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?
Sure, it’s theoretically possible. But that might account for less than 1% of currently living billionaires, if any at all.
Tempting to agree on the less than 1%.
Regarding millionaires, not billionaires, I can only think of one who sold a business and then started a Linux distribution : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth
Heh Canonical is a funny example, considering most Linux users steer clear of it because of it’s arguably exploitative practices in an effort to remain profitable.
I do think most, if not all billionaires have convinced themselves the ends justify their means. Zuck thinks he’s “connecting the world”. Bezos probably thinks the same thing Sam Walton did. Musk thinks he’s ushering in the next stage of humanity. On some level I’m sympathetic to Ubuntu’s cause; all tech companies harvest your data for profit, why not leverage that technique in order to bootstrap the prevalence of a FOSS platform.
But the point is, that’s just what has to happen to amass that level of wealth in the society we live in. You can be as noble as you want, you can get lucky and find yourself in a pile of cash, but to steadily climb that ladder to the billion+ territory will require you to exploit or be exploited.
Absolutely I’m willing to agree to that.
I am only pushing back on the statement, “it is impossible to amass a billion dollars without exploiting the labor of the working class.”
I certainly don’t think that’s the majority of billionaires. If your definition of exploiting the labor of the working class includes “having any employees that aren’t part owners of the business,” then of course the number of billionaires who can say that is vanishingly small.
But they do in fact exist, and I think the majority of people are aware of that. Therefore, making statements like “all billionaires exploited labor” makes the average person think your position is uninformed at best and disingenuous at worst.
I think there is a slightly different claim we’re each making, and it’s confused by the term “billion”. I think we both agree that it’s an arbitrary value that was used in the interest of an oversimplified claim above, but I think we can disambiguate the points we’re making if we generalize it.
Your statement that “it is possible to be an X-aire without exploitation of the working class” is technically correct for the value of X=billion.
But I think the claim I’m making (and the oversimplified claim that was originally made) is that: for any given point in time, in any given capitalist society, there is a value X beyond which you cannot reliably amass and retain wealth without unethical exploitation.
The post above set X at a billion, maybe it’s not a billion, maybe it’s 100 billion. 100 years ago maybe it was 100 million, and in 100 years it’ll be 100 trillion. But the point is that there exists a value beyond which ONLY exploitative practices can get you; or in other words, you will never be the richest man in our late-stage capitalist society by winning the lottery or through steady, ethical investments.
