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Re: Jeff Bezos' superyacht is so big it needs its own yacht 

By: Cactus Flower in ALEA | Recommend this post (1)
Tue, 11 May 21 8:01 AM | 24 view(s)
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Msg. 42050 of 54434
(This msg. is a reply to 42049 by Cactus Flower)

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Another point.

I am not sure why, but people on the American left are often prone to see the world as a bit like a pie whose ingredients magically appear, and the only thing that matters is how the pie is divided. They will come up with all sorts of justifications for it. Ancient wrongs and so on.

I certainly agree that portions of the pie might be divided slightly differently. But not that every pie must be equally sliced and everyone should get a piece the same size. Or that someone whose grandfather was badly treated should get a bigger slice than others to make up for it. There's no way to measure fairness in this way.

A pie is an output. Inputs are something different. If you don't have ingredients, there won't be a pie to split. And the pie will be bigger or smaller depending upon the ingredients that are available.

Businesses don't appear by magic. They emerge because people take risks and work hard in hopes of doing better. You want to nurture that. A piece of the nurturing involves incentives. Work hard, hopefully end up with rewards. That's as true for biotech companies creating drugs to inoculate us against covid as it is for companies like Amazon.

Only gross inequality is a problem. One person hogging the pie leaving others malnourished is not a good solution. But simple inequality of the non-gross sort isn't an issue in and of itself. Societies shouldn't demand fair outcomes. They should only rule out extremely unfair ones.

If Dems end up appearing to punish success, then they will lose their role leading America. For me, it's important not to build my politics out of complaints, resentments and jealousies. That doesn't lead anywhere that is worthwhile. Nevertheless, we should have sympathies, prevent harms on our watch and widen the scope of the opportunities that are available to everyone.




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Jeff Bezos' superyacht is so big it needs its own yacht
By: Cactus Flower
in ALEA
Tue, 11 May 21 5:57 AM
Msg. 42049 of 54434

Not for me. Nope.

This is just the way the American system [and to an extent similar western democracies] rewards individual success. Which is to say, very unequally.

Bezos came up with his own ideas, took the risk of putting money into them, made them work as a business - things many people celebrate, including me.

But good fortune is always a part of things. And others' will have added their own ideas to his success. And he will have benefitted from things he inherited from society as whole, such as a functioning legal system, running water, roads, security, education and healthcare. The privilege of belonging to a wealthy, democratic, albeit imperfect country [but which country isn't].

In the way we work things, he takes a vast share of the wealth and the income his idea and his good fortune have generated; while we tend to overlook the things he (and everyone else in a democracy like the US) has received.

He also avoids paying taxes (if only via Amazon) and therefore he fails to contribute what many, including me, think of as a proper share to the common weal.

If he was a brown or black man, in a non-race-based way, I would think the same thing. There are plenty of wealthy black people in America. That isn't black privilege either. It's the privilege of being American.

To his credit, Bill Gates found a useful way to redress the balance between making a fortune for himself and sharing its benefits. But is it better to have a system in which individuals select the things upon which to focus their largesse? Or should a society make those decisions via a fully tax-funded government? I think the latter is healthier, at least for the bulk of the income these sorts of people generate [while also leaving them with enough to feel it was all worth it]. But at least Gates is giving a lot of it away.

Big ships to me suggest private lives without much personal meaning. If I was him, I'd pay my taxes and be building lots of hospitals, public libraries and schools. But I don't see much to do with so-called white privilege in it. Just a system that generates, harnesses and rewards self-centred behaviour, and seems blind to the investment of society as a whole in any individual person's success.


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