I don’t understand how you can possibly think that someone’s contribution to the world is so outsized as to be worth millions of times that of say a teacher or a care worker. Would the world really be that much a worse place without bezos? I actually think there’s a decent argument to be made that it would be better…
Have you just swallowed the idea that the market value of something is equal to its value to society?
I guess I would like to hear your justification that billionaire’s deserve their wealth, bearing in mind that this typically does come at the expense of others.
They deserve their wealth because you keep buying and using their products. If everyone who hated billionaires stopped using amazon tomorrow, Bezos would be in serious trouble.
But alas, Bezos offers a service that enormous amounts of people seemingly can't quit using, which to me (and the market that prices it), is infact worth hundreds of billions.
I haven't used amazon in 2 years. I'm sick of sitting in peoples apartments listening to them cry about billionaires while I'm tripping over prime boxes to get to the bathroom. Wake up.
>They deserve their wealth because you keep buying and using their products.
Can you elaborate on this? It doesn't follow at all to me. If somebody makes billions and another person makes thousands, but the billionaire does not work proportionally hard or deliver proportional value to society or does not behave morally, and I buy products from both people, you may (and should) criticize me. However, there's no logical reason that means the billionaire "deserves" all their wealth, if we are using the word "deserve" by its normal conversational definition. The offloading of 100% of responsibility to the consumer seems like a really weak scape-goat based on emotions.
Everyone involved was acting voluntarily. No one's forcing people to work at Amazon, nor to buy from Amazon. We all set up these rules of the game, and he played and won.
Don't get me wrong, I think he's an ass. He took Captain Kirk to space, but then dissed him on the ground to pour champagne on the desert. Also I really miss used book stores.
But as a businessman I don't see how he doesn't deserve what he has, he's earned it, eh?
I very much do put the blame on "the consumer", they are the ones who keep giving Bezos money!
Fixing wealth inequality doesn't necessitate throwing out the entire legal and economic system we have. Workers can form unions if they they are not being recognized. There is no need to topple capitalism so that amazon can become a nationalized business with an inverted pay hierarchy.
Legally, no. The company belongs to investors and the workers signed a contractual agreement with those investors.
Any single one of those workers could have spun off and sold their value to any other buyer willing to pay the price they(the worker) wanted. Most don't do this though because they are willing to take a lower pay in order to (greatly) mitigate risk.
Also, as you might be surprised to learn, workers already keep the majority of value they produce. Quick example: Gold mine owner lets workers keep 90% of everything they mine. Gold mine owner doesn't mine at all, but is by far the wealthiest person in the operation.
> Fixing wealth inequality doesn't necessitate throwing out the entire legal and economic system we have
I don't think anyone's suggesting that. More likely they are advocating for higher taxation on the highest earners and perhaps on the largest businesses (notably, we already had this in the 60s/70s/80s). This would leave us with largely the same economic system, except with a counterbalance to a key a flaw in the current setup: that in a given time period, those who already control capital can typically turn that into more capital with much less effort than those who don't start out with that capital.
Have you just swallowed the idea that the market value of something is equal to its value to society?
I guess I would like to hear your justification that billionaire’s deserve their wealth, bearing in mind that this typically does come at the expense of others.