> The specific people mentioned are certainly nowhere near as important to society as their wealth makes it appear
No one knows how much someone is "worth to society". Not me, and not you. Not even Bezos. This is not even a well-defined question.
But what we do know is that this is not what money measures, and attempts to politicize that -- to create some algorithm that decides what someone is worth to society, and then pay them according to that algorithm, always lead to terrible outcomes.
In the same way, we don't know how good or evil Bezos is, and neither is money a measure of good points net evil points.
The sooner we abandon these weird discourses around money, trying to endow it as some kind of metaphysical tally, or make it conform to some metaphysical tally, the better.
No one knows how much someone is "worth to society". Not me, and not you. Not even Bezos. This is not even a well-defined question.
But what we do know is that this is not what money measures, and attempts to politicize that -- to create some algorithm that decides what someone is worth to society, and then pay them according to that algorithm, always lead to terrible outcomes.
In the same way, we don't know how good or evil Bezos is, and neither is money a measure of good points net evil points.
The sooner we abandon these weird discourses around money, trying to endow it as some kind of metaphysical tally, or make it conform to some metaphysical tally, the better.