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 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.
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.
I don’t think this is semantic though. The initial post said that “Nobody earns a billion dollars. It can only be stolen and exploited from other peoples’ labor.”
That statement does not read as “they were at least involved indirectly in some behavior at some point in their life that was in some way unethical.” It is purporting a direct relationship between their achieving a billion dollars and an active exploitation of others direct labor. That is why I pushed back against it.
And here is my issue with including indirect exploitation in the consideration. It vastly waters down culpability. A billionaire is just as guilty of indirect exploitation as you or me or the Pope. There is literally no action at all that one can take that I couldn’t make some argument for being a form of indirect exploitation. So when you say that billionaires are exploitative for indirect exploitation reasons, it seems churlish. It loses all meaning because it’s basically tautologically true. Why should I care about it if the person telling me that the billionaire is exploiting people is actively and continuously engaging in the exact same type of exploitation?
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.
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 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.
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.
I don’t think this is semantic though. The initial post said that “Nobody earns a billion dollars. It can only be stolen and exploited from other peoples’ labor.”
That statement does not read as “they were at least involved indirectly in some behavior at some point in their life that was in some way unethical.” It is purporting a direct relationship between their achieving a billion dollars and an active exploitation of others direct labor. That is why I pushed back against it.
And here is my issue with including indirect exploitation in the consideration. It vastly waters down culpability. A billionaire is just as guilty of indirect exploitation as you or me or the Pope. There is literally no action at all that one can take that I couldn’t make some argument for being a form of indirect exploitation. So when you say that billionaires are exploitative for indirect exploitation reasons, it seems churlish. It loses all meaning because it’s basically tautologically true. Why should I care about it if the person telling me that the billionaire is exploiting people is actively and continuously engaging in the exact same type of exploitation?
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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.