Billionaires. No one needs this much money and it’s not helpful to have this much hoarded.
We get it, you won at capitalism, now actually contribute to the world around you
Nobody earns a billion dollars. It can only be stolen and exploited from other peoples’ labor.
Out of curiosity, let’s say I’m a video game developer and I make games by myself (no team). I have a hit success and sell 300 milion copies worldwide for an average of $20 a piece and am now a billionaire.
Was that money stolen or exploited? If so, how? If not, how does that jive with your stated position?
You’re right that the claim that “being a billionaire requires exploitation” is massively oversimplified. But the situation you’ve described is essentially winning the lottery. Yeah, you put the time into think of, and execute on an idea, but everything else, from having the time to work on a possible flop, to it being a hit with 300 million people is ultra luck-based. 1000 people could do the exact same thing, and 1 might hit it big. It’s gambling.
A more accurate phrasing of the original statement is: the only way to reliably amass billions of dollars in wealth is to exploit a supply/demand gap to the point of unsustainability.
A small business that operates with integrity, prioritizes the wellbeing of their society over their profits, doesn’t price gouge, and doesn’t discourage healthy competition will never become worth billions. They will always lose to competition that is willing and allowed to forego ethics for profits.
So 100 people could try your strategy of making a game that goes viral, and none of them are going to do it, most probably won’t even make a profit. But then 100 people could try the strategy of exploitation, and they’re going to reliably turn a profit. We allow a society where exploitation is a good investment.
Regardless of what people think of Peter Thiel he says out loud exactly what is wrong with late-stage capitalism: competition is for losers.
Firstly, it’s no more luck based than any other method. There are less than 3000 billionaires in the world. If there was an even pseudo-reliable system to become a billionaire, there would be more than 0.00004% of the population who’ve managed it.
And selling a popular video game is just as much “exploiting a supply/demand gap” as any other method. You have an effective monopoly on an asset that people want.
All that to say, I’m pushing back on the “massively oversimplified,” because it’s not, it’s just counterfactual.
I wouldn’t have minded if the OP had said “the overwhelming majority of billionaires got there by exploiting the working class.” That’s just as “massively oversimplified” as what they did say, but isn’t objectively false.You’re not describing a situation where your made a series of investments with a high ROI, you’re describing a “one-hit-wonder” scenario. Ask any successful game developer and they’ll all (sorry, the overwhelming majority will) tell you that making a viral game as you’ve described is hugely luck-based.
Similarly, all (sorry, the overwhelming majority) of those 3000 billionaires would agree that you don’t amass their amount of wealth via a one-hit-wonder. Yes, it involves the fortune of having the opportunity to exploit others (usually born to already wealthy families), but then also requires a pattern of exploitation (I think they’ll be less willing to admit that one. Maybe Theil would.)
If you’d like to adjust your hypothetical scenario to not be based off of a one-hit-wonder, and instead model a sustainable pattern of good investments, go for it. But I believe I’ve already addressed that possibility with my “small business” example in the previous post. It simply doesn’t happen.
Yes, anything that turns a profit is based on a supply/demand gap, the key word I used was “unsustainablely”. I’m not talking about selling a video game for $100 when players want to pay $20, I’m talking about selling the cure for a disease for $10000 when it costs $1 to make. Price gouging. Exploitation.
So, I just looked at the list of the top ten billionaires. It includes: Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook (one hit wonder) Jeff Bezos: Amazon (one hit wonder) Bill Gates: Microsoft (one hit wonder) Larry Page: Google (one hit wonder)
There are several other examples in the top ten list that are lesser known but also one hit wonders, but even if there weren’t, that’s 40% right there.
I suppose you could argue that those companies do more than one thing, especially Google, but the vast majority of the cash flow for each is behind one product or line of products.
The only differentiator between any of them and Notch is that Notch was a one man team, and therefore wasn’t “exploiting the capital generated by his employees.”
