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Comment by douglaswlance | Hacker News Reader

1. Wealth is not zero sum.

2. He enjoys what he does.

3. The more wealth he generates, the better off the world is.

I don't know how you can think 3. is true. There are many situations that increase wealth without making the world a better place. For instance he could wage a war, turn war prisoners into slaves and take their land. He would be very wealthy but it wouldn't make the world a single bit better.

The reason why trickle down doesn't work is because there is no accountability. There are good and bad ways to make money but trickle down doesn't make that distinction.

This is probably about Warren Buffer specifically, who has donated a majority of his wealth to things like the Bill and Melinda gates foundation.

You're 100% right of course that most billionaires makes the world a worse place, but I'd argue he's one of the exceptions.

people love to repeat things. he hasn't donated anything yet. he donates when he dies.

Both Bill and Warren have donated ~35 Billion to charity respectively in their lives. Both have also dedicated to the giving pledge.

This is patently false. The entire point of the pledge is they give away the vast majority of their wealth while still alive.

Please don't pull fake facts out of your anus.

Those things don’t create wealth though.

> 3. The more wealth he generates, the better off the world is.

wat?

Is this some "Make the World a better place™" Silicon Valley techo-religious bullshit?

Wealth can be good or bad and good and bad at the same time, it's not automatic.

"Wealth" is a collection of valuable things.

Things are valuable because people value them.

So... I struggle to think of why people would value bad things?

I can't tell if you're trolling or just naive, but negative externalities exist everywhere.

A ton of people are getting wealthy providing American taxpayers the "valuable" service of for profit prisons and border detention facilities, Russian taxpayers the "valuable" service of foreign election interference, British taxpayers the "valuable" service of EU trade negotiations, Chinese taxpayers the "valuable" service of total surveillance ..

And of course in the private sector there's client change denial, GHG emissions ("clean coal"), the opioid crisis, medical bankruptcies, data breaches, propaganda, lobbyists, ...

It's in fact incredibly easy to see why "people" value "bad" things - because many people don't see the same things as bad.

That people value different things is an important insight. It's the fundamental reason why trade creates wealth, for example.

We agree that people can acquire wealth in ways that hurt others. I think that's different from saying the wealth itself is bad, but that's perhaps splitting hairs.

Crimes and externalities are real, but they're also very manageable with good legislation, and I think all experience is that the enormous accumulation of wealth since the Industrial Revolution has been the best thing that ever happened.

I don't let the minor imperfections distract from the awesome big picture!

I have my doubts about 3. I am not sure if these guys really “generate” wealth but more concentrate it on themselves even at the expense of others. I am sure e-commerce would have taken off without Bezos and we would have computing without Gates. Maybe in a different shape but not necessarily less or worse.

Then you believe in some form of pre-destined, zero-sum world, which is totally legitimate, but I personally don't believe and find sad, as it makes a lot of life look pretty pointless, if true.

I believe that a lot of people provide value to the world. I also believe that some people have the ability to concentrate the value provided by a lot of people on themselves and benefit more than they deserve based on the value they provided themselves.

Does this make sense? In short, a lot of billionaires benefit much more than they deserve at the expense of others who get less than they deserve.

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