You're wrong.
Fundamentally it requires redistribution and a complete change of mindset.
Fundamentally it requires redistribution and a complete change of mindset.
An excellent critical comment is wasted on a shallow argument… your thinking assumes that reaching beyond the metaphorical ceiling doesn’t require standing atop those still struggling to reach the metaphorical floor… it absolutely and necessarily does. Worse, you seem to think that reaching for means that vastly outstrip your need is somehow noble. It isn’t… it’s pathetic.
What's "pathetic" are the ad hominems and insults the people in this thread have to resort to when they can't argue like adults. You're not right because you're angry, and you weaken your advocacy by trying to use your frustration as leverage over people giving reasoned arguments.
And even so, the work the people making the pencils for Jimmy would not exist without Jimmy. Jimmy, in yet another way, provides value. Jimmy figured out to put the wood with the graphite, not them. Who actually does it is irrelevant; or are you suggesting that if Jimmy kept his operation entirely mechanical, that'd be better?
Apart from this example being overly reductive and not rooted in reality, the hypothetical Jimmy would eventually be replaced by someone else who would invent this pencil.
There is no truth that needs a single person to be uncovered. There are infinitely many people able to invent the pencil given enough tries and time. This also makes the argument of original thought not being original.
We are made and influenced by our surroundings and thus the ideas we form must necessarily be a product of those surroundings.
So, even if Jimmy had the idea to "invent" the pencil, he will not be the first one who did. He might be the first one with enough capital to execute (as in buy machines and factories, hire workers and exploit them for their labor and scale the business to planet-scale) and this is where it gets ugly.
As I've seen it historically, here's the crux of your argument. "If not for this employer, some other person would have done what they did, so it's not even really their value."
The problem becomes the devaluation effect this has on ideation, which misaligns incentives away from innovation and progress. Since when do we presume someone would have done something, discounting the person who actually does? This wouldn't apply to the laborer who constructed the pencil, I observe. "Well, anyone could have constructed this pencil, so why value the production?" Nobody makes that argument.
Additionally, this devalues the organizational contribution of coordination between the lumberjack and the miner. Jimmy coordinates their raw materials into an environment where they can be combined in the first place. Even if he doesn't invent the pencil, he still creates value by building the environment for the job to exist. Absent someone in Jimmy's role, none of the pencil-construction jobs would exist.
Just because something seems like it _should_ be possible, doesn't mean that other worse consequences won't manifest.
It's not "should", it's "is". This is happening, all over the place, right now.
All the best.
That's ignoring the environmental impact of getting these raw materials. Value creation doesn't happen in a vacuum, and most people involved in the creation of that value don't get a share in the profits from creating said value.
This is absolutely not where most of billionaires' wealth comes from. You are being naive if you think this is how they make money.