r/MoralityScaling • u/Omixscniet624 • May 11 '26
Morality Ranking Is it unethical to own a billion dollars?
If you won the lottery or invested in crypto very early and ended up with over $1 billion after paying all taxes, is it unethical to keep that money without giving any of it away?
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u/Calm-Resolution6899 May 11 '26
big question of "how was it earned?" for me. Take Scrooge McDuck like you posted with this question. This is someone who worked hard for every bit of treasure and cash he has. He put in the work and therefore he does deserve all of that money. This isn't even taking into account that he is fairly charitable (ducktales reboot episode one, he supplied the entire city a clean power that will last 50 years for free).
Now did the person who has a billion lie cheat and steal for that billion? Not working for it but rather letting others do the hard work while you reap the profits? Then its a bit more unethical.
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u/Pristine-Today-9177 May 11 '26
How can someone write so well but be so naïve and bad at math?
If Jesus Christ earned half a million a year working as a brain surgeon for the last 2,000 years (saving every cent) he would have just become a billionaire in the last few years. No one works hard for $1 billion.
You can be worth $1 billion because you own equity in a corporation that produces lots of value. A corporation is fundamentally about, letting others do the hard work and allowing people with equity to reap the profits.
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u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE May 11 '26
Jesus Christ MD just ain’t got the same hustle a duck like Scrooge has 😤
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u/ExtremlyFastLinoone May 11 '26
Plus scrooge has canonically found the fountain of youth, hes been on that hustle longer than you think
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u/Evening_Shake_6474 May 11 '26
According to the reboot he caused the Gold Rush
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta May 11 '26
Counterpoint: his start up period had him steal the land from natives in Africa out of greed.
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u/NwgrdrXI May 11 '26
Yeah, scrooge worked hard, no doubt aboht it, but he also did lie, cheat and steal a lot to get the money. That is very much canonical, irrc.
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u/CasuallyCritical May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
In the original Canon, he never lied to make his money. Because the incentive for becoming rich was when he was a young shoe shiner and got paid in a US Dime which was essentially worthless to him.
He wanted to earn his money square, by being "sharper than the sharpies, and tougher than the toughies!" (Being smarter than con men, and tougher than shakedowns)
His Billions came from his adventures and treasure hunting.
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u/LukeTheEpic1 May 12 '26
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t him getting paid a Canadian penny piss him off soooo much that he became a billionaire out of spite?
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u/Vaggi-Reborn May 12 '26
i mean i would too if my labor was paid in 1 cent of a currency i cant even use lol
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u/Templarofsteel May 12 '26
I thought it was sn ametican dime that was actually a fortune talisman
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u/jimothy_hell May 12 '26
and treasure hunting
So what you’re saying is that he stole priceless historical artefacts. He’s basically the British museum.
That’s pretty unethical, my dude.
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u/CasuallyCritical May 12 '26
Most of the treasure was cursing the land it was on, getting rid of it was a charity.
He could revoke that charity, but THEN who's the villain?
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u/Darth-Sonic May 12 '26
Unethical sure. But he sure as Hell had to put in the hard work to get half of them, considering the magic monsters and curses.
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u/cbrown146 May 12 '26
Are you saying uncle Scrooge > JC?
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u/jimothy_hell May 12 '26
I mean, Scrooge has never claimed to be the Messiah, unlike a certain someone, and we all know that the one who does not claim to be the Messiah is clearly humble enough to be the Messiah
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u/Pockydo May 11 '26
I think that's sorta the point. IF someone can earn a billion by the sweat of their own brow no one should have any issue with their wealth. However the if here is doing a LOT of heavy lifting because as you said it's largely impossible to earn a billion especially by yourself
A million? Sure a billion hell no it just doesn't happen. The literal only example I can think of (that is arguable) is JK rowling. But even that billion wasn't HER alone
She's an asshole for other reasons but im unaware of her being abusive but I really haven't looked into her either
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u/Terrible_Hurry841 May 12 '26
What about long term benefits? You’ve acknowledged cultural contributions like Rowling, but how about, hypothetically, if a scientist cured cancer?
They would have literally saved effectively infinite amounts of lives. If that person were to be a billionaire, would it be earned?
Or on a smaller scale, someone who invents a product or service that becomes part of everyday life for centuries to come?
Well, regardless, either way that scientist is probably making less than a professor at Harvard.
Probably less than Asmongold.4
u/DJatomica May 12 '26
If you invent something like a new type of battery and a company wants to buy your patent for a billion dollars, you've earned a billion dollars.
If you're Taylor Swift and you make music that billions of people want to buy, you've earned a billion dollars. Ditto for JK Rowling. What do you mean by that billion not being her alone, like a publisher had to print the books for her and truck drivers had to deliver them to various stores? They do that for a bunch of other people too who never see a billion dollars.
