Anand Giridharadas | It Is Immoral To Be A Billionaire (5/8) | Oxford Union 

Oxford doesn't make any relevant amount of billionaires: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_by_number_of_billionaire_alumni

pretty much, makes the motion not passing less surprising.

Yeah whats up with that ?

amadexi Oxford did make a rapist and murderer who became the US president though

Lol it aint stanford

Some idiot in the background is rotting away😅

Tax-bitchass biyatch No, you STFU bootlicker. There’s nothing wrong with fighting for fairness for all. You not the only one that lives on this planet.

The combined wealth of all billionaires in the US is 3 trillion. That is enough to run the government for 8 months.

I noticed that, too. When he said being a billionaire is immoral, they guy behind and to the left of him screwed up his face in an angry sneer. I LOL!

HAHAHA

Damn hahah

Good one

Lulz

Bruh

The audience looks very uncomfortable especially the bow tie dude.

It's a debate, it means you have 2 team debating a subject. One has to say yes it's immoral and an other no it's not. The participants can't choose which team their are on

@@superpanda99show they're*

@@superpanda99show well the man did choose this side. He has literally written the book on this topic.

He receives a very handsome paycheck after all his speaking engagements. He talks a good game but never, ever speaks on any public figure or politician that offers solutions to the problems he’s constantly shining a spotlight on.

Sounds cool, but has nothing to do with reality, finance has been OUTSIDE of political influence for a long time now, and usually its finance that DECIDE politics, not the other way around.

“A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.” is another good Mario Puzo quote

@@Grafomanokrasto same game same players

@@Grafomanokrasto I believe the FED and Switzerland would beg to differ....

Yes cause Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey made their money plundering faraway land and the slave. Such a childish position.

@@pauliewalnuts100 he wasn't talking about them though

@@MineSomeCraftPoo The whole thing is about billionaires.

@@pauliewalnuts100 the commenter was talking about specifically those undergraduates in the audience at Oxford. Many of whom have very good family connections.

TheLegend27 is that factual or is that your belief? So they got there because they paid or because they got the right results at school?

Rich people are not inherently evil and nor is it immoral to be rich. Demonizing the rich is a strategy for the poor to remain poor and not strive to be rich. Rich people employ so many and they contribute to the economy in a big way. That is what a capitalist economy provides.

@@tirthshah1580 Never said rich people are evil or immoral.. rich is a word with a multitude of meaning.. I said being a billionaire and working to stay there, with their pseudo charities and social photo ops, and that would include each and everyone of them.. that is just pure evil.. destroying your small scale competitors to monopolize the market, which also includes everyone of them, is again just everything evil.. oh and about employing people, I don't think they would or could do the manual labor.. next you might make a case for slavery, I hope not..

@@SinghalLouis Your jump from being competititve to 'everything evil' and employing people to 'slavery' is amusing. Every democratic country has anti-trust laws that promote competition. If you think big corporates employ slaves, try asking one of their employees would they rather run their own business or work for guaranteed pay plus overtime and have weekends off? Billionaires provide services that even well-minded philanthropists cannot. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio network provided cheap connectivity to those that never had it. Imagine nearly a billion people with access to the Internet. That is a great leveler. Now India is the leading market for investments in the digital space.

@Paul B Rich people do not owe us anything. But most do charities and some have even vowed to donate all their wealth before they die. I hope you are not living in poverty because you say "resources the rest of us need to survive". People in developed countries have basic necessities or a social net by the government. Emerging superpower India is on track to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 and it is home to 140 billionaires.

