> People criticize billionaires. Full stop. Criticism of their philanthropy is not selective...
And Scott's point is that non-selective criticism is dumb. If you don't want your dog to chew the carpet, criticizing your dog, full stop, as you say, is a terrible strategy.
If you're opposed to dogs or people richer than you in principle, then you can make that claim too I guess. But you won't get much sympathy if you do it when they're doing their most praiseworthy things.
Just out of curiosity, do you just think that billionaires are evil, or does that also extend to people in rich countries making six figure salaries in tech, who are also ridiculously richer than most of the rest of the world?
> And Scott's point is that non-selective criticism is dumb
That's a reasonable point to make, but... I don't think I saw Scott making it. Are you sure that was Scott's point, or is it yours?
> criticizing your dog, full stop, as you say, is a terrible strategy
I guess this depends on our definition of "criticising" and it's intent. If you're sitting at home, shouting at your dog, I'm not sure that's particularly productive. If you're having a conversation with a peer, and expressing your frustration at your dog chewing carpet, you may perhaps combine forces to arrive at some solutions to your carpet problems.
You can argue that perhaps discussing the plight of billionaires amongst peers (or even random folk on the internet) is equivalent to sitting at home shouting at your dog, but I think that's a debate for a different day.
Point being: I doubt many "criticising" the billionaires/dogs are expecting them to listen. They're discussing problems (and potential solutions?) in a more general sense by criticising a system/event that exists/occurs.
> do you just think that billionaires are evil
Are you proposing that dogs chewing carpets are evil? I presume not, but I presume you still want to save your carpet.
Billionaires are not necessarily "evil" in intent in the absolute sense. What I am proposing is that their existence is a problem needing solving in and of itself.
The existence of billionaires (or anyone who holds more economic resources than are needed to be content... I think that stands somewhere around the ~$150k mark according to some studies... certainly far short of whatever number of millions/pa leads to billion-level assets) necessitates that those resources have been withheld from someone who has less than are needed to be content (in many cases, to survive).
---
It may be worth noting that Feeney has gone about solving this exact problem (the existence of billionaires), albeit in a very individual way (making 1 billionaire no longer a non-billionaire). Which is quite an remarkable and laudable achievement, even if that billionaire was himself.
(and that's before we get into the very far-reaching, and—in my own experience—enormously positive impact, of his philanthropy)
And Scott's point is that non-selective criticism is dumb. If you don't want your dog to chew the carpet, criticizing your dog, full stop, as you say, is a terrible strategy.
If you're opposed to dogs or people richer than you in principle, then you can make that claim too I guess. But you won't get much sympathy if you do it when they're doing their most praiseworthy things.
Just out of curiosity, do you just think that billionaires are evil, or does that also extend to people in rich countries making six figure salaries in tech, who are also ridiculously richer than most of the rest of the world?