You're wrong. The Gates Foundation has pledged $10 billion to vaccine research and I can't think of how that could be considered "patronizing".
it shouldn't be possible to accumulate that much wealth to begin with.
I disagree. The most productive people in society should be rewarded accordingly, and encouraged to keep producing. If you put a cap on rewards you'll put a cap on productivity.
Many would cite John Rawls here, but I have my own criticisms and my philosophical debates (I am a philosophy minor) can run into weeks of time. Instead, I'm going to simply make the argument that wealth over $200 million is meaningless to a single person. That is, from a practical perspective, that is more money than one could ever spend. The only positive use that could come from that amount of money is heavy watched investment and philanthropy. It is not easy to see that $1 billion is enough to move the world. Why should that responsibility fall into a single citizen's hands? In the best circumstances, the citizen hires a flotilla of people to manage that wealth (e.g., Gates and Buffet) and they spend it wisely and do great good. I don't see the fundamental reason why the government couldn't just do the exact same thing. By awarding the money of a government to a single person (Gates and Buffet each had, at the height of their wealth, more money than most of the governments in the world), this simply ensures an entrenched oligarchy of the rich (and therefore powerful) unless they decide to give it away.
Many would argue that this is "their" money so they deserve it. I think this argument is mostly bollocks, though. Bill Gates had over $100 billion at one point. Let's say that a skilled professional makes ~$1 million (gross) over the same time period. That's a 100,000x multiplier. Did Gates really do 100,000x more work? Did he really have 100,000x more insight? I think he just got lucky. He was at the right time at the right place with a good idea. From there he built a company. But the trick is that it's a lot easier to make a lot of money when you already have a whole lot of money.
Anyway, I'm gonna end this here, even though I'm not completely satisfied with my argument because this is becoming ridiculous.
P.S. This is not for those who believe that the government can do nothing right. I'm not sure that it's even worth arguing with those people. Theoretically, there's no satisfying proof that that's the case and practically the only evidence I see is that when those same people set the government up to fall, it falls hard.
There are lots of things which cost more than a billion dollars which makes this statement false. Not individual items, of course, but buying a billion dollar railway is both possible and spending.
I don't think philanthropy (as in, charity) goes far enough. It isn't thinking big enough. Imagine what Buffet could do if he spent his fortune on a Manhatten Project for room temperature superconductors? He could nearly start a lunar colony for that money.
The fundamental reason the government can't do the same thing is because they would be voted out for 'wasting' money on speculative ivory tower wankery.
Anyway, so what if Bill Gates got lucky, this just sounds like sour grapes. Is he not allowed to get more lucky than you approve of? Whether he 'deserves' it is neither here nor there - it's a non question, like does he deserve two feet or to live past 30.
P.S. This is not for those who believe that the government can do nothing right
I'll just note that here in England, our recent government scandal is on what MPs had been taking from taxpayer money for their expenses. It included one MP expensing £1600 (>$2000) on an ornamental floating duck house.
They do a lot right, but just giving them money because they will magically spend it better than any normal person is not something I can go along with.
Comedian Louis CK on Bill Gates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95fNgx8aCS8
"You know what you could do with 85 billion dollars? You could buy every baseball team and have them all wear dresses for only like 3 billion. How do you not do that? I would do that everyday. One day I would go out and buy all the pants in the world and just burn them. Start over with making pants. They're all gone."
I would be more interested in the solution however, taking into account the practicalities. I mean, if the government had the billions of Gates, besides using them to pay off their debt, their only option might perhaps be to give it to people on benefit who do nothing with their day whatever, rather than, as Gates has, though a rare occurrence, employ a lot of people for a very worthy cause.
My point I think is that to allow people to make as much as possible, allows the society to benefit from the fundamental ideas of the free market, while, to give it to the government effectively locks this wealth in bureaucracy and grant it to people who might be very stupid and waste it all entirely to no good whatever.
What do you get in return? Essentially the government receives a bunch of claim checks for wealth (remember that "money" itself has almost no intrinsic value; what we're after, from a macroeconomic viewpoint, is a maximal sustainable production of wealth). Your proposal amounts to reducing overall wealth production in exchange for increasing the government's buying power by a comparatively small amount. Forget ethical arguments against it; except in very extreme economic circumstances, it's absurd from a practical standpoint.
Instead, I'm going to simply make the argument that wealth
over $200 million is meaningless to a single person.
How do you define productivity, the one who makes the most money?
