my ire draws less from that, and more from how this sort of like, meaningless agreement over this particular example doesn’t really necessarily lend itself towards any more in depth analysis. We’ve put the marker too high, the standard too high. A billion dollars is obviously very extreme, you can see that with the comparisons from a million to a billion. What about a million, though? Is that bad, is that a bad standard of evil, if you have a million dollars, does that make you evil? Where’s the cutoff, here?
You got way too focused on the bottom text of the meme while ignoring the top text.
It is very clear - As long as extreme poverty exists then people with extreme excess wealth are not good people.
If the world had no homeless, workers were paid fairly and not exploited, people didn’t die from lack of medical coverage or affordability,
and billionaires didn’t poison our planet in search of record quarterly profits, then we might be able to have super rich people who are also good.
So, you no longer need to ponder about an arbitrary dollar amount.
The only good billionaire is one who actively becomes a millionaire by choice.
Here’s the only example I know of:
Charles “Chuck” Feeney, who co-founded retailer Duty Free Shoppers, became a billionaire and donated much of his fortune anonymously.
Over his lifetime, Feeney made more than $8 billion in grants in a handful of countries, supporting education, health, equity and more.
Former Billionaire Chuck Feeney, Philanthropist Who Pioneered Giving While Living