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> Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who believe it should be taken away from them to justify that.

This is a great example of status quo bias.

You believe that the onus of arguing ethics is on the people who want to change the status quo when really, we should start by thinking about what society ought to look like from first principles. And then you absolutely do have to give arguments for why you want any inequality to exist in the first place, let alone billionaires.[0]

> It's not a shame that there exist billionaires. It's a shame that there exist people with nothing. The former doesn't need fixing; the latter absolutely does.

While I'd agree that the latter problem is more urgent, the former can't be dismissed so easily, either. For one, the existence of billionaires (and upper-range millionaires, really) is pretty antithetical to one of the foundational principles of democracy, which is "one person one vote". It gets even worse when you consider the possibility and practice of inheritance.

And besides, some people might argue that if we didn't have the former problem, it might be easier to tackle the latter -- because when there is less inequality, there tends to be less focus on wasteful jockeying for social status overall, and then people might be more inclined to help those that are below themselves on the social ladder.

[0] There are good arguments in favor of some inequality, but the degree of it is pretty important.

> And then you absolutely do have to give arguments for why you want any inequality to exist in the first place

I'm not in favor of inequality, but I can't disregard the fact that it is naturally occuring in most realms. From geography, to agriculture, to education, to skill, etc. If there is one principle that I think is true is that in nature there is a complete lack of equality, yet there is balance.

I understand that equality is an ideal that we aspire toward. But it almost seems arbitrary and forced when you consider that systems don't inheritely have equality built into them.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense, just trying to spark conversation.

> You believe that the onus of arguing ethics is on the people who want to change the status quo when really, we should start by thinking about what society ought to look like from first principles. And then you absolutely do have to give arguments for why you want any inequality to exist in the first place, let alone billionaires.[0]

Interesting challenge, taking a look at the need for inequality based on first principles. Let me attempt my hand at it.

If you look at a capitalist economy as an optimization mechanism, large wealth concentrations are sources for large jumps in the solution space that escape local maximums. Explaining why:

Start by ignoring the comfort providing aspect of wealth. At these levels, wealth is more about power to shape society than it is about personal comfort. On the personal comfort scale, you get diminishing returns as you spend more.

In terms of shaping society, a billionaire has more power than a millionaire. Whereas, for a large project, a millionaire must convince other millionaires to share the risk, a billionaire may throw himself on a tangent all on his own.

This single-mind behaviour, when compared to group-mind behaviour, produces solutions that are a lot different from the status quo. In terms of optimization, they are larger jumps in the coordinate space.

Now, these large jumps in the solution coordinate space may be beneficial, may be dangerous, or altogether innocuous. Most are innocuous, some are wildly positive (Tesla pushing the auto market to move towards electric traction), some are wildly negative (Koch brothers capturing government).

The question of whether the final balance is positive or negative is an extremely difficult question. We're talking about very rare events in the optimization of very complex systems.

So, I have a very nice, useless theory :-)

Democracy should be a tool not a religion. I'm pretty glad Elon Musk had $100 million to save Space X and Tesla during the financial crash.

Equality of resources and status, or equality of opportunity?

Some people are worse than others. Some people are less useful to society than others, though that doesn't make them worse. Some people, given large amounts of money, can do amazing things for the world. On a whim, I can think of Elon Musk. If he weren't allowed to have his fortune from Paypal because inequality is unethical... who would have gotten that money? A government? What would they have done with that money? And why is government/the public always the best decider of how wealth is spent?

Your argument may be reasonable in degrees: Who needs $500 billion dollars? Should there be a legal requirement to invest that money in the public at a certain point, if it isn't taxed directly? I don't know. But I believe inequality is ethical and necessary.

Equality of resources and status, or equality of opportunity?

Both, for two main groups of reason.

The first one is that when the available positions in society are highly unequal, then equality of opportunity may simply not be enough for a fair outcome, as who ends up in the comfortable and high-status position ends up largely being down to mere luck.

The second one is that (at least as long as families and inheritance are a thing) the two are linked anyway. Inequality of resources and status is the leading cause of inequality of opportunity, after all. You basically have to either go Brave New World or increase equality of resources in generation N in order to make serious progress towards equality of opportunity in generation N+1.

And we agree that a lot of it is about a matter of degree -- I've said as much in my original post, after all :)

Money is a social construct. A person can only earn money because as a society we've decided to create the rules and institutions that allow that to happen. Our current free-market system that assumes money should be accumulated freely and its ownership preserved by default is based on ideology, not physics.

Given the current massive wealth inequality, one really simple, effective, and ethical way to help people who are poor and suffering is to redistribute wealth. We don't do that because our political and cultural systems disproportionately represent the interests of the rich.

It's reasonable to say that as long as there are poor and suffering people, as long as we don't all have access to health care and education, as long as there are causes for the common good, there may be an asymptotic upper limit to the amount of wealth a single person can ethically have, when that wealth could be going toward improving other people's lives instead.

I think people are still coming to grips with the incredible scalability of software. You might hate a business tycoon, but somebody worked their ass off to build that business. But today, you write a nifty little game about a bird worth a few nickles or something, and thanks to stupid-scalar you're an overnight billionaire. People don't know how to feel about that. I don't know how to feel about that.

