Imagine being as wealthy as Jeff Bezos. You could “quit life” at any point and live out your remaining years without a care in the world, and you could do so millions of times over. Think of how many people probably deserve to do this, just after this pandemic, but will die poor.

Is that a just world? I do not think so.

These aren’t profound thoughts of any kind, but in thinking them I know there are many who simply conclude that life is not fair or, given that it’s his money, Bezos may spend it as he pleases, but these people appear to miss the point.

In my experience, though, these justifications are often used by those who seem to believe they will one day be in a position of power themselves. Therefore, they wish to justify power with a premise akin to the Divine Right of Kings, albeit one closer to an argument from nature.

It would then follow that those with “power” are naturally deserving of it and therefore it is not our place to question it. For them, power is the only thing that checks power, and not, say, moral reasoning. But this is a fallacy, for moral reasoning itself is a kind of power.

Nature has birthed in us the faculties to experience life and to quantify it. As such, we are the only reliable measures of life. We are at the same time subject and object in relation to life. We determine it’s value. We determine what is fair.

If we collectively agree that a world shouldn’t exist in which people can possess as much wealth to live life a million times over without making a dent in their fortune while others struggle their entire life to be fed, clothed and receive medical care, then it should not exist.

Nature has birthed in us the capacity for reason, not relieved us of it. It is reason we must use to assess and assign value to human activity, for it is only those who live who can and must ascribe value to life itself and everything in it.