> It is impossible to become a billionaire without exploting people.
Explain this to me using math not feelings.
Explain this to me using math not feelings.
Do enlighten us as to what actual labor creates $300,000 in real value every week, week after week.
Through this exploitation he created billions in value for himself and other capital holders.
That is the answer to the question: "How many of the top 50 billionaires in the world have NOT been in legal trouble for anti-worker, anti-consumer or anti-competitive practices."
Try it yourself! If you ask it to, Google AI Overview will even detail the infractions of each billionaire on the list.
And that still underplays their overall scope of culpability. As a lawyer, you are probably best positioned to appreciate how asymmetrically difficult it is for anyone but the most well-funded to realistically take these giant companies to court.
You need to quantify it for these lawsuits to support your point. The fact that these companies sometimes color outside the lines doesn’t negate the enormous value they create otherwise.
You know who else has lost tons of lawsuits and paid a huge amount in penalties? The federal government. 40,000 lawsuits are filed agains the federal government annually. The government pays out billions of dollars a year for various wrongdoing: https://settlementinsight.com/research/federal-government-pa.... By your logic, we can assume that the existence of these lawsuits and payments means that the entire value of the government can be attributed to exploitation.
In the US? most def. I don't even know where to start with all the exploitative practices of the government - Regan's strike busting is a good place to. And don't forget the institutional practices:
Yes, they create enormous value, but they get convicted of rule-breaking with such regularity and such large penalties that "coloring outside lines" is not a "sometimes" thing but rather a standard mode of operation. At that point it becomes impossible to separate the genuine value created versus the revenues generated from exploitation.
As an example, look into Project Bernanke, which is part of Google's convictions in the latest Ad Tech antitrust it lost, wherein they rigged all their ad auctions to benefit themselves: https://www.adtechexplained.com/p/google-project-bernanke-ex... -- now try to explain how we could separate that from the profits they made during all those years, which would also require one to consider how they profited from the lock-in they reinforced through that time.
> By your logic, we can assume that the existence of these lawsuits and payments means that the entire value of the government can be attributed to exploitation.
I never said "the entire value" (see point above about attribution) but yes, it applies to governments too. From the site you linked the top reason for lawsuits seem to be Breach of Contract, which does sound somewhat "exploit-y" to me.