Moving to: m/AskMbin!

To me, being good is a function of altruism, while being bad is a function of egoism. This starts to get whacky when you do an altruistic thing for egoistic motives (ie donating for recognition) but it serves me as a baseline, and by that understanding, I would say yes, theoretically it is possible. However, in most scenarios I can think of, the way that a person becomes rich will be filled with egoistical decisions and thus be bad.

I am currently re-reading pedagogy of the oppressed by Freire though, and he brings up a good point: charity and being charitable will always lead to an unjust system, because the person feeing charitable, to be able to do that, needs to perpetuate a system in which they have more, and where there is a poor one to give to. So he would say not really because the being rich in and of itself is a symptom of an amoral system. And I have to say that's a good point

A priori, yes. Being rich is not automatically incompatible with being good - philantropy is a thing. But depending on how rich, how much or how little they give back to the community, how they acquired/maintain their wealth, etc, you eventually reach a point where the person is simply put a social parasite. And that IS incompatible with being good.

We live in capitalism. Rich people get rich by exploiting value from others. They have capital and use that capital to generate lifetime money and paying you now-money, because you need food now so you are willing to take.

I suppose it depends upon how it was made and what they do with it once they have it. If it's hoarding wealth for wealth's sake then, yea, probably an issue. It seems though, there are some that have obtained wealth and chose philanthropy.

millions to billions of dollars

Those two are very different sums of money.
But if you're very rich, you can't be a good person, there's no way to accumulate that kind of wealth without exploiting others.

But then again, we all live in capitalist societies that have been built on exploiting the shit out of others, so there's quite a bit of hypocrisy in my post.

The first example I thought of was Bill Gates. He amassed his wealth from a corporation that employed anti-competitive and immoral business practices. That makes him “bad”.

But what he has done with his fortune in the past few decades definitely doesn’t make him a bad person. Is his foundation and its goals the most efficient way to go from point A to point B? Probably not. Does that make him a bad person? Probably not, but it also doesn’t absolve him of sins he committed in the past.

A bit late to the party, and haven't read through every comment, so apologies if this is was already stated opinion.

In many (if not most) cases excess wealth is a byproduct of capitalizing on others labor in an unfair way. There was (not so long ago) a time when excess income over a certain amount (say a million) was taxed anywhere from 60-90%. This high level of taxation mixed with the victories of the labor movement standardized that upper management and ownership made around 10X max what their average laborer did. That number has now swelled to 100X-1000X the average salary and with minimum wage (US) basically the same for the last 20+ years.

Beyond having more than you could ever use and depriving a portion to those below you; the systems of capital seem as much about cleaving society into separate castes and classes (as much as anything.) We've had the ability to bring the world out of poverty and hunger for a long time now and instead we've managed to perpetuate myths about those less fortunate being a burden around societies neck. The poor are raised to look at the poorer as impediments to their ascendancy and the idea of base universal standards as rights for humanity have stalled and are largely no longer talked about. Capital has done everything it can to divide people with hate and drain money from the bottom, while maintaining the expectation for never ending growth of markets and resources. This is unsustainable and will eventually lead to rifts that will break governments and societies around the world. Probably faster than most of us think or are willing to accept.

In America so many of us think that we're always one lucky break from rising away from those like us. So as secret millionaires we tacitly approve in the hopes of living better than the rest. Legitimately though, to be rich (from means other than luck (EDIT, see bottom)) will come down to how little you care for exploiting others. If you can take more from those around you and feel less about it, then you could be the next millionaire. And it is this difference in ethics and mentality (possibly psychopathy) that leads to being rich and doing fucked up shit.

I've worked for very wealthy people and they are masters at disguising themselves as adequate people. They are usually very charismatic and can say all the right things without being found out for a very long time. Being wealthy makes people view you as exceptional. You must have been smarter, worked harder, more godly and/or more worthy. As such, people almost always give you the benefit of the doubt much more than they would a regular person. And the rich are exceptionally good at wearing that trust just to the point of breaking for as long as they can. From my experience they are largely on cocaine or prescription stimulants, so that they're always "on point." They buy excessively, without thought and will throw even costly unopened things away. They become bored with life and begin sexual abusing those in proximity to them. These tastes will continue to become more extreme and degrading so that they can feel more power and hurt others more. Hurting people, without consequence, is a great way to assure ones self of how untouchable they really are. They come to enjoy these things and have no care for those they hurt unless it affects them in some meaningful way. They can make up stories that allow them to feel fine about this when it's clear they've done horrific things (DARVO behaviors) and thus will likely never feel any lasting remorse for even the worst of things.

This last part is again from personal experience, but it largely matches over a number of people and I see no difference in the actions of the vast majority of the wealthy. Surely there are some wealthy people who not all of these things apply to, but they are exceptions and not the rule.

We could point to so many things that make the world awful but the overly rich and powerful are a nearly singular point that if toppled could right so many wrongs. Humanity needs a second bill of rights and even beyond a maximum wage, the majority of excess wealth and holdings needs to be taken back and used to fix humanity's course.

