Should billionaires exist? 「Yes or No」

[Kassaran]

Billionaires should definitely exist. Restrictions on the amount of wealth one can obtain is a restriction on individual liberty. The methods by which someone obtains the status of billionaire is, however, more subject to scrutiny. If your value to society is worth the merit of obtaining billions of dollars, then why not have the value. People like to complain about the wealth of billionaires by highlighting their private assets, but forget that those private assets take skilled artisans and craftspeople to create, which means that generates a demand. Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

[Sanghyeok]

Billionaires should definitely exist. Restrictions on the amount of wealth one can obtain is a restriction on individual liberty. The methods by which someone obtains the status of billionaire is, however, more subject to scrutiny. If your value to society is worth the merit of obtaining billions of dollars, then why not have the value. People like to complain about the wealth of billionaires by highlighting their private assets, but forget that those private assets take skilled artisans and craftspeople to create, which means that generates a demand. Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

And we're not worried about how billionaires oppressing many other people to gain their wealth is a restriction on ordinary people's liberty?

[Kassaran]

Billionaires should definitely exist. Restrictions on the amount of wealth one can obtain is a restriction on individual liberty. The methods by which someone obtains the status of billionaire is, however, more subject to scrutiny. If your value to society is worth the merit of obtaining billions of dollars, then why not have the value. People like to complain about the wealth of billionaires by highlighting their private assets, but forget that those private assets take skilled artisans and craftspeople to create, which means that generates a demand. Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

And we're not worried about how billionaires oppressing many other people to gain their wealth is a restriction on ordinary people's liberty?

Emphasis mine.

Edit: What is your threshold for ordinary? Someone who makes 30k a year? 60k? 120k? You've obviously gone ahead and expressed an idea that people can no longer have the same rights when they achieve certain thresholds. At what point do we restrict the rights of the individual?

[Genivaria]

Prehistoric civilisations refused to invent fire because there was no profit motive.

And yet there was a profit motive: their food tasted better. Capitalism is natural and age-old. The most successful cavemen would get the most resources and ultimately be the ones to reproduce most effectively. Modern society is slowly degrading the essence of evolution, which ultimately weakens the society as a whole.

TIL that 'food tasting better' is a type of currency.

[Sanghyeok]

And we're not worried about how billionaires oppressing many other people to gain their wealth is a restriction on ordinary people's liberty?

Emphasis mine.

Edit: What is your threshold for ordinary? Someone who makes 30k a year? 60k? 120k? You've obviously gone ahead and expressed an idea that people can no longer have the same rights when they achieve certain thresholds. At what point do we restrict the rights of the individual?

Saying "you can't have a billion dollars" is far from restricting those rights of an individual. What can someone do with a billion to better their lives that they can't do with a hundred million? Or even better to ask: how can you realistically spend a billion in a lifetime?

[Alcala-Cordel]

Billionaires should definitely exist. Restrictions on the amount of wealth one can obtain is a restriction on individual liberty. The methods by which someone obtains the status of billionaire is, however, more subject to scrutiny. If your value to society is worth the merit of obtaining billions of dollars, then why not have the value. People like to complain about the wealth of billionaires by highlighting their private assets, but forget that those private assets take skilled artisans and craftspeople to create, which means that generates a demand. Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

How would you respond to the argument that the existence of billionaires, being fundamentally hierarchial, restricts the personal liberties of all workers trapped in low-wage jobs to survive? Second, their wealth is not triclkling down.

[Senkaku]

You've obviously gone ahead and expressed an idea that people can no longer have the same rights when they achieve certain thresholds. At what point do we restrict the rights of the individual?

I think a hundred million dollars is more than enough for any mortal human. So let's call that the point at which we restrict the rights of the individual-- that's like twenty to fifty times the average person's total lifetime earnings, I think, so it's not like we're talking about state-mandated destitution. They might just have to settle for a normal boat rather than a Panamax megayacht. Comparing that amount of money to the amount normal people have is disingenuous and silly.

