Both of these options sound wrong to me. I think the actual case is kind of obvious when you think about it:
Wealth is the reward people get for doing useful things.
Jeff Bezos is rich because he found away to easily provide people with cheap goods. That benefited everyone. It is good that he is rich as a result, because that’s what gave him the incentive to do so.
That does not in any way imply that now that he has that money he’d be able to use it more usefully than anyone else. It’s possible he will, but also possible he’ll waste it all on gigantic superyachts or a 2000 metre high statue of himself.
Given that’s the case it seems perfectly reasonable to try to push him towards giving some of his wealth to effective charities which will likely do more good for the world than his default next best use.
You don’t think an exceptional magnitude of recognition for doing useful things is evidence for exceptional capacity and willingness to make that capacity useful to others? Why not?
The facts are many billionaires choose to either use their money for private consumption or waste it on pointless charities. That doesn’t in any way imply that their having this money in unfair—they’ve earned it, and taking it away would make the world worse by discouraging excellence. It does however imply we should encourage them to pursue better uses for their money.
Their unconsumed wealth is purely deflationary, allowing the government to print money for ‘free’. Presumably that is less useful to society than e.g. giving it to an effective charity.
Their consumed wealth is sometimes used usefully—I buy that for Bill Gates for example. Sometimes it’s frittered away on personal consumption. And sometimes it’s given away to pointless/actively harmful charities like Mackenzie Scott.
Both of these options sound wrong to me. I think the actual case is kind of obvious when you think about it:
Wealth is the reward people get for doing useful things.
Jeff Bezos is rich because he found away to easily provide people with cheap goods. That benefited everyone. It is good that he is rich as a result, because that’s what gave him the incentive to do so.
That does not in any way imply that now that he has that money he’d be able to use it more usefully than anyone else. It’s possible he will, but also possible he’ll waste it all on gigantic superyachts or a 2000 metre high statue of himself.
Given that’s the case it seems perfectly reasonable to try to push him towards giving some of his wealth to effective charities which will likely do more good for the world than his default next best use.
You don’t think an exceptional magnitude of recognition for doing useful things is evidence for exceptional capacity and willingness to make that capacity useful to others? Why not?
The facts are many billionaires choose to either use their money for private consumption or waste it on pointless charities. That doesn’t in any way imply that their having this money in unfair—they’ve earned it, and taking it away would make the world worse by discouraging excellence. It does however imply we should encourage them to pursue better uses for their money.
No they don’t, billionaires consume very little of their net worth.
Their unconsumed wealth is purely deflationary, allowing the government to print money for ‘free’. Presumably that is less useful to society than e.g. giving it to an effective charity.
Their consumed wealth is sometimes used usefully—I buy that for Bill Gates for example. Sometimes it’s frittered away on personal consumption. And sometimes it’s given away to pointless/actively harmful charities like Mackenzie Scott.