Quote:
Originally Posted by 4X4
It's just so pathetic to read people who think that just because someone has money, they either owe it to the greater good, or else they are greedy a-holes.
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There are perfectly rational and legitimate reasons to be concerned about the growing concentration of wealthy and widening inequality in the world. Eventually, stark inequalities lead to the breakdown of public trust and order. You reach a critical mass of people who have no investment in the common good, and are happy to cheat the system and one another, or simply use force to take what they want. Then you get ghettos, burning cars, no-go zones for police, and whole regions of the countryside succumbing to drug addiction and squalor.
While the rich can try to shield themselves behind gated communities, private schools and the like, it can become onerous to have to maintain bodyguards watching over your children day and night so they aren't kidnapped. And if you require secure and skilled workers to generate your wealth, you'll have a lot more trouble finding those in an insecure, unequal and predatory society than in a secure and egalitarian one. The Murray Edwards of Canada built their business empires on a foundation of skilled workers educated and kept healthy and secure at the public expense. I'd like to see how he would have made out building an oil company in Nigeria or Ecuador.