Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres

First, you seem to conflate being a billionaire with conspicuous spending or otherwise inefficient use of their capital. Once again this is a generalization and many billionaires don’t have these sports cars and estates that you describe.

Secondly, you state “I just think the idea of many humans spending their lives in order to satisfy a single human is absurd”. This seems extremely blind considering that your iPhone was probably made the same way, and the food you get at the restaurant and literally anything you pay for. Countless humans have toiled to sustain your life too.

You also state that “If the billionaire holds majority stakes within prominent industries we are delegating important decisions to opaque power with unknown agendas that we can not hope to influence in meaningful ways.”. Yea it’s a risk, but it’s absurd to say with complete certainty that all billionaires use their power to influence the world in nefarious ways. What if they use it in moral ways that benefit us all? Does that make the billionaire a better person than the rest?

There is nothing to be fixed here. Your sense of deep equity is a feeling that’s born out of some kind of primal sense of fairness. In reality, there is nothing inherently amoral about billionaires.

Try applying all the arguments you have above from the perspective of someone with lesser means than you, with your relatively wealthy position being that of the billionaire.

Do you benefit from the labor of others? Check. Do you have more influence on the society than the other person? Probably, check. Somehow these add up to you being an immoral person. It’s pretty absurd bro.

I am also not arguing for 1000:3 or any other specific ratio. The only reason I brought his net worth up is to show the ratio that we have right now (not even including the ratio compared to amazon workes which would be even higher). And even if he doesn't do anything evil with his money its money that other people dont't have. People that could use that money to provide for their families or put their kids through school. People that could have the potential to create something new or come up with new ideas who never get to do it because they barely make enough to get through the month. For Bezos it is indeed just a number but for others it could mean a lot more.

For all of those people it suddenly doesn't matter how hard they work or how skilled and talented they are. We do not live in a meritocracy and its probably impossible to achieve that so the only answer can be a more socialized system.

You are right in that it would not help to just split the money up my point is that we should not allow this to happen in the first place. As for prices increasing - If our system only works if a few have a lot and a lot have very little I think we should think about the sustainability of this system. If we do nothing things will get out of hand sooner or later (if they are not already).

People wont stop investing or taking risks just because they cannot reach bezos levels of wealth. Bezos has absolutely no reason to aquire another dollar but he still keeps going. Again I am not arguing for 1000:3 the number can be a lot higher but there needs to be an upper limit.

Also: neither VA not DC want retrocession and you can’t force a state to change its borders. So no, the answer is DC statehood, which is something Congress can do. It’s long past time.