And let’s be real here. You say that a small business can’t grow to be a multi-billion dollar business? Tell that to literally any of the above. Microsoft started in Gates garage. Facebook was a college project. Almost all businesses start as small mom-and-pop shops. Some do in fact become multi-billion dollar businesses. Just not the vast majority because, again, it’s based on luck.
And look, you keep circling back to try and paint what I’m saying as “it’s fine for billionaires to price gouge medicine and stomp homeless people to death” or something. That’s not what I’m saying no matter how many times you circle back to it.
To repeat ad nauseum, the only point I’m making is that it’s in fact possible to become a billionaire without exploiting other people’s labor. Full stop. No other point beside that. If we agree on that point, then we are fully in agreement. That is, again, the only point I’m arguing.I just looked at the list of the top ten billionaires. It includes: Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook (one hit wonder) Jeff Bezos: Amazon (one hit wonder) Bill Gates: Microsoft (one hit wonder) Larry Page: Google (one hit wonder)
Not a single one of these hit billionaire status via a one-hit-wonder. Every single one of them did so via a pattern of exploitation.
Sure, some of them might have had a one-hit-wonder that resulted in their first few million. But to keep climbing past a billion required steady, consistent, methodical, unethical exploitation and anti-competative practices. These are the poster-children for exploitative billionaires in our society.
You say that a small business can’t grow to be a multi-billion dollar business? Tell that to literally any of the above.
I didn’t say that. I said that (the overwhelming majority of) small businesses cannot become a billionaire company without a pattern of exploitation.
the only point I’m making is that it’s in fact possible to become a billionaire without exploiting other people’s labor…If we agree on that point, then we are fully in agreement.
Sure, it’s theoretically possible. But that might account for less than 1% of currently living billionaires, if any at all. Do we agree?
You are talking about Minecraft level success and even that took many years of success and being bought by one of the largest companies in the world to reach that many sells.
I am talking about that level of success, yes. I in fact was using it’s numbers and exact case information, lol.
Notch is a billionaire. The original claim was that no one becomes a billionaire without stealing or exploiting the value of the work of the laborers. My question then is, the value of whose labor did Notch steal or exploit to become a billionaire?
Note: He is also an awful person, so setting that aside for the moment. He’s not awful in a way that directly relates to the question at hand.
So really he made his money from selling his company, not just from the game sales itself. And I would argue that he more or less got lucky more than he “earned” it, which I think he has said as much in interviews before.
I can’t really speak to if he directly exploited labor, but I think we can pretty safely state that Microsoft has in fact done so repeatedly, and so indirectly at least, Notch benefited from that as well.
Now does that make him morally corrupt for taking that offer? Maybe. But I think any one of us would take the same offer if given the chance. But the reality of the situation is that getting rich from this kind of success is very slim, and even then the labor and effort involved is very much disproportionate to what others are earning for much more effort. And if he was taxed at a rate where is was no longer a billionaire, but just a millionaire, then his quality of life very likely won’t change too much while many other people would benefit, assuming that tax money is actually going to public services, that is.
The issue I’d take with that is that it’s hardly any more or less “luck” than any other billionaire.
There’s less than 3000 billionaires in the world. It’s not like the other 2999 were wildly more qualified and had the perfect strategy that inevitably and directly led to their billionaire status.
And while he did become a billionaire by selling to Microsoft, he would have even without that most likely. The game has sold enough copies that it would have made him a billionaire, even without the sale to Microsoft.
And I think it’s unfair, even if that wasn’t the case, to lay the sins of the buyer at the feet of the seller, when the seller isn’t otherwise doing anything wrong. It’s basically the “no ethical consumption under capitalism” thing. There is no one he could sell to that wouldn’t be “unethical”, and therefore he’d be morally obligated to never sell it to anyone. He’s as “morally corrupt” for that as any of us are when we shop at a grocery store or buy/rent housing.
And I said it elsewhere, I am in no way arguing against him being appropriately taxed on this income (or potentially standing wealth). I simply push back on the idea that billionaires can only become such by being morally bankrupt exploiters who stomp on the heads of millions of the proletariat to get where they are.