All of that certainly isn't going to be happening though, so I look forward to spending the horrifying future with the rest of you poors!

Edit: @Aesthesiaphilia pointed out that inheritance is the largest means of wealth transfer and they are absolutely right. Previously the notated EDIT portion said "to be rich (from means other than luck or some inheritance)" and I've edited out the inheritance portion because you could inherit a million dollars randomly or 500 million. The amount doesn't matter as the impediments to generational transfer of wealth between elites has been substantially weakened even recently and it very much folds into the myth of the self made millionaire/billionaire, which is not supported by reality.

I suppose it depends. There are plenty of rich people who do actively seem to care and go out of their way to not only donate to charity, but actively get involved in communities and try to improve things. Very clearly putting themselves out there and not for personal fame and prestige.

The big part you have to focus on is whether the charity is being done for tax write-offs or other personal benefits, such as what you see with most conservative rich people like the Kochs.

Of course, no matter how a rich person uses their money, even if they very clearly are spending massive amounts of it on helping others and improving the lives of those around them, they'll still be considered evil just because they are rich.

It's an interesting paradox. For some people who have a very narrow view on the subject, they will only consider a rich person "good" if they make themselves not rich. Entirely so. Of course, such a no longer rich person wouldn't be able to help others at that point.

I think there is a line, and it's different for every person, but on one side of the line to lift other people up you would have to sacrifice your own life velocity, and on the other side of the line you have the power to lift tens of hundreds or thousands of people out of poverty without impacting more than a fraction of your children's inheritance.

I understand that there are issues with unchecked charity, for instance, if Bill Gates suddenly decided to take I don't know 25 billion dollars and distribute it equally to everybody in the 50% or below category of America which is about 250 million people, then he would basically be giving these people a hundred bucks each and saying "there I've done my job I gave up 30% of my net worth to help the poor" and that really wouldn't accomplish anything.

But that same $25 billion targeted at the bottom 1% of America I could do quite a bit but then there's overhead. Buying houses and repairing them for people to solve the homelessness problem or purchasing all of the debt that you could possibly buy for $25 billion and then forgiving that debt for the poorest people, those things could be better and do more for people but then you have administrative overhead finding and communicating with the debtors and negotiating with them, and then at the end of it it's likely that you would get a massive tax right off cuz you wouldn't do this as an individual you do it as a nonprofit, and then bill would get back 8 billion of that in tax rebates or so.

Like there is obviously a line on both sides and while I don't think people making you know even 200 Grand a year should put themselves at risk for homelessness in order to justify their financial status I also don't think that any billionaire has any right to strive to continue being a billionaire for the rest of their lives. If you cannot live a happy life on a billion dollars then you cannot live a happy life.

Theoretically... yes and no? First of all it's a given that any truly rich person in today's day and age is a capitalist, no exceptions.

Modern capitalism is based on the assumption that "maximizing profit" leads to the best outcome for everyone... which is not true. So if theoretically a rich person is trying to be 100% rational then they cannot be "good"

On the other hand... also theoretically, rich ppl have a lot more resources to give and support causes they care about, so on this aspect they could be good? I know ppl who donate a ton to social causes but I honestly don't know how much of their donations can be attributed to tax benefits

In practice... I guess most of what you could call "good" people wouldn't want to make that much money in the first place? Or it could just be probability, good people and rich people are both quite rare, so good+rich is even rarer (if we assume they are independent).

One thing to realize - it is paper money, stocks, obligation, not actual resources that rich people own. If you actually spend billions on yourself, like building multiple palaces, huge and multiple yachts, then yes, you are consuming resources egoistically for yourself. If the money are "working", producing something that not for you to consume (also known as "invested"), and especially if you donate a lot for charities, then sure, you can be a good person.

TL;DR: I think it is basically impossible to have that much money and claim it was earned ethically. Therefore it is basically impossible to be "good" without giving it away.

I think that it is borderline impossible to ethically accrue that much wealth. Is it possible? Maybe? I'd love to hear more examples of where a company owner made sure all their employees shared in the success when the company is large enough that the owner is that rich. I remember hearing that Google did right by their early employees, but it's been the exception that makes the rule and was also a long time ago in a different world where their ethics were different anyway.

And if you inherit that much wealth, what are the odds that it came to you free and clear of having been generated from exploiting others? Colonizing/"settling" and redlining making property values super high? Using eminent domain to tear down minority major communities for the sake of putting an interstate down the middle instead of risking devaluing the richest people's property more? Because odds are that even if they didn't cause the system they certainly benefited from it.

And unfortunately, "charity" is a horror in the USA because it's used as a very bad and very biased by rich people version of an actual welfare system that worked. The idea that there are food banks operating off donations while billionaires exist is horrific. If billionaires did not exist I frankly think that a lot more things like food banks (and public transit maybe?) would find themselves with funding.