HJCarden wrote: ↑November 24th, 2020, 1:49 pm
Lots of discussion has arisen recently in regards to the ethics of the super wealthy, i.e. should we allow billionaires to exist, and I have seen much conversation as to whether it is ethical for anyone to have that much money.
Who is "we"?
The wealthy are powerful enough to minimize any effect that those with less power could have on the power of the wealthy. So who exactly is going to stand up against the wealthy? Who can do so successfully?
Rather, I take issue with the fact that through capitalism, these people have become ultra wealthy to the point where they wield significant power, political, economic, social and all the like.
It seems that the core factor has always been power, not wealth. The two tend to go together, of course, but not necessarily. For example, all over the world, religious institutions have always tended to have a lot of power, but not necessarily wealth.
And this has been the issue with the ultra wealthy historically, the trust busters and so on back in American history, the issue arrises not out of a certain level of wealth, but the power that wealth creates.
Why should the rich be moral (in an ordinary sense of the word, meaning that they wouldn't lie, steal, etc.)?
I think if you can answer this, the rest should be easy to figure out.
My counter is that something needs to be done to keep the powerful in check, as we use treaties to ensure peace between nations, the problem of billionaires is how to check their power.
But how do you propose to accomplish that?