[Zemalynn]

Billionaires should definitely exist. Restrictions on the amount of wealth one can obtain is a restriction on individual liberty. The methods by which someone obtains the status of billionaire is, however, more subject to scrutiny. If your value to society is worth the merit of obtaining billions of dollars, then why not have the value. People like to complain about the wealth of billionaires by highlighting their private assets, but forget that those private assets take skilled artisans and craftspeople to create, which means that generates a demand. Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

There is no shortage of work to be done. However, in a capitalist system work is only deemed necessary to the extent it can generate profit. This leads to expensive novelty products where labor would be put to better use elsewhere. In the United States for example, a project fixing the infrastructure of the country could provide as many jobs as you need. Anyway if the bolded is true, I'm off to go break windows to create more jobs in my community.

[Kassaran]

Emphasis mine.

Edit: What is your threshold for ordinary? Someone who makes 30k a year? 60k? 120k? You've obviously gone ahead and expressed an idea that people can no longer have the same rights when they achieve certain thresholds. At what point do we restrict the rights of the individual?

Saying "you can't have a billion dollars" is far from restricting those rights of an individual. What can someone do with a billion to better their lives that they can't do with a hundred million? Or even better to ask: how can you realistically spend a billion in a lifetime?

But it is a restriction on their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Create a pharmaceutical research company, fund a space program, open a private university or health care facility, create an energy company based around nuclear and renewable energy development and infrastructure upgrades. There's plenty that a healthy billion will do, but you have to have the desire and intent which many do.

How would you respond to the argument that the existence of billionaires, being fundamentally hierarchial, restricts the personal liberties of all workers trapped in low-wage jobs to survive? Second, their wealth is not triclkling down.

I'd disagree that the existence of any person and their wealth is hierarchical in any fashion. Their wealth does not restrict personal liberties of those beneath them, unless you can show me how that is false. I also don't understand how wealth could not trickle down, given that they must be spending their money at some point. Those who do not, cannot.

Billionaires should definitely exist. Restrictions on the amount of wealth one can obtain is a restriction on individual liberty. The methods by which someone obtains the status of billionaire is, however, more subject to scrutiny. If your value to society is worth the merit of obtaining billions of dollars, then why not have the value. People like to complain about the wealth of billionaires by highlighting their private assets, but forget that those private assets take skilled artisans and craftspeople to create, which means that generates a demand. Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

There is no shortage of work to be done. However, in a capitalist system work is only deemed necessary to the extent it can generate profit. This leads to expensive novelty products where labor would be put to better use elsewhere. In the United States for example, a project fixing the infrastructure of the country could provide as many jobs as you need. Anyway if the bolded is true, I'm off to go break windows to create more jobs in my community.

You're right there is no shortage of work to be done. And that a capitalist system creates supply by acknowledging demand. The higher the demand, the more supply is provided, or at least the more supply should be provided. The market determines where labor is best put to use, and it's done by the consumers themselves. In the United States there are companies and contractors specifically hired to do just that, to fix broken down and dilapidated infrastructure. But the money spent is often diminished because most don't see the highways as being quite as vital as they once were, see the Pacific Coast treatment of their interstate highways.

Additionally, the bolded is true, and you definitely will create more jobs, but will also be charged with property destruction, and possible attempted assault, burglary, and trespass depending on the hijinks you have to carry out to accomplish your aforementioned task.

[Alcala-Cordel]

How would you respond to the argument that the existence of billionaires, being fundamentally hierarchial, restricts the personal liberties of all workers trapped in low-wage jobs to survive? Second, their wealth is not triclkling down.

I'd disagree that the existence of any person and their wealth is hierarchical in any fashion. Their wealth does not restrict personal liberties of those beneath them, unless you can show me how that is false.

Your claim will always be false unless the companies pay the workers the full value of their labor. This would be true if time and effort were equal to the value the workers recieved for it, but as it stands the majority of the labor value goes to the company, its CEO, and its investors.

