But is it right for one person to be in control of that much money? Why do we allow individuals to amass that much power?
But I don't like dynasties. I don't like that trusts and foundations are being used as a way to bring back dynastic wealth and power.
You see this at play in the most powerful families in America: the Kennedies, Clintons, Bushes, Romneys, Pelosis. They all use trusts and foundations to preserve wealth between generations.
I understand why people are skeptical.
Yes, he can. For a fairly extreme case, he could expend a substantial fraction of the recurring proceeds generated by the investment of that fortune buying up some good or combination of goods which whose production competes with that of basic necessities that Joe needs in terms of some of the needed production inputs, by so doing he drives up the manufacturing costs of those necessities (and, thus, their market clearing price, by affecting the supply curve for those goods), and increases Joe's living costs.
EDIT: Not to mention the jobs that government can directly create with more money to spend. That's an even more direct example of wealth distribution, really.
Politicians and bureaucrats having unlimited power: good.
Concentration of power is an emergent property of network effects. As long as "being popular" is positively correlated with your decision to use a product, then the products that are already popular will get more popular, and their owners will get rich. It's largely (but not entirely) random who the owners are, but their existence is guaranteed.
If everybody thought for themselves and made their decisions independently of what everyone else does, you'd see a much more egalitarian distribution of wealth. But unfortunately most people lack the courage (or maybe just time & energy) to make up their own minds, and outsource their opinions to others. Ironically, many of the very rich are the biggest critics of this phenomena - indeed, the reason they got rich was because they had the ability to think for themselves and see what other people didn't see.
The same applies to political power (people would rather vote for a Clinton or Bush than an unknown candidate just because they have the brand name recognition) and to fame (Paris Hilton got to be famous because people talk about her. Why do they talk about her? Because their friends talk about her.)
If seriously corrupting effects can occur from one person's use of money, we have a larger issue and need to address the cause (someone can use money to cause a big, society-wide problem), not the symptom (someone has a lot of money and is using it in a socially-disastrous way). If we're nitpicking at individual's monetary use, the system is broken.
Individuals should be able to amass any amount of money and not cause large-scale social damage. Looking at a set of fortunes above a certain size and confiscating them because we can't build a resilient system is totally bad. In effect, we're already doing it with income tax.
If you don't contend that Zuck will cause large-scale social damage, what's wrong with him having that much money and using it as he sees fit? After all, he "earned" it.
You have a choice to not use Facebook, and if everyone refuses to use Facebook, he will lose his wealth and his influence. When was the last time you heard about Tom from MySpace on TV? He and his team have done a great job promoting the product, despite issues like privacy.
If you are looking from an ideal socialism, then I am sad to inform you that socialism does not work at all because most human I know have opinions, and when there's opinion people take side, and when people take side people turn into control. When people have professional skill, they become experts, and when they are experts, they are assigned roles. You wouldn't listen to me for medical advice. Between a nobody physicist and a Nobel laureate in Physics, the Nobel laureate's opinions obviously carry more weight in a conference talk.
And btw, he doesn't have $45B in his bank account. Most of his money are still virtual, in bytes (argue about silver vs greenback, in the 1800s).
Of course there is danger in accumulating power. For a nation, being the most powerful doesn't mean you have to stick your head in everyone's else affairs. There is always some gains and some losses when a giant arises. Giants with the right vision can create quality products (i.e. Apple), but giants dictating vision (i.e. Microsoft) can cause life fortune to turn around (although Microsoft is doing much better in the last few years).
You can be the forerunner in your competition, but if you want to maintain your influence, you must allow some competitions. Only way to innovate is to accept challenges. You don't write better code unless someone critique you. That's the difference between a thinker and a narrator.
To be fair, it's his money. It's not that he bought a lottery ticket and won the jackpot. He build a company and made loads of money. It's up to him what to do with it, I guess.
Hacker != capitalist !
It might be a remnant of capitalism, but capitalism was relatively controversial when it was the dominant economic system of the developed world (it was named as a system by those critical of it!), was displaced everywhere in the developed world by modern mixed economies, and even the degree of capitalism present in those economies remains controversial.
So, no, I don't think "we all agreed" that capitalism was good.