Is there a "Razor" for the idea that "If a Billionaire is against it, I'm for it?"
Not sure if this is the right section for this post, might be better off somewhere else.
But a sentiment I've seen more and more frequently online is the idea that there's a pretty simple "razor" (like Occum's razor, or Halon's) that if a billionaire or huge corporation is telling me something is bad or will hurt people, it's usually a sign that the opposite is true. Or if a billionaire goes on the news and says that this new law is good for the poors and people should support it, it's a good sign to go out and vote against it.
Do we have a catchy name for it yet? I was thinking maybe "The Bezo's inversion" or something similar.
Edit: Shout out to /u/Rosco for expressing my intentions from this post better than I could have. The discussion in this thread didn't really go the direction I was expecting and that's probably on me for how I structured the original post.
I read this as more of a fun catharsis. We're in a society that is getting disproportionately out of whack. Wealth inequality is at a pretty untenable level, the average person is having a hard time getting by, and those with extreme wealth are actively trying to change our media, regulatory, labor, political landscapes to their benefit. I think a big of off gassing is warranted and this seems like a fun to way to engage with it. Obviously it's not actually going to function as a law, like I agree with Tom Steyer's stance on the Environment. But, on the flip side I came across the voter guide in the Palo Alto Daily in 2020 and it was literally the exact opposite - on every single proposition - than what I was planning to vote for. So it also kind of works? Regardless, it's harmless fun.
Not a serious reply, but Bezos' Razor has a certain humor to it, given his current state of hair growth.
Aside: my keyboard keeps trying to correct Bezos to Bozos. I think it's on to something.
Haha, I think unfortunately despite the humor it wouldn't really work, I think a "razor" is supposed to be attributed to someone who espoused the idea, not who the idea applies to. So in this instance "Bezos' Razor" would be something like "You can treat people like human trash and bankrupt their local communities as long as you can deliver Chinese made slop to their doors in 48 hours or less."(/s)
OBLIVIATOR's Razor it is. Or OBLIVIATORazor. OBLIVIAzor?
Sorry, that's the best a man can get at puns when he's out and about on mobile.
Maybe would be better attributed to someone with some more concrete rhetoric haha, I'm not very well read on socialism but it's probably better off with one of those authors.
I feel like if you’re against everything a billionaire anywhere has ever supported you’d just be against everything. Billionaires say a lot of things, it’s not like it cost money or anything to say things. Being hypocritical is free.
I think the point of a "razor" is that its "largely true" not that its true in every single situation, at least that's my understanding of it. It's not meant to be the sole arbiter of truth that you base your worldview on. It's a base point from which you use critical thinking to get to a conclusion.
/u/The_Schield also brought up an important point that what a billionaire or corporation says matters a lot less than what they actually end up doing. Someone brought up the example of Bezos saying "the bottom half of earners should pay zero in income taxes" which is a lovely sentiment, but if you actually look at their actions of finding every legal (and illegal) loophole possible to avoid paying their own taxes (not to mention a living wage to their employees) it quickly discounts the feelgood slop he might say to appease the media.
I kinda expected people to pick up on the fact I wasn't referring to when people or corporations are just... lying haha. In my mind, the perfect example is something like the hundreds of millions of dollars that Uber/Lyft spent lobbying against laws that would classify their drivers as employees, saying it would "take away their freedom of being able to make their own hours" and other such schlock.
So in essence, I feel like this thought process applies specifically to when you can see the money moving and the power being flexed. I'm honestly not sure if that came across well in the original post, but I think I did a poor job considering how many replies are basically just "well a billionaire once said don't kill innocent people so this doesn't make any sense."
I don't think it's largely true, though? It's just random. Billionaires have all kinds of thoughts and support all kinds of things. The idea that because they're really rich, there's some cosmic force that makes them only speak evil is just not based on reality.
First, is Uber a person? Second, what about the time Apple heavily lobbied the UK government against their request to decrypt E2EE iCloud backups for law enforcement purposes?
