Memes

They aren't greedy! They're exercising rational self-interest!

They aren't cruel! They're acting in the best interests of shareholders!

They don't sociopathically betray the workers who helped them succeed, they curtailed redundancies to maximize workplace efficiency!

We have always been at war with Eurasia!

It's the people at the company working that make the money. So technically the people create their own jobs or smth. A company should be owned by the workers at that company and they should get to elect leading personnel. I think this sounds rad.

Titan 2: Bezos Boogaloo

Money has too much power

I don’t really have a direct reply to these ideas but I would like to point out an interesting example of a business model that addresses some of these concerns, that is the worker cooperative, where the workers have some portion of ownership of the company, either in revenue sharing or decision making.

What the free market dictates they are worth

That's one of the main fallacies of capitalism apologia: assuming that the market is free and inherently fair.

In reality, the "market wage" is the lowest amount that the company can possibly get away with while retaining its workforce. Conversely, the market price for a product that workers buy is the HIGHEST profit margin possible without hurting sales and the number one priority is always profit for owners/shareholders.

As for the market being free, that's literally impossible: without the presence of government regulations and unions to constrict them, the most powerful forces constrict the less powerful.

You either have tyranny of the already rich and powerful corporations or limits to their freedom being imposed. The American system leans heavily towards the tyranny end, which severely stifles the freedom of workers.

If you're paying your employees what they're worth (not the minimum the market will bear, but actually in line with the value they contribute), and you're still making Bezos money, then you're fleecing your customers.

There's no way to get to a billion dollars without 1) exploiting your labor and supply chain by taking advantage of capitalist forces to pay less than the value of their contribution or 2) exploiting your customers by taking advantage of capitalist forces to charge more than the value of your product. Usually both, to extreme degrees, enabled by monopolies, regulatory capture, collusion, and other capitalist tricks. That's not "a business that helps people".

No matter how "innovative" an entrepreneur is, the actual value of their product or service is generated by the people who actually do the work. Of course, you're entitled to the value that you personally create, but the best business idea in the world is worth exactly zilch without implementation. Bezos doesn't build those fulfillment centers, he doesn't manufacture the products, he doesn't pack the boxes, he doesn't drive the trucks, he doesn't program the website. He only has the wealth he does because he pays the people that generate the value of his company the absolute minimum that he can get away with, skimming a big slice of everyone's labor value for himself. That doesn't help the public.

Those philosophies are not the only way to do things. Workers don't have to be paid the minimum possible. At some point, wealth accumulation becomes so extreme that it's immoral, like when people have so much money that they could never possibly spend it and are spending $300 million on a new boat or whatever. Tax rates used to be much, much higher on wealthy people and they still were "reaping the benefit of their innovation". Even better than paying taxes would be giving the money to employees. Paying a janitor (not sure why that is your example of someone who is lesser) enough money to buy a house and pay for their children to go to college is not a waste. It's also how the economy works. Capitalists and the wealthy class in the US seem to think they can keep all the money and economically starve their employees without realizing that the public has to have enough money to buy their products.

My take? The issue I have with the mega rich is that they (generalization here) aren't playing by the same rules as you or I. I don't have an issue, with not paying all of your employees 6 figures. Different jobs, skills, training, and capabilities are (and should be) worth different amounts of money. It's important that people with good ideas, or business capabilities have avenues of expanding, bettering themselves, and enjoying the fruits of their labor.

When you pay money to write rules that are favorable to you, you become the problem. Money in politics is the problem. Imo, that has enabled all of this. Don't have good healthcare? Likely it was lobbied for because someone wanted more money. Stuck in prison? Oh yeah, money in politics got you there. Minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation? Something, something trickledown-bullshit, money in politics. Kids killed in school constantly? Oh you know....FUCKING MONEY IN POLITICS.

Favorable can be lobbying against health & safety or environmental regulations because it impacts your bottom line. It is donating to political campaigns for tax cuts (you know, fucking bribery). It's blocking minimum wage hikes to secure your bottom line.