Are there some like that? Absolutely. Is it the vast majority? Depends on how you define “stomping on the heads of the proletariat,” but it’s probably a good chunk at minimum. But the only requirement is luck. Not cruelty or exploitation.I’m all for progression tax structures. I’m all for taxing the rich. But statements like “all billionaires got their money by exploiting the poor” makes one look, at best, uncritical of your own positions. It’s counterfactual name calling of the out-tribe, the same as calling everyone you disagree with a Nazi.
Every billionaire are where they are at by being at least somewhat lucky. In a lot of cases they are simply lucky enough to be born to the right family. Some have worked to get where they are, but its not just hard work or effort that got them there.
And I would argue that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and I would also argue that that is the case for just about any other societal system as well. After all, none of us can live without being a burden or hurting others at some point. That’s life. Its also more or less the concept of “original sin” that Christians go on about. Its fine to acknowledge that and only by doing so can society at large takes steps to reduce systematic harm where we can.
That being said, billionaires, by having more capital, have more power and influence under capitalism, so it can be argued that they get a larger part of the blame for systematic issues, especially as many of them do utilize their power to maintain the status quo or push for more harmful systematic policies. And the ones that aren’t actively pushing such policies are still benefiting from such policies. And they could donate their fortunes to charitable causes, but in my opinion that’s not something that we should have to rely on them doing and does nothing to solve the systematic issues at play.
At the end of the day, it’s its not as if its a black and white issue, but the statement that no one “earned” a billion dollars is largely true in the sense that if you work hard or put in the effort, you can make it. Even in Notch’s case, if he didn’t decide to sale to Microsoft, maybe he might still be a billionaire today, but would he have earned it himself? Its not like he was the only one working on the game even when he sold the company. I’m not sure what the compensation the others working at Mojang got, but if he continued to independently develop Minecraft, getting to 300 million sales requires significant development effort between porting the game to various platforms and ongoing content updates. If he ended up getting the majority of the payout, then he would have very likely did it at the disproportionately at the expense of other’s effort.
A billion dollars is a lot of money. Like a lot of money. I don’t necessary think its wrong to have the opinion that billionaires shouldn’t exist. At least in the system we have today. Now, I’d say that its the system that’s the problem, not necessary any individual billionaire, but if they get to wieild the power that comes with their fortune, then its fair to have more blame for it as well.
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Not all of that money goes to the developer, but also to the seller places and other places. You’d also still have to pay income tax.
Ideally, there’d just be a 100% income and wealth tax after having say, 1/10,000,000th of the world’s total GDP. Without any loopholes.
With a world GDP of approx. $ 102 trillion, or 102 billion if you use the long scale, that is about $ 10.2 million you would have at max.
I think it fair up until then, exploited after that. With that money, you can practically buy anything to your heart’s content anyways.
How about more brackets?
– Practical scenario –
Suppose you had a wealth of 10 billion. The lowest bracket is a 3 billionth of the world’s income, so say 34k. That’s taxed 0%.
The lower middle is from there til 1.6 billionth of that income, around 64k. Taxed 35%.
Upper middle, around 1.6 billionth til 1 billionth (around 100k), taxed 65%.
Upper, around 1 billionth til 1 millionth (10 million) of world’s GDP, has about 99%.
Highest has 1 millionth and beyond. Let’s assume the world’s GDP is 100 trillion for ease of calculation.
So, you have 10 billion. 10 bil - 10 mil. 9.99 bil, all removed, used for public works.
10 mil - 100k, 9.9 mil. Taxing 99% of that 9.9 mil gets 99k.
And so on, until you have a smaller but respectable amount to play with.
I think you misunderstand me. I don’t strictly disagree with anything you’ve said. I’m not sure that I’m on the 100% tax above a certain threshold idea, but I’m not terrible interested in debating it one way or another.
The point I was interested in was what makes it inherently exploitative to earn that much money? You repeat the claim (and clarify) that making anything above 10mil is exploitative, but what I’m curious about is the justification.
