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.
There’s a lot of arguments here based on emotions and assumptions rather than logic.
I don’t think any person is simply “good” or “bad”. A person can perform a “good” deed one moment, and a “bad” deed the next. When people look at someone and judge if they are a “good” or “bad” person, they are usually either: 1) judging that person by the overall sum of their publicly known deeds, or 2) judging that person by deeds they have performed for (or against) the judger.
Being in possession of great wealth is not a deed. A person can come in possession of great wealth relative to other people in a society without taking any action (e.g. inheritance, etc) or without taking any evil action (e.g. winning the lottery, taking profit from a sufficiently large business that doesn’t perform any ethical violations, etc).
Gotta say, I’m getting a little tired of moral relativism being trotted out as a defense of bad people.
Too tired to read logical arguments? Comfortable in your assumption that all rich people are bad people, based on your distaste for the few famous rich people who are constantly in the news? The vast majority of the world’s billionaires prefer to stay anonymous.
Not that I’m pointing out any specific rich people as good people, I’m just pointing out the illogic of automatically linking a person’s moral qualities with their wealth without knowing anything else about them. Would you assume the contrapositive, that all poor people are good people?
Relativism is a cop out argument for or against anything. It’s a hail Mary, it’s a sign you’re scraping the bottom of the rhetorical barrel.
But yes, I’d say that the simple fact of having a billion dollars makes you immoral. All other parts of your life aside. It is immoral simply to have that much money and not be using it to help people.
In the modern world of fiat currencies, crypto currencies, stocks, and other fictitious denominations of value, I wouldn’t assume that having great wealth necessarily means that you are hoarding resources away from the greater public. In fact, people with massive bank accounts cannot withdraw all of their money even if they tried, because banks only hold a fractional reserve on the assumption that the overall sums of withdrawals will be balanced out by the overall sums of deposits.
Money by itself is worthless, it is tokens to be traded for goods and services. No matter how much money you have, you cannot buy more than what is willingly for sale to you, and money that sits never spent may as well not exist.
If a hacker got into your bank account, and added many zeros without your consent or knowledge, are you now a bad person?
If you don’t use it to help others? Yes. Pretty simple concept, y’all are doing some crazy mental gymnastics here.
In this entire debate, you haven’t made any logical arguments. You have only started and ended with a single assumption, that being in possession of great wealth inherently makes you a bad person.
I’m currently reading the Ender’s Game series, and just finished the 2nd book, Speaker for the Dead. Mild spoilers follow.
Ender has been doing a lot of near-lightspeed travel, so due to time dilation, he is now about 3000 years old. He has a sentient AI friend who has been making investments in his name during his travels, so he has inadvertently become possibly the wealthiest human in existence. However, he never asked his friend to make those investments, and he only found out when he asked for her help with a problem one day. His wealth is rarely mentioned for the rest of the book.
He wasn’t living a life of luxury before he found out about his wealth, and still doesn’t, and he’s too busy with protagonist stuff to devote any time to philanthropy; money just isn’t part of his identity or decision making. He helps lots of people in his adventures, but not using his money, and most things he or they need can’t be bought anyway. His wealth is just another tool to be used as needed, but it’s far from his most useful or important one.
Cool. He should tell his AI friend to use that money to help people. That’s the real protagonist shit.
Yes, and I don’t know what about it requires more explanation. If you have more money than you will ever need, and you’re not using it to help people, that is bad. It’s almost axiomatic.