Probably because it's impossible for a person to make a billion dollar in value without stealing from others.
Name me a single example that has made it up there without
- labor violations
- stealing profits from workers
- causing damage to the people who have worked for them
Note I’m pretty sympathetic to the argument that extreme wealth inequality (billionaires) are are symptom of a poorly configured economic system and should be minimised, but your hyperbole is off-putting. And it’s probably hindering rather than helping you make your point.
I'm a founder. I can tell you, external funding is as generous now as it's ever been, and in my network there are YC alumns (and 2-time alums) that would disagree with your take.
Also, we are in a golden age of bootstrapping, you don't need to raise to get a company up and running.
All this to say: Maybe just possibly capitalism isn't so bad? My dad is the manager of a gas station, and I am the founder of a startup with financial security. Anything really is possible when you work for it.
That's the best part, it isn't for a chunk of people. It destroys life for another chunk of people.
So yeah, maybe, to you, it's not bad. To others? It's fucked.
2. Do you consider all the supply chain related deaths, all the prison related deaths, all the civilians killed in America going after oil part of "people killed under capitalism?"
Ironically, you know who else thought the exact same thing, lavishing praise on capitalism? Karl Marx. Maybe educate yourself and open your horizons to something outside your narrow views. I have no problem with people being ignorant (nobody knows everything), but it's grating when somebody is proud of it.
> Anything really is possible when you work for it.
Actually nevermind, such naivete is mind-boggling.
1 is obviously a value judgement. 2 contributes nothing to the discussion.
Communism is an outright religion - there is no experimentalism, outcomes are preordained, and no results may change the assumptions. The only thinking is telological. If anybody pays X for a product and sells it for X + Y where Y is greater than zero it is automatically exploitation by their conveniently loaded definitions.
1. The idea that loaning it out isn't providing any value in itself is objectively wrong. If it provides no value is ridiculous in even a preindustrial economy - let alone an industrialized one where economies of scale and large capex are why markets wind up dominated by big players.
2. The idea that it is a small monopoly is also objectively wrong - money is fungible and it doesn't matter if you get one million in a loan from one entity or ten thousand ones. Even if we accept the standards of morality "if it is a good thing" is irrelevant a question as asking if it is a good thing that vehicles use electricity or break down fuels to move. Those are the mechanisms by which it works - we don't have an option of movement without expending energy. Similarly if you ask for all loans to be free to avoid "exploitation" there is no reason to lock up the money in delays and put it at risk.
Your response is typical of psudo-intellectuals called out on their bullshit. It's a lot easier to say "I'm right regardless of the facts" instead of directly addressing the points raised.
Provide a rebuttal or stop with your nonsense.
2. "Communism is an outright religion - there is no experimentalism, outcomes are preordained" is a case of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong. I don't even know what I'm supposed to say to this other than "pick up a book".
3. "If anybody pays X for a product and sells it for X + Y where Y is greater than zero it is automatically exploitation by their conveniently loaded definitions." Again, this is the idea of "communizm" I had when I was 12 or 13. As you can imagine, either everyone who is a socialist or anarchist or left-libertarian or whatever is a complety drooling idiot, or this is a stupid straw-man designed to fool people with zero critical thinking skills.
4. "If it provides no value is ridiculous in even a preindustrial economy - let alone an industrialized one where economies of scale and large capex are why markets wind up dominated by big players." Again, this is circular reasoning: in the current system providing capital is a valuable service, therefore the system is good since in the system the system is good... do you see what I mean? You cannot justify a thing by reasons internal to the thing itself.
5. "Those are the mechanisms by which it works" See above. I'll also add: capitalism (and specifically our current flavour thereof) is not a Law of Nature: it is the result of a very specific course that history took over the past 300 years. Alternatives are possible. Criticism is legitimate. Ambition to improve is a good thing.
Shall I go on? I learned it's not useful to talk with people who are not in good faith from the get go. Why bother?
First-a, he deserves what he has (as far as you can make such a statement in a complex society). He provided some value, got paid for it, he now takes a risk helping others do the same. The only difference between him and me consuming X, providing X+Y value, and using the Y to buy tiny parts of public companies to have some claim on their profits is scale.
First-b, and yes, if someone came and took away my Y for "fairness", I would start working less to just make what I consume. And I mostly /like/ my job, unlike most people.
Second-a, after critically thinking about it, I actually believe it's better for people like him to allocate capital, instead of either some "democratic process", or even worse some semi-elected bureaucrats. I wish we could have people like Bezos, Buffett, Graham, etc. run MANY MORE things (generally speaking, not attached to a particular implementation). We have all of history to indicate who does things better. Second-a-a, even if we were to say "free market is bad in this area, no free market is allowed [e.g. healthcare or housing]" (to be clear, I disagree with that, but let's say we did) I would prefer to install a conventionally-defined-self-made billionaire from another industry to run said area, instead of a govt bureaucracy like we do now.
