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Comment by Shacklz | Hacker News Reader

> And many would then ask, what's the motive for generating wealth if it's just going to be taken away from you?

The same motivation that drives some folks to study e.g. philosophy, even though it's perfectly well known that this will never make you rich: Because they like it.

You don't just e.g. found a company for the sake of money - you also do it because it allows you to do things on your own terms, it gives you prestige, it gives you the satisfaction of being 'successful'. In todays day and age, this is usually equivalent with 'generating wealth', but I'm a firm believer that this does not necessarily have to be the case.

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I find it absolutely fascinating that your arguments are shot down on this board, because it's business, but that is literally what you're told on a constant basis if you want to go into the education field in the US.

You don't do it for the paycheck, you do it because you like it. Why education, social work, and other human services fields, but not business? That is odd to me.

> I find it absolutely fascinating that your arguments are shot down on this board, because it's business, but that is literally what you're told on a constant basis if you want to go into the education field in the US.

It’s not actually that fascinating, and has a simple explanation: the people saying this about teachers are not the same people that are commenting here. It’s a non-sequitur.

The notion that educators (or anyone else for that matter) ought to accept bad pay or working conditions because of “passion” is completely objectionable. Teachers should be well-compensated for the important and difficult work they do.

I’m not so sure. Running a business exposes you to tremendous personal risk, especially in a litigious country like the US. It’s also incredibly hard, most often fails, and typically confers less prestige than other much more reliable and substantially less risky high paying career paths (finance, law, medicine, consulting, etc).

Folks who want to start and run a business and give away their profit can already do so. E.g. Warren Buffet gives away half his wealth voluntarily. Or take the case of Dan Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Price

Is it ethical to force people to give up against their will money that they (presumably) earned "fair and square"?

Assuming we find that ethical formula (which seems dubious to me but let it ride for the sake of discussion) the next question is, would the people willing to work under that system be "enough"? And then we have to ask "enough for what purpose?"

That gets into ethical and speculative issues that cut right to the heart of the human condition. Wendell Berry asked, "What are people for?" Bucky Fuller calculated that we could bring about a secular utopia for ~$25 billion by sometime in the 1970's if we applied our technology efficiently to supplying our physical needs. I'm open to the idea that we don't need open-ended profit motive to create a good and worthwhile global society (in fact even Adam Smith thought the capitalist "greed is good" phase would be just that: a temporary phase between the old system and the new.)

Economies based on this idea tend to do very poorly.

For one thing, people won't have money to invest in new ventures.

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