Opinion of billionaires

[Antonio the Sixth]

They're bringing corruption, they're bringing financial crashes, they're exploiters - and some of them, I assume, are good people.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I assume if I started a poll saying "opinion of serial killers" you cowards would furiously that it is "unfair" to characterise the serial killing proportion of the populace as HP's?

what about fictional serial killer Dexter Morgan from the Dexter series? Nice guy, FF!

#NotAllSerialKillers

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't care why you have it but ffs Scarlet change your avatar to something more fitting to your disgusting plutocrat-shilling tendencies (yellow works very well).

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't care why you have it but ffs Scarlet change your avatar to something more fitting to your disgusting plutocrat-shilling tendencies (yellow works very well).

Um, omega scarlet just seems to be reacting to extreme hyperbole here (comparing billionaires to serial killers).  Hardly seems like "plutocrat shilling" to me to simply point out the fact that such comparisons are hardly fair and there are indeed, genuine societal contributions that the rich make. 

I think you and others completely missed the point of that comparison. Saying that two things are bad =/= saying that they're equally bad. The point is that this silly idea that billionaire is a group that deserves to be respected as if it were a racial group or sexual orientation is grotesque, and that if you seriously want to apply to billionaires then why not apply it to serial killers too?

Also, for those of us who believe that no one has the right to earn that much money, then by definition billionaires don't "contribute" anything, since they take from society more than the are allowed to.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Just saying that, if this thread were about any other group, it would have been locked hours ago.  I would disagree with that and think this should be left open.  But, please note the double standard!

NOT ALL "GROUPS" ARE EQUAL FFS

[Antonio the Sixth]

Billionaires should give enough of their money that they stop being billionaires (or hell, they should limit themselves to 10 million as a maximum). Problem solved.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Billionaires should give enough of their money that they stop being billionaires (or hell, they should limit themselves to 10 million as a maximum). Problem solved.

Why 10M?

Well, I guess ideally it would be less than that, but we're only human, and that's a good start.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Billionaires should give enough of their money that they stop being billionaires (or hell, they should limit themselves to 10 million as a maximum). Problem solved.

Why 10M?

Well, I guess ideally it would be less than that, but we're only human, and that's a good start.

10 million would mean you'd be worth a hundred average yearly incomes in an super-wealthy country like Luxembourg.  Should be enough for any sane person.

I personally don't actually believe in income caps on principle, though - just very steep progressive taxation.

Well, that 10 million figure was about wealth, not incomes.

In terms of income, yes, just tax most of what comes after 100K and basically everythingything over a million.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Billionaires should give enough of their money that they stop being billionaires (or hell, they should limit themselves to 10 million as a maximum). Problem solved.

Being a Billionaire means you have more then a Billion dollars worth of assets. Many of those assets are how they make more money. And you can't donate millions or billions(depending on how many billions one makes) of dollars to charity every year unless you make billions of dollars every year. Plus a certain amount(don't make this a debate about whether the current amount is so much that its harmful, because I really don't care to discuss that question now, and that isn't the point) of investments by rich people are helpful to the economy(as while as occasionally getting projects like asteroid defense systems that could become very important to have but no one wants to fund rn).

Of course, all of this pretends that the middle class isn't just as guilty of not giving enough back.

This implies that billionaires have a right to decide how that money is invested. I say they don't. They people should decide that, and the profits go back to the people. Private property is not an absolute right.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Is it so hard to accept that some people might find it inherently immoral to amass more than a certain amount of wealth, regardless of how they amassed it? Has the left abandoned the cultural struggle to the point that this simple idea strikes most people as facially absurd?

I know the answer is yes, and that saddens me to no end.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Private property rights might be efficient on utilitarian grounds (I'm not convinced of that, but I'm willing to admit that it's possible). That doesn't make them inherently morally valuable. And as such, the State is perfectly justified in setting limits to property rights, just like it sets proper bounds for other rights.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's pretty clear that you start from a moral framework that leads you to this conclusion. This moral framework is obviously terrible, but not very surprising. I guess that's the direction the wind of history seems to be blowing towards, so what can I do?

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's pretty clear that you start from a moral framework that leads you to this conclusion. This moral framework is obviously terrible, but not very surprising. I guess that's the direction the wind is blowing towards.

"Income inequality doesn't matter if the very bottom still has enough to be comfortable and happy" is morally awful? I think you need to get your morality detector re-calibrated.

Yes, I believe that extreme inequality is wrong in and of itself. Deal with it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I mean, after a certain point(about $100,000 IIRC), more money doesn't even make one more happy.

That's a very good argument in favor of my position, yes. Thanks.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I mean, after a certain point(about $100,000 IIRC), more money doesn't even make one more happy.

That's a very good argument in favor of my position, yes. Thanks.