The closest analogue from before would have been inventing something clever, making a proof of concept, filing a patent, and chaching you never have to work again and have your own Senator. And of course that never happened.

Linus obviously puts in a hell of a lot more work than that, but the simplified version is a thought experiment.

Anyway, nobody begrudges someone who had a good idea and did the world good, having it made and living a good life. But I think there's two elements that turn things sour- one is the influence of money in politics, and the other is as you mentioned that some people have nothing. If nobody was starving and we got money out of politics, it would be easier to applaud overnight billionaires with no reservations.

As for the "Hard Problems", it's businesses or government that tend to tackle those. The billionaire investor-philanthropist funding a derring-do venture out of his own pockets ala Musk is not the norm.

> yes, there are ethical reasons to accumulate so many resources: because some problems are incredibly hard to solve and need a lot of resources to even start to solve.

Allowing people to become billionaires is a hideously inefficient way to solve hard problems. Most billionaires hoard their wealth, or spend it on the hard problem of ostentatious display of wealth. Billionaires who solve hard problems: Bill Gates and Elon Musk. The rest of that wealth goes on things like solid gold soap dishes for superyachts - my neighbour worked at a shipyard, and a customer had them rip out merely gold-plated soap dishes in all the showers.

If even a fraction of that money funded university research departments, say, we'd get far more problems solved.

> Allowing

One word in, and already the same inverted burden of proof problem as the comment I replied to.

> people to become billionaires is a hideously inefficient way to solve hard problems

It's a good thing that's not the reason, nor is any reason required, and that's not your choice to make. And, also critically important: it's a great way to solve specific hard problems that aren't the ones most people are focused on.

Over the course of my lifetime, I expect to donate 99+% of my lifetime earnings towards specific charitable causes that are not something that the vast majority of people care about, though I believe they should.

> If even a fraction of that money funded university research departments, say, we'd get far more problems solved.

University research departments are a passable way to solve some problems, motivated by the ability to attract grant money and publish papers. Many problems are far more efficiently and quickly solved when motivated directly by producing a product or service people will pay for.

Again, the problem is not that we have millionaires and billionaires. The problem is that we have people with nothing. Let's fix that.

> I expect to donate 99+% of my lifetime earnings

Good on you.

Your property rights are secured by the government you live under. The government you live in doesn't exist without the consent of the governed (unless you live in one of the many autocracies/despotisms/theocracies/etc. in the world). "Allowing" is the correct word.

Taxes are state allowing you to keep X% of your earnings. Apparently they don't need a proof that they can do that.

> If even a fraction of that money funded university research departments, say, we'd get far more problems solved.

No, you'd get more grantsmanship. It's an indicator of how hideously inefficient and misguided our university research programmes are that the word even exists.

It seems that you have a very strong opinion on the matter already so I won‘t try to convince you to change it but I want to offer some points that follow from your perspective that you might not have considered before.

If you take into account the historical development of the world you basically argue for the natural state of affairs. The stronger or more powerful person is generally right and free to do as they please and the weaker have to bring forth good arguments or band together to become stronger to assert there „rights“. This is certainly the way it used to be and often still is but we humans have come up with societal arrangements to change this because we realized it is ineffective - there are simply more fights and less cooperation otherwise.

As you alude to in your last statement you agree that humans have basic rights and there needs should be met. However, regarding the effectiveness of social arrangements, do you really believe a society with a handful of super rich and a broad majority of have nots is going to be effective and cooperative? If you think about the natural state of affairs, who is more powerful, the many or the few? While it’s certainly not easy to organize large groups of people, it‘s possible and happening as seen with Trump and Brexit. These are movements which in my opinion have a strong attitude of „sticking it to the man“ and are a direct consequence of inequality. So I think if you somewhat follow your own logic to the end the billionaires actually have the burden of justifying their wealth to the general populace. Otherwise you would be mixing and matching rights and the natural state of affairs in a way that contradicts your own argument in the first place.

> It's a shame that there exist people with nothing. The former doesn't need fixing; the latter absolutely does.

I'm not sure if you are being facetious or you generally don't see the link here.

There's a massive difference between "we should tax people slightly more" and "nobody should have more than X amount".

(Leaving aside that we already have the money to help people who have nothing and are just really terrible about actually doing it for all sorts of reasons that would not be solved by having more taxes.)

I think that there are similarities with gun control laws. The gun in wrong hands is a dangerous thing. Especially so if there are lots of hands. Billion dollars in the wrong hand is far more dangerous. Especially in a country that has lobbying as a standard way law influence.

Of course it's easier to get a gun then to become a billionaire. But billion dollars is closer to nuclear energy than to pistol.

I'm not sure if billionaire-control laws would be beneficial, but I understand why there are at least a few positives.

>because some problems are incredibly hard to solve and need a lot of resources to even start to solve.

But there's not a whole lot of evidence that solving one problem truly lends itself to solving any other of any actual utility.

EDIT:

Downvotes are cool and all, but actual examples?

Offhand, Musk is probably an example. Gates has done good things, as well.

Meanwhile we also have people like Peter Thiel attacking freedom of speech. Or Larry Ellison. Or the Kochs. Or the Murdochs. Or the Waltons.

Not convincing to me if we're talking single digit percentages. I'm swayable, but it's going to require proof.