Should we strive for a world where billionaires are impossible?

The corona pandemic pushed more than 100 million people into extreme poverty, while Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are engaging in a private space race. In the Washington Post, director of the Fair Limits Project Prof. Ingrid Robeyns argues that this extreme wealth gap is not morally permissible.

Limitarianism

There is a general understanding of the poverty line, a line which indicates the income under which we agree that no one should fall. There is, however, no maximum to what someone can earn. The philosophy of limitarianism argues that we should construct a ‘wealth line’ over which no one should rise, in order to make the world a fairer place.

Fair Limits Project

“It isn’t morally permissible to have more resources than are needed to fully flourish in life,” argues Robeyns. She is the director of the Fair Limits Project, which focuses on the philosophy of limitarianism and investigates if limitarianism is plausible in the area of economic and ecological resources.