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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Doesn’t have to be so boolean. The alternative is taxation.

He didn’t create all of that, he led and directed the efforts of others, who could’ve earned more form their blood, sweat, and tears if he had not.

This is not to deny he’s a smart, highly complement business leader whose management skills acted as a force multiplier that means it was Amazon rather than, say, Walmart, who is the dominant online retailer.

It’s just that saying he deserves all of that $171 billion seems as wrong to me as saying he deserves none of it.

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That wealth is not cash. It's control. It's control of something he created and would like to continue to control. He can't convert it into cash without liquidating control.

Imagine is 98% of net worth was in your home. You can't mortgage that without giving up control. This is why even Bill Gates really only started being truly philanthropic at a grand scale once he had decided to relinquish control in Microsoft and pursue his philanthropic endeavors. It was only at that point was he free to do something with that wealth.

We would all be better off letting Bezos build wealth and then tax it at the end. There's going to be a lot more tax money to work if you tax at the end of the prosperity.

I am aware the shares operate like that, and that this is still the case even though he is cashing in enough to run a space program as a hobby. It is nevertheless a bad look for him to run a space program with pocket change while fighting against internal efforts to unionise his workforce.

To steal a cliché from a different sector, I believe that when a corporation is “too big to fail” is becomes a threat to the governments which it operates under and the societies which it operates in. There are many ways to manage this risk, and I am not qualified to study their pros and cons — taxation is a simple solution, and I will accept that simple solutions are probably bad solutions. This does not mean that there are no better solutions.

Many people (particularly in the lower income brackets) prefer to be paid in cash as opposed to equity[1]. Given the chance, most people prefer not to shoulder the risk of an equity stake at the expense of a reduced or non-existent salary.

Is it any surprise then that a lucky few who forgo cash in favor of worthless pieces of paper become super rich after the stock rises?

1. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/amazon-criticized-ending-wareh...

Many investors are also opposed to giving the poor equity in the company. Richard Garfield encountered significant opposition when he gave equity to roles like cleaning staff in Wizards of the Coast.

He is taxed, anytime he wants to move any of those stocks he pays the capital gains tax.

And depending on your role at amazon, you get equity.

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