My point is not that he shouldn't give charitably, but there is something that seems deeply pessimistic to me about turning to the rich to solve our societal ills. If the implication is that we should have a more 'fair' tax system, I can get on board with some version of that straw man, but would rather we as a society fix our own problems rather than hoping for help from the plutocrats.
Why should we assume that Bezos or any other billionaire would solve these problems in a way that is actually in society's best interest? Would we wish that Bezos spend his money differently than the Koch brothers?
We have government to help create solutions for this space, and in my opinion we should reject the passive acceptance of mediocrity there and instead hold them accountable for delivering these things. I may not be holding my breath for this, but that is part of the problem.
Better than questioning the morality of looking into rich people's bank accounts, is the question of whether it is ethical for people to accumulate so much in the first place. There must be a sense of commonwealth, because the only thing that exists "in a vacuum of society", is nature itself, and that must in some respect belong to everybody. It would not even amount to "wealth redistribution" to tax the top 0.01% enough to afford decent housing and education; it'd be a soft cap.
The economy is not a zero-sum game. Bezos has "accumulated" company stock by building the freaking company. He didn't stockpile food he took from someone's mouth. He created value, and got value in trade for it. That is not unethical.
I'm willing to debate whether it is ethical to be uncharitable if you have great means. But can we please dispense with the notion that merely being wealthy is wrong?
Yup!
Not for any sensible things he may want, but he certainly would if he were to do everything OP implies he can do with his wealth
You wake in in 1993 with no memories except perfect insider knowledge of how Amazon was built down to the finest details. You have a full year of lead time to drink Jeff Bezos' milkshake.
Do you:
1) Spoil all the resources he used so that an unknown entity becomes the main online merchant instead, with the typical "morals" you'd expect a big company to have?
2) Build Amazon yourself plus "morals" accepting the real possibility that those changes to the formula cede your competitive advantage to a less "moral" unknown entity?
3) Build Amazon exactly as Bezos did, but with the strong belief that after 20+ years of extremely dedicated work on your part you'll still feel like the rest of the world deserves the payoff more than you do?
4) Find out you're mostly interested in video games and can't be bothered to change history. Plus, it's really convenient to get those games from Amazon!
I don't worship Amazon (nor currently own any shares other than via index funds), but I'm a very happy customer of many of their businesses and think they've created vastly more good than ill. I'd rather they continue doing what they're doing.
Which shows two things:
1. Throwing money at a problem is not enough. 2. The idea of just taking rich people's money to fix problems is not enough.
Also, one of the further items ("Fund NASA for a year (-$20 billion)"): Jeff Bezos is already spending a billion dollars every year to fund a private space company. I don't know why the assumption is that it's a "vanity" project.
All the options though... Like calling out Valve [0] or the whole funding secured saga. Would be too complex?
[0] check twitter.com/elonmusk
That's... not how taxes work. We have income taxes in the USA, not wealth taxes.
I'm not entirely sure what the point of the game is. But after playing through this far, I am not exactly impressed by this kind of error.
Clearly, there's a political message the author is pushing here. Which isn't necessarily bad: I liked Capt. Planet damn it. But getting such a trivial fact like taxes wrong makes me distrust the "game" in its entirety. Now maybe the game is saying that he wants to push for wealth taxes in the USA. Maybe we can have that discussion. But... for now... this seems to be pushing assertions that are very far removed from reality.
Now, it turns out that this is worth a lot of money. But should it really be... wrong to want to own part of your own company?