I also don't understand how wealth could not trickle down, given that they must be spending their money at some point. Those who do not, cannot.

It's difficult to spend money when you make money faster than you could possibly spend it even if you want to (which they don't).

Imagine a system in which water is pumped between two enclosed tanks by two separate pumps, one running incredibly fast and the other one much more slowly. Some will go back in the other direction, but the system would hardly be doing its job as the pump to the full tank will always be much faster than the one from it. Now imagine the larger tank hiding some of that water in offshore tax havens, and you'll get the basic idea.

[Sanghyeok]

Billionaires should definitely exist. Restrictions on the amount of wealth one can obtain is a restriction on individual liberty. The methods by which someone obtains the status of billionaire is, however, more subject to scrutiny. If your value to society is worth the merit of obtaining billions of dollars, then why not have the value. People like to complain about the wealth of billionaires by highlighting their private assets, but forget that those private assets take skilled artisans and craftspeople to create, which means that generates a demand. Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

There is no shortage of work to be done. However, in a capitalist system work is only deemed necessary to the extent it can generate profit. This leads to expensive novelty products where labor would be put to better use elsewhere. In the United States for example, a project fixing the infrastructure of the country could provide as many jobs as you need. Anyway if the bolded is true, I'm off to go break windows to create more jobs in my community.

A hero who solved unemployment in their community!

[Kassaran]

Your claim will always be false unless the companies pay the workers the full value of their labor. This would be true if time and effort were equal to the value the workers recieved for it, but as it stands the majority of the labor value goes to the company, its CEO, and its investors.

The full value of a worker's labor is what they sell their labor for. If a worker identifies a market with high demand and low supply, they should recognize the value of adapting to said market. Some workers do this, and as a result become incredibly wealthy. Underwater welders, nuclear technicians, and other specialist (yet high-risk) professions pay far above what one would expect, because there's been so little supply in spite of demand.

It's difficult to spend money when you make money faster than you could possibly spend it even if you want to (which they don't).

This doesn't show someone making money faster than they can spend it, it shows them exploiting tax schemes in foreign countries, of which I'm honestly against. Citizens of countries should be beholden to pay the taxes of said country, though I'm also against an income tax as well. At the most, this still fails to show why billionaires shouldn't exist. Just that there are those who gain such riches immorally or unethically.

Imagine a system in which water is pumped between two enclosed tanks by two separate pumps, one running incredibly fast and the other one much more slowly. Some will go back in the other direction, but the system would hardly be doing its job as the pump to the full tank will always be much faster than the one from it. Now imagine the larger tank hiding some of that water in offshore tax havens, and you'll get the basic idea.

That sounds more like tax evasion than anything else, but unfortunately the corruption at the higher points of government (specifically legislative branches), tend to insulate alleged tax evaders. This, however, does not mean that billionaires should not exist. If someone could theoretically conduct themselves in a way to obtain the merits worthy of being a billionaire, they should be enabled to do so. What if someone were to unlock the secret to immortality or the cure for cancer, but did so only at great expense to themselves already, should their right to actually profit from selling said information be restricted? No, it shouldn't because there is no legal challenge or basis to it.

I speak from an almost exclusively American point of view though, so if you come from a legal system which would require the divulgence of such information, then in that society they most definitely should be restricted from doing so. I just find it far more distasteful. I'm also not stating that someone should exclusively benefit from potentially revolutionary or life-saving technologies, but in the circumstances of having developed said technologies, persons should be allowed to benefit from the merit to society they represent.

[Allanea]

Yes. Billionaires are awesome.

In fact, given the vast amounts of good companies like Amazon have done for society, I feel people like Bezos are not sufficiently compensated for their efforts. It's not enough that we pay for their services - we should also build a culture that lionizes them the way we do firefighters, nurses, and doctors.