It's just not a very good razor if its accuracy is 50/50. A more reasonable razor is that whenever someone is trying to convince you of something, they are likely personally benefitting in some way. Which is true of companies and billionaires. But it's not exactly a revolutionary statement, and something can benefit two people at once quite easily.
Social issues are an obvious example. There's a reason so many people are bringing it up. A billionaire can support, say, LGBTQ rights and there's no reason they wouldn't just because they're a billionaire. Maybe they are gay, maybe they have friends that are LGBTQ, maybe they just want to present themselves as a social progressive because they think it makes them cool. Regardless, there's no particular reason they would misalign with you or anyone else or universal ethics on this matter.
And this really goes for a lot of things - so many things that it makes it not a particularly useful razor!
According to Citizens United, yes.
I'm sorry but this is in my main post, I thought it was clear I was extending this idea to corporations as tools of the elite.
It's easy to discount corporations as not people, but at the end of the day these kinds of decisions are being made by people, a group of very very wealthy and powerful people.
This is a great example and makes me re-think my original point. I think I was focusing too much on economic and class issues and wasn't taking into account social issues. In fairness, most of the things billionaires (or large corporations) spend lots and lots of money on aren't purely social issues. Things like lobbying against abortion, laws against media monopolies, or LGBTQ rights often cross the line between social, economic, and even environmental impacts. For example, is Universal Health Care a social issue, or an economic/class one? Since most people who are affected by the lack of adequate healthcare are poor folks, and disproportionately people of color (often women), its easy to see how it can get confusing very quickly. An insurance company like UnitedHealth probably isn't spending billions of dollars lobbying politicians against Universal Health Care because they hate poor black folks, it's much more likely that they're doing it because having an oligopoly on providing healthcare to people makes them 500 billion of dollars a year.
I mean, no? And it’s like an incredibly different topic. Billionaires are people, and people have loads of random thoughts and say loads of random things that have nothing to do with why they are a billionaire. Whereas a company is not an entity but a collection of people that align on a specific interest and that interest only.
Tim Cook is a major supporter of the LGBTQ community, and he is gay, so that should be no surprise. Apple isn’t gay. That doesn’t even make sense.
—-
Even into companies, it’s still not a very useful razor. Of course, companies do things essentially exclusively for their own benefit, but whether or not that aligns with something being “bad” is very much variable.
Tesla supports electrification, renewables, and technology to make renewables more feasible. Is it because Tesla is a nice guy? No, Tesla does it because it’s good for them. But are you going to be against batteries for solar panels because Tesla has a high market cap?
UnitedHealth and other insurance companies are highly in favor of preventative care. Why? Because preventative care is cheaper for their bottom line. UnitedHealth would love if you get your colonoscopy because a polyp is a lot cheaper for them than cancer treatment. Are you against preventative cancer treatments?
Geico is against distracted and reckless driving. Are you for distracted driving because Geico is a rich company?
I mean... it was literally in there though...
Regardless, good responses! You definitely made some great points that have changed how I think about some of this. Discussions like this are what keep me coming back to Tildes. I think this definitely reinforces my idea that any "Razor" or just a worldview in general is probably more healthy if its applied with an appropriate amount of critical thinking. It's important to remember that things are usually some shade of grey, but some level of skepticism is necessary when coming to a conclusion.
Maxim vs razor?
and
(Both copied from whatever Google presented to me.)
The sentiment of if a billionaire is for something then I am against it (and vice versa) is in my mind analogous to the enemy of
my enemy is my friend.
I keep it simple and agree with everything Mother Taylor Swift says or does
I think a corporation or billionaire can do or say whatever they want, their intentions are pretty much nulled by the system they inhabit. Saying "we should do something" and then quietly doing something else is pretty normal for people or companies in power, anyway.
