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Originally Posted by Devonin
Somebody with a billion dollars could lose 0.1% of their wealth and that is a MILLION DOLLARS. That million dollars could pay for 20 people's 50k university educations, or fund 100 classrooms with 10k each for supplies and better teacher compensation.
Somebody like Jeff Bezos is worth 140 times that much. The same 0.1% of his wealth ratchets those 20/100 up to 2,800 people or 14,000 classrooms, for 0.1% of his wealth.
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How exactly did Jeff Bezos get his wealth? Did he go around stealing from people and getting away with it? Or did a large number of voluntary interactions happen in which both parties considered themselves better off for having closed the deal? I think the latter is the case.
And even when he became a billionaire and a public figure, people
still bought products through Amazon, thus endorsing the fact that whatever income inequality was on display did
not constitute inequity. People still felt better off and were willing to make the slight "sacrifice" of helping some people at a corporation become very rich.
If Bezos had given away all his money in 1999 besides one million dollars, would Amazon be as expansive and helpful to as many customers as it is today? I'm not even saying I like Amazon, but the market certainly does.
Some people are better with money than others, and people aren't nearly as replaceable as currency notes, especially within an industry. I won't be receiving a billion-dollar investment any time soon, because I'm not as productive as an Amazon warehouse.
Maybe Bezos can't be confident that investing in 20,000 people's college educations will be as productive as investing in 20,000 new jobs and a warehouse for workers in a business model he is entirely familiar with and therefore can more reliably predict the continued productivity of. Maybe more of the college students could be expected to drop out, or major in gender or ethnic victimhood studies. Either way, it's wise to invest in what you know rather than what you don't know. Just ask the Oracle of Omaha. Familial and community structures innately work in the same way, and justifiably so.
Of course the rich should give
some money to charity, but 99% of it? Buffett is too nice.