[Tyrassueb]

I don't think literally any one person should ever have more than a billion dollars in net worth (adjusting for inflation this could shift upwards as time goes on but I'm talking 2020 $1,000,000,000). Simple fact is is that that money in many cases is non-taxed and usually hidden overseas to avoid being taxed, often gained from exploited labor in the US and overseas and gives the individual a massive power dynamic in the economy and politics. By permitting billionaires we actually restrict the amount of capital in circulation and it allows them to exert their influence onto politicians to gain favorable legislation which does not help the common person in the electorate. Billionaires, in effect, permit the rise of oligarchy and corporatocracy and largely leads to them also heading monopolies which strangle out competition and allow them to basically own the economy.

While we're at it can we also break up a lot of these megacorporations and end the "this business owns this business" shenanigans as well which only allows for the stealth rise of monopolies and, therefore, the exploitation of the worker and consumer alike?

[Odreria]

Yes. Billionaires are awesome.

In fact, given the vast amounts of good companies like Amazon have done for society, I feel people like Bezos are not sufficiently compensated for their efforts. It's not enough that we pay for their services - we should also build a culture that lionizes them the way we do firefighters, nurses, and doctors.

parody...?

[Senkaku]

Just that there are those who gain such riches immorally or unethically.

How do you morally and ethically acquire a billion dollars? I'd like to know.

If someone could theoretically conduct themselves in a way to obtain the merits worthy of being a billionaire, they should be enabled to do so.

What would that be?

What if someone were to unlock the secret to immortality or the cure for cancer, but did so only at great expense to themselves already, should their right to actually profit from selling said information be restricted? No, it shouldn't because there is no legal challenge or basis to it.

The people who created the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history rarely actually make much money from them, but even when they do, they pretty much never personally have become billionaires. Even Carl Bosch didn't make that kind of money from IG Farben, and his work is responsible for more or less the entire modern world's food supply. Henry Bessemer made a tidy sum by inventing the technology that basically created the steel industry, but nowhere near today's billionaires.

Today's billionaires, or their antecedents like Carnegie and Rockefeller, pretty much never have actually created the technologies they profit from. The sole exceptions I can think of are Sergey Brin and Larry Page-- but Alphabet's business now involves considerably more than just the search engine they originally created, so even they haven't made their billions by pure invention or genius. Hell, the cure for cancer (and malaria and HIV and countless genetic conditions and God knows what else) and the secret to immortality may both be discovered thanks to CRISPR, but the scientists who invented that technology aren't billionaires, far from it.

You should be allowed to profit if you create great inventions. But it's not unreasonable to say that after a certain point, it's a transition from being rewarded with luxury and comfort, to being rewarded with exceptional power. Why would inventing the cure for cancer necessarily mean I have the wisdom or judgement to run a huge political or media operation, or to know what to spend my money on that will produce good outcomes for society?

I'm also not stating that someone should exclusively benefit from potentially revolutionary or life-saving technologies, but in the circumstances of having developed said technologies, persons should be allowed to benefit from the merit to society they represent.

Thomas Edison's net worth, adjusted for inflation, didn't even top $200M. You can benefit mightily for producing things of merit for society, pretty much no one thinks genius inventors or artists should die penniless. But quite often they do, and even when they don't, pretty much never do they make a billion dollars. It's an unfathomable sum which cannot be achieved by an individual solely by creating good works-- and often, the people who acquire such fortunes never created any good works to begin with. Jakob Fugger or Jamie Dimon didn't invent some revolutionary technology to acquire their wealth, most billionaires don't.

tl;dr: The argument that we should allow people to personally hold and control such obscene fortunes because someday someone might invent something amazing and deserve to profit from doing so is disingenuous. Most billionaires did not gain their fortunes thusly, almost no great inventors or artists have become billionaires, and indeed many more have died modestly or even penniless. No one gains such a colossal amount of money solely on the merits of their own deeds or ideas, it necessarily requires exploitation (and luck)-- and even if you could acquire such a fortune solely on the merits of your great works of science or art, why would that necessarily qualify you to hold immense financial and political power over the rest of society? Finally, since pretty much all of the luxuries enjoyed by billionaires can be enjoyed with less than a billion dollars-- maybe the private jet or the yacht would be smaller, but human beings can only consume so much-- there's no rationale for the idea that "rewards" for your good works should scale linearly with their magnitude, since after a certain point the zeroes don't really impact your day-to-day existence or creature comforts.