@@tirthshah1580 if Jio has been the first telecom company to break even in record time, how is it 'cheap' service? Vodafone and Airtel were looting everyone, but that doesn't make Jio cheap, just makes it more fair than others.. There's a huge difference.. Law and 'cheap' excuses are all that these billionaire suck ups can come up with.. people's state of mind is not an excuse for tyranny.. German people supported Hitler in his tyranny because they were misled, or lazy to think for themselves, or scared, or intimidated.. doesn't matter.. But, that cannot be an excuse for Hitler's actions, can it? Employees state of mind CANNOT be an excuse for the unpardonable excesses of all of these heartless 'sadistic' billionaires

People become billionaires not by working 1000x harder, but by having their money work for them. Investing and reinvesting. It is absolutely an indicator of skill and effort or anyone would be able to accomplish it.

@@steverguyI don't think a billionaire's investing skills would be so much better than a millionaire or even than any given person with enough financial knowledge. The reason why the result is different is firstly that billionaires generally have more money to invest and secondly, they have more "inside information", which is not necessarily always illegal but still an information asymmetry. Interest by interest, even a maroon can become a billionaire as long as he hires a good finance consultant.

​@@steverguy It takes absolutely no skill whatsoever to grow a fortune provided you have a sizable starting capital, as many billionaires did. For example: if you have a million dollars you can simply invest it in some S&P 500 ETF and then do nothing. No trading, no moving it around - nothing. Just sit on your ass. It will grow ~13% every year. In 30 years you'd have 39 million - all by doing nothing. And a billion dollars? A billion dollars is *1000 times a million dollars*. It is absolutely insane amount of money for one person. Every billionaire is a policy failure.

I can think of a case. For example, in an industry where specific products or services are only feasible from an MVP standpoint; such as the aerospace industry. In order to control the rudder of a company, the founders who have built it need to retain a significant proportion of equity (as in any start up business). The necessary capital and inherent valuation for minimum viable product or service will depend on the industry and the current technology of the time. Many billionaires are valued based on their on-paper share in the equity of the businesses which they have started. It's not a cash-in-the-bank-balance which they are hoarding, it's simply representative of their still-retained proportion of the current valuation of the business they have grown. Forcibly divesting them of that proportion in order to hold them below some arbitrarily-defined moral dollar amount would its self be an immoral act, bereaving them of the privilege and ability to continue to guide their own businesses with the vision they first employed to start them. Elon Musks' proportion of SpaceX equity is significant, and its valuation is also significant. However it doesn't automatically imply inherent immorality just because on paper someone can write nine or more zeros past the dollar sign under his name. One man thinks 9 zeros is too much. Another thinks 7 is enough. It's arbitrary and subjective. I think that it is what we do with our money and how we acquire it which indicates our integrity or lack thereof, not simply the net value at some discrete point in time. That would be too 1-dimensional of a measure, and the problem is massively multi-variate by nature and requires more finesse to discuss rather than "billionaire = bad/good".

Donald Trump is an example of a system where you inherit a large sum of money, make bad business decisions, and still keep billionaire status through tax avoidance and various scams and settlements. If you have large enough capital, you'll still be rich unless you just give it all away.

You fuckers live in glass houses don't you?

Strange. It sounds more like complaining. Fun fact: over 80% of billionaires existed today scarifice years of their lives to attain their wealthy status. They brought a product that benefit people as a whole. The only reason it seems to me that this intellectual individual state that it is immoral is for reasons that he wishes to be one. Life is not black or white. Billionaires should not suffer due to people who lack the fundamental understanding of money and how money works

saysomethingsmart comeonentertainme well maybe its more about wealth distribution. The assets that they accumulated are not contributing to the development of the society..well they got rich from the society because obviously the billionaires only make their workers richer and not redistributing their wealth proportionately to the ones that are really in need. Maybe.

