What, exactly, is the morally indefensible thing that they have definitely done? If it's definitely there, you should be able to point out what it is.
What, exactly, is the morally indefensible thing that they have definitely done? If it's definitely there, you should be able to point out what it is.
Apple, for example, steals 30% of the money of anything you buy on your phone.
Charging someone money that they voluntarily pay in return for getting something of value themselves is not stealing.
For example, the highwayman, who who provides the valuable service of 'not getting murdered' to travelers, in return for the payment they voluntarily make.
Or perhaps you would prefer the example of the extortionist, who provides insurance against the risk of "something" happening to the nice business you have?
What's morally indefensible about that?
Once they define it as stealing, then it's morally indefensible, by definition.
The question is, is it actually stealing, or is that just their overheated rhetoric? From where I sit, it's hot air.
> Once they define it as stealing, then it's morally indefensible, by definition.
Right, similar to the equivocation around the meaning of earn in this thread. I've started to wonder whether it's possible to push by accepting that framing and then asking for a justification rather than quibbling about what "stealing" is.
Does the highwayman earn his toll or does he steal it?
I doubt it. "Stealing" functions as a thought-terminating cliche; I suspect that very few people will think past it.
Especially amongst those who think of taxes as a form of stealing.
I fear you are right, but I feel like trying it anyway.
Some of that 30% has both directly and indirectly empowered war crimes and has pushed on the accelerator of an unspeakable [and, sadly, irreversible] descent into the kind of mad fascistic experiment that always ends up driving many more. The seizure of means that you turn around and use for rent-seeking is morally indefensible in its own right, but it’s the unintended (yet obvious) consequences of that same self-serving and short-sighted impulse where the real moral trap lies.
So it's not the stealing that was wrong, but what the proceeds were put to?
No, both are wrong, the war crimes are more wrong.
As a first pass, you’ve accumulated all that money, thus you’ve actively or passively, knowingly or unknowingly, taken advantage of a perverse systemic bug that allows that sort of money to accumulate in any one person’s hands to begin with.
But point me at any given billionaire and I can provide more context-specific examples, sure.
Start further back. You need to defend that allowing that much money to accumulate in any person's hands is indeed a "perverse systemic bug".
The default framework is one of private property. If you make it, it's yours, and (modulo taxation), nobody has the right to take it from you. In that framework, it's not a bug that, if someone makes a billion dollars, they can accumulate a billion dollars.
So, do you reject that framework? If so, on what authority? Given that it's the default framework, "I reject it" doesn't cut it. "I think it's immoral" is slightly better, but you need to demonstrate that someone accumulating that much money is more immoral than taking it from them would be.
Or are you claiming that it's immoral for any one person to receive that much money? In a free economy, if others voluntarily exchange that much money for what the person supplies, why is it immoral? What is your moral authority for claiming that voluntary transactions are morally wrong, just because too many of them go to one person?
Since we’re playing this game, prove to me there exists a default framework. Further, prove to me that said default framework is one that includes billionaires, the concept having been utterly alien throughout the vast majority of human history.
Any system that allows more wealth than is necessary to accumulate into one pair of hands while another pair hasn’t enough food is inherently immoral.
Also you’ve never, not once, been operating within a free economy… the only people I’ve met in life who have witnessed such an economy have gone to extreme lengths to escape it. Or they’ve died.
The default framework is the existing legal system. There is one, therefore one exists. In that framework, there is no legal limit on how much you can earn.
That framework is the default for the legal understanding of what is right and wrong. If you want us to change it, the burden of proof is on you. Bare assertions of "that's immoral" aren't going to be enough. You need to make a much more robust case than that, one that's not just soundbites. (At least here. Most people here can think at deeper level than soundbites.)
Ahh, so you’re conflating what’s legal — which at times has included chattel slavery, genocide that suited the state, actual torture, and, for the moment at least, unlimited betting by members of the executive branch on the outcomes of military actions that are facially illegal under international law — with what’s moral.
Yes, under what you’ve accepted as the default it’s legally acceptable to accumulate all the money and avoid any taxation while doing so. Thank you for summarizing and explaining to yourself and others precisely the perverse systemic bug I described earlier.
Interesting bug! Why not tell us about this assertion by providing your own examples?
Elon. Jeff. Donald. Honestly just randomly select a billionaire.