No, it isn't. It means that after everyone reaches the point(which likely shifts depending on the strength of the welfare state), redistribution does nothing to help people and really only serves to tear people down for daring to be wealthier then average. Plus, strong reduction in wealth tends to make one less happy via not having many of the things one is used to even if one falls to above the point.

...so you're saying that the few millions taken from the billionaire are more important to their happiness than an additional $50k would be to a middle-income earner? lol

[Antonio the Sixth]

I mean, after a certain point(about $100,000 IIRC), more money doesn't even make one more happy.

That's a very good argument in favor of my position, yes. Thanks.

No, it isn't. It means that after everyone reaches the point(which likely shifts depending on the strength of the welfare state), redistribution does nothing to help people and really only serves to tear people down for daring to be wealthier then average. Plus, strong reduction in wealth tends to make one less happy via not having many of the things one is used to even if one falls to above the point.

...so you're saying that the billionaire's second billion is more important to their happiness than an additional $50k would be to a middle-income earner? lol

...

No, the point is that losing enough money to force you to live without things that you're used to is bad for your happiness, Einstein. People do badly with less then they're used to in general.

What I said is the exact practical implication of what you just said. You're saying that taking away the billionaire's billions makes a greater difference in their happiness than redistributing that money to people who aren't billionaires (and who therefore start up with a lot less). I don't care what kind of pseudo-psychological bullsh*t you are using to back up this theory, it should be obviously disgusting to anyone with a basic sense of justice. I find it amazing that you even have the ability to feel sorry for those poor billionaires while being so dismissive about the struggles of people who aren't and who have to live in the real world where money actually matters.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't care why you have it but ffs Scarlet change your avatar to something more fitting to your disgusting plutocrat-shilling tendencies (yellow works very well).

Um, omega scarlet just seems to be reacting to extreme hyperbole here (comparing billionaires to serial killers).  Hardly seems like "plutocrat shilling" to me to simply point out the fact that such comparisons are hardly fair and there are indeed, genuine societal contributions that the rich make. 

I think you and others completely missed the point of that comparison. Saying that two things are bad =/= saying that they're equally bad. The point is that this silly idea that billionaire is a group that deserves to be respected as if it were a racial group or sexual orientation is grotesque, and that if you seriously want to apply to billionaires then why not apply it to serial killers too?

Also, for those of us who believe that no one has the right to earn that much money, then by definition billionaires don't "contribute" anything, since they take from society more than the are allowed to.

That doesn't follow. What would follow is that they are also contributing in ways and amounts that they aren't allowed to, and that they shouldn't have been investing their wealth in one or another enterprise. There isn't some giant pile of money that is held in static amount by society that people come in and grab. 

"Contributing" implies that the money belonged to them to begin with. It implies that they are the "rightful" owner of that money and therefore that their decision to invest it in socially useful ways is a "contribution". I disagree. I believe that people have no rightful claim to that money and that therefore whatever use they make of it is an abuse. You can't "contribute" if the money you use to "contribute" was never yours to begin with. Even if some of the scraps of their (self-interested) investment decisions end up benefiting society, they are still net "takers".

[Antonio the Sixth]

In the interest of full disclosure, my own family makes about 100k a year right now and has assets that I seem to remember come pretty close to a million (we have a mortgage, though, which I guess should be deducted from that, but I have no idea how much it's worth). I'm doing pretty well for myself and my family should obviously be among the net "givers" of redistribution, but there's an obvious difference between this and friggin' billionaires (which no, I don't "hate" either - this has never been about personal hatred and I'm amazed I actually have to spell it out).

Scarlet, are you at all familiar with John Rawls? Look up his Theory of Justice. It's probably the best way to rescue you from the depths of your cringeworthy amoral utilitarianism.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You want this because you resent the rich. You want this because you want to punish them. You want to hurt them. If you wanted to help people, you wouldn't advocate doing it when it no longer helps anyone. But you just hate people who have more money then average.

I mean, Tony does hate himself but it has nothing to do with his financial status.

Actually it does, a little bit. But yeah, it's not the main issue.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You seem to have trouble grasping the basic premise on which my moral premise is based. And yet, it's a very simple one: the right to property is not absolute. I am among those who believe that some degree of private property is beneficial to society (which I think sets me apart from our actual socialist posters), but I also believe that society has the right to set limits, both in what kinds of things can be owned and in how much wealth can be owned. By definition, everything that does not belong to an individual or group of individuals must belong to society as a whole. When you understand this premises, the answers to your questions should be self-evident.

They are net takers?  So you do admit it is possible for them to contribute, but for some reason, no matter what good they do, if they use that money to cure diseases or lift people out of poverty, this will always be less important to you than the fact that they had more money than you feel comfortable with them having?

