[0x1221]

I'm really not a fan of the rising trend to attack billionaires just because they're billionares. There are plenty of points that each of the mentioned individuals can be legitimately criticised on. Their level of wealth or the decision to donate it to one cause or another is not a valid point of criticism.

[anonsivalley652]

Their balance sheet isn't the point, it's what they did and are doing to get there that is the point:

- taking away healthcare from the poor, killing people

- destroying/privatizing what was once free and part of the shared commonwealth

- privatizing what never should've been profit-motivated in the first place: hospitals, prisons, schools and so on.

- "deregulating" removing pollution and safety protections that were written in blood

- spending money to corrupt the political process in order to buy passage of laws

- underpaying workers so they have to live in their cars and cheating them out of the profits they helped create

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair

(One could also call it the "Upton Sinclair-effect".)

[mantas]

Maybe it'd be more productive to criticise people based on those points. Rather pick a somewhat correlating group.

How about we pick a skin color correlating with petty crimes and then draw conclusions on that? Not so cool, huh...

[viklove]

Your skin color isn't based on your actions, but your wealth is. It's not a fair comparison to make. You should be judged for your actions.

[mantas]

Exactly, people should be judged for their actions. Not for skin color or net worth.

One's wealth isn't automatically a result of bad actions. It's a very accurate comparison. Generalisation is generalisation.

[viklove]

> One's wealth isn't automatically a result of bad actions.

It almost always is, though. Skin color never is. I don't agree with your take at all.

[mam2]

Life is adversarial. If you are angry about it, do something about it yourself, like putting up regulations or whatever. You cant attack someone for doing his job.

[Frost1x]

Sounds like OP is adopting the adversarial approach and trying push the concept of change around.

[mam2]

Its true. But still, hating on bilionaires is just ineffecient

[mantas]

It's quite efficient if you manage to bring together large enough crowd.

[mam2]

It was never efficient ever.

[ickwabe]

One of the major problems with the concentration of wealth in such few hands is that the societies/countries where these folks live don't get to make collective decisions about how the money is spent.

Most have made their money using the many advantages of their countries. Roads, infrastructure, eductaion, stability, government, etc.

That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But when we allow such concentration of wealth we have given away the decision power to this handfull of people about how all that wealth gets used. The very top wealthy may in some cases believe their motivations and decisions are altruistic. That they may be. But that doesn't give them the authority to think "I know better than every one else in my country/world how this wealth should be spent."

So while the fault for how we get in these situations of terrible wealth inequality may be shared by the peoples and governments that allow it, the wealthy themselves cannot escape their share either.

And in terms of who has more individual power to help restore balance by influencing the system, it sure isn't the single parent working a minimum wage job. Or a family barely getting by after an economic downturn destroys their jobs. Or the student struggling to pay their loans because they chose to get a degree in social work or eductaion instead of compsci or finance quant.

So it would be nice to see a lot more effort by more these lucky billionaires to actually correct wealth inequality and the systemtic issues that leads to this type of inequality.

[0x1221]

> That they may be. But that doesn't give them the authority to think "I know better than every one else in my country/world how this wealth should be spent."

Owning the wealth gives them authority on how it's spent.

[ds_]

It's only not a valid point of criticism if you believe any level of wealth is justified as it must be proportional to that individual's contributions to society.

[mech1234]

I think that billionaires' wealth is justified, with the exception of criminal billionaires. Assuming that they pay all taxes that they are legally required to pay, why do you think that they do not have a right to their own personal property? They earned their property through voluntary agreements with other individuals.

A Warren-style wealth tax comes up surprisingly short in terms of funds collected for the government relative to the risks it faces ($2.75 trillion over 10 years, https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/facts-on-warrens-wealth-ta...) The risks it drives include capital flight, worsened corporate governance, and decreased economic dynamism. These are all long term risks that are difficult to quantify. Most countries that have ever instituted a wealth tax have later repealed it. In every economic sense, taxing income is a better idea than taxing wealth.

Much of our understanding of wealth distribution is biased toward our home country. There's a pretty good chance that if you are an HN reader you are in the top 1% of income or wealth in the world (http://www.globalrichlist.com/). When I consider how little of the government's efforts try to solve global humanitarian problems compared to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, I tend to think that the Gates' charitable contributions do more to address income inequality than a wealth tax on Gates would have.

In many ways the charitable contributions by billionaires solve problems that the government is poorly equipped to solve due to collective action problems. Forcing any large-scale charitable effort to be redirected through the government risks stultification, political misappropriation of funds, endless bickering about policy goals, projects cancelled due to changes at each election cycle. Having a two-pronged approach of private and public charity is more robust.

[viklove]

> They earned their property through voluntary agreements with other individuals.

Employment is not a "voluntary" agreement for many people.

[mantas]

Let alone that sometimes problems and/or ways to solve them are... subjective to say the least. Or priorities are different.

It's OK to spend money without getting approval from the hive mind.

It feels like rehash of centrally governed rehash. If non-profit problem solving shall be centralised, maybe for-profit activities shall be done according by government-approved plan as well?

[mantas]

Why stick to billionaires though? There're lots and lot of people whose wealth is much bigger than their contribution to society.