commissioner.org
| Source | Bill Lear |
| Date | 05/02/02/01:18 |
| I'm curious about how social wealth is accounted for in ... well, accounting. Suppose I park Bill Gates on the moon and hand him a menu. On the menu are the things that he might need to build a company. It might read, in no particular order: Item Price State Protection of Corporate Formation General Law Roads Sanitation Clean Air, Water Health System Educated Workers Food Inspection Consumers Computers & Electronics Basic Science Social Norms Imagine the price that would be put next to just one of these. Take "Educated Workers" for example. This requires a massive investment in each person, from cradle to adulthood, by parents, teachers, others. They have to teach them all sorts of lessons, give them all sorts of support. Imagine if each of these were enumerated: Item Price Shoe Tying Nose Blowing Bottom Wiping Showing difference between up and down Reading Writing Arithmetic Computer Science This list could be extended to dozens of pages. Each item would be subject to similar breakdown, and it would be an exponential cost. Each person who taught the person was taught by someone else. My parents would need their cut, so would my grandparents. And on, and on, and on. Pretty soon, the tab is pretty big. Gates would need to shell out about $400 GaTraZillion dollars to create what he needed to create Microsoft. $400 GaTraZillion minus Bill Gates' wealth is about $400 GaTraZillion. Bill Gates owes society about $400 GaTraZillion on his $50 billion. Is there a good justification Gates' private wealth accumulation --- a donation, really --- at the expense of society? Has anyone made a serious attempt at such an accounting --- in the rich detail that one might need to hand a bill to someone like Bill Gates who once said "the resources under [my] command are really society's resources"? |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho