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Comment by jumpman500 | Hacker News Reader

> It's very natural, and very logical.

Being natural and logical doesn't make it moral or ethical. I think you're only kidding yourself if you believe that people deserve that much money and power.

> How about folks who centralize powers like politicians in high level functions, who have not even been elected but appointed? How do you feel about that? They also can have massive influence on the world's affairs, even if they are not billionaires. I'd be way more concerned about that.

Nice use of whataboutism. We can protest, resit, or vote for politicians and bureaucrats. A billionaire will be a billionaire unless the economy collapses or they decide to become a philanthropist.

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Ideologies and violence caused so many disasters in history. At least money does not directly terrify us like that. Billionaires usually became victims of such disasters. In the end, money is not the ultimate power. It's violence that matters most on this planet.

And money grants control of violence. Either direct, as a drug lord in Mexico in the absence of a strong central state monopoly on violence, or indirect by simply being above the law in the US if you have enough zeroes in your bank account to afford the lawyers to make any accusations go away when there is a strong central monopoly on violence. Or on the reciprocal, you can use money to inflict violence through frivolous lawsuits or even worse the kind of patent trolling used by heinous groups to ruin ventures.

Turns out people want money, and will offer you violence in return for it if you offer enough to justify it.

> I think you're only kidding yourself if you believe that people deserve that much money and power.

And who is it to decide? What organization? Money is simply a proxy for utility in society (at least for salaries) based on demand and offer. Do you want to replace that by divine birth rights? Casts? Or cancel private property altogether? So far that's the "less worse" system we have found that does not make people live in abject poverty. And you know what, it's working. Look at WHO poverty reports: poverty is decreasing progressively around the world.

I guess they should feel lucky you don't get to decide how much money they are allowed to have.

I wouldn't want to personally decide or have a government which decides limits on wealth. I just hope one day American culture will be driven more by compassion, kindness and duty to common a good, rather than endless accumulation of material goods. At some point maybe cultural shame could embarrass the super rich to become more philanthropic. But that is quite wishful thinking.

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