It seems to me like it's an oligarchical smokescreen above anything. Bezos might say "end world hunger" or like he recently said, "poorer people just shouldn't pay taxes" while he doesn't pay any as the richest man — the trueness or falseness of a claim should be met with judgement, like most things. But greed is huge, so predicting the kinds of chaos that they can pay for is difficult
Edit: This comment didn't contribute at all, I'm just alone with the same thoughts. How can I start to dictate my unfeelings on the nature of man, and the state of the world?
Yeah I guess a more accurate representation should be based on their actions and not just words, that's a good point. It's tougher to track that kind of thing though, since they're usually laundering their dirty deeds through an army of lawyers and CEOs.
Bill Gates, for one, says that we should help the developing nations, and actually does that with his money. Unlike some others, who just use a fake charity as a tax evasion scheme and reputation laundering (elon musk). Which is not to say that Bill Gates is a saint who's only ever done good (he was famously connected to Epstein), but it just goes to show that actions do in fact matter much more than the words.
Hello! Just chiming in here with one of those obnoxious internet replies that ensure we cant have anything good in this world!
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundatiom has a lot of controversies as a supposed charitable organization.
"The foundation has invested $500 million in its own nonprofit pharmaceutical enterprise and gives large sums to for-profit drug companies, often holding stocks and bonds in those same companies. This creates conflicts of interest from which the foundation can financially benefit from its “charitable” partnerships—an evident problem.
By controlling intellectual property and aggressively defending patents, the foundation and Big Pharma work hand in glove, often blocking cheaper or better products from reaching those who need them most. Schwab warns this meddling can delay lifesaving drugs and vaccines from getting to the global poor—a deeply troubling scenario."
Theres also a lot to question about the organizational model and how the foundation is effectively a tool of Gates to wield political power in developing nations. A true foundation would be taking his money with 0 input from him, but he remains a co-chair at the helm. Its a conflict of interest nightmare.
If youre interested, The Bill Gates Problem Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire is definitely a good breakdown of just how fucked up that organization is.
I would add more detail but its been a while since i learned about all this so digging up sources is tough and my dog is begging me to take her outside, apologies 🙏
I'll also add that his Giving Pledge does not actually promise giving away all of their money when they die, and even with that the majority of people who sign it do not actually meet that halfway point which it actually promise. Quoting Wikipedia:
There's also been a number of high profile people withdrawing from the agreement, including Warren Buffet.
Eat the rich, people, lest the rich eat you.
The giving pledge has also seemed like a somewhat performative thing to me. Even in that niche, much better and more transparent pledges exist, such as Giving What We Can or Founder's Pledge. But Gates specifically has promised to donate all of his wealth in the next 20 years, and so far he is on track to meet that goal.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
In the meanwhile one “good billionaire” doesn’t invalidate the wealth (heh) of evil billionaires. But I don’t consider Gates to be good nor do I accept the premise that such a thing exists.
Sure, it's not the best charitable foundation out there, but every criticism of it I've seen mostly just either look like people trying to find malice in anything that's done by a billionaire, or are general criticisms of all international charity.
I don't think donating $500 million to a related company matters much when it's one twentieth of their yearly donations. Even then, I'm not sure how a nonprofit giving money to another nonprofit is bad just because they share ownership.
Why is it a problem? They're a non-profit, all of their finances are public. They don't spend the revenue from the investments on management salaries, it goes back into their charity programs. They're pretty open about doing this and I dont see anything wrong with that.
Not sure what this means, the foundation doesn't hold IP rights to the research produced on its money and as far as I could tell it hasn't been funding any legal fights about patent infringement
Don't know about this since I couldn't find a specific example of a situation like this. Seems pretty speculative from this sentence, but since you've learned about this in-depth, maybe you have a more specific case in mind.
True, that's the only part of this I somewhat agree with in theory. But again, do you have specific cases of him using that political power for bad?
Again, not claiming the foundation, or especially Gates himself, are perfect, but the Gates foundation has probably made more good in the world than most private foundations combined, even with all its issues.
