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Comment by tanseydavid | Hacker News Reader

> Is there any billionaire out there whose gains prove not to be ill-gotten if we look close enough?

This arbitrary and dangerous thinking.

But if you really feel like it by all means start looking closely at as many billionaires as you can identify and prove that each of their gains were ill-gotten.

Just please avoid the generalization.

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I think the question "Is there any billionaire out there whose gains prove not to be ill-gotten" is a good question to ask.

There are over 2000 billionaires in the world, and rich people often pay extra for privacy. Learning about all of them isn't a small feat. It's good and proper to have public discussion about such questions before entering research.

I would contribute towards crowdfunding for investigative journalism to dive into the finances of billionaires, with the caveat that I'd expect any whistleblower or other awards for finding wrongdoing would be invested back into the enterprise.

its arbitrary and dangerous to evaluate economic stagnation and profligacy at the hands of a criminal class of sociopaths?

every billionaire is a criminal sociopath?

that is the basic question being asked at the root of this thread, is it not?

It is not. It is possible for a fundamentally empathetic person to go against his or her conscience (or to not look too carefully at what they're really doing), and it is useful to distinguish this behavior from that of people who simply have no empathy.

I just wanted to confirm such an extreme view.

What if someone wins the lottery (after many roll overs)?

At what point do they become criminal sociopaths? When they cross the billion threshold? USD or local currency?

Billionaires don't need your help, why choose to lend your efforts to it.

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