Typically, my understanding of when people say billionaires exploited the working class, it’s because they are pocketing the excess value of those that they employ. But we have real world cases of billionaires who employ no one.
In those cases, what have they done that is exploitative?
And to further clarify. I’m not asking why it’s unjust from an equity standpoint. I’m not asking why it would be better if that wealth was taxed. I’m specifically asking after the word exploitative.
Yeah we really need an upper limit for wealth. In video games you would eventually cap the score, and billionaires are far in excess of that. Reminds me of that episode of Ducktales where Scrooge celebrates that he has become so rich he no longer has to pay taxes because they cannot be calculated any more.
We would be ~1000 years in the future right now without Abrahamic faiths.
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Talked about this a ton with an LLM a couple months back. The thing is, there was never an alternative that captured a similar psychotic zealotry. All groups have their faiths throughout the same eras, but none match the exported hate, murder, and industrial scale slaughter of other humans like the Abrahamic faiths. Confusion Monks never invaded France. Buddhists never occupied Scandinavia. The hate, death, and constant conflict of the Abrahamic faiths are the absolute most toxic and harmful aspect of all of humanity. The most deadly conflict since WW2 has been in Africa over the last few years. Most of the west isn’t even talking about this. It is a Abrahamic in origin. Gaza is the same. It has all been like this for 2500 years of constant killing. Other places had minor issues, but they never exported and in the present, these others are mostly in decline. If you take away the Abrahamic faiths, I bet all are gone in half a millennia. The man was as schizophrenic as the nations and peoples he left in his wake. Taming the ghost of the worlds most psychotic killer changes everything for the better.
You’re getting religion mixed up with technology and opportunity.
There’s been plenty of violence, war, and extremism in the name of Buddha and Confucius. They absolutely can be used to justify genocide, just look at Myanmar. It’s very difficult to find a major religion that has never produced fanatical sociopaths.
Never on boats across seas and continents. Nowhere on earth now is really safe from the history and influence of colonialism. All of those expeditions carried a strong religious underpinning that was the primary capital motivation in case of loss. Myanmar is no exception. All of it only happened because it was underpinned by religious bullshit. Many cultures were motivated by trade in the past but none of those that only cared for trade ever had the kind of history of death accompanied by Abrahamic faiths. This is the primary commonality with all of the worst acts in human history in one form or another. Shedding this one awful thing would be the largest positive change possible. Abrahamic faith is the single greatest disease in all of history.
I am equally confident there will never be enough time
I’m an atheist and think we’d be better off if we moved beyond religion. That said, I don’t think it’s true we’d be so much farther ahead without it.
Looking at early humans I think religion was a competitive advantage, because it organized groups of people who might not otherwise have worked together. It allowed us to move beyond tribal affiliation, to create a common “operating system” for societies and conceive of and pursue multigenerational goals.
I think we can do all that stuff now without religion, but also think we need more explicitly defined structures and institutions to fill the role religion has played.
I really liked that in Raised by Wolves it was an alternate timeline where there was no Christianity.
Instead the religious fanatics eradicating the atheists were Mithraics.
Poverty. It’s honestly something I don’t wish upon my worst enemy and the fact I’ve seen so much shit due to it, it’s something I can never get back and now will have to endlessly live with the pain until the day I literally die.
Pocerty is crazy. When i grew up, i didn’t really know any poor people. The closest i got was a family that moved here from Sarajevo, because they had a war going. They weren’t poor, because we have a good safety net for things like that (for the most part.) when i got older, there was the occasional beggar in the city. When i was 20 ish, i went to canada for two weeks, and ithey had not only more beggars, they had different beggars. Like i have never seen someone going through a garbage bin to find food. I talked to a guy in a suit who was eating a donut that i threw away. He lost his job like 3 weeks ago and was on the street pretty much from one week to another. I’m not shitting on canada at all, it was just the first time that i left europe.
Religion
Well, I liked learning about the ethics some religions have like budhism and so on.
But I totally agree with that when I see various countries being controlled by religion.