That's definitely true too, but in his time Billy G was running a pretty ruthless business with some dirty dirty tactics. I guess it's a lot easier to be altruistic when you've reached the peak... Wish more of them felt that way.
While not having an answer, I don't think ethical billionaires can exist. I don't want to demonize them all equally, but I do think that having that many assets and/or funds is robbing other people of having financial stability. Any money you have is money I can't have. If I need it more than you do it's worth less to you. Money not in circulation (and tied up in assets, funds, bonds or stocks) is just wasted when it can feed the hungry or give a home to the homeless.
I wouldn't give credit to Bezos by immortalizing the Razor in his name. If anything, use his actual surname given at birth before he changed it to rub salt in the wound :P (PS. I know this is deadnaming and as such, should not be taken seriously.)
There's kind of a fallacy there. The economy isn't a zero sum game, because wealth truly can be created out of nothing. A dollar is simply a representation of productive capacity. You can take those representations of productive capacity from other people, or, you can create new productive capacity where none existed before, via new technology, or efficiency gains, or just some new, better way of getting something that other people deem valuable done.
That's more or less what inflation represents; more productive capacity coming into existence (as long as its at a reasonable rate). Like, a bar of soap in 1900 cost about $0.25. People were getting paid about $400 a year on average, so that translates to having to give an hours worth of your pay for a single bar of soap.
Soap costs maybe $1 a bar now, but people get paid way more than $400 a year. On average, Americans can afford 37 bars of soap for an hour of work now.
Obviously that a single example, but it's like that pretty much across the board for any good that isn't primarily limited by it's physical existence (like land). People in western countries are just way, way wealthier overall than they were 100+ years ago.
That's largely because of new wealth being created by technology, efficiency, and so on. So it's not exactly correct to say that every dollar a billionaire has made is one less dollar in everyone else's pocket. There is a good deal of that going on obviously, but some portion of that wealth is just new money that didn't exist before.
I understand the basics. But I don't agree with the fact that 'an economy should always grow'. This creates an environment of competition that people's livelihoods start to depend on. Some people are not able to work, others not full workdays and would not be able to satisfy that which the economy demands of them. So yea, why should we work at all is a question one could ask. We live in paradise on this tiny pale blue dot and we waste away precious time to satisfy the monetary needs of a chosen superior only to be able to afford to live. It might be a radical take and I don't mind the premise of being compensated for labor done for others. But there is something inherently off that has put everything out of balance and that I cannot accept.
Because living requires materials that do not exist without transformation. Animals spend the entirety of their lives spending every ounce of energy obtaining their next meal and next drink of water.
For most of human history, settled humans were subsistence farming, working desperately for the base metabolic needs of sufficient caloric intake and protection from the elements.
The reality today is that if you merely wanted to eek out that kind of existence - where the only goal is having enough calories to maintain bodily operation alongside clean water, you can do that in any part of the US with minimum wage jobs alone, let alone counting the meager food assistance the US government supplies. But that life is now considered “depressing”.
You do not have a right to the food other people grow, but it has never been easier to get it in exchange for labor.
100% agree.
Technology has made it almost unnecessary for many of us to labor towards food security. One farmer can feed a multitude of people. Similarly, that one farmer does not have enough labor available for that multitude of people to aid in his farming activities.
The reality is also that a lot of people in the US live this life while having multiple jobs.
You're right, I don't. But I would happily do something in return which I enjoy doing if it meant both the receiver and myself benefit from it, be it through mutual appreciation, financial means, services or goods traded.
My main gripe is that a certain subset of the population has amassed an ungodly amount of capital that they can buy favors that will make the world a better place for them, but a worse place for others. Money and power should be separated. Money passively generating money does not benefit communities or even countries. It only serves those who already have amassed said wealth while the hungry, sick and poor still exist.
