Keen On

Should being a billionaire be illegal? Or, at least, actively discouraged? That’s the argument at the heart of Ingrid Robeyns’ intriguing case against extreme wealth, Limitarianism. It’s an argument particularly pertinent in a week when Tesla is offering to make Elon Musk a trillionaire if he can reach certain sales targets. For Robeyns, an ethicist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, her arguments against extreme wealth are both moral and utilitarian. On the one hand, she argues that nobody truly "deserves" billions because economic success depends heavily on factors beyond individual control - genetic lottery, family circumstances, educational opportunities, and market timing. On the other hand, she contends that extreme wealth concentration actively harms society by undermining democracy, encouraging unsustainable consumption patterns, and creating inefficient resource allocation. While acknowledging that such reforms may take decades to implement, Robeyns floats the idea of wealth caps around