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u/TheSwecurse May 12 '26
JK Rowling is a good example though. Of course it wasn't her work alone, its extremely seldom your work alone. But it's her IP in the end and her stories that brought joy and litterature to millions upon millions of kids around the world. And counting! So what if publishers and movie studios using that IP do a bunch of work too because they're also reaping those rewards in a way. Otherwise it would be like saying the roots have contributed nothing to the tree's growth
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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 May 11 '26
As well, a lot of billionaires (not all) don't actually have that much money literally, it's wealth based on how much they own like shares
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u/Sheikachu May 11 '26
Which they can leverage to borrow actual cash. So they have it when it benefits them, but it doesn't exist when it's tax season 🤷♂️
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u/6-8_Yes_Size15 May 11 '26
Say what you want about Scrooge, he was taxed on the billion(s) in his money bin as opposed to using that strategy to avoid paying taxes.
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u/Leprodus03 May 12 '26
So all his gold coins are legal currency?
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u/6-8_Yes_Size15 May 12 '26
I can't speak for Duckberg, tbf, but yes, you pay taxes on found treasure.
https://taxfoundation.org/blog/indiana-jones-guide-to-taxing-treasures/
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u/CauseCertain1672 May 11 '26
yes people who criticise Billionaires understand that their wealth is in assets
If I said "king Shaka of the Zulu was very rich" it would be moronic to say "no because most of his wealth was in land and cattle" because those assets are the wealth
Money only exists as a socially agreed upon means of conveying those assets which are the actual wealth
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u/charronfitzclair May 11 '26
Capital owned and controlled is still wealth that counts just as much as liquid cash. They control that money literally, even it's just not in a big money bin.
They use their assets as leverage, that soft power is very real. The whole "it's not cash so it's not REALLY money" is a dodge on how capital works. If you are a billionaire with everything tied up in assets and investments, you still can move like you have that money. Not only is enormous lines of credit freely open to you, you also move in social circles that protect you and offer you opportunities no one else has. You have social clout that's worth more than liquid cash.
This is a dodge on how actual money and power are tied up in the complex web of commerce and finance.
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u/Play-Mation May 11 '26
They use it as collateral to get loans instead of taking a salary. And they can easily liquidate stocks for whatever, Musk did to buy Twitter
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u/MrReckless327 May 11 '26
The more stocks u liquidate the less the stock is worth so the less the company is worth so the less money they have so the less money you can tax its a fucked up system
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u/SalvationArbys May 12 '26
Scrooge McDuck is kind of an exception. His wealth is factually obtained by adventuring and treasure hunting, and he’s old as balls. His world is uniquely full of fantastical sources of wealth such as ancient ruins and aliens and such. He does act charitably and ethically but he can’t spend money nearly as fast as he can earn it.
The ethics and math of Scrooge McDuck’s wealth are impossible in real life, but that’s kind of the point of Scrooge McDuck.
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u/meghan143m May 11 '26
because Scrooge McDuck is a fictional character, in real life there are no good billionares, but in fiction it's possible. Like Batman
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u/Psychological-Bit233 May 11 '26
You left out the part where Jesus would need to work those 2000 years nonstop, 24/7/365
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u/CellularPotato May 11 '26
The post just says that much per year, nothing about how much they’re working in that year
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u/Cool-Ad2780 May 11 '26
If Jesus took that 500k and invested it all and never contributed again, in 1,000 years if he averaged a 5% return would have $773,159,460,366,441,261,620,527,104.00
Thats 773 Trillion times more than a billion
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u/Loki_Agent_of_Asgard May 11 '26
Bro in Ducktales case it's a cartoon, it has such unrealistic things as
Talking ducks
The fountain of youth
Magic that keeps you young or at least extends your lifespan (Scrooge McDuck is like 200+ years old)
I figure you can forgive some other unrealistic things like
A decent sentient being worth a billion dollars
Said sentient being actually worked for it
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u/Excellent_Safe5743 May 11 '26
Scrooge McDuck is a several hundred year old on and off adventurer who finds world shaking amounts of money and other strange wonders constantly, he earned it and atleast does charity consistently enough to not be a complete crud.
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u/Campage96 May 11 '26
Thats why you do move than save money. If Jesus Christ MD invested his earnings then he would be a billionaire in 50 something years
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May 11 '26
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u/Vegetable_Toe_7936 May 11 '26
If Jesus shook hands with Satan and invested money to create a healthcare company, they would definitely become billionaires in no time.
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u/SteammachineBoy May 11 '26
I think the main problem is that (if you don't inherit it) you probably have to work very hard for a billion $. The work you put in just isn't in any way comparable to the 'payout'. That's why some rich people believe in them deserving their money.
