Those who have to work capture almost all of society.
It’s a little odd to clump everyone into the same bucket of wealth.
It’s a little odd to clump everyone into the same bucket of wealth.
1. Capitalists control our society, and live completely different lives than the rest. A typical CEO is certainly quite privileged, and may even work their way up to true wealth eventually! But at the end of the day, they're still clocking in for at least 40 hours a week to do something they'd rather not do, and their life would be completely upended if they had to stop working for some reason. The difference between Pichai and Bezos dwarfs the difference between Pichai and me for these reasons, IMO.
2. Capitalists directly control ~50% of the capital in the US last time I checked. It makes sense to split any given pie in half IMO, at least to start!
I don’t understand: Pichai is a billionaire.
Obviously the line can be hard to draw for most (intentionally so, even!), but at the end of the day there’s people who work for their living and people who invest for their living. Besides not having to work, investors are very intentionally & explicitly tasked with directing society.
Being raised in the US, I often assumed that “capitalism” meant “a system that involves markets”, or perhaps even “a system with personal freedom”. In reality, it’s much drier and more obvious: capitalism is a system where the capitalists rule, just like the monarchs of monarchism or the theocrats of theocracy. There are many possible market-based systems that don’t have the same notion of personal property and investment that we do.
Looking it up, it seems that marxists use the word "capitalists" to refer to the class of owners of capital. I've always used "capitalist" to refer to a market-led country or to people who believe in capitalism. My dictionary helpfully uses "capitalist" to mean anything related to capitalism.
At the very least, I'll have learnt something from this conversation :)
Also, the Capitalists are good at keeping thing hidden from us. For example, we do not know how they arrive on Earth. I certainly don't believe they aren't born to a mother and a father like the rest of us.