Theres also this mentality that pretty much anything goes in businesses, which I find a bit interesting. Hence the phrase: it's not personal, it's business. So people are allowed to screw you over and be complete a-holes when it comes to business.
Some businesses (see: credit cards) are most profitable when they siphon billions from the poor, which is then placed in the hands of the rich. Then, after doing so, they are lauded for donating that money to philanthropic causes. I don't know how this can be viewed as anything other than patronizing.
In my experience, this isn't how the vast majority of wealthy people operate. It's how it's portrayed in the movies, but it doesn't really jive with the real world.
People love stories of the evil geniuses so those get spread around, but the vast majority of wealthy people deliver pretty well, keep their promises, work extremely hard, are fair and even-handed, and make the world a better place. Generally speaking, the higher up you go in wealth, the more likely you are to get a fair shake by that person in business. It's hard to get wealthy without people trusting you and building a good reputation as a reliable and effective person.
You're much more likely to have someone try to screw you over if they're poor or middle class - which is why those people remain poor and middle class. It's quite hard to get wealthy if you're leaving a trail of carnage behind you (it's been done, but it makes it a hell of a lot harder).
Of course, some people get rich by operating those smallish businesses, and lots of them seem upstanding to me. But a lot of people get rich by filling the decision-maker (CEO/VP/etc.) roles at large firms, where they tend to be somewhat ruthless, perhaps because there's something of a disconnect in ethical responsibility (they're just doing their jobs, nothing personal).
> Are you including how the wealthy people operate when they're running businesses, or just in their personal lives?
Generally speaking, both. Some people do poorly in one direction or the other, but I find successful people to be pretty honorable most of the time.
> I've interacted with a number of game companies, for example, and I've found the big ones much more likely to try to screw you over if you don't have lawyers keeping them from doing so, whereas small indie studios will keep their word and try to act in a way that seems ethical
Care to share some anecdotes about the game industry? That'd be cool to hear.
Gaming seems like an interesting example, I don't have any friends in gaming specifically. I get the impression that indie studios are really in it for the love of it, so you're dealing with people who are working with their passionate love for less money, so that's a good point.
Actually, if anything, the worst gap is when going from a laborer or craftsman (generally pretty honest and good guys) to a middle manager. I think, I hope we're on the path to obsoleting middle managers in general, because its just not a role conducive to good people. Good middle managers get promoted or hired away to be upper level managers, or leave to start their own company pretty quickly. So you get all sorts of bureaucratic flunkeys in that role - no good. I'm surprised to hear you've got to be wary around a CEO of a major company, though. I'm friends with more business owners and skilled professionals (architects, engineers, etc) than high level executives, but the high level executives I've met seem like decent sorts. Can't comment so much - I was thinking more about business owners than high level employees when I commented. I guess that's my bias.
> Of course, some people get rich by operating those smallish businesses, and lots of them seem upstanding to me.
Right, this is mostly my social circle and our acquaintances. Maybe the corporate world is uglier and I was overlooking it... one potential HUGE conflict of interest nobody talks about is when ownership and management are mis-aligned, especially in public companies. I think I'll never, ever buy stock in a public company again unless the top 5 decisionmakers in the organization own like a combine 30-40% of the company at least.
Good question, good comment. I would be interested in hearing about your experiences in gaming if you think you can talk in a way that wouldn't potentially bring heat on you.
It's an eye-opening book about just how removed upper management of a public company can be. Although I don't have much anecdotal experience to back it up, I think people who start their own companies and grow them are much more likely to be honorable than employees who worked their way up to become CEO. Being upper management of a large corporation is generally a golden ticket. Even if you do a horrible job, you will probably still receive millions in pay and stock options. In fact, because the organization is so large, it will probably take a couple years for people to figure out if you are doing poorly. By that time, you already have your money.
Because of the incentives, I would think that people trying to get into these types of positions would be much more ruthless than people who generated their wealth through their own means.
Like I said, I don't have much experience with this but it is how I imagine things are.
It turned out into more of a sex advertisement and soft money for advertisers and managers (i.e. completely misspent money).
The media did not complain though (since they received a shitload of advertisement money).
No actually i'm right.
> and I can't think of how that could be considered "patronizing".
the part where bill gates accumulates wealth through computer technology, and where computer technology depends on minerals mined under slave labor conditions, or devices put together in sweatshops, and then he gets lauded for "donating" what he dispossessed those people of.
that would be one of many patronizing threads to this story, for example.
> The most productive people in society should be rewarded accordingly,
the non-linear returns of capitalist accumulation do not reward people "accordingly".