The only way they can contribute is by giving back all the excess money that they cannot legitimately own and something more. Any profit gained through the investment of money that is not legitimately theirs (and, by virtue of exceeding a certain amount, it isn't legitimately theirs) means that they are net takers.

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Society. See above.

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That's, admittedly, a tougher question. I'm open to arguments as to what the appropriate limit is, as long as people recognize that such limit does exist. I'd say it's well below a billion, though.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You certainly sound like you have a personal hatred.

No I don't. You just interpret any principled argument against the immoral behavior of the rich as if it was born out of personal hatred because you're incapable of comprehending the principles on which it's based.

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...because you're depriving society of literally 1000 times the amount of money?

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Well, that's a shame. If even Rawls can't help you, you're probably too far gone.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You've been on here for almost a year. Learn to quote posts properly, for f**k's sake.

You're manifestly incapable of comprehending the premises of my argument, or else you wouldn't be rambling on about muh mathematical relationships when those have absolutely no relevance to my point.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Your position doesn't flow necessarily from a belief that private property is not absolute.  One can  imagine that some society might decide for whatever reason decide that it is in its best interest for some people to be able to accumulate a large amount of money.  But you are saying that you would find whether this would truly be in the interest of society to be an uninteresting question, merely on the basis of this idea that all property that exists or might exist is ultimately owned by society at large?  This baffles me.

All I'm saying is that I believe that the burden is on advocates of private property to argue why, in a given specific case, private property is morally legitimate and socially beneficial. I think that it is in most cases - it can easily be demonstrated that most people's ownership of most things is a net benefit for society. But that case is a lot harder to make when you're talking about people who own more than the GDP of several countries. In these cases, redistributing a large part of this wealth to the benefit of society as a whole strikes me as the self-evidently morally preferable option.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I would argue that private property is a natural right but not an absolute one. It follows logically from natural law that if stealing is wrong, then there must be some sense in which material objects belong to a particular person or group. Thus there is a right to property. However, simply because something belong's to someone does not give them a free reign to do whatsoever they wish without regard for the sake of others. On an individual level, we should always ask whether our use of resources for individual pleasure is done with respect to the needs of others. As a society, it is right and proper for the government to levy taxes upon us to use for the operation of social institutions and for those in need. I believe this is best done via means tested welfare policies rather than universal society support to better respect the dignity of individuals to provide for themselves and instill a culture of personal responsibility rather than hedonism.

See, that's the problem right here. I think "natural law" is a preposterous notion that has no place in moral or political philosophy. The arguments for it are a product of the worst tendencies in Enlightenment thought (basically a clumsy attempt at replacing God with "nature" as the foundation of morality that I hope we can both agree is problematic, albeit we propose diametrically opposite alternatives to it) and simply don't withstand intellectual scrutiny.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I would argue that private property is a natural right but not an absolute one. It follows logically from natural law that if stealing is wrong, then there must be some sense in which material objects belong to a particular person or group. Thus there is a right to property. However, simply because something belong's to someone does not give them a free reign to do whatsoever they wish without regard for the sake of others. On an individual level, we should always ask whether our use of resources for individual pleasure is done with respect to the needs of others. As a society, it is right and proper for the government to levy taxes upon us to use for the operation of social institutions and for those in need. I believe this is best done via means tested welfare policies rather than universal society support to better respect the dignity of individuals to provide for themselves and instill a culture of personal responsibility rather than hedonism.

See, that's the problem right here. I think "natural law" is a preposterous notion that has no place in moral or political philosophy. The arguments for it are a relic of the worst of Enlightenment thought (a clumsy attempt at replacing God with "nature" as the foundation of morality that I hope we can both agree is problematic, albeit we propose diametrically opposite alternatives to it) and simply don't withstand intellectual scrutiny.

I think we may mean totally different things when we refer to natural law. For one, natural law is a pre-enlightenment scholastic idea. By invoking it I do not mean a Hobbsian state of nature but the idea that humans have some intrinsic moral aspect to our own natures. In this classical sense, natural doesn't attempt to replace God with 'nature' but treats God (assuming you are using the classic definition of both) as the source of our nature. It isn't a replacement but a description of the law inscribed upon every human heart.

Generally the objection to natural law is that humans don't have natures.

I won't go as far as to say that humans don't have natures, because research does seem to suggest that certain aspects of our behaviors are genetically predisposed and it wouldn't help my case to deny that. I'll note that the vast majority of appeals to "human nature" are inappropriate and are most often used to justify patently immoral things, though.

My point, however, was that moral naturalism - the idea that moral principles can be deduced from empirical observation of natural phenomena - is an inherently absurd and dangerous philosophical idea. You can't deduce an "ought" from an "is". Even if it is true that humans have certain natural predispositions, nothing tells us which of those predispositions are moral and which aren't. So any appeal to "human nature" to justify a given moral principle (against theft in this case) is inherently fallacious.