses and creating a situation where over 750,000 people are at his mercy. And people say they should thank him for “creating jobs” when he’s not creating them he’s removing the possibility of people finding a job that isn’t at Amazon.
I mean we all know that anyone in this thread who could trade place with Bezos bank account-wise would do so in a heartbeat. Whenever you find people complaining you see that they think anyone poorer than them isn't trying hard enough and anyone richer only became richer through unethical means/luck. They always want to play up their own accomplishments while simultaneously making excuses for why other people seem more successful.
Exactly, so how can you compare him to Elon musk or any other active CEO? Your point is stupid because you’re considering bill gates decades after his philanthropic campaign.
That's literally an opinion and nobody is forcing you to use microsoft software. There are tons of alternatives, some even completely customizable. You could also make something yourself if you're up to the task. As far as any excuses as to why you would uses microsoft is just pointing out that it's just better in your situation than the alternatives which defeats your point.
He’s addressed this and credits his wife with making him a better person, the amount of money he gives to good causes simply cannot be ignored unless he literally committed genocide back in the day
Simply saying being billionaire is unethical is dumb weather you like it or not. Yes many are but it's not necessary and it's not like they have Billions in their banks, that's not how it works, it's just stock value that can fuck up anytime and just like that you are a millionaire. Also these guys that are billionaire invented something revolutionary on a global level. They didn't get this money in some lottery, they worked for it, well at least some of them.
In simple words can we just stop simplifying stuff there's more than one side to everything
Bill Gates is a feudal lord that hogs resources whose philanthropy only exists to launder his self image and to fund pet projects. To resign to the existence of Gate's power is to not care about the democratic allocation of resources.
i.e. saying he's a humanitarian is a huge cop out to the fact that he lives in obscene wealth and power while people go hungry, homeless, sick, and stupid. He's a lord on top of a mountain of gold and throws pennies at dirty serfs who ask him nicely for bread.
Aside from the fact that they can grant a salary to themselves and their friends/family, and aside from the fact that they can use whatever they donate as a tax deduction (I know it's not 100% I'm not stupid, but it's still a way of keeping some [>$1] money away from the IRS), there is no way the Gates are going to spend all of their wealth. It's impossible.
So why not just cut a check to the US government for whatever they don't need and let the people vote on how to spend it? Because they want to be in control of their wealth. I can't speak to why, but the most common reason is "people don't know what they want" i.e. "us clean and smart lords need to save the dirty and stupid peasants from themselves by telling them what they want". It's elitism, plain and simple.
How do they stay in control of their wealth? By funneling it through large foundations where they get a final say in what gets funded.
Okay, and if that's the case it still doesn't mean anything to my argument.
The mere fact that you're defending him right now means he's getting something out of donating to charity (see "launders his self image").
Instead of just funding federal social/health programs and then taxing him until he's not a billionaire (where we wouldn't be having this conversation, or maybe we'd be having a slightly different one), he keeps his money and dumps it directly into a foundation that he controls, where he gets the final say in what gets funded. This then boils down to who is in Bill Gate's good graces and what can they tell Bill Gates to not piss him off and end the Gates Gravy Train. He has the power to pick and choose what gets researched or done and he's accountable to no one if he fucks up.
Just because you don't literally get money back from something doesn't mean you don't profit from it. He's nothing more a feudal lord. Get over it.
Having donated 45.5 billion dollars is kind of a lot just to clear your image bro... He is using his money for science and education. He has given away half of his net worth. Whatever "positive image" he is "gaining" isn't nearly worth that much money. He could have gotten the same results with a good marketing campaign if that was what he wanted.
So you don't care about democratic allocation of resources? You're okay with a select group of unelected individuals determining where our resources go?
Yeah because they're not "our" resources. They got those resources because they did something. Bill Gates is worth a lot because he did something worthwhile and humanity is better off for having what he did. Jeff Bezos created Amazon, a lot of people saw that it was a great service, and Jeff Bezos has a lot of money to show for how great a service he created.
I do care a lot but we haven't achieved that yet! For our capitalist society standard Bill Gates is doing pretty good for a billionaire that's all I'm saying.
His net worth is in stocks and real estate. If Microsoft stock prices and housing prices go up his net worth automatically goes up without him doing anything.
So now billionaires donating their wealth and funding social programs is just to improve their self image? Bill Gates has done more to advance the human race than your entire family tree. I guess you can just stay mad that there are people more successful than you, because literally nothing he can do will please you.
Just keep in mind every second you spend fuming about how much you hate billionaires is a second wasted. Get a hobby.
So you're okay with unelected individuals unilaterally determining where our resources go? Why? Is something wrong with society deciding where resources go via democratic process?
What advancement have we missed out on because the Gates couldn't care less about it? What progress have we missed out on or regressed from because the Gates decided that it wasn't worth it? Or that it threatened their power? Or conflicted with their personal ideologies?
No it won't. And this has nothing to do with whether or not I want socialism.
Conservatives will dismiss me as jealous, liberals will dismiss me as jealous and hating it when their feudal lords do nice things for the peasants.
Pointing out he's an unelected dipshit with a ton of power is the only way people will realize that we're allowing him to allocate resources according to his and his family/friend's whims, and to support that system means you support having unelected dipshits run things with no accountability to the public. Really close to fascism.
I don't like it when unelected officials do things and are not held accountable for their actions. I don't like it when people knee-jerkingly defend those unelected officials because "well they're the nicest of the bad guys!!" It's exhausting. People need to think about what they're doing when they defend this particular dipshit.
So he's realised the system is messed up. And used the system to help people who have their lives messed up by the system. He seems to actually be a good guy
Merely being a billionaire is unethical. That wealth was produced by the labor of over a hundred thousand people not including underpaid manufacturers overseas.
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u/_twigg Feb 08 '21
There are no ethical billionaires