If she meant "impossible" completely literally, then she is wrong.
If she meant "impossible" completely literally, then she is wrong.
"No I didn't mean this [virtuous example]. I meant the vast majority of [unnamed nefarious actors] which I don't need to elaborate about as their existence is obvious."
Once you say it's just hyperbole and you don't mean it literally, then the only way to prove it is a statistical argument.
"The overwhelmingly share of company founders and companies are bad and don't earn their money." is a big claim that requires more than vibes.
What counts as 'doing something bad' and 'cheating' clearly is subjective. I suspect Graham's opinion on the behaviour of a Zuckerberg or a Musk would be a little more flattering than mine.
Paul Graham feels the sorts of decisions one must make to wind up with a billion dollars are morally unobjectionable - but that's a 'vibes' issue, not an empirical matter. This is because any two people can judge the morality of business and product decisions differently.I see large companies selling things they ought not sell (eg: Meta glasses, Tesla FSD) and making malevolent decisions (eg: Google deprioritising search content, Amazon hijacking product searches). Those things probably bother Graham too, but I reckon I consider them more evil than he, since I have less reverence for the 'invisible hand of the market'
Whether my comments constitute a motte-and-bailey depends on whether a reasonable person would assume the "impossible to earn a billion dollars" statement to be hyperbole.