Third, as others have mentioned you don't have to take his money, you can bootstrap (and then get rich and loan money just like him).
Second-b, combining second-a and third in a more narrow scope, do you think either voters or bureaucrats would fund startups (and, do it better than the likes of VCs)? It has happened, but rarely and almost always in response to an existential threat. Viaweb FAQ says they were financed by angels to the tune of $2m 90ies-dollars. What are the alternative sources of funding you envision in the "fairer" allocation structure for such startups, be it Tesla, Google, or Viaweb, given their success rate?
I have a $1m MMR startup that I founded without any external funding - but mostly because I was naive to such structures existing at all. I would have saved years of struggling if I had an initial cash infusion of a few hundred thousand.
Idk about you, but I would trade 10% of my $1m MMR company for more free time during my early 20s.
Yes. But again, not a lot of options to avoid it as you said.
Like for example just build something and start selling it and make money.
That's what I did. Millions others have too. You are on Hacker News, you are probably a hacker, you can just create assets out of thin air!
> "Warren Buffett has made his money using ... land ownership and exclusivity ... a human construct"
Well, sheesh... if your starting frame of reference is that "capitalism is stealing by definition", then there's really no further discussion to be had.
Why not? Is Capitalism the universal truth or something that we can't touch or change?
Nothing like this to show you're open to healthy discussion.
But the comment you replied to had a subtantitive point about the linked article, and you replied to a tertiary part of that post with a political message (no billionares exist without theft/etc) that had nothing to do with the thrust of the conversation.
That led me to believe you were being a troll. You engaged in a way that seemed straight forward so maybe you are just somebody who feels very strongly about a political view.
Okay, let me try. I'll go with Jerry Seinfeld.
What labor violations did he do? Who did he steal from and what damage did he cause to the people who worked for him?
All the staff that made his shows possible. All the workers that made his ability to make tons of profit possible, and they saw essentially no real amount of it.
She made something appealing to hundreds of millions of people, and they willing gave her money for it. The horror.
Maybe we should put a limit on charity giving? Or do you have an official list of Authorized Ways to spend money?
The actual problem is people can use wealth to corrupt others, e.g., buy political influence. But instead of railing on that, you can't see that you're fighting against value generation itself.
Punishment, for writing such addictive tales of wizardry!
You and that other guy clearly have a bone to pick.
And her books sold well enough before the movies and merch.
There are ~500mm Harry Potter books in print (all years, all languages). Author royalties are between 6 and 15 percent of the cover price. She would definitely have been wealthy, but not billionaire.
What's your actual "you've provided too much value to willing participants" amount? If she negotiated royalties of 20% she would have been a bad person? If she put her money in an index fund and it doubled every 10 years, she'd become immoral later?
In my opinion the Labor Theory of Value is a tautology.
not all billionaire are good, and not all are bad.
Minecraft became what it is because of the third-party developer community. They saw nothing of it.
> j.k. rowling
Has already been explained. But also, her editors, and the fact that copyright/intellectual property is still a govt backed monopoly.
> George Lucas
Same deal as J.K.
critically, they did so voluntarily and for the compensation of entertainment, passion, and helping themselves.
rowling and lucas didn’t harm workers nor did they violate labor laws. complying with IP laws was not in the criteria, nor should it be.
So you mean they're paper billionaires by "owning the means of production" Yeah. I know. :)
Can you explain? If they have options, and they probably do, then it will go up. What is your question based on?
I don't know how you could misread this badly. A paper billionaire means that they don't have billions in the bank; it's just the sale price of the last share that was traded in their company multiplied by the number of shares they own. It's not real, and any attempt to confiscate shares will not result in real money being given to anyone else. Shares are only worth real money when they're sold, and no one will buy shares in a confiscation world.
People act like we don't understand how "value" and "equity" works.
We do. We don't want money. The idea is to own the means of production. Amazon is nothing without its workers. No company is anything without its workers. The workers deserve to be represented in that huge equity.
Every time you say things like "we" and "people" you discredit yourself. It's a pointless statement. You can have equity; start a company, or join a company (such as Amazon) that awards share options.
That becomes the crux of this. "Billionaires are bad" is a discussion about the system that actually allows them to exist, rather than the people themselves.
Warren Buffett has made a ton of his money using state-backed monopolies like real-estate. Land ownership and exclusivity, even when the land use is unproductive, is a human construct after-all.