[JuniperMesos]

I'd much rather live in a society where Jeff Bezos has more wealth than me and I can buy things on Amazon, than in a society where Amazon no longer functions as a company because it was destroyed by a military insurrection and also the leaders of said insurrection have unequal access to resources compared to most other people (because they're the leaders of a military insurrection; there's not a whole lot of equality in a military)

[TheOtherHobbes]

I'd much rather neither, but apparently that's utopian.

Dictatorship is an almost inevitable outcome of huge wealth inequality.

At the very least political checks and balances erode rapidly, because most politicians, judges, and media people love easy money. If a billionaire throws money at them they'll do whatever they're told to do.

There aren't many systems that protect non-compliers from negative consequences when they're surrounded by corruption.

[wiseowise]

Supposedly you’ll be at the helm, Lenin style.

Also, who said anything about Amazon? Why are you myopic? The whole system is rotten to the core when a single person can make it in a minute more than 99% of world’s population and not use the money to advance the world. And before you mark (ha, get it?) me as a communist – I’m not against wealth and personal ownership. It’s one thing to own a Ferrari and an expensive home, and is another to live in a cookie clicker world watching number go up and doing nothing with it but multiply the money.

[JuniperMesos]

Amazon is the reason Jeff Bezos has a lot of money, and why you've heard of him and not a number of other people who have similar amounts of money.

[bdangubic]

so it is either or, eh? this is the fault of our society (the most in america due to two-party system) where we have been programmed (especially in recent years with party-controlled “social” media) to think this way. there is of course much more sane middle ground but we are past the point, evidenced by comments like yours, where this is even debatable. any approach to a more sane scenarios will be labeled as “socialism” etc…

[JuniperMesos]

Are there not wealthy business owners who donate their money to poltical causes they believe in in other countries with differently designed electoral systems?