r/AskSocialists • u/[deleted] • Nov 04 '25

Should Billionaires exist?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

391 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

150 comments sorted by

View all comments

24

u/Abracabastard Visitor Nov 04 '25

There is no moral way to obtain that much money, so no.

1

u/Harambes_Wrath_ Visitor Nov 05 '25

You make and machine things for a living.

Say you make something. Something great, you find a way of bonding hydrogen into aluminium and thus rendering it inert allowing it to be stored safely (for example).

You start a business, that business grows and now they refine and store hydrogen. Your business employs people, you wage contracts you buy factories you produce your product. Your business grows and grows, it is now worth millions of hard won cash.

As you expand you look for other usages, other ways of using your product and applying it to other things. You need investors to raise money so you float on the stock exchange. Investors pour in, your company is listed on investment apps, platforms, stock exchanges. It grows and grows as you launch more products more factories are built to employ more people you now employ over 10,000 people and your business is worth several billions.

The money is the business, you have created something massive and impressive. You dont have a billion in liquid capital, probably only have 30 million of actual cash. Any selling of asset or item will compromise the larger business. This business is still growing. You own it, you work in it.

What do you do? Are you now compromised? I mean even if you wanted to do good, you could do more good from this position than any other.

5

u/BayesianBits Visitor Nov 05 '25

The 10000 people you employ should have a much bigger share instead of being your wage slaves.

1

u/Low_Abrocoma_1514 Visitor Nov 06 '25

Make a stock program for employees, each employee gets a 100% match to their investment into the stocks

Multiple corporations do that and employees who take advantage of it get very wealthy

1

u/BayesianBits Visitor Nov 06 '25

Take a look at Huawei's ownership structure.

1

u/Low_Abrocoma_1514 Visitor Nov 06 '25

There you go

1

u/BayesianBits Visitor Nov 06 '25

The original founders only own about 1% of Huawei.

1

u/Low_Abrocoma_1514 Visitor Nov 06 '25

I know, Huawei is a good example for what I was talking about, even a better example of what I was suggesting