@@dood1011 I have to say that your statement have some merit to it. Allow me to ask you this then. Would you distribute your wealth to your loyal friends who help you out or would you give it to complete strangers whom you know nothing of and dont know if they are using the money for good. Ofcourse the workers are getting rich, they do the same thing the billionaires do, provide value. The man does not seem to provide enough value to the millions out there whom benefit from his existence. Let me say one more thing, billionaires put their life on the line both figuratively and metaphorically by not paying themselves and suffering more than anyone for a better chance to keep their employee loyal and their customers happy. Build a company is no easy task. A task mind you that strip you away from your families while you (not specifically you) get to either sleep in bed or enjoy family outing.

saysomethingsmart comeonentertainme points taken. But my point in redistributing wealth is in form of philanthropy. Its simply wanting to improve the lives of others that are unfortunate, so you have to do it because you are selfless (after you are insanely rich). The billionaire’s company will satisfy those who contributed value to the stakeholders. Anyway I think its not immoral to be a billionaire, but its immoral to not redistribute the wealth. You get what I mean? But I know its really hard as well to redistribute wealth to the right target, I mean you want to provide sanitation,cure malaria, or tuberculosis (which will make you a zillionaire if you can) etc for example not just drop cash to the poor. But I kinda get your perspective, you’re thinking in a corporate way, everything comes with a price,well just correct me if Im wrong.

Call it what you want, but billionaires are better than the federal government having that money instead. They get $4T in taxes but still manage to fuck up the budget. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon are collectively worth $4T and they have done way more good for this world than the federal government has done in 1 year since they have been operating for decades and all have provided something of value to billions of people worldwide. Not to mention how many people they provide salaries to. Don't be so shortsighted and seek instant gratification with their money from taxes. Look at it long-term. Also, billionaires don't readily have $1B in cash to spend even if they're worth $50B. Most of their net worth comes from their company stake which they have to sell to others for cash.

@@BRBallin1 I haven't bothered to read many of them, as their relatively predictable...& no doubt Bernie bros/Labour Party enthusiasts/sympathizers/members....who know little of business, history, etc. Just that they're "feeling," well...."unhappy" with their lives and the anxieties thereof are coming to fruition w/in themselves. (& with some prodding by MSM & Soc-Media) This is not to say, that many of Anand's "points" are not w/out merit of concern or "addressing." Indeed they are. But Anand too, as the naive are not presently aware of, has a nefarious "agenda" of his own; and so do his "complicit" woke, followers. Hmmm......🤔

BRBallin1 Billionaires got 15 Trillion dollars in 2008, how do you think that budget gets fucked up when the US has a D+ rating for infrastructure?

Economic power spills into political power via lobbying and then we blame governments for what businesses are essentially paying them to do..

@@kargs5krun Nah, al, they're just not greedy and have the ability to put the wellbeing of others on a par with their own. You know, anyone outside of the 'me, me, me', 'I want it all and I want it now' demeographic.

Coming from a millioniar ha

Only to eventually turn on each other after the "wealthy" are dealt with.

@@shauncameron8390 You're right. This has happened at least over 75 times in human history and it usually ends in genocide. BUT there are two sides to this when it comes to not learning from the past. Conservatives like to talk about the inevitable failures of communist revolutions, and rightfully so, however what the don't like to talk about are the conditions that inevitably lead to them happening in the first place. There is an elephant in the room that neither side wants to talk about, and that is the Pareto Principle. If you don't know what this is, it's basically a mathematical natural law that ensures that the "losers" INEVITABLY become the majority in ANY natural system of distribution, while the shrinking number of "winners" take everything. The left doesn't want to talk about it because it destroys the idea that we are all equal and ensures that the formation of hierarchies is inevitable, and the right doesn't want to talk about it because is destroys the idea that the "invisible hand of the market" will take care of everything. If we don't find a way to deal with the destabilizing trends of the Pareto Principle, then we will continue seeing the cycle of austerity and communism. The inevitable austerity that's caused by the markets natural tendency toward the winners taking all, and the communist revolutions that happen as a response.

