RE: Child Labor; to the Extremes
If their actions didn't violate others' property and the market was not influenced by violent intervences, then we could say that they bring more good to the society than the 744 milion people. For example, someone invents a television and thus he gets really really rich, but he gets rich only by bringing good to the society (again, if the market is not influenced by violence: forcing others to pay someone - subsidies, etc.). In our society, we cannot precisely measure the good brought to the society by someone, because the market IS pretty much under control of the state (which acts violently). The inventor do better also because of patents, but on the other hand, he has to pay taxes... also numerous regulations help him, because smaller firms cannot handle them so easy, and so on.
First of all thanks for your answer, this is an important point to discuss, here and everywhere.
In my opinion, you can't say that 3 individuals bring more good to society than 744 million people. I mean, you can, but that's an obscene statement whether we are talking economy, society and, it is most definitely obscene, if we are talking ethics. And, forgive me, but your read on the correlation between merit and wealth seems naive at best. Do you really believe that most of the sickly rich got rich because they were good at inventing stuff? Nah man, they were good at having others inventing for them and then taking the credit, at exploring cheap labor, at lobbying politicians, at sacrificing Nature in sake of profit. I know I sound all "conspiracy-theory", but apart from some exceptions that's how big money was made - by putting a price tag on everything else.
I agree with you that the markets are under control of the state and this is a discussion that would fill a book, but economics came to find that in many instances the optimal result does not came from Adam Smith's invisible hand, but by it being nudged a little bit one side or the other. Which means a laissez-faire economy does not provide the best solution. It is also very liable to be corrupted as for example the current market of real state, diamonds, pharmaceuticals, and on and on and on...
I am glad that you are interested in this topic. Thank you. :)
The inventor of TV was just an example and every entrepreneur has his unique way of "bringing good to the society". Somebody can even employ cheap labor from poor countries and, as written in the article, that's not a bad thing.
As I said, state acts violently and every entrepreneur want to have profit, so it is much easier to lobby at politicians and get regulations that harm the competition. That's not a problem of those entrepreneurs, but a problem of the system. Greed is a beneficial thing in the free market, because by satisfying the most urgent needs they get the biggest profit.
Sacrificing nature in sake of profit, well... that is not something inherently bad. I think that everyone should do with his property, what he thinks is the best. Today, there is not a big market need for protecting the environment, because the state assume this role, so almost nobody does that. That's a similar thing as protecting culture.
I can agree with you that nudging the invisible hand can bring better results in a certain industries. If you order people to pay taxes to you and you then transfer most of this money to, for example, healthcare, then of course you would (probably) have better healthcare than on the free market. But politics is a game of priorities. As a politician you constatly argue with somebody what's best for the people. Where to put money. Why would a politician have a more reasonable judgement than those who are involved? I think that I can decide things about my life better than a politician, who is a part of system that is highly inefficient and has no idea what my priorities are... through the free market, there are expressed the real needs and I have no idea why should the state get better results even if there was no inefficiency.