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by rootusrootus 614 days ago
> They became rich by creating a business that provided value for others - the most noble way to acquire wealth that exists.

This applies to small business owners way more accurately than it does to billionaires riding the startup rocket to the moon because all the gamblers with money decided they looked like the best way to make a quick buck in the stock market.
1 comments
monero-xmr 614 days ago
It appears there is a certain type of person, to your own exacting standards, who "deserves" being wealthy, but everyone else does not. Furthermore, the act of having a lot of wealth is inherently suspicious to you, although certain edge cases (a small business owner perhaps) you would allow it.

Overall I am not persuaded, I think rich people are a good thing for society.

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rootusrootus 614 days ago
You inferred an awful lot from my comment. Which, I get it, makes a certain amount of sense given that you're attributing 'noble' to people using wealth as the metric.

I'm not focused on the person, nor how deserving they are individually, I care about how this benefits society.

Let me put this another way. I think that the majority of billionaires essentially won the lottery, and that a typical small business owner brings more real, actual value to society. For every one Musk or Bezos or Gates, how many equally intelligent people tried but were in the wrong place at the wrong time? I think the collective value of a lot of really intelligent people is much higher to society than the guys who got all the right things lined up at the right moment. Does Bezos have skill? Yes! Does he have skill proportionate to his wealth? Not a chance.

Hell, I'll even admit that Musk is clearly skilled in business. Luck can't necessarily explain all of it. But he rode the wealth rocket on the back of TSLA, a company he did not create. It wasn't his idea to build electric cars, but maybe we can credit him for figuring how to make them a sexy and sought over status symbol.

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monero-xmr 614 days ago
There is no logical way to objectively judge which billionaire is deserving or not of wealth. Any tactic you take will be gamed. I’d rather not pick winners and losers. I disagree that you “win the lottery” by becoming rich.
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