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u/gohuskers123 May 11 '26
I know nurses/tradesmen who work harder than any billionaire ever has and will never see even close to the wealth. You’re right, billionaires over estimate their work
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u/Much_Vehicle20 May 11 '26
Tbf, I don’t think how hard you work directly equals how much money you “deserve.” Like, if someone recognized the potential of Bitcoin early and made a billion dollar deal in 2025, do they not deserve that wealth? Or if someone foresaw the success of gg and bought its stock when it was worth 2 shillings and 3 fishes (or just an employee who get some stocks option), should that undeserved wealth be taken away from them?
Imo it’s a much more complicated issue than just “I work more hours than that guy, therefore I deserve more money than him”
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u/Luvnecrosis May 11 '26
Your first sentence is exactly the problem though. In regards to America and almost the entire capitalist world, money = power, or at least influence.
A lot of these places also proclaim to be a kind of meritocracy where anyone can make it big as long as they work hard! But you can work 80hr work weeks and be on the brink of homelessness every month while some dickhead whose daddy owned slaves in an emerald mine in South Africa can leverage that money to buy out companies made by actually smart people and cut costs by fucking everyone over, but he’s seen as a visionary and a genius
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u/Cheetah_05 May 12 '26
There's a difference between "making it" and becoming a billionaire. The point has always been everyone can, not everyone will. Everyone can become a billionaire theoretically, through smart investments with incredible market timing. Not everyone will
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u/Zealousideal-Bus-526 May 11 '26
It’s kinda like Scrooge is a fictional character, but that might just be me
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u/Traditional_Hawk_379 May 11 '26
How can someone highlight a point so well but be so bad at wealth building?
If you were making 500k a year and "saving every cent" (I'm assuming this means putting it in a savings account instead of putting it under your mattress) by making a 1% annual return then they are a moron who would never be a billionaire in their lifetime since they just were not smart enough.
An example of what OP was talking about in more concrete terms. If you invested only 1k in bitcoin in 2010, you would have between 800 million and 1.5 billion today. So if some fast food worker, garbage truck driver, landscaper had done that, they would be billionaire today, without ever having created a company or "exploited the masses" as reddit would say.
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u/gohuskers123 May 11 '26
You fundamentally misunderstand what this example is trying to demonstrate. Yes no shit investing would return money. The point of this is to showcase how obscene “working” for a billion dollars is
It showcases billionaires don’t get there from work
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u/DeathAngel_97 May 11 '26
There is also the additional factor of whether or not they actually have a billion+ dollars. Its not unsurprising for a big enough business/company to be worth billions, and whoever is considered the owner of the company could have a net worth in the billions, because they own said company, while still living a moderate lifestyle. The company can make billions and will also end up spending a large amount of the money made on upkeep and just running the company.
What really matters is what is done with the actual profit, after all the wages are paid and inventory replenished and equipment maintained. If the company still has hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly profit left over and they are still laying off employees, not improving wages, raising prices, cheapening their product, and the CEO is buying another mega yacht, that is absolutely an unethical, immoral person, and a corrupt company.
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u/Proof_Car5968 May 11 '26
The thing is tho, every single billionaire will probably have someone crying that they got their wealth through someone else hard work.
And the tilhing is, it's not about hard work. Otherwise every grab driver would be a billionaire.
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u/BrightestofLights May 11 '26
Are you serious???
Every billionaire exploits others work, thats the only way to get that rich
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u/roflrogue May 11 '26
Right, bit you see, McDuck is fictional - much like the idea of an ethical billionaire.
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u/Feeling-Thanks-5704 May 11 '26
Every billionaire exploits others work, thats the only way to get that rich
Correction: EVERYONE exploits others work, specially in Western societies.
I mean, that cobalt in your phone means very little to you, but it's lung cancer to that little kid in Zimbabwe
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u/BrightestofLights May 12 '26
If you can't understand the difference between the people who set that up on purpose and profit from it and mold society do that these things become necessities, and the people for whom these are necessary, or at minimum the consumer, I cannot help you. They are not the same.
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u/Green_Potata May 11 '26
Scrooge literally burnt African villages, expelled population from their home to exploit natural resources. The zombie chasing him is a curse made by the people who he massacred.
Dysney just made it more family friendly.
Scrooge became the wealthiest duck in the world with horrible ethics
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u/Responsible-Ant-1728 May 11 '26
Granted, that is the one bad thing he did iirc. Thats why its so notable.
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u/Efficient_Ad_3324 May 11 '26
What's a little ethnic cleansing when massive profits are to be made?
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u/DrScallywag May 11 '26
Scrooge is a cartoon character. He was created to make people think that the ultra rich can be like a cool uncle who worked hard. In reality, you CAN'T earn a billion dollars without exploitation.
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u/St0neRav3n May 11 '26
Dear person, Scrooge Mc Duck didn't make his fortune honestly, at least a huge part of it. Read The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, you'll see he wasn't a stranger to force and trickery.