LIQUIDSNAKEz28 but didn’t you just make the opposite point? Some people are just better than others. If left by itself, some people at the top will just make more than everyone else

@@utkarsh4386​ Utkarsh Dave Sahni *"but didn’t you just make the opposite point?"* - No, I didn't. I'm not speaking out against inequality, I'm speaking out against mass abject poverty. Hierarches are perfectly healthy, and are a necessity in order to maintain an incentive structure and level of competence in any given society. The issue is that they don't just plateau at a stable homeostatic state, they continue growing, tending towards greater levels of polarization and inevitably become unstable. This is the real reason the middle class is disappearing and why communist revolutions keep happening over and over again. *"If left by itself, some people at the top will just make more than everyone else"* - Wrong, if left by itself, it will inevitably lead to austerity in the long run, where the "winners" take *ALL* and leave the masses just barely scrapping by. It's literally monopoly where one dude or a tiny group take EVERYTHING in the end, leaving everyone else with practically nothing.

Do you have aspergers? Your comment had literally NOTHING to do with this conversation.

Rich people are not inherently evil and nor is it immoral to be rich. But for so long, films in India demonize the rich. Therefore, the poor remain poor and do not strive to be rich. Rich people employ so many and they contribute to the economy in a big way. That is what a capitalist economy provides.

@Paul B Be it automation or artificial intelligence, it is an unavoidable reality. The use of a calculator is automation and has only improved humans' lives. The leader of the world's biggest democracy has condemned efforts to demonize technology in his country. The debate over AI is needlessly pessimistic. AI can be for everyone's development. The need for labor is still present. Amazon fulfillment centers provide jobs for thousands in rural or suburban areas. Like Spartanburg, SC or Jefferson, GA in America.

Future Greatest President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Dude u are cringe worthy. Billionaire is an evaluation not that they have that money in Capital it’s all paper You DUMB FUCK

Paul B you’re wrong on that. The idea that for someone to be rich, others are poor is inherently flawed. The world is richer now then it has ever been. Poverty has decreased in the last 50 yr than at any time in history. We have billionaires, millionaires and products to buy and sell. In the last century, the poverty standard was far lower than today, now people live in poverty in the west with cable tv and alcohol. That’s not poverty. In the 19th century, millions died from starvation, plagues and disease. In the last 50 yrs, that number has decreased exponentially. Population growth has more than doubled and yet poverty is further away for that vast many on the planet. It doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire, millionaire or even wealthy, because everyone is becoming wealthier in a variety of different ways. From monetary, to food, to medicine to educationally. I’m from a working class background, the vast majority of my friends are too. I can tell you I am richer now than my family were as a kid, as they are just through simple working, medicine, food production etc. We’ve gone from single glazed windows to double or triple, obesity becoming a problem not just in the west, but the east also. That’s not a sign of poverty, it’s progress and choice. Poverty would have been removed quicker had the old USSR fell faster and its ideology not spread to poor nations.

Obesity affects more people than hunger now. Billionaires are just gluttons with cash over food.

😂😂😂😂😂😂

Dead 💀😂

... holy shit 😮

Wait so is he Kanye West or Ryan Reynolds?

@@JC-rl6ln Kanye East

Ngl idk what this means

I can’t puzzle this

Oh I get it never mind

Show Love the crowd is the status quo

This don't make sense because the room has two sides to debate and one side is against the others. Don't just paste quotes cause it makes you look smart...

Anh Truong If only there were more like you in the world. Unfortunately...

please teach people how to successfully manage businesses, so many fail because they don’t understand these basic tenants

What a powerful story, thank you for sharing. May I ask the name of the e-commerce so we could potentially support it?

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XTJRGHsrYhY.html

She’s done loads of charity.

@@jarenc2048 Did you not listen to this man's speech?

She earned her wealth

@@cardcode8345 What a load of misinformation. He basically says "Winners take all" is a law of nature. That is literally oppression...or slavery. This man has fallen in love with his own legend and cannot take a critical stand on his own ideas.

l d Nah. He just killed the truth.

It was a terrible analogy. Not even remotely similar to what businesses do.

