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Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

  > One of the common defenses of capitalism is that the capital owner is risking capital so should get to enjoy a disproportionate amount of their profits. The standard rejoinder is: "what exactly are they risking? If the capital owner is wiped out, they simply become a worker like everyone else".

That standard rejoinder is completely dismissive of how the capital owner came to be in the position of owning capital in the first place. That capital owner - or his ancestor - either worked exceptionally hard or took exceptional risks to get into that position.

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"Or his ancestor"? What are we, an aristocracy? Personally I don't think there should be any inherited wealth beyond a few million dollars but that's another story. Luckily, this hasn't been a big problem yet. The heirs tend to be very bad at maintaining or building their inherited wealth. Cornelius Vanderbilt II is an obvious exception.

But in the middle we do have an increasing problem of trust fund kids dominating industry. Hollywood is an obvious example. But even in the startup world, your education matters an awful lot. And you going to Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Yale has a lot to do with elite private schooling and all of it has a ton to do with the luck of birth not merit.

I'm actually curious who you think risked their fortune? Is it anyone in particular or is it just some romanticized idea? Bill Gates came from a privileged background. Jeff Bezos's parents had a quarter million in retirement savings to lend him in the 1990s and he was playing with investor money after that.

Now wealth creation seems to be taking other people's money and buying up industries with inelastic demand to extract wealth from ordinary people. Housing, medical care, vets, utilities, that sort of thing.

And then there's slavery and its aftermath. How much generational wealth was created from slavery? Even a century after Emancipation, we had the government creating wealth for white people with the GI Bill post-WW2. Free college and cheap mortgages. Who was taking a risk there?

You get sufficiently wealthy and you aren't allowed to fail. The government will bail you out.

I feel like James Cameron has never tried anything safe. He was a truck driver early on. Some dentists took a risk and financed a truck driver to make a movie.

> That capital owner - or his ancestor - either worked exceptionally hard or took exceptional risks to get into that position.

That’s nuts. The industrial barons of 19th century America neither worked hard nor took amazing risks. They were lawyers and bankers who manipulated stocks and broke unions.

When you suddenly limit a discussion to a very specific time and place, sure, you could discount any point ever made.

I live in neither the 19th century nor in America. The wealthy people I know all earned everything over the past three generations - three generations ago my people were completely devastated and many started off with no more than the single torn shirt they fled with.

Or they got lucky, or they took the capital from others by force or stole it.

But nobody answers the question of why that would allow them to treat others like basically slaves.

The standard answer is: but the others could do the same thing. Well, if everybody tried to become a capitalist at all costs then we'd be in a pretty bad place.

Not trying to argue on the downsides of capitalism, but what comes to mind is the Endicott Johnson Corporation. They paid decent wages to their workers during 1950s, but got overcompeted by Nike partly because they were unwilling to lower their wages to stay in business

  > But nobody answers the question of why that would allow them to treat others like basically slaves.

None of the wealthy people I know treat others like slaves. In fact my own grandfather was a slave.

Somebody worked hard; it wasn’t the rich guy.

The capital owner risks his status, the laborer risks his life.

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