That’s the thing though, most people don’t view a religion as an ethical lens, they view it as a dogma to be followed unconditionally under threat of eternal torture.
Religions, all of them
Trump
Nature abhorres a vacuum, and we could get someone worse instead, someone actually smart.
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Cancer
It’s kind of a side effect for us having regenerating cells. From what I understand it’s an umbrella term for a variety of diseases that emerge from us living long lives with - relatively - versatile/adaptable bodies. In some ways it’s amazing that our bodies work at all.
That said, it’s not easy to be philosophical about it when you or someone you know is affected. Lost a family friend to cancer just a few months ago.
Jordan Peterson
Canada supports this message. God I wish that fuck would close his fucking trap.
At the end of the day he’s a fragile human being who appears to suffer from moderately bad mental health issues. I’d argue that he is more of a symptom of something going wrong with our society than a cause, even if he does amplify certain undesirable viewpoints.
If he didn’t exist some other charlaton would get niche internet celebrity status by making hot takes from a similar perspective.
He causes no harm to the people who don’t like him but he has helped thousands of young men sort their lives out and get their shit together. This has objectively made a huge positive impact in the world.
He became popular by harming people.
He became popular by resisting government mandate on speech. He haven’t harmed anyone. He’s literally a clinical psychologist whose job is to help people.
Didn’t he lose the right to be a psychologist because he was harming people?
A quick google didn’t provide me with any information on that but I’m sure you will.
“An Ontario court ruled against popular clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson and is upholding an order for him to receive social media sensitivity training or lose his license to practice medicine… The court declared Dr. Peterson’s activities as harmful to the public and damaging to the profession of psychology, with his statements threatening to erode public trust… …He has not worked in clinical psychology since 2017,”
Article from August 2023 https://leaders.com/news/public-speaking/jordan-petersons-appeal-denied-requires-training-for-medical-license/
Behind the bastards podcast on JP https://youtu.be/v9zjjj8NP3g?si=_YSIx7AjAH4p-g3O
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/v9zjjj8NP3g?si=_YSIx7AjAH4p-g3O
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I don’t see it saying anywhere that he has lost his licence or harmed anyone. He doesn’t even do clinical work anymore.
the person he encouraged to kill themself?
he became popular by
resistingexaggerating and misrepresenting a governmentmandaterestriction on hate speechfixed that for you
He’s literally a disgraced neo-nazi.
Just young men?
Mostly young men. That’s his audience.
he encourages the idea that physical fun time is a human right
Care to elaborate on this? I’ve listened probably 20 hours of him talking but I don’t remember him saying anything like this. To me his core message seems to be that stop blaming the world for your issues and instead look in the mirror and sort your own life out first. He even became famous as the “clean your own room before you go out fixing the world” dude.
I said that euphemistically, but he’s quite famous for his teachings regarding the community known as incels which he describes as having been failed by society, mentioning his notion that they would be satisfied if society was built according to ideal conditions, which implies what they want should be a given, with incels being predominantly men, most of whom are self-convinced into thinking their situation is more than happenstance and almost never based on their own prior social conduct.
The belief in inherent entitlements and obligations, especially when they’re not even balanced, is the biggest reason society has succumbed so hard in the first place, which he even says when it doesn’t involve the interests of his target audience, yet in any discussion on sexuality, including asexuality, which his dismissal of is feeding into some of how we’re treated in the world, you’ll find him bringing up this train of thought.
The quote you linked is not from Jordan Peterson but a random twitter user called “TYL80737692”
If you want to know JP’s thought on incels you can look it up and hear it from the man himself rather than look for someone to intrepret it for you and add their own spin to it.
From the comments of the first video: “It’s ironic that mainstream media slandered Jordan Peterson as “King of the incels” when he routinely tells men that if women don’t find them attractive - it’s not the women’s fault - but men’s fault, and it’s each man’s responsibility to fix it.”
Advertising
Capitalism
Conservatism.
The only thing they “conserve” is a low age of consent.
Greed
Cancer.
Advertising, political parties and religions. All of them.