Well, I think the answer to that lies mostly within the innate human capacity for endless desire. I'm not convinced that there's an economic system that exists which can successfully temper that impulse. No matter how easy people's lives are, they'll want them to be easier. No matter how safe they are, they'll want to be safer, and most importantly, no matter how much stuff people have, there's always just ooooooone more thing they want that would make their lives perfect.
Without some radical, intentional vulcan esque social movement that regularly suppresses this urge, or some sort of weird brain modification that everyone gets, people will always want a better paying job. The only way for everyone to get that is for the economy to grow.
But ever growing economies do not work with a finite amount of resources. Scarcity would drive up costs, even making them inaccessible to certain groups of people. The rat race continues and competition drives people to more unreasonable tactics to achieve that goal (be it corruption, war etc.) While accepting less is also a valid outcome to consider.
We only have one planet, we should consider keeping it livable, even tend to it and restore it to how we found it, instead of draining its resources, pollution our skies and taking harmless animals with us.
Yeah, I mean I agree with you, it's not good that human nature is this way, but I don't think we've come up with a satisfactory way to quell that hunger that seems inherit in not just human nature, but the nature of all living things.
The innate tendency is to want to expand, grow, gather and so on. If it wasn't individual capitalists doing it at large scale, it would be a group of people empowered by a state to do it.
I don't know how you solve that problem, and get everyone on earth to collectively go "you know what, we have enough. There's no need for me to earn more money, or have a nicer house, or more land, or better computers, I'm good where I'm at".
The real question is where has all the money gone? (rhetorical.) There have been logarithmic levels of advancement in human productivity over the past 200-300 years, with a similar spike in productivity during the ongoing information age. The standard of living for people (at least in richer countries) has improved dramatically over the same time period, but I would argue that it's not nearly at the same pace as the levels of wealth generated would indicate.
It's even more apparent over the last 40 years as we've seen the gap between the lower class and the upper class widen further and further, where things like homeownership was the standard for many younger folks; it's quickly becoming exceptional. If things like the internet, advanced farming technology, logistics improvements, etc have made massive efficiency gains and improved productivity in nearly every field, why does it seem like things are at such a standstill or even backsliding for the average person?
Standard of living is a notoriously difficult thing to measure. By some metrics like childhood mortality, or average calorie intake, or literacy, we're so much better off than we were 200 years ago that it's almost unbelievable. On the other hand, we work less than back then, but not that much less. We live longer, but not drastically longer if you discount childhood mortality.
On the other hand, there are subjective things like... Having access to all of humanity's collective scientific knowledge available to you 24/7 in your pocket via a device that most people can afford with a days wages. The same device can be used to instantly communicate with anyone in the world who also has one at your whim, and not only communicate, but see them via high definition video.
That's pretty amazing when you take a step back and think about it, at least subjectively.
Does it translate to quality of life though? I don't know. I'd say yes, but how do you even measure that?
Serious question: I agree with the sentiment in general, but I understand Taylor Swift is now a 2ish billionaire. How do you feel about her?
I think making music and finding success (through popularity, amount of concerts) can be had without amassing wealth, those two things are mutually exclusive. Through music deals, merch and other means she has setup a business that is very profitable. Is she in it to spread her love for music? Or does she make music to be successful? Would she still be making music if it made her 100k a year?
Would you take 10min flights if you could take other means of transportation knowing that those would be less environmentally impactful?
I'd be willing to bet quite a lot that she would. Musicians in general don't commonly do it to make money. It obviously seems like it would be pretty awesome to make millions of dollars to be a rock or pop star, but it takes so much work, and the chances of success are so ridiculously small, that if you wanted to just make a lot of money, there are literally thousands of jobs that you'd be better off trying to do it.
Musician is one of the worst fields you could pick if you're solely motivated by making a lot of money.
I guess I could reframe my question to clarify: I think she's an example of someone who is rising based on her own hard work, not the exploitation of labor.
She's obviously smart and business savvy. She's great at marketing. She's innovative. She is good at making music that connects with people. She is prolific and she works hard. A good example is that she memorized her "patter" between the songs in Japanese for her concerts there.