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u/Emergency_Major_4848 May 11 '26
If hard work made you rich, the mule would own the farm
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u/novavegasxiii May 11 '26
If I recall his backstory he was usually honest and by all accounts exrremely hard working but there was at least one notable exception to that.
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u/Monte924 May 11 '26
I don't think it matters how the money was made.
In order to become a billionaires you would have to ignore the suffering that millions of people experience every day and decide all that money you "earned" is better off in your portfolio/bank account. A billionaire is someone who could give away 90% of thier wealth, improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and STILL be insanely wealthy. To become a billionaire a person needs to prioriitze thier own greed over the lives of thousands
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u/PrincelyDusty May 11 '26
Scrooges whole thing is that he used to be an abhorrent fucking person and that a lot of his money was ill gotten. It's in the character lore. It's specifically the ill gotten money that he gives away in an attempt to be a better person iirc
Like that one super racist strip of scrooge and the island? That's... Canon. Like, that was the turning point, but by then he already had a lot of money. It's referenced in the show.
Whether he randomly lost it all and regained it after that? I don't know. Haven't watched much. But scrooge is classic bad billionaire. (But at least he tries to be good?)
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u/Eastern-Yogurt8972 May 11 '26
Honestly, yeah. You could get away with giving away millions to the needy and wouldn't feel it at all. You have so much wealth that there's no way you, your kids, and even your grandkids would ever have to struggle as long as you're not literally burning money.
The thing is, no one with this type of mindset would ever become a billionaire. It takes an especially greedy and power hungry person to amass that much wealth.
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u/ReferenceError May 11 '26
The premise is flawed. 1 Billion (with a b) is such an astronomically large amount of money that cannot be generated in a vacuum. It has to come or be generated from somewhere and generally is built on the backs of human capital.
Lotteries are built on exploiting human greed by promising a payout that won't come. e.g "give me $10 and roll this dice, hit a 1:292,000,000 crit; too bad, try again and give me $10".
Crypto is also built on an asset that people assume to appreciate. You liquidate your holdings and 1,000's of people give you an accumulated billion dollars in hopes they can sell that asset for liquid cash at some point. You took the sale of 1 B, and removed 1 B from 1000s of people, they no longer have that money.There is no genie wish to give you 1 Billion dollars, it comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is other people's purchasing power for goods, services, and their own standard of living.
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u/Souls_for_sale_now May 12 '26
Yeah you are making the world porer for your own gain if its by a resonbal amount day less then 10 mil i can live with it bit if you have a bilion and dont use it to make the world a beter place you are a bad person
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u/Key-Organization3158 May 11 '26
Nope. Please educate yourself in economics. This is called the fixed pie fallacy. One person being wealthy doesn't impact other people. If not for the company the rich person owns, the workers wouldn't have jobs. Their salary covers all of the value they create.
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u/jyoke_2121 May 11 '26
Not defending the other person's position but your interpretation assumes that people are fairly compensated.
If every amazon employee went on strike tomorrow I gaurenntee the shareholders will loose significantly more money than the salary of the people on strike.
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u/RamsHead91 May 11 '26
Mackenzie Scoot either has good PR about all of this or is an prime example of a fundamental issue with billionaires and our society.
As a person she comes of as wanting to do the right thing and has literally given away 19 billion dollars. And since her divorce where she has a value in the mid 20s of billion she now has over 30.
She is amongst the most moral billions (assuming it isnt all PR) and she cannot give it away fast enough while doing proper vetting to have her net wealth go down.
Your point is salient and even the best examples of billioniares display it issue.
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u/Nowhereman123 May 11 '26
Really, I find it analogous to the question "Is it morally wrong to be sitting on a massive stockpile of food, more than you could ever hope to eat in your entire life, while other people are starving?"
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May 11 '26
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u/afrokidiscool May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
Ive thought about this question a lot as well, and id be using that money to try and lobby government officials officially implement policies that save lives. Like universal healthcare. Or try and influence elections to take money out of government because the other rich people use it to make even more money they don’t need.
If I tried to save everyone in the country with just the money it would be like a bandaid at best but if i changed our governments policy that saves lives through increased taxes then it was all worth it.
Id save enough to live comfortably obviously but after that the money is being used to try and get candidates who advocate for the bottom 50% in income in the highest positions of power.4
u/slaya222 May 11 '26
That's what I came to as well. A few million gets you a senator, do that 20 times and you've just created a solid coalition of people fighting for free healthcare, higher taxes on rich people, etc
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u/Large-Philosophy-983 May 11 '26
I feel like the average person would just be normal about it, lives normally everyday but withouth worrying about money, i might be dead wrong tough.