[Indolos]

Yes

[Nobel Hobos 2]

What if someone were to unlock the secret to immortality or the cure for cancer, but did so only at great expense to themselves already, should their right to actually profit from selling said information be restricted? No, it shouldn't because there is no legal challenge or basis to it.

"It is ethical because there is no law against it, and if a law was passed it wouldn't be an ethical one" is just the sort of self-supporting amoral nonsense that is used to support any injustice or inequality which is institutionalized.

A cure for cancer, sure, the team who discover that deserve to be billionaires. But the secret to immortality is the key to inequality becoming greater and greater into the future, until newborns are banned for being penniless leaches on the wealth of the immortal few. To sell immortality at the highest price that people would pay, would hasten that enormously. We all get immortality, or none of us do, and that's a choice we will make democratically. Since it's presumably irreversible, a supermajority should be required before anyone gets it. And if I personally could intervene before it became public, I would destroy the secret to immortality. Humanity is not ready to make that ethical choice.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

This is obviously false, a billionaire spending is not one of the best distributors of money into society at all. Two people with 500 million each is obviously better, four people with 250 million even better...

[Marxist Germany]

People need to learn that a "billionaire" is a person who is worth a billion or more dollars. This means that their total assets are worth such, not that they have a billion dollars in their pocket or bank account. Most of these assets are shares of stock in large businesses that they almost certainly bought before the business became large (See Jeff Bezos as an example). These people risked their capital to invest in a business and are reaping the rewards. For every Jeff Bezos there are a million or so users of r/WallStreetBets wasting their life savings on sinking ships akin to MySpace. The capital they invest in businesses allows the economy to grow, for jobs to be created, and for new innovations to spread. The rest of the wealth is likely property: houses, cars, clothes, phones, computers, etc.; perhaps making up a small portion of their wealth. The liquid money that a usual billionaire has is only a sliver of their wealth because money that is not invested is money that is wasted.

In short, yes; billionaires are the natural result of a society that allows risk-taking and does not punish success.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

People need to learn that a "billionaire" is a person who is worth a billion or more dollars. This means that their total assets are worth such, not that they have a billion dollars in their pocket or bank account. Most of these assets are shares of stock in large businesses that they almost certainly bought before the business became large (See Jeff Bezos as an example). These people risked their capital to invest in a business and are reaping the rewards. For every Jeff Bezos there are a million or so users of r/WallStreetBets wasting their life savings on sinking ships akin to MySpace.

And a thousand or so with a business plan nearly as good as Bezos' who can't get any market oxygen because his behemoth of a company sucked it all up.

But there's no such thing as "too big" am I right? The million lost their money because they lacked knowledge. The thousand don't get to invest in their idea because it came to late (or too soon: there wasn't much wrong with MySpace tbh).

And a hundred million are out there working their jobs and not getting significantly richer. The only option they've got to "risk their capital" is to pay off a loan on their house. About one in five have negative net wealth, due to mortgages, auto and student debt. Are you really going to blame those people for not being billionaires? What did they do wrong? The way it looked to them early in life, without inherited wealth, was that they had to invest in their own education, a reliable car to get to work, or a house to live in.

The capital they invest in businesses allows the economy to grow, for jobs to be created, and for new innovations to spread.

They invest to earn more money. The price to those businesses, or to other investors (including smaller investors, and including the poorly informed you like to make fun of) is to pay more money to the rich person. They are extracting income from the economy and if you will insist that's perfectly legitimate, it's in exchange for some good they're doing, then there is nothing left over for "the economy grows, jobs are created" etc. In fact there's a strong argument that less skilled investors are better for the economy and jobs. At least in so far as they're extracting less money from the economy: it must be going somewhere, and if it's going more to small businesses which fail, that's actually good. The investor is subsidizing an employer, also exploring a market niche that some other company might be more successful in.