She also seems to be a pretty great human being*. I hear a lot about paying out bonuses to her staff and supporting her backup singers careers. She's very genuine when it comes to interacting with fans.
So given all that, do you still think there are no ethical billionaires? Do you see her work differently than the way I've portrayed it here?
Like I said, I'm not trying to argue all or most billionaires are ethical, but that she is an example of someone who I feel like has genuinely earned it.
*An exception might be if you date her, break up with her, and get an album made roasting you.
A billionaire is a human being who belongs to some of the common groups as I do. They should belong to the tax payer class. They are an animal on this same planet with similar resource needs.
So, in cases where they're speaking / supporting things as a member of a superclass, instead of upperclass, I may not necessarily disagree with one.
Want to put it to the test with some examples? I'll try a few:
This one says bottom half of earners should pay zero in income taxes, '
Superclass taxpayer. Agreed.
But elsewhere, the same one says in 2021
Upperclass. When they send an email it's to a team of employees who will stress and make their stress go away. This is not a human person speaking, or an organism worried about starving or being predated upon no matter how hard they're working on camouflage or hiding their young or being quiet. Disagree.
Being contrarian/tribalism/skepticism?
People are like this already about plenty of subjects. Religion, politics, sports, whatever? Not sure it makes much sense to try and label it a "razor" outside of the got 'em mentality we have these days.
I read this as more of a fun catharsis. We're in a society that is getting disproportionately out of whack. Wealth inequality is at a pretty untenable level, the average person is having a hard time getting by, and those with extreme wealth are actively trying to change our media, regulatory, labor, political landscapes to their benefit. I think a big of off gassing is warranted and this seems like a fun to way to engage with it. Obviously it's not actually going to function as a law, like I agree with Tom Steyer's stance on the Environment. But, on the flip side I came across the voter guide in the Palo Alto Daily in 2020 and it was literally the exact opposite - on every single proposition - than what I was planning to vote for. So it also kind of works? Regardless, it's harmless fun.
I think you said it better than I could have! I didn't think people would assume I meant that a heuristic like this would apply to every single situation, but I definitely could have been more clear. I originally had this in the ~humanities category because I thought it was more of a thought experiment but it got moved to ~finance which may have implied I was speaking with more authority and factualism than I actually intended.
I appreciate you being willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.
I thought it was hilarious and gave me quite the giggle. I was surprised to see how heated and defensive the comments got.
I mean, so many of us are going through it right now and many of the issues are direct downstream effect from these folks. I think it's ok if we mother fuck them every now and then. They won't hear us on their yachts anyway :)
What comments do you think are “heated” or “defensive”? I feel like this is a common framing in Reddit but it’s not one that makes sense. If I argue against OP’s idea, I’m not defending billionaires, I’m defending reality.
If you say Stalin was a cannibal, I don’t think it’s “defending” Stalin to say that’s ahistorical. Not everything is about sides.
If OP wanted less discussion and more of a venting post, then that’s probably worth mentioning.
That's a pretty uncharitable distillation of the idea I was trying to communicate. I expanded on what I meant here which may have been a little more clear.
I don't think this boils down into just "being contrarian" but of course that's for the reader to decide.
I think it’s reasonable to be suspicious when someone on the opposite side advocates for something. But why be a blind partisan? Why give it catchy name? Repeating simple slogans is the sort of thing that makes social media worse.
Not quite a "razor", but the process itself sounds like reactive devaluation. Or possibly genetic fallacy.
So, how about the "bulverist's razor"? I for sure have wielded that blade more often than I care to admit.
I think there is a word for this sort of thing ("schismogenesis") but it's super academic and is more about the idea of this billionaire razor than the razor itself.
If you want to get into the weeds, I've seen a blog from Cory Doctorow on how it applies to progressive movements which might help frame why it feels so good to disagree with billionaires.
(Just note it's from 2021 and also sort of a book review, so the perspective is from a specific time and place)