I didn't say I put no effort into understanding upper class motivations. I said I don't need to sit down personally with billionaires to know that having a billion dollars is ethically problematic. I've read plenty about the upper class and about business culture, by Thomas Frank, for example. So that's maybe the hundredth time you've strawmanned my statements.

And since it's a comment from you, it wouldn't be complete without a bunch of quibbles too. Lo and behold, you take issue with the articles I cited, pointing to the distinction between the wrongness of gross inequality and the wrongness of the mere existence of billionaires or the impossibility of ethically earning access to that much money.

Do you understand that this quibble is like a microscopic anthill on top of a normal-sized anthill? The remarks I made about economics in the article were themselves only side points. But as a self-appointed policeman for online talk about economics, you seem ready to pounce on the slightest criticism. Again, you're protesting too much.

The fact that companies would go under if some illiquid assets in the shadow banking system were liquidated only shows how unethical the admittedly legal system of capitalism has become. Not enough respect is paid to the average worker, you see, so their livelihood depends unfairly on the gambling habits of the executives.

There's no chance the billionaire owner earns than much more of an income (or that many resources that make his net worth in the billions of dollars) than his lowly workers who make the company productive. This is a neofeudal system, as the billions of dollars of private wealth are generated by parking the money in unproductive activities on the stock market. The system is legal (but not ethical) because of the outsized impact of lobbyists for the wealthy class, who literally write the loopholes in the laws. Just by participating in a grossly distorted capitalistic system, we all behave unethically. And the more enmeshed we are in it, the more we're tainted by it. Hence, being a billionaire in this kind of system is morally dubious.