Billionaires are often lauded in America, but some condemn them as evil simply for being billionaires. This raises the moral issue of whether a person can be morally good and a billionaire. The issue is whether, in general, you could be a billionaire and still plausibly be a good person. Proper resolution of this issue requires determining which moral theory (if any) is correct. But we can rely to some degree on our moral intuitions and some basic logic.
A key concern is the way the billionaire acquires their wealth. Virtue theorists, such as Confucius, generally agree that acquiring wealth is not inherently evil. Their concern is with how the wealth is obtained and the impact on the person’s virtues. As Confucius says, “Wealth and rank are what every man desires; but if they can only be retained to the detriment of the Way he professes, he must relinquish them. Poverty and obscurity are what every man detests; but if they can only be avoided to the detriment of the Way he professes, he must accept them.”
While we could debate endlessly about ethical and unethical ways of becoming wealthy, we can probably agree that there are some ways of acquiring wealth that are inconsistent with being a good person. As an appeal to intuition, I ask you to imagine something you regard as being the evilest thing a person could do. Now imagine someone who finds a way to monetize that and manages to become a billionaire. You would probably agree that they would not be a good person. We can also probably agree that there are ethical ways to become a billionaire that no sensible person would see as evil. For example, imagine a writer of such incredible appeal that they sell billions of reasonably priced books. No one gets exploited or hurt; people just love to buy those reasonably priced books. While unlikely, it is not impossible. As such, merely becoming a billionaire need not make a person evil.
The second key concern is what the billionaire does with their wealth. Obviously, a billionaire could use their wealth to do evil, but this is not unique to billionaires. Someone with little wealth could use it for evil ends. For example, someone could pay another person $10 to commit murder. The special concern about billionaires is, obviously, the extent of the evil they could do with all that wealth. Once again, simply imagine a billionaire using their wealth to bring about things that you regard as evil, this should suffice to show that they could be evil. This can, of course, get complicated when one starts to consider various factors such as character, motives, and consequences.
A billionaire could also use their wealth to do good things. Simply think of what you regard as good and then imagine a billionaire using their wealth to bring that about. One can certainly raise concerns about the billionaire’s motives and other factors when wondering whether they are good even when they do things you believe to be good. But you can simply imagine a billionaire doing things you think are good for reasons you think are good and so on. This should be easy enough to do. Unless, of course, you think that billionaires are inherently bad (with one general exception). Which I do. I will need to argue for this and will do so by analogy and appealing to your intuitions.
If a person is a billionaire, then this entails that they have at least $1 billion in wealth. This is distinct from merely being in control of such wealth. The President of the United States has effective control over billions in military equipment yet need not be a billionaire. This wealth can take various forms: cash, stocks, yachts, helicopters, mansions, spaceships, and so on. This means that the typically billionaire has vast resources.
We know that many people, including many in the United States, suffer greatly from a lack of resources. People go hungry, struggle with contaminated water supplies (like in Flint, Michigan), go without adequate medical care, go without shelter and so on. There are so many who have so little that they suffer so much because of it. You can certainly guess where I am going with this.
A billionaire has such vast wealth that all their needs and are met many times over. Some even have a support yacht for their main yacht. They can own many mansions. This means that they could share their resources without putting a noticeable dent in the quality of their existence. Jeff Bezos could, for example, easily fund the replacement of failing pipes in many towns. Elon Musk could, for example, properly fund many public schools. Bill Gates could, for example, fund animal shelters across America.
At this point, one might point out that billionaires do engage in philanthropy; they do give some money to causes and charity. Bill Gates, for example, is famous for his foundation. But there is the stock criticism that billionaires “give” away millions to make billions. For example, while Bill Gates did fund the development of a vaccine, he did not do so for the good of humanity but to profit Bill Gates. The conspiracy theorists who hate Gates are right to be critical of him, but they hate him for the wrong reason: he is not microchipping vaccines, he is monetizing vaccines.
I do admit the obvious: yes, it is morally better for a billionaire to do some good rather than doing all evil. But this doesn’t show that billionaires are good because they sometimes give away a little bit of their wealth. The moral problem is that they are still billionaires in the face of so much suffering and need. And now comes the analogy.
Imagine people on a derelict ship drifting in the ocean. One person has supplies that would last them a thousand years. Other people have enough supplies to survive comfortably until they are rescued. Many people, however, do not have enough supplies to meet their basic needs. They are suffering, and some will die long before any possibility of rescue. Even if the person with the vast supplies somehow earned their supply cache, could they be a good person if they simply let the others suffer and die when they could easily help them? Intuitively, they would not: they could help people in need and still be completely fine themselves.
They need not give up all their supplies and could even retain much more than they would ever need. If they sit atop a pile of supplies they will never need while other people die, then they cannot be a good person. To see this, imagine you and your family on that ship without adequate supplies while someone looks down upon your suffering from their throne of supplies.
The obvious stock reply to my analogy would be that the people who lack supplies have no right to those held by the super hoarder. They need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and get their own supplies, perhaps by laboring for the hoarder. Maybe if they made him supplies for 10 or 100 days, he would graciously allow them 1 day of supplies. If this would not suffice for their well-being, one might say that they need to pull those bootstraps even harder and find a way to be a supply creator before they die from lack of supplies. This sort of hoarder would, of course, be the obvious villain in a movie, but they are often the hero in real life.
I mentioned above that there is one general exception. If a billionaire is, in fact, using their resources to create more good than they would create by sharing these resources, then they would be a good person. To use a simple and silly example, a person who owned a five billion-dollar factory (hence they would still be a billionaire) but used it to provide good jobs while supplying critical infrastructure components at cost could be a good person. To close, I must emphasize that I do not advocate stripping people of all their wealth; I have no moral objection against people living well or in some luxury. There is, of course, a complicated moral issue here about how much a person can keep to themselves in the face of the suffering and need of others. I also do not advocate just giving people things in cases where people could easily do well by their own efforts; what I am against is cruel hoarding when so many are in need and could easily be helped.