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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

There are several founders of YC companies that are self-made billionaires and they post on this very forum.

Do you really think they made it on the "backs of society" through "corruption and bribery" rather than building a company that provides value to those willing to pay for it?

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If they made their money in a vacuum with no interaction to society then they would owe nothing to society. That isn't the case. They absolutely made their money on the back of society, including the decades of wealthy lobbying/bribery that came before them that has allows them to keep their immoral gains

We all interact with, benefit from, and pay into society.

Whether that value is real or whether that value was created just by the founders is something that needs to be discussed.

What does "value is real" even mean?

The internet was created by governments, much of its technical infrastructure through open source projects, and I’m pretty sure most of those billionaire companies had at least some employees (many of whom I assume were also educated in public schools and state universities).

So, yes, quite obviously, they made it on the “backs of society.”

We all pay taxes and benefit from "society". There's nothing special about it, and you too have the freedom to start your own company.

This presumes that societies are run and tax so as to provide equal benefits to all. This is disproven by, I dunno, the history of every society.

Taxes are not equally paid either. I'm not sure what your point is. Do you want to limit wealth? Do you want to ban entrepreneurship? Do you want communism?

You’re right. Workers now pay a higher tax rate than Capital owners:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/16/us-now-ta...

What I want is for the value workers create to be returned to them, not hoovered up by the wealthy in some distortive, unjustifiable scheme that prizes Capital ownership over everything else, including the lives and well-being of the majority of citizens.

Sure, I agree with removing capital gains taxes. Remove corporate income tax too. That would eliminate a lot of the discrepancy and tax loopholes.

But tax rates are meaningless otherwise. The top 1% pay as much as the bottom 90% combined, and the bottom 40% pay nothing at all.

>Do you want communism?

Yes

>Do you want to limit wealth?

Absolutely

No thanks. No need for an ideology that has killed hundreds of millions while keeping the ones the survived in poverty.

Any wealth inequality that exists in capitalism is only magnified in communism where an even smaller group of people have both political and monetary power.

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