Tech billionaires who donate millions are just “bribing society at large.”
vox.com
vox.com
We are effectively in another gilded age. The wealthy are acting much like they did in the last one. Tech is an irrelevance here.
Because they have a history of getting impressive shit done. Not complained about, but actually done. And they have the will to get it done, and a bunch of capital to put behind that will, even if they were taxed at whatever ridiculously high rate Giridharadas wants them taxed at.
Giridharadas is welcome to disagree with successful people, but they've at this point proven their opinions do tend to matter when it comes to shaping the country whether we want to pay attention or not.
Just because someone's successful it doesn't mean they're wise. Looking at Zuckerberg fumble from scandal to scandal certainly doesn't give one that impression. He's just another ruthless rich businessman.
Bezos built the biggest e-commerce business in the world, never having worked in e-commerce or retail before. And seems to be doing some impressive stuff at Blue Origin, not knowing anything about space travel.
That's all not to mention Musk, who goes from new industry to new industry, building successful businesses that fundamentally change those industries, without previously knowing anything about those industries.
These are incredibly impressive accomplishments. They've proven their bonafides for solving general problems in fields they weren't previously familiar with, probably more than just about anyone else in the world.
The thing to bear in mind with this is they're all constantly looking at a bunch of other initiatives before jumping in, so if one of these people had a comment to a reporter on just about anything it's probably not the first time they're thinking about that subject.
Richest country in the world can't offer health care to so many of its citizens.
Zuckerberg accidentally invented surveillance capitalism by gathering more and more data to show ads to more and more people. Then he was completely surprised when it backfired and yet tries to continue down the same path, because that's all that Facebook knows.
Bezos can at least be credited with having some insights about online platforms, but a lot of his success can be attributed to being in the right place at the right time. The same man starting today would probably get bought out by one of Google, Fb, Apple or Amazon or succeed on a small/medium scale. Not to mention that Amazon apparently has a culture of making people cry and warehouse worker abuse.
What's most bothersome about your assertions is this CEO worshipping that's ignoring the real people doing the work. And I'm not talking about the janitors cleaning Tesla's tent-factory, but rather the engineers and experts which actually built the rockets, batteries and scalable platforms these companies stand on.
Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg haven't solved any problems, except how to be a CEO. The people they hired did the solving.
I've gotten to the point where it feels like we need a Net Worth Limit. Cap it at $250 million let's say. The rich still get to enjoy a post-scarcity lifestyle, and the rest of society doesn't hang in the balance of whether our billionaire gods are benevolent or not. I doubt Jobs, Zuck and Gates would have said "Forget it" if they knew they only had the opportunity to acquire a quarter of a billion dollars. And if they did, they are probably not the sort you want to have more money than that anyway.
By restricting ultra productive people to a capped return we're effectively disincentivizing these people from providing additional value once they've hit their cap.
additionally you can forsee the fixed per capita cap will be gamed. $250M for me, and for my spouse, and each next of kin, and each parent / uncle aunt etc. Suddenly neopotism is all over the place.
but the question i have is whether these people who are ultra rich really did provide the value to society that their wealth suggests.
Did bezos or zuckerberg create value? Or did they just extracted the residual value from their employees?
May be instead of a wealth cap, the cap needs to be applied at income (and also make capital gains into income). Your wealth total is uncapped, but you as a person, could not possibly have created more value than $X per year. Where X is set can be debated, but i would expect it to be less than $10mil.
It's really hard to know the alternate history w/o Zuck, but the theory goes that these employees would have been employed in less valuable ways w/o him. Thus there is some marginal value add he brought to the table of which he captures a portion of... Of course all of this is up for debate...
The rationale is that the entrepreneur/organization bringing the greatest value to market is able to subsequently pay employees the most as well and employees will naturally migrate to their greatest opportunity. Whether it's starting their own business, staying at their current job or changing employers/careers it is up to individuals to decide their own best path.
The question is, will a cap like this produce a net negative or net positive to society?
On one hand, what's the incentive to keep being productive and innovative once the cap is reached? If we can come up with some (besides money), and they are good and desirable, it may offset some of the negative effects.
I always think of it like we don't let private citizens posses atom bombs in the US (even if they are really good people who would never use them for evil). A shotgun is fine though. Too much power in a single individual unbalances society.
But I'm really not sure what the net effects would be. Besides, as other posters have pointed out, the system would almost certainly be gamed. The hazard of too much wealth does seem real though.
> I doubt Jobs, Zuck and Gates would have said "Forget it" if they knew they only had the opportunity to acquire a quarter of a billion dollars.
They might have if they knew their companies would be taken away from them at the first sign of success. Jobs was worth well over 250 million in 2001 (probably earlier thanks to Pixar, but cannot confirm at the moment). You would have taken Apple away from Steve Jobs before the iPhone was a pipe dream, and Pixar away from him before Finding Nemo.
Bill Gates was worth 1.25 billion in 1987, and I'm not even going to start talking about what Microsoft did after 1987 (tbf there's a case to be made that MS wasn't so great for the world after 1987, but my point that founders would totally say "Forget it" stands).
Slim laptops with dust-sensitive keyboards? Windows 10 telemetry? The world moves on without larger than life characters.
Zuckerberg saying forget it would have been a great thing for everyone except Facebook and its employees, not sure why you even bothered to put him on the list.