I mentioned this earlier in the thread. If we put a cap on wealth, requiring billionaires to forfeit money if they go seriously over the cap, they would have many options including giving to charity, and handing it over as tax. But also sub-prime investments: they'd invest in business ideas that no-one else is interested in because the risk/reward prospects are terrible. And a few of those companies would do well, becoming self sufficient, growing, becoming profitable. That wouldn't do the billionaire any good, because they're not allowed to keep the money they've "made" but just from a charitable urge towards startup businesses they might do it anyway. The economic benefits are clear: it's new ground for the market, literally growing the economy by finding a niche no-one knew was there.

The rest of the wealth is likely property: houses, cars, clothes, phones, computers, etc.; perhaps making up a small portion of their wealth. The liquid money that a usual billionaire has is only a sliver of their wealth because money that is not invested is money that is wasted.

In short, yes; billionaires are the natural result of a society that allows risk-taking and does not punish success.

Well I'd like to "punish success" but I wouldn't put it like that. The whole "richer than most people" game that keeps these people interested past about a billion dollars, is nothing to do with contributing to a healthy economy. In fact too much money being in too few hands makes the economy extremely inflexible. The heroes of people like you are Bezos and Gates and Zuckerburg, not just because they're the richest, but because their rise to wealth began early in life. They had "a great idea" and worked hard and after that ... yeah, after that. Once you're a billionaire, you could just retire, right? If you're a bit older (like Gates) you pretty much do, and then find something else to do with your life. Computers are pretty fucking boring after 20 or 30 years, the novelty wears off hard. To his great credit, Gates became a philanthropist. Maybe Bezos and Zuckerburg will too. Or maybe they'll be total asswipes and keep "making their mark on the world" with products of dubious social utility ... because that's the way to become the world's first trillionaire.

It's a game. It won't make it any more or less fair if we put in a new rule "billionaire, OK, but no more". A wealth cap. Sure, it can have a loose fit, they can go over by half a billion if their shares do particularly well one year, but sooner or later they have to spend (not invest) the money. Those with competitive instincts can play "quickest from a million to a billion" or "most money over a billion forfeited" but the point is to take all that power out of the hands of people who think it's a fucking game.

Having money is not a fucking game. For some people, it is life or death. For others, it's going to prison or not. It's losing your job because your car won't start. It's being able to afford fresh fruit and vegetables. I have no problem with there being billionaires, but with wealth concentrating into the hands of fewer and fewer people, we have got to draw the line somewhere.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Billionaires who spend the money they earn are probably one of the best distributors of large sums of money back into a society, so long as they're actually returning to said society.

This is obviously false, a billionaire spending is not one of the best distributors of money into society at all. Two people with 500 million each is obviously better, four people with 250 million even better...

I agree thus far, but at some point you get everyone having equal wealth, which severely limits the market in luxuries.

Laptops date from 1980, and mobile phones from the late '80's. Both were almost entirely useless, but were bought as "conspicuous consumption" ie a luxury to be seen with. Without both the modern phone would not exist. High-end spending on laptops improved their screens to the point that CRT's were obsoleted for regular televisions, and that mass market made the amazing screens of modern phones possible.

Computers in general have relied on "luxury" spending, without which supercomputers now would not be clusters of thousands of cheap consumer CPU's, but far more expensive and much slower Crays.

On the other hand, a large part of poverty is that things once considered luxuries are now necessities ... not just a phone and an account to work it, but "decent" facilities like more than one toilet in the same house, a weatherproof house, children having their own room, an "entertainment" budget (going to the movies was a luxury for many), an objectively higher standard of health care, not having to share a car, actually having a car in some cases, and having a professional cut your hair or depilitate your legs.

