Some people say "The only ethical solution to the current situation is to kill all the billionaires".
In that reality, the real answer is to deal with the massive bureaucratic state and mass political corruption that allows for the creation of the richest people in the history of the world in the first place, and implement legal structures that limit the size of a person's wealth through natural means.
The solution of killing those with power and wealth is unethical because we know it's ineffective. We have numerous examples where the people rose up and killed the ruling class, and another group of people just got sucked in through the power vacuum and ended up becoming the new ruling class. The French revolution in particular had massive amounts of bloodshed during the reign of terror, and despite that within 15 years there was another emperor on the throne and a new aristocracy in France.
For examples where long-term improvements were made to regular people, you have to look at examples such as constitutional monarchies where systems were built that limited the powers of the powerful. For much of history, the powerful were the people controlling the governments, so limiting what the government was allowed to do using Constitution and courts was an effective means to improve a common man's lot.
Unfortunately, the modern bureaucratic state was not predicted for by those who came before us and so a lot of power has aggregated into unelected, unaccountable, undemocratic parts of government that perhaps wouldn't have previously. Without constraints, such bureaucrats are eminently corruptible. Perfect for the aggregation of power into billionaires, whoever's ready to pay for play to bureaucrats who will have their jobs whoever's in congress or the whitehouse.
The other thing is that our business structures are set up in such a way that you can let a business grow and grow and there's few natural constraints on growth. I think the way to limit the size of businesses and the amount of active wealth someone can be using at one time is to change it so the owners of companies are responsible for what those companies do when it's something catastrophic enough. Why shouldn't the shareholders of BP be responsible for the damage BP did by cutting corners in the process of making them money? And selling your stock before the court case goes through should not be enough to divest your responsibility.
In that reality, the real answer is to deal with the massive bureaucratic state and mass political corruption that allows for the creation of the richest people in the history of the world in the first place, and implement legal structures that limit the size of a person's wealth through natural means.
The solution of killing those with power and wealth is unethical because we know it's ineffective. We have numerous examples where the people rose up and killed the ruling class, and another group of people just got sucked in through the power vacuum and ended up becoming the new ruling class. The French revolution in particular had massive amounts of bloodshed during the reign of terror, and despite that within 15 years there was another emperor on the throne and a new aristocracy in France.
For examples where long-term improvements were made to regular people, you have to look at examples such as constitutional monarchies where systems were built that limited the powers of the powerful. For much of history, the powerful were the people controlling the governments, so limiting what the government was allowed to do using Constitution and courts was an effective means to improve a common man's lot.
Unfortunately, the modern bureaucratic state was not predicted for by those who came before us and so a lot of power has aggregated into unelected, unaccountable, undemocratic parts of government that perhaps wouldn't have previously. Without constraints, such bureaucrats are eminently corruptible. Perfect for the aggregation of power into billionaires, whoever's ready to pay for play to bureaucrats who will have their jobs whoever's in congress or the whitehouse.
The other thing is that our business structures are set up in such a way that you can let a business grow and grow and there's few natural constraints on growth. I think the way to limit the size of businesses and the amount of active wealth someone can be using at one time is to change it so the owners of companies are responsible for what those companies do when it's something catastrophic enough. Why shouldn't the shareholders of BP be responsible for the damage BP did by cutting corners in the process of making them money? And selling your stock before the court case goes through should not be enough to divest your responsibility.
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