[Gormo]

Well, it's not so much a "rhetorical fishing expedition" as much as I just initially gave you the benefit of the doubt, and didn't assume you were aiming to divert the thread into a platform for inane propaganda. Sadly, the doubt did not resolve in your favor.

Needless to say, people who have little or nothing to do with each other having different levels of wealth as a consequence of activities entirely unrelated to one another is not a "problem" that needs to be solved. People having their rights violated or opportunities artificially limited is a problem, but attempting to attribute that sort of problem to someone else, somewhere else, not being artificially transgressed against is disingenuous and fallacious.

[esseph]

> it's not so much a "rhetorical fishing expedition"

After your post I reviewed the first page of your comment history and I was pretty sure I knew where you would stand on this issue.

> as much as I just initially gave you the benefit of the doubt

And I was proven correct in my assumption.

> Sadly, the doubt did not resolve in your favor.

Once you get off your soapbox, reality may find you surrounded by pitchforks.

> people who have little or nothing to do with each other having different levels of wealth as a consequence of activities entirely unrelated to one another

This is where our conversation ends, because we have a different interpretation of value creation and reality, and neither one of us will change the other's mind.

> People having their rights violated or opportunities artificially limited is a problem

The billionaire class have different rights and opportunities. They have different tools in the financial and political system. They have more sway in the political system, and they can greatly impact how things play out. Is it a representative government? Yes. But currently capital allocation and mechanisms see to it that the representation and opportunities are limited, which is the entire problem caused by having such wealth disparity. It is thorn in the side of democracy, and antithetical to freedom.

[Gormo]

> After your post I reviewed the first page of your comment history and I was pretty sure I knew where you would stand on this issue.

Yes, that seems reasonable. I try to root my positions in a baseline understanding of reality and a core set of underlying principles, rather than allow them to be unduly influenced by polemic and arguments from emotion (as is unfortunately all too common these days) so there should be a certain level of consistency in my stances on various issues. Thanks for recognizing this.

> Once you get off your soapbox, reality may find you surrounded by pitchforks.

Where I live, alligators are a bit more common, but perhaps a bit more rational in their actions than the allegorical pitchfork-bearers. The alligators may act to obtain food that's actually present, but the mob is usually reacting only to imaginary stimuli.

> This is where our conversation ends, because we have a different interpretation of value creation and reality, and neither one of us will change the other's mind.

I supposed not. But where empirical propositions are concerned, reality is what it is regardless of how you choose to interpret it, and things will play out as cause and effect entail, with people acting on the motivations that they actually have, irrespective of the normative opinions of uninvolved stranger.s

> The billionaire class have different rights and opportunities.

I thought you'd ended the conversation with the last paragraph. Nevertheless, I'll respond to point out that there is no such thing as a "billionaire class", or any other kind of class, as a causal entity in the world: it's all just people pursuing motivations deriving from fundamental human nature, as parsed through their individual reason.

The taxonomy you're engaging with exists in your own mind, not the world itself, and encompasses disparate people who are often at odds with each other as you suspect they are with you.

And no one has "different rights and opportunities"; the former are normative boundaries that are definitionally the same for everyone, and the latter are states of affairs that exist in the world at large. Indeed, the specific people we're talking about here did not start out as billionaires, but acquired their wealth by pursuing opportunities that already existed.

> They have more sway in the political system, and they can greatly impact how things play out.

This is a defect of the political system, not the broader world in which the political system exists. My suspicion, though, is that you may not want to acknowledge this and join those who seek to restrain the reach of political power itself, out of a desire to use political power for your own ends and the fatal conceit that it can be used effectively for those ends without ultimately just becoming an instrument of greater abuse than the abuses you aim to rectify.

> But currently capital allocation and mechanisms see to it that the representation and opportunities are limited, which is the entire problem caused by having such wealth disparity.

Ah, an empirical claim! It sounds like you're saying that some people earning large amounts of wealth from success in businesses -- that exist on account of widespread availability of capital in the first place -- is somehow blocking other parties' access to liquid capital. Can you cite any examples of this? It doesn't seem to make sense, given how capital markets actually work, so some actual specifics would definitely help you make your argument here.

> It is thorn in the side of democracy,

Democracy is a political decision-making process that has nothing per se to do with how much wealth anyone in particular has, and if political decisions are being distorted by misuse of wealth, that again is a defect of the political system that can only be remedied by constraining politics itself.

> and antithetical to freedom.

People you don't know and have no relationship with having more stuff than you is absolutely not antithetical to your freedom; rather, organized attempts to take anyone's stuff away from them is a threat to everyone's freedom.