Private Wealth and Common Wealth
The concept of compound empowerment stresses the degree to which the acquisition of great private wealth depends upon common structures. For example, while a wealthy individual such as Bill Gates might owe his status as the world's richest man largely to his intelligence and innovation, his ability to earn and maintain his fortune was and is compounded by public resources held in common. According to theorists such as George Lakoff, the prominent cognitive linguist and founder of the non-partisan think tank the Rockridge Institute, Bill Gates "built his company with many employees educated in public schools and universities. Tax-funded research helped develop computer science and the Internet. Trade laws negotiated and enforced by the government protect his ability to sell his products abroad. These are but a few of the ways in which Mr. Gates' accumulation of wealth was empowered by the common wealth and by taxation."
The inextricability of private wealth and public resources was influentially formulated by the political philosopher John Rawls, who argued that wealth is arbitrary from a moral point of view, as those factors that enable the accumulation of wealth in a society are largely contingent--that is, are the outcome of luck more than of morally relevant activity.
Read more about this topic: Compound Empowerment
Famous quotes containing the words private, wealth and/or common:
“Oh! a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon,
If you listen to popular rumour;
From morning to night he’s so joyous and bright,
And he bubbles with wit and good humour!”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self- complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)