Of course very few would succeed or become billionaires but in the process they will create jobs and companies and tremendous value for a society that needs that much more than it needs the current wailing and gnashing of teeth against the "evil billionaires" that tried and succeeded.
What makes you think they didn't? There are hundreds of thousands (or way more) who 'failed' for every self-made billionaire.
P.S.: What makes you think Amazon had no competition ? Were there no other booksellers, or generalist stores selling books ?
Yes, and look how entrenched they have become. Search engines, for example, are dominated by Google holding 80%+ for well over a decade. Even Bing, with Microsoft's deep cash coffers, can't get above 9% [1]. Facebook just went ahead and bought the biggest threats (Whatsapp, Instagram) or copied the features of competitors to destroy them (Snapchat). The only threat in the social media marketplace comes from TikTok, who are backed by the Chinese government. Twitter is tiny and Musk is driving it to the ground. Amazon, while "only" at 38% market share in e-commerce, still leaves everyone else including Wal-Mart in the dust [2]. Microsoft utterly dominates the PC and laptop market [3] as well as the office suite market [4].
Even with these multi-billion companies fighting against each other, they can't manage to land any kind of significant blows - so how should a small startup stand a chance?
> P.S.: What makes you think Amazon had no competition ? Were there no other booksellers, or generalist stores selling books ?
Amazon had no competition online, mostly because the competition was asleep at the wheel. And by the time the competition woke up, it was too late - and now "classic" book stores are dying out left and right, not to mention other kinds of specialized stores. Here in Munich, all the small electronics specialty stores closed down, even famous chain Conrad closed down because they couldn't compete any more.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/274255/market-share-of-t...
[3] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
[4] https://blogs.gartner.com/craig-roth/2022/08/02/market-share...
For instance :
How rich are your parents?
But I have nothing against people who grew up under a humane system, got help from parents or VCs and made something of themselves. Because I know plenty of bums who had everything they ever needed and did absolutely nothing with it.
It is not possible for everyone to successfully exploit others. You need some victims, too.
If you start from the assumption that people should live and die under reasonable expectations of health, growth and participation in labor, able to bring up their children to aspire to a better living standards than their own, then progressive policies will make sense.
If you start from the assumption that people deserve the life they have and everyone can pull themselves from their bootstraps, and only thing people lack is ambition and hard work, then the progressive policies will sound like stealing from the successful people.
I personally believe that corporations should exist to serve their customers, their workers and then the shareholders, in that order.
> people should live and die under reasonable expectations of health, growth and participation in labor, able to bring up their children to aspire to a better living standards
But I have enough real-world experience and I've been lied to by enough politicians to know that we will never get that through policies. We can only get it though the same mechanisms that pulled us out of poverty and exploitation and offered us this amazing bounty of choice we are enjoying every day in non-government-controlled-domains: free markets.
This is why I support less restrictions and more opportunities for companies and startups.
> I personally believe that corporations should exist to serve their customers, their workers and then the shareholders, in that order.
I do not believe these are separate classes and instead they should mix together instead: anybody should be able to become shareholder at the company they work or consume from, start their own company or simply work for whomever they want.