[andrewfromx]

Feels like the author keeps making this point over and over that if we could just take x million from these people we could fix so many things. But I don’t see any vision painted for this new world where now everything is OK and fair. Maybe the current system we got is what makes people build things like amazon. Maybe jeff gets to be proud of his wealth and makes his own philanthropy choices.

[otde]

What’s mind-boggling is that Bezos is still a billionaire after all of the suggested changes. The amount this affects his day-to-day life is slim to none. He’d still get to be proud of his wealth in the new system!

I have a hard time feeling like large-scale preventable deaths of six figures of real human children is worth Jeff Bezos’ warm tummy fuzzies he gets when he thinks about being unfathomably rich. Instead of thinking about whether innovations like Amazon would have materialized in this brave new world where people can actually get their malaria treated and have access to clean drinking water, consider: how many people might have made something just as game-changing as Amazon, but died a preventable death, or lived on, but weren’t given the same resources to survive and thrive as someone like Bezos?

[andrewfromx]

i think what you are missing is it's a game of "whack a mole" way more than a game of a perfect puzzle where if you just do the ethical thing, and just be nice, and cure this and stop that, THEN, THEN everything will be... ok. But the reality is you plow 2 billion dollars into fixing one thing and this displaces something else and you can't get to this desert mirage utopia society we think we see just down the road if we could just get people like Jeff to fork it over.

[titzer]

I fundamentally reject the idea that society is obligated to help Jeff Bezos protect his $100 billion dollar fortune.

I think it is absolutely fair to say that society will not allow you to have more than $1 billion. Flat. Out. Wealth. Cap.

Then maybe instead of corporations squeezing their customers for every nickel and dime and screwing pensioners they can retire to their private islands and enjoy their life.

[titzer]

The biggest problem society faces right now is not how an individual gets from $1 billion net worth to $10 billion net worth, or $100 billion.