Democrats want us to believe that there is some cohort of “good billionaires” who can be relied upon to fight for political progress. But as the right-wing turn of tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk suggests, this is nonsense.
The premise that merely having more than you need is inherently unethical is completely arbitrary, doubly so when only applied to those who have the most.
I live a fairly simple and frugal lifestyle. The amount of money where I am living at the standard of living ideal for me, and my “savings are enough to ride out life in comfort”, is likely a much lower number than most others in the US.
Does that make me more ethical than those others? I don’t believe so.
There’s no hard line, sure: I lived in the Amazon for years, so I know how to live off poverty wages. Poverty where I grew up in the USA seems almost plush by comparison, because a shitty trailer is far more comfortable than a thatch roofed house with electricity only 4 hours a day. My lifestyle now is middle class, and I feel like I’m living like a king. It’s a grey smear of a continuum of wealth and privilege and morality that I feel like I understand viscerally.
However: my lifestyle and wealth is far closer to my friends in the Amazon than that of billionaires.
So there’s a line, but it’s far closer to the top 0.1% than the rest of us. I can help a few friends get motors for fishing canoes, and still make ends meet if I’m careful. A billionaire could get electricity and running water for the whole town and not notice.
The premise that merely having more than you need is inherently unethical is completely arbitrary, doubly so when only applied to those who have the most.
I live a fairly simple and frugal lifestyle. The amount of money where I am living at the standard of living ideal for me, and my “savings are enough to ride out life in comfort”, is likely a much lower number than most others in the US.
Does that make me more ethical than those others? I don’t believe so.
There’s no hard line, sure: I lived in the Amazon for years, so I know how to live off poverty wages. Poverty where I grew up in the USA seems almost plush by comparison, because a shitty trailer is far more comfortable than a thatch roofed house with electricity only 4 hours a day. My lifestyle now is middle class, and I feel like I’m living like a king. It’s a grey smear of a continuum of wealth and privilege and morality that I feel like I understand viscerally.
However: my lifestyle and wealth is far closer to my friends in the Amazon than that of billionaires.
So there’s a line, but it’s far closer to the top 0.1% than the rest of us. I can help a few friends get motors for fishing canoes, and still make ends meet if I’m careful. A billionaire could get electricity and running water for the whole town and not notice.