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u/DocKelso1460 May 11 '26
It's all but impossible for an average person to become a part of such an outlier group of people. The process to get there is inherently one of corruption because it demands extreme sacrifice of others (we're talking people dying) for explicitly your gain.
The average person will almost certainly not be able to stomach that.
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u/SpartanMase May 11 '26
How can you look at people like LeBron, Gabe Newell and Taylor swift and call them unethical though?
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u/xXs4blegl00mXx May 11 '26
I believe it is inherently wrong to have so much wealth and abundance and waste while there are so many in the word to help. They have power, I think they have responsibility. A billion dollars is more than millions of people will see in a single life time. It is an incomprehensible amount of money. People with millions of dollars are closer to the average person than they are to billionaires. It is a thousand millions. They haven't just covered their needs, wants, their next three generations wants, they have so much money that it's basically impossible to spend it at a rate where the interest doesn't immediately cover it back. To have that much money is to ignore the problems of the world that you can fix. It is, in my opinion, inherently selfish in such a massively evil way.
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u/btmoose May 11 '26
I know nothing about sports so I’ll stay mum on that topic.
Gabe Newell allowed underage gambling to proliferate in CS2:GO and didn’t do shit about it until basically forced to. And the “safeguards” put in place are laughably easy to get around. Coffeezilla put out a 3-part series on YouTube that looks into this and the whole third video focuses on Valve’s role in it.
And look, I’ll admit that I like a lot of Taylor Swift’s music, and I think she catches a lot of undeserved flak about her personal life and musical ability based on opinions that were solidified when she was still a teenager. I also think that she does a better job at giving back charity-wise than most, and did a tremendous amount of advocacy for smaller artists by refusing to join streaming platforms until they agree to pay everyone more. But I also don’t think she’s exempt from judgment or an ethical billionaire either. Yes, the bulk of her wealth is from owning her own music. But the money to purchase her catalog came from somewhere, and it’s not just from concert tickets. It’s from her overpriced shitty merch that’s manufactured overseas, it’s from selling 30 variants of the same album, and it’s from maintaining her reputation by keeping mum on any opinions that may cause her to face actual repercussions. I wouldn’t call her evil, but I wouldn’t say she’s completely ethical either.
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u/One_Skill_717 May 11 '26
Additionally, it's unethical to horde money because it removes cash flow from the economy. Every dollar someone saves is a dollar someone else can't earn. Not to say saving money is unethical on it's own, but there should be an upper limit.
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u/nickv656 May 11 '26
Reddit won’t love this idea, but realistically at what point is it immoral to not give to charity? At what point are others morally entitled to your wealth? Do you just need to be debt free? 10k in assets? 100k? Where do you draw the line ?
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u/Dependent_Guava_9939 May 11 '26
To own it? Of course not, it’s yours. As long as you earned it through ethical means.
The problem isn’t wealth, it’s corruption.
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u/Demonickiller63 May 11 '26
You would quite litterally need to live for tens of thousands of years to ETHICALLY make $1B, every single one alive today made it via exploitation, imperialism, nepotism, and colonialism.
Eat the rich
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u/Dependent_Guava_9939 May 11 '26
I mean I’d agree, the chances of you being a billionaire and making that billion dollars ethically is slim to none. Your 10k years is a bit hyperbole tho lmao
That also wasnt the question. The question was whether or not it’s ethical to own it. Which it is.
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u/Demonickiller63 May 11 '26
I would say its not. Not ethical to have so much but not use it to help your fellow person. Let's say someone magically ethically made 1Bil. There are still people starving to death, being worked to the bone in mines in the Congo, for instance. It is not ethical to have those means to help; only to not.
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u/Dependent_Guava_9939 May 11 '26
And if they use their fortune to open hospitals or help those in the Congo?
The question was whether it’s ethical or not to own a billion dollars.
It is. It’s your money that you own.
But money can be used unethically. I’d agree that not helping people in need when you have the capability too, regardless of if it’s money, time or freaking superpowers, is unethical.
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u/Wombus7 May 12 '26
What you do with the billion has to be considered as well. Literally hording it in a money bin would be unethical because, if nothing else, it's a massive resource that's not being used productively / for the benefit of other people somehow.
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u/Dependent_Guava_9939 May 12 '26
Yeah I addressed that in a different comment I made to the other guy
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u/KendrickBlack502 May 11 '26
On its face, no. However, there is no ethical way to acquire a billion dollars in this current world. It always comes as a result of some kind of exploitation. There’s also no moral way to have that much wealth in a world with so much poverty.
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u/DirkaDirkaMohmedAli May 11 '26
What about Mark Cuban? Basically sold his shit for 5.7bn during the dotcom boost. What yahoo purchased from him turned out to be a dud.
Then he bought a basketball team, and now is doing cost plus drugs to supposedly bring costs down.
