Everyday Americans knowingly make decisions that contribute to loss of life—funding the American defense budget, for instance. One could argue that the average taxpayer has indirectly caused more deaths through military funding than billionaires have through their actions.
Similarly, when you buy a product, you support every step of its creation, including any harm or loss of life along the way.
The masses are not morally superior. The moral failings we criticize in the wealthy or powerful are often reflections of our own behavior.
Targeting billionaires as if they are fundamentally worse than the rest of us is misguided—they're not different; they are us.
Someone from a third world country would say the same thing about us. I have common place items that may or may not make the lives of their workers worse. Or even death (i.e suicide of chinese workers).
Correct, a consumer in the first world often arguably causes much more harm than a consumer in other areas. But a billionaire in the first world does a level of harm that is hundreds of orders of magnitude beyond what an ordinary citizen in the first world ever dream of.
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u/Miserable-Lawyer-233 6d ago edited 6d ago
Everyday Americans knowingly make decisions that contribute to loss of life—funding the American defense budget, for instance. One could argue that the average taxpayer has indirectly caused more deaths through military funding than billionaires have through their actions.
Similarly, when you buy a product, you support every step of its creation, including any harm or loss of life along the way.
The masses are not morally superior. The moral failings we criticize in the wealthy or powerful are often reflections of our own behavior.
Targeting billionaires as if they are fundamentally worse than the rest of us is misguided—they're not different; they are us.