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Can a rich person be a good person? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I don't mean doctor-making-150k-a-year rich, I mean properly rich with millions to billions of dollars.

I think many will say yes, they can be, though it may be rare. I was tempted to. I thought more about it and I wondered, are you really a good person if you're hoarding enough money you and your family couldn't spend in 10 lifetimes?

I thought, if you're a good person, you wouldn't be rich. And if you're properly rich you're probably not a good person.

I don't know if it's fair or naive to say, but that's what I thought. Whether it's what I believe requires more thought.

There are a handful of ex-millionaires who are no longer millionaires because they cared for others in a way they couldn't care for themselves. Only a handful of course, I would say they are good people.

And in order to stay rich, you have to play your role and participate in a society that oppresses the poor which in turn maintains your wealth. Are you really still capable of being a good person?

Very curious about people's thoughts on this.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are any of us good people? I think there is a level of selfishness in wealth that all of us engage in, and so I'm not willing to condemn people for having wealth that seems disproportionate to us. Is John Famousactor a bad person because he lives in a mansion worth ten times the average American's? Is Jake Factoryworker a bad person because he lives in a house worth ten times the world average? What matter of suffering can be alleviated in developing countries by our sacrifices in developed countries? At what level are our sins equal? Is it a matter of principle? Proportion?

The vast majority of people who 'make' millions do so by exploiting others, or by exploiting society to keep it, though, so fuck 'em.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your scale is off by several orders of magnitude. We're not talking about someone with ten times the average wealth, we're talking about someone with hundreds of thousands, or millions, times.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Someone who has 100,000 times the average (median) wealth of a US resident would have more than 12 billion dollars. There are only a few people in the world with that kind of money. Even the richest person alive doesn't have a million times the average wealth (120 billion).

By and large, if you're talking about 'millionaires', you're talking about people who have 100-200 times the average wealth. Which, not irrelevantly, is comparable to the average wealth of an American to the average wealth of someone from South Sudan.

I'm not playing apologist for the ultra-wealthy. It's pretty clear that, as a class, they're fucking our society. But ownership of 100-200 times the wealth of the average American is no more wrong than ownership of 100-200 times the wealth of the average South Sudanese. What makes wealth exceptionally wrong is the way one acquires and maintains it, not its existence/possession.