Nothing Wrong With Buffet's Level Of Wealth

I disagree with Buffet's statement. There is nothing wrong with his level of wealth. There are two parts to Buffet's statement. First, he states it is wrong for anyone to have the level of wealth he does. He then claims that passing such wealth down generations “flies in the face of meritocratic society.” These are distinct points that should be addressed separately. Presumably, Buffet didn't break the law or use dishonest means to obtain his wealth; he obtained it through legal trades that were willingly carried out by all participants. According to the second principle Nozick's entitlement theory of justice, a person has the right to transfer their property to someone else if they want to, so long as the transfer is carried out legally.

For example, Nielson's theory of justice promotes equality of opportunity, which essentially means everyone should have the same ability to gain resources, and argues that in order for equality of opportunity to exist, there must be equality of conditions, meaning everyone lives in the same circumstances with the same access to resources. If person A has $10 and person B has $5, then person A only needs to gain $5 to have $15, whereas person B needs $10, so the two clearly have different abilities to achieve any given level of wealth. The difference is even greater if we allow for investment of wealth, since if A and B both double their money, the difference in their levels of wealth will also double. Passing down wealth obviously violates equality of condition, so it also violates equality of opportunity. This means Buffet's ability to pass down wealth is unjust under Nielson's theory. Although leaving an inheritance isn't allowed by Nielson's theory, Nozick (698) argues that implementing a patterned distributional theory of justice, such as Nielson's, would necessarily infringe on the freedom of the people. For example, we showed that passing down wealth is unjust under Nielson's theory, but the same logic applies to any transfer of wealth, since if society starts out with equality of conditions, and then one person transfers some wealth to another person, there would then no longer be equality of