Somehow the people who didn't have the intelligence and discipline to spend decades successfully doing things that make them rich are so sure that they would be able to do better with their (totally hypothetical) wealth than the people who did.
Everyone loves to claim some kind of moral superiority over the billionaires, but I don't see these critics spending a significant portion of their wealth on charity.
Notice I didn't say "earned" because the entire premise of some is that one cannot morally "earn" a billion dollars - that something is fundamentally broken in our society when wealth can become so centralized.
Some people make fun of the idea that government is a decent decisionmaker for spending money on society, whenever raising taxes on the wealthy comes up. Where do you draw the line? Do you think they currently are taxed perfectly? Do you think no one should be taxed? How would the infrastructure these companies relied on get funded?
Oh, I see you committed another trope of comparing the earnings of anyone on this thread (and about 95% of the country) to a billionaire. The floor for living comfortably, or even somewhat luxuriously, is a much higher proportion of the wages of a middle class household than it is for a billionaire. I make 0.02% annually of just this bonus. Don't you think that makes a difference in the equation?
Hell the whole reason why democracy is thing is because monarchies of yesteryear have proven quite decisively that the ability to raise capital and spend well for society are not even remotely linked.
We need to consider very carefully as a society what the impact of the billionaire class has on how our society develops, and the outsized impacts they can have on democratic processes.
Personally I don’t think having such wealthy individuals is a good idea. Their wealth is so great it’s pretty much impossible for them not to get wealthier, and do it at a rate greater than than the vast majority of people. And their ability to deploy that capital to influence society is scary, effectively taking the role of government to provide social services, and placing it in the hands of a wealth few.
We’ve already seen what more extreme individuals are prepared to do with that power, just a Hobbylobby and David Green’s continued vendetta against abortions and safe contraceptives.
I trust a person who has generated billions of dollars worth of value over a buerocrat who won a popularity contest.
Besides, I don't think it should matter whether or not these people spend their money optimally. They've made this money, it's theirs. Don't take other people's stuff.
> We’ve already seen what more extreme individuals are prepared to do with that power.
Until we leave in a featureless dystopia where all people are perfect clones brought up in an identical environment, there will be power disparity between people. It can be based on inheritance (like in monarchies), or ability to commit violence, or charisma, or political skill, or ability to create value.
Between all these options, I'd much rather live in society where people get to keep the value they have created. It seems to me the most correlated with merit (not perfectly, but better than the alternatives), besides, it is morally right.
Politicians may not be perfect, but they’re much easier to hold to account that high net worth individuals. I personally consider that a killer feature when picking my power brokers.
We already take others people stuff for the public good. It’s called taxes. That money built the roads you use everyday and props up the society you live in by helping to ensure that everyone gets a decent quality of life.
Simple fact of the matter is that no individual has any practical use for wealth measured in billions. It’s wealth that could be better put to use help the poorest in society, and helping us navigate the next hundred years of climate change and associated social unrest.
He may go down the evangelical Christian path and fund a war of sex, abortions, gays, trans and people’s reproductive rights. That’s not even a hypothetical outcome, there’s plenty of millionaires and billionaires (like David Green) already funding that war.
But also, there's no guarantee that _anyone_ including the government will use money for "good" causes. Bridges to nowhere, military adventurism, wars on drugs, personal enrichment of politicians and government employees, vanity projects of various sorts, the list of things governments mis-spend on is vast.
And of course we don't all agree on the relative merits of different causes.
If he had to pay all of this on taxes, society could decide how to use that money and it would be just as much, if not more "a better place".