If you want for any of these things, in America or Europe, then you deserve them just for working the best job you can get for 40 hours a week. It is possible, with a progressive wealth tax for a few years, followed by a progressive income tax on all income (including asset appreciation). Living expenses vary from city to city, but that can be largely fixed by resetting land prices and adjusting mortgages to fit.

Oh, and completely eliminate billionaires by inheritance (some say Donald Trump). Inheritance per individual should be capped hard at one million, unless that is a farm in which case it would be put in a trust. The heir could borrow a million against it then scarper, but the farm would become property of the government.

Ideally there would still be enough scope to get rich: providing incentive to inventors and market innovators, also to professionals to get their qualifications. Becoming a billionaire should be enough incentive for anyone, and all beyond that could be put to better use. By a charity, by a legal business, or by government.

[Post War America]

And we're not worried about how billionaires oppressing many other people to gain their wealth is a restriction on ordinary people's liberty?

Emphasis mine.

Edit: What is your threshold for ordinary? Someone who makes 30k a year? 60k? 120k? You've obviously gone ahead and expressed an idea that people can no longer have the same rights when they achieve certain thresholds. At what point do we restrict the rights of the individual?

Nobody becomes a billionaire through their own labor. They must, necessarily, exploit the labor of others, often to a major extent to do so. The threshold I think for normal person to not normal person is much more aligned with their relation to the means of production than an arbitrary amount of money they have.

[Kungsu]

People need to learn that a "billionaire" is a person who is worth a billion or more dollars. This means that their total assets are worth such, not that they have a billion dollars in their pocket or bank account. Most of these assets are shares of stock in large businesses that they almost certainly bought before the business became large (See Jeff Bezos as an example). These people risked their capital to invest in a business and are reaping the rewards. For every Jeff Bezos there are a million or so users of r/WallStreetBets wasting their life savings on sinking ships akin to MySpace.

And a thousand or so with a business plan nearly as good as Bezos' who can't get any market oxygen because his behemoth of a company sucked it all up.

But there's no such thing as "too big" am I right? The million lost their money because they lacked knowledge. The thousand don't get to invest in their idea because it came to late (or too soon: there wasn't much wrong with MySpace tbh).

And a hundred million are out there working their jobs and not getting significantly richer. The only option they've got to "risk their capital" is to pay off a loan on their house. About one in five have negative net wealth, due to mortgages, auto and student debt. Are you really going to blame those people for not being billionaires? What did they do wrong? The way it looked to them early in life, without inherited wealth, was that they had to invest in their own education, a reliable car to get to work, or a house to live in.

Sounds to me like this issue is best resolved by breaking down a lot of the monopolies and conglomerates that are strangling our economy (though that isn't to say billionaires are in the clear, either). Heck, if we regularly cracked down on monopolies, oligopolies, and ultra-conglomerates we would have next to no billionaires, if not no billionaires at all. But keeping powerful companies powerful is far too lucrative for the government and its political parties, so we aren't going to see that happen anytime soon.

[ImperialRussia]

Billionaires should exist under the influence of the government they will decide what is the will of the nation get what to decide what better or the worst that it can self get into as a rich collective to determine a nations future. Accepting billionaires as your overlord are the wonder of life turning society into a technocracy or a dictatorship determine if better society through a socialism for the betterment of human through robotics. Billionaires should exist but the money they earn should be entitled before they die to other geniuses from a nation into society better for a nation. Billionaires should be entitled to their money under government because they have a say in congress to turn society for a better or worst for a nation they’ll change a government need and whim to have a say as a collective in earning mass amounts of wealth as a billionaire. Billionaires exist because they changed the world and decided the out come of the human race where once they decide what fate of the world to destroy it or restore is a ever ending conflict from the old and new all the need is to proceed what benefits society through normalcy so the populace don’t have to worry about anything in there government only billionaires have to worry to change the whim of a nation’s future for the better or worst out of its outcome to decide it decisions if it benefits a collective.