[bskrobisz]

This is not really the point that I'm arguing--my point would be that if you wanted your house entirely encrusted in precious jewels, each of which was individually polished by a team of people paid 50 USD an hour to do this weekly, nothing stops you from making that decision even though you are monopolizing a large quantity of resources for status, almost entirely. Someone with a large amount of wealth is generally within their rights to do this, which I would view as a problem.

This isn't to say that I would accuse the majority (or even very many) individuals in positions where they're able to leverage a lot of wealth of anything specifically this egregious, but rather that because they're able to control many resources because their efforts have enormous leverage (and therefore are worth more to the system they operate in), they can consume orders of magnitude more resources to gain comparably minuscule increases in personal utility.

In addition, because of how valuable their leverage makes their effort, when they cause damage whose negative value is on the scale of individuals, the disparity leads a system that's self-interested to forgive them much more quickly--if someone can get 1% more value out of 10 billion dollars' resources than anyone else, that system doesn't have any purely value-driven reason to replace them in their position if they should murder someone and its negative effects never amount to more than a couple million dollars' loss in value. From any ethical standpoint that holds "death at the whims of billionaires" incompatible with "certain unalienable rights", this is a problem.

[WalterBright]

There's been a surge in real estate values lately. I've yet to see any homeowner decide they owe part of that gain to the people who built the house or the folks who mow their lawns.

[bskrobisz]

I'm... confused as to what your interpretation of my comments here is. I'm explicitly stating that the issue isn't about people deciding they owe something to other people, or what the market decides the value of something is--it is about people in highly-leveraged positions who are currently able to waste resources or actively cause damage with some impunity because of the value their leverage allows them to provide.

I'm not making the suggestion that those who are wealthy should divest themselves of their wealth and donate it to charity, the point I'm intending to communicate is that such leverage shouldn't act as a pass to engage in unethical behavior.