@@lucdochterman9767 @Luc Dochterman I personally floated 5 separate businesses that lease commercial real estate I own during lockdowns (their combined rent is $13k a month x 5-9 months). I could have been stingy and let them fail but because they've always been loyal to me I decided to return the favor by not forcing them to pay rent for several months with money they didn't have, I told them to feed their families. I also run a successful 42-year restaurant equipment business I bought from my father. I make a fair living and so does everyone who works under me. I could easily hire people for less money but that's why I have some employees that have been with us for 30 years plus. At my business you start out at $30k while the average income in my town is $17k. My highest paid employee makes $60 and drives a personal truck that I purchased for them. I'm able to support my family, my parents, my employees and my renters and still walk away every year with $100k to myself. I want for nothing, drive a nice car, own a house, and still have more than enough money every year. I could make closer to $300K if I treat employees like most businesses do but morally I can't justify that. So you can say it's a bad analogy but as a long time successful business owner I think it's pretty damn accurate. Greed is immoral and my employees and renters pay me to live and they're beyond loyal...

@@ZERO_O7X a whole paragraph to still be wrong.

@@lucdochterman9767 and another whole sentence where you don't even have an opposing opinion. Bye troll! 🧟

@@ZERO_O7X im not going to waste my time to give a rebuttal to your dissertation.

Said the broke man

@@theone8327 refute the point dipshit because I'd like to see you try

I disagree. I willingly paid J.K. Rowling for her books. I am happy to contribute to making JK Rowling a billionaire. Its good that she created those books. Both of us are richer now.

@@michaelsnater2345 would you not be able to buy her books if she were taxed into simply being a multi 100 millionaire?

@@bigtuna7900 There is a direct relationship with the freedom of creating wealth and economic agents innovating.

Dressed to the nines, sitting upfront in an intellectual debate at the Oxford Union and constantly shifting between one uncivil and unrefined expression to another ... He better be thanking God for his dad's wealth, his beauty won't get him much further in the real world.

TheAnial8r Yeah, there’s a surprising lack of Trumpy bootlickers in here!

@@coSMia2010 but the ones here are particularly despicable

He said point of information, he wants to asks a question of the speaker about what he's saying, probably going to be challenging what he's saying

Sadly the same immoral system is just waiting for the best opportunity to take him out

There is a way. Every time somebody gets rich beyond a certain point, stop buying their products. Instead promote a new young business. But this can limit technological change.

You already pointed out some solutions. Work co-ops, collective strike and bargaining, modest lifestyle and active saving, organized political power that candidates take seriously, small business workshops and affordable housing revolution. Save Save Save and invest inside the community.

"point of information" meaning he wanted to challenge what anand just said

repooc84 facts

Or at least millionaires. And the only person of color was the speaker that I saw.

No. They choose to be money-grubbers. That is their choice. Do I judge all murderers just for being murderers? Yes.

@@johntao6822 you can judge them any way you like but morality is subjective. People call doctors that perform abortions murderers, and trained warriors that kill for the interests if the elite of their nation, "patriotic heroes". Murder is nothing more but unsanctioned killing; many of us don't mind killing we just want it on our terms and in our favor. Just understand that calling a murderer a murderer isn't the same as calling a duck a duck. The latter is based on sound logical reasoning, the former on your religion, your culture, and eventually just your personal feelings about the matter. Don't you think people should mature beyond a "what feels bad to me= definitive evil" attitude?

@@johntao6822 another thing: I know they choose to be money grubbers, or murderers. I also know you judge them for it, thats besides the point. I'm just saying its pointless. It changes nothing, other than providing you with some complacent relief from emotional frustration. stigmatising murderers does not prevent or end murder, just as stigmatising who you call " money-grubbers" won't end or prevent financial inequality. So, you may even be part of the problem that frustrates you, because it seems asif all you want to do is judge people, instead of understand them and move them towards better, more benevolent behaviour. Calling "money grubbers" out does not improve the situation of poor people( or your own situation, if you are poor), it only benefits your ego.

