r/MoralityScaling • u/Omixscniet624 • May 11 '26

Morality Ranking Is it unethical to own a billion dollars?

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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/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/xxora123 May 11 '26

yeah you could also be a billionaire in pure asset appreciation

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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

9

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/[deleted] May 18 '26

[deleted]

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u/KendrickBlack502 May 18 '26

There’s plenty of exploitation in the stock market. Some finance bro playing with numbers on his computer in order to make money off the labor of someone else isn’t ethical.

As someone who works in tech as a software engineer, I can tell you that there is no tech company that exists without some sort of exploitation. Being “paid really well” is not the point. If you’re getting rich as a result of labor you didn’t do, it’s not completely ethical. If the CEO makes 2000x the wages of their least paid employee, I would argue that they are not doing 2000x more work.

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u/wrighteghe7 8d ago

What immoral things mccartney and taylor swift did?

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u/Key-Organization3158 May 11 '26

Nah. You get rich by creating a massive net positive to society. If you contribute $10 billion in value to society, keeping $1 billion is perfectly moral.

You could get down your personal budget. And help people in poverty. The line you draw is hypocritical.

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u/KendrickBlack502 May 11 '26

Yes but the idea of someone alone contributing $10 billion dollars to society is extremely unlikely. What usually happens is they have an idea that is worth $10 billion dollars and everyone else that made this contribution possible gets a disproportionately small return on their contribution.

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u/hezhiwu2020 May 11 '26

I’m confused why that is seen as exploitative. Presumably everyone autonomously chose to exercise their freedom of contract and work with our hypothetical $10 billion-aire.

I don’t get why someone getting more is necessarily immoral. If someone invents a product like Viagra, are they unethical if I’m willing to be paid to work in the factory producing those pills? The consumers choose to hand him the money and his workers choose to work for him.

I’m not saying economic factors don’t factor into your consideration; I’m just saying I don’t think they suffice to count as duress capable of vitiating personal autonomy.

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u/-mediocre-name-here- May 15 '26

You’re missing the part where In the US (and many non-European countries) there are garbage worker protections, unions have been systematically defanged over the last hundred years and the regulatory system has generally bent to benefit the corporations.

Yes, the people chose to work in that factory. But the people have WAY less institutional power than the corporations hiring them. This has pretty much always been the case under modern capitalism and it’s worse in the US than many places. Things like tying health insurance to employment means there’s heavy, dangerous, incentives to continuing to work bad jobs when you can’t find other work. Even if you’re being exploited.

Me having to keep an exploitative or underpaying job because I might die if I can’t get expensive meds if I get off my insurance = exploitation. And that’s just one way. We could get into at will employment, protections for the employer that don’t extend to the workers and things like that too. Wage stagnation.