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1. Some people physically or mentally can't contribute to to disability or some other disorder.
2. Some people can't contribute because they were not provided with/are not provided with the opportunity to gain those skills.
3. It's very, very hard to quantify how much one contributes to society, especially when a task requires lots of people doing small things, or few people doing big things. Pay offers some signal for this in some cases, but at best it's talking about the economy - itself a proxy of society which layers on its own incentives.
I'm raising these three points because I know that if I were to respond with "That seems unfair and it's not the sort of society I'd like to live in" the counter response to that would likely be "we should aim for equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome". The point of my comment is to effectively say that it's very hard to measure opportunity and outcome when one takes into account individual circumstances, and it's even harder to get to the root of what we mean by 'equality' (mathematical equality? qualitatitve equality? quantitative equality? equality before the law?).
- people's particular successes depend onthw rest of society, they didn't create everything themselves. This should factor into the deservingness calculation.
- we have an instinctual desire to take care of the needy (children and elderly in particular); not to honor this would be inhuman.
- and: why? Why be so selfish, when you have the option to love others and be kind to them? What are you really getting out of it? Rewarding yourself, your whims and appetites... It's stupid. It's hollow, and contemptible, and childish. You can be so much better than that.
To add to your point: In order for something to be unequal, it had to be obtained via unethical means. This is because the sum of morality of small transactions is transitive. Breaking it down in simple terms: If you voluntarily give your free-earned money to Jeff Bezos, it's an ethical transaction. If millions of people do it, they're all ethical transactions. If Jeff Bezos becomes a go-zillionaire, it's moral and ethical.
Meaning: If you don't want billionaires in this world, you're free to stop giving them your money at any time.
There has been some work done in economics and distributive justice which casts doubts on whether any and all voluntary transactions count as 'ethical', and philosophers get a look-in here too; see economist Roberto Veneziani or Sen's work.
>If you don't want billionaires in this world, you're free to stop giving them your money at any time.
Economists have also spent a lot of time trying to calculate the rationality of voting vis-a-vis the expected return, and the results don't look good. The inconvenience caused by voting (and I think we could apply this to not buying from Amazon or other corporations owned by billionaires) outweighs the miniscule or 'negligible' (as the economists say in the case of voting) benefit of the owner making less money.
There's a lot of research on the effectiveness and power of boycotts. It's as much an empricical argument as it is a logical one.
Moreover, just because one side of a transaction is voluntary doesn’t mean that the entire business is ethical. Plenty of people voluntarily gave their money for cotton harvested by slaves. Does that mean slavery is ethical?
> This is because the sum of morality of small transactions is transitive.
You take this as fact, but I’m not sure I agree. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Every transaction can be reversed with violence, a much more elegant form of chargeback
Also stop it. Each and every time the same thing. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon and basically every company in the history of mankind shows that once an organization becomes large enough it doesn't really matter who is at the figurative helm.
Countries could expropriate billionaires and nothing would really change, they don't do for 2 reasons:
1) because a certain mass of people are so deluded that they think that one day they'll become one, so they panic because the 0.0000000001% of chances they had becomes 0%.
2) Other countries would start a race to the bottom so if the US decides to expropriate then Canada could go come here we only take 80%!, Switzerland could say 50%! Bahamas could then scream 10% all the way down.
That's great for you (and me). But the overwhelming majority of people on this planet are lower down the stack and can neither afford a Starlink nor a Tesla nor anything even close. That's the problem.
> As long as there's a rough connection between contribution and wealth, I'm happy with the system and any inequality that it generates
I'd love to know how you define "contribution".
That's a catastrophically flawed line of thinking. How can you quantify a person's contributions to society? You certainly can't do it by their ability to generate wealth as you seem to imply.
Generated wealth is a very, very coarse measure of the contribution. But I posit that a seriously more precise measurements would involve grave violations of privacy.
is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence!
>> Generated wealth is a very, very coarse measure of the contribution
No it’s not. If i generate my wealth by being born to a rich person. In what way have i contributed more to society than a nurse who declared bankruptcy after the latest food and energy price increases?
It’s not because of the extremes of my example, it’s because wealth doesn’t accrue as a function of contribution to society.
> is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence!
You can safely replace it with "the majority".
> If i generate my wealth by being being born to a rich person. In what way have i contributed
In no way. You have not generated any wealth, you've inherited it.
Andrew Carnegie generated wealth. "Colonel" Sanders generated wealth. Hell, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk generated wealth, as did any guy who runs a profitable pizza joint of a food truck. Interestingly, their contribution to the society, if not adequately measurable, is undeniably visible.
Not a high enough bar to decide whether someone should gain benefit of society
>> In no way
That seems like a catastrophic hole in your boat then? I can have lots of wealth - and so by your idea qualify for all the benefits society has to offer - yet having contributed less than the bum did before he fell out of a productive path in life.
There’s too many holes in the idea that wealth can be used even as a rough proxy. Pick any low productivity roles with high value in society, from pastors / chaplains to a family carer. These are high value to society but they’re economic drains.
My point is that the amount of wealth acquired through doing business has a posiitive correlarion with doing something that the society values and finds good.
Your point is that the amount of wealth generated and any other good done to the society should not prevent a person from gaining certain social benefits.
These point do not contradict each other. Basic benefits (like protection of life) should be, and are given by the society equally to a bum and to a millionaire (even thoough a millionaire can also buy an extra package on top of the universal protection). At least such is the idea and the letter of the law.
This is basically the difference between commerce and love: love is unconditional.
But the amount of matetial manifestations of love a society can give its members is limited by how rich it is. If you are poor yourself, you cannot help your poor neighbor, except maybe with a kind word.
Which, if you accept that, rather undermines your entire point.
see also charlie munger's famous quote - 'inflation is how democracies die' - and inflation is something that makes poor poorer and rich richer.
Elon Musk impulse bought Twitter and has been bullshitting the public for years on the Teslas, bought himself the "founder" title and has become the main marketing tool of Tesla. Going by merit and wise business decisions, I do not think he should have the billions, I think Gwinneth shotwell should.