@dariaphoebe was referring to billionaires. I don't know who you're talking about @cgervasi, but there isn't a single billionaire who can be said to have got their billions because they "built something valuable".

The challenge is to find *any* hyper wealthy person who has got there by doing anything that could remotely be called "valuable to society". It's always exploited unjustly, from the resources and labour of others.

Yep, agreed entirely @dariaphoebe. Once your income secures a comfortable life now and indefinitely until you die, then any more income you get is not rightly yours to hold.

To the extent that money represents the ability to direct what other people do, anything more than that amount of money is not rightly vested in any person. I don't care what they've "built" @cgervasi, they can be comfortable and then they have no more right to accumulate inordinate wealth.

@cgervasi @bignose I agree. I peopoe have a right to be exploitative by paying their employees inadequate wages.

That’s what you were talking about, right?

@cgervasi
> I think more people than ever have their rights respected and are free to enter honest trades with honest courts enforcing their agreements.

This simply does not describe our world. The hyper-wealthy are profiting massively while the rest of us see our real wealth decline (which you gloss as "the world is so much wealthier").

> I obviously don't want people to get away with exploitation.

And yet it is the norm today for billionaires. Let's stop them, forever.

@dariaphoebe

@bignose
I don't see wealth declining, except in war zones, and even those are decreasing. (Hopefully Russia's invasion of Ukraine is an anomaly not an end to the trend.) To me it looks like the world is way wealthier than 100 years ago and WAY better than the pre-Englightnment world of imaginary demons and no concept of liberty.

Most (not all) people with high net worths are in free places with less exploitation. The problem is not related to wealth.
@dariaphoebe

@cgervasi

I said

> The hyper-wealthy are profiting massively while the rest of us see our real wealth decline

You replied

> I don't see wealth declining [...] the world is way wealthier

thereby completely erasing any understanding of *some* people accumulating vast wealth while *everyone else* has a crappier impoverished world to live in.

You've done it several times now, and I think it reveals that you care more about abstract number go up, than about people's real lives.

@dariaphoebe