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.
I don’t disagree with a single thing you have just said, nor have I. But then, based on all that, would you agree then that the sentence “[A billion dollars] can only be stolen and exploited from other peoples’ labor” is counterfactual?
Because that’s the only point I’m making. I’m with you on the additional social responsibility that should be encumbant upon billionaires. I’m with you on fixing systematic issues that allow them to exist.
My one and only point for this whole thread is that you can be a billionaire without “stealing and exploiting other people’s labor.”
I think what we are getting to is the semantics of it. Theoretically, it should be possible to be a billionaire without stealing and exploitation. I think that in reality though, a billion dollars is so much money that’s its hard to see how a single person can amass that much wealth without being exploitative, intentionally or not. Even if you were given that much money, holding onto it would require investing into a system that is rife with exploitation.
I’ll admit that I’m by no means an expert on billionaires and there might exist some that made their fortune without exploitation. And I’m including indirect exploitation here. Maybe that’s another point of semantics, but its one that I feel very much matters in this context.
