Yeah, it does make sense if you think about it. Imagine if Bezos or Musk decided to use their fortune to do as much damage to a city as possible. Musk could go to a city of hundreds of thousands and absolutely decimate if he wanted. Buy up all the big employers in town and shut them down. Fund local politicians who will screw things up as much as possible. Buy up residences by the thousand and pay to have them demolished. A billionaire like Musk or Bezos could, if they chose to, absolutely do as much damage to a city as a nuclear bomb. And countless people would die deaths of despair as a result.
Bezos could literally destroy a city if he wanted to. Let’s say a city of 100k people has 33,000 residences. Let’s say the average cost of buying and demolishing one is $500k. For about $16 billion, Bezos could literally buy up every residence in a city and tear them all down. Hell, they could afford to literally level a city that is home to millions of people, forcing the city to be abandoned.
One person should simply not have that much power. We don’t let people own nuclear bomb, period. We don’t say “only really ethical people get to own nukes.” We don’t say “only people with an expensive permit and license can own a nuke.” No. There we recognize that no person, no matter how sane or moral, gets to own a nuke. Mr. Rogers wasn’t allowed to own a nuke, even if he wanted one. Because even Mr. Rogers with a nuke isn’t safe. There’s always a chance of one individual going nuts and killing millions. There are simply levels of power that only large groups of people should have. Some things just should never be trusted to individuals.
Equating mass wealth to weapons of mass destruction is not the metaphor I thought I’d be agreeing with today but it is extremely apt.
Yeah, it does make sense if you think about it. Imagine if Bezos or Musk decided to use their fortune to do as much damage to a city as possible. Musk could go to a city of hundreds of thousands and absolutely decimate if he wanted. Buy up all the big employers in town and shut them down. Fund local politicians who will screw things up as much as possible. Buy up residences by the thousand and pay to have them demolished. A billionaire like Musk or Bezos could, if they chose to, absolutely do as much damage to a city as a nuclear bomb. And countless people would die deaths of despair as a result.
Bezos could literally destroy a city if he wanted to. Let’s say a city of 100k people has 33,000 residences. Let’s say the average cost of buying and demolishing one is $500k. For about $16 billion, Bezos could literally buy up every residence in a city and tear them all down. Hell, they could afford to literally level a city that is home to millions of people, forcing the city to be abandoned.
One person should simply not have that much power. We don’t let people own nuclear bomb, period. We don’t say “only really ethical people get to own nukes.” We don’t say “only people with an expensive permit and license can own a nuke.” No. There we recognize that no person, no matter how sane or moral, gets to own a nuke. Mr. Rogers wasn’t allowed to own a nuke, even if he wanted one. Because even Mr. Rogers with a nuke isn’t safe. There’s always a chance of one individual going nuts and killing millions. There are simply levels of power that only large groups of people should have. Some things just should never be trusted to individuals.