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?
Because a billionaire isn’t “just as guilty” in an exploitative system. They are more guilty because they benefit more and they have more power due to their capital. If you can’t see that, then I guess we won’t ever agree.
Do you have a job? If so, you should know how hard it is to earn money. The level of effort required to even get minimum wage is usually astounding. And maybe you went to school and learned to do more skilled jobs, so you don’t have to work as hard as a minimum wage laborer. Maybe you can justify it as being smarter or more skilled and that’s fine. But do you think someone that “earned” a billion dollars actually worked ten thousand times harder than someone who earns 100k. Or a thousand times harder than someone that earned a million dollars. Or are that much smarter or more skilled?
In your original example, you talk about how and individual could make a game that could get 300 million in sales while ignoring that vast amount of effort it realistically takes to do so. Way more effort than a single individual person can do. Getting to those kinds of sales would take the effort of many people, so if a single person benefits more than the others involved in that effort, then they did so by exploitation of their labor.
But if becoming a billionaire is truly just luck, then what are they to do? If I gave you a billion dollars right now, out of the blue, no strings attached, are you now morally bankrupt because you’re a billionaire?
What if you leverage your power and capital to affect positive change (like Bill Gates for instance)? Do you still deserve the guillotine?
If you bankrupt yourself by giving every American a one time 4 dollar payout ($4 × 300mil Americans), are you now clean, or did you waste your chance to make a meaningful difference with your power and capital?
What exactly would you have to see Notch do now or have done in the past to make him not the villain in this narrative? What can he or could he have done to be morally in the right?
