Bezos wasn't holding guns to the heads of Amazon employees. To the contrary. The existence of Amazon created more demand for workers which resulted in more options for them, as well as better pay and working conditions.
Where do you get your worker exploitation from? That is absolute nonsense.
In the west, or in relatively free societies, it is true that one's wealth is basically proportional to their contribution to society. Inheritance too, if someone contributes a great deal it's their choice what they want to do with it. If they want to leave it to their offspring then who are we to disagree?
Only in socialist societies are people who contribute nothing the richest - e.g. North Korea.
Regarding wealth growth while not working, what are you trying to get at? This is such a simple concept that it barely requires an explanation. Rich people don't earn money per hour worked, by definition. You'll never be rich if your income is proportional to the hours you work. You have to do something that's scalable, and thankfully with Industrialisation a lot of things are.
Ridiculous. The ONLY way to build wealth in a capitalist system is to provide value to other people. Case in point: Bezos and every other billionaire in the US.
You are missing the point. The only way Bezos can take a cent from you is if you willingly give him the money. In contrast, in a socialist system, the government takes money from you regardless of whether you want to give it or not. Spoiler: no one wants to give it. Governments are 91283128391823918293819381x more evil than billionaires.
It's crazy, right? It's always baffling how otherwise very intelligent people like Google/Meta engineers are communists. They're basically brain dead outside of their immediate area of expertise.
These people have no idea what wealth means, it would indeed be a problem if Bezos was consuming all his $100B+ but he isn't. The value he created through Amazon is likely orders of magnitude greater than his net worth.
If you agree that nobody deserves or needs that wealth, then please move to Cuba or North Korea. And enjoy your life, there's no Bezoses there.
But it IS all willpower. The other take is baffling to me - the notion that "we"(the smart people/ the regulators/ the ones above the masses) need to protect weak people because they are too weak to do something about it.
It's a ridiculous proposition in my opinion. First, it's intractable - Zynga closes the woman's account, she'll find other ways to blow her money away.
But the biggest problem is not even that - the proposed solution of regulation, which nowadays is a universal hammer for absolutely every problem, takes freedom away from me and you in order to protect her. Even though as I've said it doesn't really protect her.
Regulation is a terrible solution to any problem, almost all of the time.
Reading the article about the addicted woman, she's perfectly aware of what she's doing and she's perfectly aware she's blowing money away on nothing. There's nothing to be regulated. Conscious adults can make their own decisions.
How ridiculous is it for her to ask Zynga to close her account and then still try to log into it later? This isn't a regulatory issue, it's a willpower issue. Might as well regulate how much/what food you can buy so people don't get fat.
Yes, that would be the market interest rate based on supply/demand, as any other good. If supply >> demand (a lot of people have a capital they don't know what do to with) then you get a low interest rate, otherwise a high interest rate.
Centrally controlled interest rates are basically price controls. The govt controls the price of money. Even a 5 year old knows price controls don't work, but we can't expect that from the govt.
I was fat/overweight all my life until I was about 24. I had enough of it and I went from ~94kg to about 85kg quite quickly (through calorie deficit), then over 1-2 years I went to a low of about 72kg. I am about 75-76 now, and have been oscillating in the 72-77 range for the past 5 years or so. It still requires me to be mindful of how much I eat, which has become part of my daily life. I'm not very strict about it, I have days when I eat more and then I compensate by eating less.
I think the mistake people make is they think they can go on a diet temporarily, then go back to the old eating habits and not get fat again. That is nonsense of course, which is why dieting doesn't work. Dieting implies something temporary and you need something permanent.
Where do you get your worker exploitation from? That is absolute nonsense.