Bernie Madoff did not earn anything. He stole.
You cannot justly equate a destroyer of value (Madoff) with a creator of value (Jobs).
You cannot justly equate a destroyer of value (Madoff) with a creator of value (Jobs).
I did not equate Jobs to Madoff (or AIG or arms dealers), I simply stated that being in possession of fifty million dollars does not provide any indication of moral value of the possessor.
This is a contradiction in terms. To earn something means to trade for it honestly, exchanging one value for another. To steal something means something altogether different (taking something by force or fraud). These two words do not mean the same thing; they are, in fact, opposites.
Honesty has absolutely nothing to do with the definition of the word.
And in any case, selling heroin to high schoolers fits your new definition of "earning". I surely see no moral good that comes from that. As such, earning fifty million, or five dollars has zero correlation to morality.
I have already provided at least 2 other examples of people immorally earning (per your new definition) money, you have ignored both to focus on semantics involving Madoff.
My point remains. Your original post and overall point is invalid. In fact, it is 100% backwards. Money is morally neutral. It's how you get money and what you do with it that determines morality.
Earning is inherently a profoundly moral action, because values are things that advance human interests (not to be confused with desires) long-term. People don't generally pursue lower values over higher ones (unless they are mistaken about what is actually valuable to them).
Values (such as food, clothing, or abstract ideas) are earned, honestly by free minds through great conscious effort. There is no other way.
You appear to want to redefine "earning" once again so that the definition now means: a moral trade of goods/services. As such, your argument boils down to this: a moral trade of goods/services is moral. Yes, yes it is.
But that also roughly translates into meaninglessness. Good things are good and bad things are bad. Yes. Ipso facto. That's the way it works. There is indeed no other way. But that has absolutely nothing to do with whether money is itself moral (it isn't) or whether helping other people is moral (it is).
Here's a zen story I'm going to mangle that will surely blow your mind:
A father in a small village gave a boy a horse of his own for his fifteenth birthday. All the village were happy for the boy, "how lucky he is" they said. One villager asked the old monk, "isn't it good that the boy got a horse?", to which the old monk replied "maybe it is, maybe it is not". They ignored the old monk and congratulated the boy on having a horse. A few days passed and then one day the boy fell from his horse and broke his leg. All the village were worried for the boy. One villager said to the old monk "you were right, isn't it a shame the boy broke his leg", to which the old monk replied "maybe it is, maybe it is not". Again the villagers shook their heads and walked away from the old monk. Two weeks passed and soldiers from the nearby town rode into the village. All the villagers gathered around and the soldiers said "every abled bodied man must come with us to fight for the Emperor so that the Emperor can conquer more land". All the women cried and all the abled bodied men rode off with the soldiers to fight a war they had no stake in. One of the women turned to the old monk and said "isn't it fortunate the boy broke his leg so he does not need to go die to conquer more land for the Emperor" ... maybe it is, maybe it is not.
Need is not a valid claim on anyone else's life. I didn't make them poor. My moral responsibility lies with making my own life the best. In doing so, I'm not harming anyone, because it's not in my interest to sacrifice others to myself (just as it is not in my interest to sacrifice myself to others.) Instead of begging or stealing, I advocate trading.
Or do you help them out of their current situation so that they can better help themselves in the future?
If I have to choose between something I value more (say my wife is in anaphylactic shock and needs to be driven to the hospital), and someone I see in a car wreck on the way to the hospital, I'm going to choose my wife, because she's a higher value to me than anyone else.
However, if I don't have something that pressing to worry about, and I physically come across someone is injured in this way (so this is an emergency context, which is by definition something that doesn't happen frequently), I'll help. The sight of someone suffering from an unforeseeable emergency is an awful thing, and if I happen to come across it, I'd do what I could to help, so long as it wasn't a sacrifice for me (didn't leave me significantly poorer, less able, etc.)
None of this means that I should drive around town looking for people that are stranded or injured, or that I need to give my money to people that I'll never meet.
I hope this clarifies things.