Ooh! Reductio ad absurdum. Nicely played. Over simplify the nuanced argument about immoral accumulation of wealth and arrive at the absurd argument "are countries with no billionaires awesome?". People fall for that, all the time. Nice.

Everyone is a billionaire in Zimbabwe

They’re are African billionaires. You can look it up. Thank you for providing even more of a reason to reform the system. Impoverished places in Africa is the end result of our current system

What are you basing that on?

@@aperson2730 He is implying most oxford kids got into the university because they bought themselves in not through intensive studying

how aboutcrushing millions into poverty?

That's how the world works since the creation of time

Yeah, he sugercoats nothing and also is not afraid to call out the true cause of which we see all the horrible effects in all areas of life on this planet: capitalism. So many left or progressive people will call out the symptoms but dance around naming the disease. Anand does not give a fuck about dancing around anything and I love him for it.

But those paying the taxes are keeping other middle or lower middle class people employed as it should be. Truly wealthy people via their taxes pay for the military that protects American interests abroad. The system is more or less fair

Justified by the long debunked idea of an actual working trickle-down-effect ...

More videos more ad revenue.

And for all the brain *you* have, you haven't noticed that the full debate video is available, with the link being available here for months now.

​@@zahrans the link leads you to a playlist of each individual video. Granted it's easier to watch but viewers demand 60 to 120min podcast length video's which can play in the background without 8 or 9 interrupting reloads of video's starting at different sections of the debate. After a viral hit with Shashi Tharoor's segment about Indian colonisation the Oxford Union RU-vid team stuck to that format. It's rather the other way around, successful debat and conversation channels(Joe Rogan, TED, etc.) upload the entirety of the conversation. If a section stands out they upload that part to drive more traffic to the full debate video. At this point in this response I'm hoping someone from the union sees it - their debate videos should really be getting hundreds of thousands of views rather then the current 2 or 3k average per segment.

itloads I hope they stop dressing like their in district 1 of hunger games. That might bring more casual viewers too

@@cf6713 has nothing to do with formating of videos so viewers actually watch. What's the point of filming everything with a production staff if they get 2k viewers on what could be much loved content. Besides the obvious branding benefits for the university.

LOL. You know socialism has billionaires, right?

@@shauncameron8390 The goal of socialism is communism, which does not have billionaires. In socialism, the workers owning the means of production means, that each worker gets the full value of their labor; this results in the dissolving of the employer-employee relationship. So, no, the billionaire class as we know it would not exist.

This piece of shit does not stand a chance against Shapiro

dr nayk and in which way does one exploit the working class by writing a book and becoming wealthy?

@@erickcartman8758 accumulation of wealth. It is just people in shallow water hating people in deep water.

K

@Androva J. I honestly don't see anything wrong with that.

@Androva J. you elect the representatives who make provisions against such activities. The onus is on us, we the people, not on Facebook or twitter commercials.

please his definition of morality is the most pious thing possible. he would believe you are immoral if you are not fighting against every injustice everywhere even though 1) that would lead to you being ineffective at getting any one thing accomplished 2)would most likely involve an incomplete knowledge of intersectionality of these problems and their possible solutions thus could lead to worse outcomes 3)put equal focus on all issues of the world when in reality things do have a priority ranking. I don't think women slaves in the 1800's cared about environmental impact as much as slavery.

@@scotchy451 The aim of morality should be for the highest good possible, but simultaneously as you say problems need to be prioritized and dealt with in turn. These aren't mutually exclusive truths.

@@G-Rockman What is the ontological grounding for your normative, and somewhat circular, claim (The aim of morality should be for the highest good possible)?

There is nothing great about accumulating so much of the harvest that the village begins to starve.

It has , it's time

Right, I was chatting with a socialist once as she typed away on her HP laptop, and told her right now she's benefiting from capitalism and billionaires. People want to have their cake and eat it too.

Dino Archon BINGO. Absolutely spot on. The fact that nobody can name even that first billionaire who hasn’t made us all richer in some way is all the proof we need.