Comment by nathan_compton
1 month ago
If bothers me if he spends that money exerting an outsized influence on my political institutions, though. Wealth inequality isn't really about wealth so much as power. I really don't care if Musk or anyone else lives more comfortably than me, but I do care if they have more than one figurative vote in how my society functions.
When is having an outsized influence allowed? Someone who pickets for a candidate will have an outsized influence; so will celebrities with many followers, etc.
You can't solve every problem, but that isn't an excuse to solve no problems. If you can buy an entire platform that functions more like public service or utility than a company and modify its political alignment, you have too much power.
But that does not address whether the wealth inequality in question causes despair (it almost certainly does not).
What makes you think wealth inequality doesn't cause despair? Despair strikes me as the expected and desired effect.
Hunger and struggling to pay one's bills -- those cause despair. Envy surely does not (and should not). And anyways the claim that relative wealth inequality (as opposed to actual poverty) causes despair is an extraordinary claim and it requires that you present extraordinary evidence.