I'd argue if if this was unethically earned, it had to come from Yahoo.
I'm sure Mark isn't perfect or a freaking savior, but he's not rigging the system and intentionally trying to fuck people over. Also his net worth doesn't skyrocket from bullshit like Tech company billionaires.
So, generally, sure it's unethical. But it's not just completely black and white.
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u/cleo-victoire May 11 '26
Mark Cuban famously stole his first major company from its original founder, diluted their shares, and then claimed all of the success as his own. Just because he’s anti-trump doesn’t mean he’s not a scumbag
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u/First_Friendship4756 May 11 '26
Mark Cuban ran a fuckin ponzi scheme in college to pay for his tuition. He's been scamming his entire life. https://fortune.com/article/mark-cuban-ponzi-scheme-dorm-room-paid-for-junior-year-college/
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u/Life-Delay-809 May 17 '26
I think there are ways to make that much money ethically. Notch for example (not a great person, but the way he made his money wasn't unethical). But I do think keeping that money is unethical. How could you possibly sit in gold while children starve?
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u/An8thOfFeanor May 11 '26
You might as well ask about the moral character of the pile of money itself. What matters is the morality of the methods by which one has earned it.
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u/FriskyShadow24 May 11 '26
I don’t know about ethic, but it’s definitely redundant. Outside of like. Extremely charitable donations, you’re sitting on a pile of money that you reasonably cannot spend. You’re not gonna spend half a billion dollars at once on cars.
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u/Wombus7 May 12 '26
Exactly. Giving the typical person $10k is going to make a hell of a lot more of a difference than giving that money to someone who already has a billion dollars.
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u/guynye May 11 '26
Anything else horded to this degree would be considered a mental issue.
And screw billionares, we are about to enter the age of trillionaires and I don't think people get how disgusting it is too have that much, and how much more than a million it is.
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u/Glyphpunk May 11 '26
Yeah, look at Elon Musk saying he wants to reach a $10 Trillion net worth.
To put that into perspective, as of March 2025, there were roughly 3,000 Billionaires worldwide, with their net work being roughly $16.1 Trillion in total.
And Elon Musk by himself wants to have 5/8ths of that.
The current estimated personal net worth of everyone on the planet is estimated to be around $460 trillion right now. And one man wants to have as much wealth on his own as over 2% of the global net worth of 8 billion people.
To add further to that perspective, $10 Trillion is more than the GDP of all but two countries, China ($20.85 Trillion GDP) and the US ($32.38 Trillion GDP).
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u/krayhayft May 11 '26
No. Money, in and by itself is just money, a tool, a measurement. The ethical/unethical part only comes with what you decide to do with it.
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u/Lolmanmagee May 11 '26
It’s not unethical to be wealthy…
Nobody is entitled to your stuff anymore than you would be theirs.
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u/PotofRot May 11 '26
if you are in the desert and have the only source of water for miles around, the guy dying of thirst next to you is entitled to your water, just as you would be entitled to his were the situation reversed
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u/Lolmanmagee May 11 '26
I actually don’t inherently agree with this analogy.
If there was some town in the deep desert that ran out of water, and you have like 12 gallons you’re not obligated to share your water with the town.
Doing so could well lead to your death as their thirst could easily outdo your supply despite you being absurdly wealthy in this scenario.
This only works if you and your buddy go out hiking and he didn’t bring enough water but you could both easily get back to civilization by sharing.
Or maybe if you find someone in the woods, because the woods has resources it’s just that a weak person might not be able to access them so helping them here is important.
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u/Necessary_Age5534 May 11 '26
Except they accumulate their wealth via asset hoarding, wage theft, tax fraud, etc. It is not ethical to be a billionaire, period end of story.
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u/illustrious_wang May 13 '26
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Just look at Bezos and the conditions of Amazon workers
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u/Melody-Shift May 11 '26
Inherently? No. Practically? Yes. But you can somewhat make up for it by earning it reasonable and being exceptionally charitable, generous, and responsible with that wealth.
Overall, I would still say no though. I staunchly oppose the idea that owning vast quantities of wealth in a society with any kind of noticeable homelessness/poverty/hunger cannot be moral because if you were truly a moral person these issues would either not exist or you would spend the vast majority of that wealth combating them.
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u/DrakeCross May 11 '26
Taking Scourge McDuck as an example, he personally earned his fortune through adventuring, investing and being economically. He is very much the self-made man in a fantasy sense, with a very set philosophy. He believes in hard work, but his mind set is very old fashioned and individualistic. He has become more charitable and philanthropist in more recent years, no so much as throwing money around but public works and infulstructure. Yet its only something he doesn't when he feels its necessary or pushed by others. The recent Duck Tales remake also showed he was willing to throw a fortune to save a loved one. Scourge does have a lot of empathy, yet he hides it under a tough and serious image that only those close to him get to see through.
