To think that we should all boycott the businesses of billionaires until they sort the situation of kids starving to death due to famine and war?

I agree - And as in most situations, nothing will change of course. It hasn’t stopped people waging war on each other or people starving.

If you take away any benefit to being rich then what’s the point in people building up businesses which employ huge amounts of staff (who pay tax)?

I think it’s an indicator of envy - because they aren’t rich they think nobody should be.

But many billionaires are helping.

Read this maybe it will help you understand what's going on: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/6/13/sorry-mr-gates-your-billions-wont-save-africa

" Bill Gates has committed the majority of his historic $200 billion fortune to Africa over the next two decades, with the goal of shutting down his foundation by 2045. These funds will target public health, education, poverty reduction, and agriculture."

"Jeff Bezos’s philanthropic efforts in Africa are primarily driven by the Bezos Earth Fund—his ($10) billion commitment to fighting climate change and protecting nature. The bulk of these initiatives focus on large-scale land restoration and the preservation of vital ecosystems like the Congo Basin."

"Jeff Bezos' ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has donated over ($385) million to Africa-based organizations through her philanthropic organization, Yield Giving. Her giving model utilizes large, unrestricted grants with no strings attached, trusting local leaders to decide how best to distribute the funds.Her giving across the African continent focuses on healthcare, girls' education, agriculture, and economic development. Some of the notable organizations she has backed"

And there are many more. You do realize Africa also has billionaires right? Why is it on Western billionaires to fix Africa? Why are you not calling on African governments to force African billionaires to help?

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.forbes.com/consent/ketch/?toURL=www.forbes.com/africa-billionaires/list" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.forbes.com/africa-billionaires/list/

What about all the African leaders who steal government funds in their countries and stash them abroad? Why are you not and at them? In Nigeria the healthcare system is a mess yet the Nigerian president travels to the UK and France for treatment and checkup instead of fixing his countries health system and then we have the brain drain where doctors and nurses have no choice but to move to countries like the UK and prop up the NHS due to failings of the Nigerian government.

YABU as, while I dislike wealth inequality and think it's a sign of a sick society that some individuals can be so unimaginably rich while others are barely scraping by, money isn't going to fix the global issues plaguing us.

Those issues need bottom up solutions that come from within the countries themselves - social and cultural shifts that can't be enacted by throwing money at countries.

Of course, providing financial support to organisations in those countries working for change would be useful, but then one has to decide who to support, and would need to somehow combat corruption, money or supplies being seized by the 'other side', and deeply ingrained cultural beliefs that stand against any change.

As in most situations, real change ultimately has to come from within.

Also i don’t believe that even the most vocal virtue signallers would actually do it themselves if they were in a position to.

The fundamental problem is that extremely rich people want to stay rich and are happy for the poor to stay poor. If the trillionaires got involved, the rich people in those countries would only offer access if they could financially benefit too.

Is it ethical for a foreign billionaire to even do this? In the UK we often feel suspicious of the influence that people like Rupert Murdoch have bought. Imagine something fundamental like our food supply being provided by a foreign billionaire?

Look at the colossal amounts of money spent on wars. There are individuals and companies benefitting from disasters like this and sleep at night. The best minds can’t solve complex issues like the Middle East. Do you really think that there is a magic number that would end the hatred that’s been going on since biblical times?

OP look up the Gates Foundation, Lumos, Welcome Trust, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Yield Giving, Bezos Trust and Bezos Earth Fund …. hth.

Can we just remind ourselves that most of the big businesses we know best are not actually owners by billionaires. Their shares can be bought by anyone and are mostly owned by investment funds, whose asset managers are investing money in their shares. In the UK those investment pots are often our pension funds, or our ISAs. So many of us are investing in these businesses, albeit often passively. And benefiting from their growth.

Hedge funds are not the largest owners of big businesses.

Those whose shares are not publicly traded (listed on the FTSE, NYSE etc) are mostly owned by private equity businesses. And some of their investors are billionaires.

The only place a wealth tax worked was Switzerland because it was small and all the other taxes low

No, it makes you naive. There have been billions of Western pounds/dollars whatever pumped into impoverished countries for many, many decades. It hasn't improved things because it's not just a matter of there not being enough money. It's much more complicated than that.

You want to put mega-rich individuals, who are very often at the head of companies with many moral questions hanging over them, and who have motivations and ambitions of their own, in charge of global politics.

Ok then.

Except for the thousands of jobs destroyed by creating the jobs to make Amazon share holders rich. I don't use Amazon not because of tax or rich owners but because they use their market strength to force small businesses into very unfavourable terms and if their products are good they force them off the platform and start supplying the product themselves. It is the abuse of their power that I dislike and it's this market abuse that is the basis for most rich people's wealth.
I don't even blame them. We elected people to regulate this market abuse but they just end up being bought off in one way or another. The reason we have such inequality in income is a failure in policy and leadership, and it's not getting any better.

Gabriel Zucman has interesting ideas around taxing wealth not work.
he proposes a 2% wealth tax with debate over starting level but he gives an example of 100 million dollars worth of wealth. Their wealth would continue to grow eg at 8% per annum rather than 10% and the tax yielded could fund civic society and health Service . He makes argument that they didn’t create the wealth from nothing - they’re a product of and benefit from society.

For this, read Gambling on Development and the Bottom Billion; both are great books. Aid only gets you so far in development; a huge part of it is down to the local elite not capturing the institutions and deciding they will do better by being the people who ensure that the institutions and the rule of law are working. The richest can do some good - see Bill Gates - but with all his money, they have only got so far.

I think we’re now at a stage where it is essentially impossible to boycott Amazon anyway. You might be able to avoid buying stuff from Amazon directly, but good luck functioning in society without using AWS. They run a significant portion of the internet.

😬😬😬😬 Yes - I used to have all the answers too 🤣

We will all do what we always do - try to get through life as well as we can and understand that compassion fatigue is real and not lose sleep over things that will never change.

Bill gates is giving away most of his money to benefit the poorest in society (eg malaria vaccines) but famine is mostly political unrest related to be honest

Sorry OP, you sound like me at thirteen before I had any clue about how the world works.

The internet isn’t a human right

How is it different?

Same tantrum.

It’s human nature though. If they have amassed a fortune then what’s the point if they are then made to give it away to help people who will be in exactly the same position in a few years?

If everyone on the planet all boycotted Amazon (including all the other services they provide), Bezos could close up shop, sit on his billions and the only ones who suffer are the people that rely on the company to make living (call centres, warehouses, third party sellers etc.

Boycotts for the reason suggested here don’t work.

Amazon actually do pay tax here. They pay plenty. Any they "avoid" is invested back in to improve the company.