All of that said, how people sleep at night with absurd amounts of money and minimal charity is disgusting. I don't fault someone for enjoying an oppulant lifestyle.....I do fault someone for Scrooge McDucking and hoarding cash....for what? Bragging rights? Power?

TLDR: be gaddamn ethical about it.

I am only entitled to a certain amount of success

This. No one working for a business is 399 times worth as much as any other employee. Not even the owner of that business. No one deserves to be filthy rich.

The idea that rich people are supposedly so many times more valuable than any other person is nothing more than the same old self-aggrandizement kings and pharaohs have shown in the past. It isn't that much different from believing you were somehow chosen by God to be above everyone else.

If your net worth breaks a billion dollars, you will garner this sort of criticism nearly no matter what you do with it. Bill Gates, at least recently, has been just about as close as you can be to a model philanthropist, and people still spit on his name regularly.

A few things that help though, would be A) paying workers higher than the federally mandated minimum amount that you can legally pay them without running afoul of labor laws, B) Reinvesting profit back into the company instead of paying yourself a gorillion dollar yearly bonus while the rest of the employees get a 2.5% cost of living raise, and C) donating to charitable causes or human rights groups.

But some CEO's (I won't say many, but definitely some) do all of these things and still come under public fire. Realistically, if you actually manage to hoard enough money to become a billionaire, you've already abandoned your morals. No human being needs that much money. By all means profit from your innovations and rake in enough to live a comfortable life off them, but when your take home pay for a month is 12x what your next best paid employee makes in a year, you're a motherfucker. Doubly so, when said employee is the one with boots on the ground and all the CEO is doing is signing papers and looking pretty for the shareholders.

In my opinion, there should never, ever ever, be a discrepancy of more than 5x the amount your lowest paid employee makes. If you're paying people 25k a year to do the work that runs your business, the guy at the top of the chain of command shouldn't make more than 125k. If you pay your guys 100k a year, sure, take home 500k a year if you've got the profits. Live comfortably. But when a company makes record breaking profits, turns around and cans half their staff, then pays the bigwigs a million dollar bonus while everyone else gets next to nothing, yeah, fuck you, fuck your product, and fuck your shareholders. If you look around there's been quite a lot of that going on recently.

I guess my point is, the act of dishonestly hoarding the money in the first place is what makes us hate the rich. If you made that money fair and square and you deserve it, man, more power to you. I don't think anyone is upset with Dolly Parton even though she's worth an estimated 650 million US dollars, because she sweat and bled for that money and hasn't taken to lording it over everyone else just because she can. Bezos invented a website and then rode it's coattails into the realm of the obscenely rich without hardly ever lifting another finger for it. So did Musk. And the better-than-thou attitude they get about it makes it so much worse.

Not all the rich are bad people, but for the most part, good people don't become rich. Not like that. It takes a certain amount of gleefully taking advantage of your fellow humans to get there. That remorseless exploitation is what we hate.

This is an easy question to answer. Look at Henry Ford and look at Bezos and his type (oh for example Walmart, etc). Ford wanted his workers to be able to afford the product he was making, and he even lost a landmark case because he was looking out for the best interest of his employees and his customers, from wikipedia:

Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 204 Mich. 459, 170 N.W. 668 (Mich. 1919)[1] is a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers. It is often taught as affirming the principle of "shareholder primacy" in corporate America, although that teaching has received some criticism

The devil doesn't need more volunteer advocates, he's got plenty of paid ones.

I don't think there is a simple answer to this question. Not bribing politicians for favours, not exploiting workers and not selling substandard goods might be considered a basic minimum. Beyond this, there have been businessmen who tried to help their employees (or society as a whole), such as Ernst Abbe of Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung and John Spedan Lewis of JLP / Waitrose.

Their pay is less bad. Not exactly good

Doesn't pay $142,667/ Minute

Wealth, shown to scale