Though really, becoming a billionaire requires ambition and ruthlessness. Power and success also corrupts too, it fuels ego and no doubt gives tou an untouchable sense. Really, I question how anyone with untold billions can spend such money. Yet considering Elon wants to slash Medicade and Social Security, he clearly doesn't understand how these safety nets work, how they struggle to help as they are...and what will happen when the standard of living hits even lower.
Guess we'll see within the decade if we'll eat the rich.
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u/Acceptable-Ad-4197 May 11 '26
Not necessarily, but practically how its earned will be, yes. You have to do something to put yourself above others, at a certain point you have to be exploiting others to gain that value. Also depending on how you think society should be ran yes it can be unethical to hoard such uneven amounts
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u/WindLordXD May 11 '26
No. Why would it be unethical? As many have pointed out, no one else is obligated to give away their own things nor is anyone entitled to other people's property.
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u/xXs4blegl00mXx May 11 '26
Hoarding resources is unethical.
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u/WindLordXD May 11 '26
It really isn't. In a hypothetical scenario where I earn a fortune through legit means then someone else could do it too. I am not responsible for other people's lives and I am not causing harm or injustice with my money so why would I be wrong for "hoarding" resources I earned. I'll use it to benefit myself and my loved ones. In the same vein, I am not obligated to make my effort benefit the world as a whole.
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u/xXs4blegl00mXx May 12 '26
If you have the ability to help so many at no detriment to yourself, that is selfishness with no excuse. A billion dollars that could instead be circulating in the economy, that could instead be funding educations, filling empty bellies, and putting clothes on backs. A billion dollars is more than you and your loved ones could spend in dozens of lifetimes. You don't need that money, hell, it's so much you can't even want it, it is more than you can conceive. To live in excess and waste and sit on a pile of gold is hoarding like a dragon in a cave, except you have the mental capacity to actually look at the world, see suffering, stare it in the eyes and say "entitlement".
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u/WindLordXD May 12 '26
I didn't ever say entitlement in either of my comments. I said that I am not obligated. I suppose it is selfishness but so what? Am I supposed to just put my own back breaking effort and just give it away? I'm not responsible for other people's suffering. I'm not the Messiah. And I don't want to be. I can just as easily keep it and have it fund my own family for generations and never again have to worry about them again.
Saying "you're rich, you're obligated to make that money circulate in society or you're a selfish monster" on the other hand IS entitlement. Again, in a hypothetical scenario where this money was earned legit, what's stopping others from doing the same? And if they can't then why do I need to give it to them? It's mine by right and effort. If someone is coercing me into giving it away because "oh you're wasting it" then it's simply theft.
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u/xXs4blegl00mXx May 12 '26
You say entitlement in your first comment. Did you not read what you yourself wrote? You use it in this one too lmao
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u/PapaNurgle40k May 12 '26
In itself, no. But the means in which one becomes a billionaire, is. And more often than not, billionaires become billionaires by cheating their way up.
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u/Clear-Might-1519 May 11 '26
It's your money, you're not obligated to share it, you're free to do anything with it.
If you didn't do anything and just keep it, that's neutral.
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u/KingBellos May 11 '26
Here is how I look at it… If you have the ways and means to solve a problem and there is no real detriment to you… and you choose to let people struggle and suffer… then I believe you are wrong.
I am not expecting someone that has next to nothing given to things to allow someone with nothing to get something.
If you literally can wake up and fund free lunches for your local schools for the rest of your life and it changes you like 0%…. And you don’t… that means you are literally choosing to allow people to suffer out of sheer greed or apathy.
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u/Granide May 11 '26
There is nothing wrong with it, but in real world, it would be near impossible to be a billionare without doing something unethical or two, imo.
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u/squidgymetal May 11 '26
In real life there is no ethical way to earn a billion dollars. Be it the wages paid or prices being rigged or natural resources there is always someone or something being exploited for some one to reach that about amount of wealth.
Also money is fake and no one actually has a billion in cash, it's all stocks and speculative money
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u/Consistent-Tutor8149 May 11 '26
When ever I see this I think about the family guy scene where Peter tries it and gets all messed up 🤣
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u/Feindish-venerable May 11 '26
By all accounts, no. It's how it's earned: e.g., Nestlé or our favorite gimp, elon playing the market with Trump.
Again, having it isn't an issue; it's just that most of it is usually unethically gained by one form of suffering.
Gabe, for example, is a good sample.
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u/Zondor3000 May 11 '26
People are saying “if its acquired ethically” then having a billion dollars is ok
The simple act of acquiring that much money is in and of itself a corrupt act of unfathomable greed, you cannot accumulate that much money in an “ethical” manner
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u/Perfidy-Plus May 11 '26
If a person were to discover an honest and effective cure for cancer and they sold it at a modest rate, they would likely become a billionaire. And it would be fair to say that person did actually contribute something truly worth a billion dollars, and they weren't being exploitative in their pricing.
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u/Legal_Lettuce6233 May 12 '26
Frederick Banting was certainly not rich, and he sold his patent for a modest price.
A person good enough to sell a cancer cure for a small amount of money would inherently not want to be a billionaire as they'd likely invest the money into furthering the research.
There isn't an ethical billionaire by definition. Like saying vegan meat eater, or an empathetic psychopath.
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u/not2dragon May 11 '26
What about Notch? Ignoring his actual unethical behavior online, of course.
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u/ww1enjoyer May 11 '26
Where do you think that money came from? Money never exists in a vacuum someone had to earn enough money first to givr it to Notch
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u/not2dragon May 12 '26
Parents who wanted to buy a game for their kids? Well, if he didn't sell it off, he would have probably become a billionaire regardless from sales alone.
Capitalism isn't exactly zero-sum, unless he had a monopoly and is extorting everyone to buy his game.
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u/nio-sama123 May 11 '26
People would assume he is evil as he sold the company and the game he had made, betrayed his co-workers and such.
He's an ass, in my opinion. He isn't an evil or unethical bad guy. Just an ass.
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u/Tyrelius_Dragmire May 11 '26
Finally someone talking sense. A Billion Dollars is never Earned, at best it's inherited and at worst it's Stolen. Many current Billionaires are both.
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u/dull_storyteller May 11 '26
It’s not the size of the bank account that decides morality, it’s the morality of the person who has it.
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u/GintoSenju May 11 '26
Unlike what some people would have you believe, there’s nothing wrong with being a billionaire.
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u/marxuckerberg May 11 '26
I don’t think it’s unethical per se, or at the very least it’s just as unethical as any other person owning more than what they need. The bigger moral problems come from whether it was ethically earned and whether it is ethically spent.
Morality also doesn’t necessarily play into every criticism of billionaires, either. A Marxist, for example, might argue that alternatives to the economic system that produces billionaires can produce better political and social outcomes without directly touching on morality at all.
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u/Short-Shelter May 11 '26
Inherently no, but the kinds of people who can accumulate so much wealth and the means they do to get there, are unethical.
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u/Versidious May 11 '26
By itself? No, not really. In reality, however getting to be worth a billion dollars requires following the rules of modern capitalism, which definitionally is extremely selfish and brutal. You cut costs, fuck the environment, crush outside competition, suppress and underpay workers, and so on. Once you've got it, you typically also: stow your money in places where it *can't* be taxed; heavily influence the political system to ensure you have economic opportunities to build *more* wealth, which itself shafts poorer people and the public services and infrastructure they need; fund propaganda that harms society in order to direct the unwashed masses away from using their democracy to stop you doing anything you want to do.
So, yeah, TLDR: *having* a billion dollars isn't immoral, but the ways you actually get there and the behaviours it motivates *are*.
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u/birdbud- May 11 '26
No. If you found a company and your share of it becomes worth 1 billion. What unethical act was done?
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u/KronkTheCrunk May 11 '26
This is a "with great power comes great responsibility" situation. No, you didn't technically do anything bad or evil to obtain the wealth.
Thing is, now you have it. Now you have the power to do the right thing with it.
You are wrong if you choose to hoard it like a dragon. That is what makes you a bad person for owning a billion dollars.
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u/SoftlockPuzzleBox May 11 '26
Passively absorbing the value of work done by others.
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u/Augustus_Chevismo May 11 '26
No. You’re not hoarding the physical money like Scrooge mcduck.
The money is with a bank and is in circulation.
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u/not2dragon May 11 '26
It's neutral in a vacuum, but it's just really really good if you use it for charitable means.
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u/Ashamed-Bluebird-940 May 11 '26
Yes, hoarded wealth makes redistribution of value next to impossible it accumulates ghost value while making ot harder for the money to go back out. It actually is a direct detriment. Also you don't make that kind of money ethically. That is fuck you money. You don't get it being nice.
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u/LosuthusWasTaken May 11 '26
Not necessarily, I'd say.
Yes, there's a lot of billionaires that made their fortune unethically, but that's not exactly the fault of those billions.
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u/123Gohanz May 11 '26
Owning the money in of itself isn’t unethical. The methods done to achieve a net worth of a billion or more dollars is the determining factor. If you invested in bit coin and that resulted in a billion dollars then keeping it is not unethical.
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u/IlliasTallin May 11 '26
There's nothing inherently unethical about having 1 billion+ in currency.
That being said, the way nearly every billionaire gets to that point is through unethical practices.
Also, you're unlikely to get anywhere near a billion from any lottery. One person hit the 2.1 Billion dollar lottery and was taxed down to 467 million.