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it's not a weak straw man. There are people who say this: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/aoc-accuses-billionaires-exploiting-workers-paying-s

it's not a weak straw man. There are people who say this: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/aoc-accuses-billionaires-exploiting-workers-paying-slave-wages-2020-1-1028842799?op=1 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/aoc-accuses-...

cactus2093 6y ago
And worth pointing out, there are not just random people saying it but members of the US Congress with many millions of supporters.
lumost 6y ago
It's a real argument, depending on where you stand. To become a billionaire, one must be able to amass 10 thousand times more wealth than the median household in the US. To reach the lofty heights of Bill Gates et al. one must amass ~ 1 million times more wealth than the median US household. The reason why some believe that to be a billionaire is exploitative is that they believe this 4-6 order of magnitude disparity in wealth is inherently exploitative. You could always imagine a society where the warehouse workers were paid double ( or even quadruple ) for the effort they perform and a 100 billionaire would simply be a 100 millionaire. Regardless of where you draw the line for the discrepancy to be considered exploitative. The line exists somewhere for everyone. Tsar Nicholas had the equivalent of ~1.3 trillion in today's dollars in wealth prior to the revolution, and I can't imagine the US supporting anyone with amassing more than 10-20 trillion dollars in wealth. Carnegie et. al. each managed to earn up to ~300 billion in today's dollars prior to the anti-trust act.
- dnautics 6y ago
  I think this depends on what you mean by "exploitative". It's such a loaded word used for rhetorical purposes that it's not necessarily clear where one draws the line between any given pair of arguments.
- refurb 6y ago
  How would your comment read if you replaced the word “amass wealth” versus “create value”?
  - lumost 6y ago
    The point of the comment is that in many minds there is a cutoff where "create value" looks like hoarding. One could argue that the Tzar and other monarchies created value by providing stable governance, organizing the nation, preventing the tyranny of the majority, as well as keeping out the invaders. At some point, when the wealth gap is extreme enough and the circumstances of enough people is sufficiently degraded -these arguments stop holding weight.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Is Bill Gates degrading or improving the lives of people on the whole? Same question for Elon Musk.
      - hezag 6y ago
        But was the improvement on people's lives produced by the work of Gates or Musk alone? Or it required hundreds of people working to make it possible?
        sokoloff 6y ago
        The latter of course, which is tangentially related (not contradictory) to my question.
        refurb 6y ago
        Of course he didn’t do it alone. But the people who got in early with Gates or Musk made out like bandits. And the bigger question is - would Microsoft or Tesla happened at all with Gates or Musk? I mean, at least in Musk’s case everybody thought he was guaranteed to fail. I don’t begrudge his $1B of wealth in the least - he put his money where his mouth was when everyone else said it was dumb - but he was right. It’s not like they Gate and Musk kept all the wealth for themselves. Didn’t Microsoft create several hundred millionaires? But if Gates and Musk were the key drivers for the very existence of the companies I don’t see any issue with them getting the lions shares of the returns.

cactus2093 6y ago

And worth pointing out, there are not just random people saying it but members of the US Congress with many millions of supporters.

lumost 6y ago

It's a real argument, depending on where you stand. To become a billionaire, one must be able to amass 10 thousand times more wealth than the median household in the US. To reach the lofty heights of Bill Gates et al. one must amass ~ 1 million times more wealth than the median US household. The reason why some believe that to be a billionaire is exploitative is that they believe this 4-6 order of magnitude disparity in wealth is inherently exploitative. You could always imagine a society where the warehouse workers were paid double ( or even quadruple ) for the effort they perform and a 100 billionaire would simply be a 100 millionaire. Regardless of where you draw the line for the discrepancy to be considered exploitative. The line exists somewhere for everyone. Tsar Nicholas had the equivalent of ~1.3 trillion in today's dollars in wealth prior to the revolution, and I can't imagine the US supporting anyone with amassing more than 10-20 trillion dollars in wealth. Carnegie et. al. each managed to earn up to ~300 billion in today's dollars prior to the anti-trust act.

dnautics 6y ago
I think this depends on what you mean by "exploitative". It's such a loaded word used for rhetorical purposes that it's not necessarily clear where one draws the line between any given pair of arguments.
refurb 6y ago
How would your comment read if you replaced the word “amass wealth” versus “create value”?
- lumost 6y ago
  The point of the comment is that in many minds there is a cutoff where "create value" looks like hoarding. One could argue that the Tzar and other monarchies created value by providing stable governance, organizing the nation, preventing the tyranny of the majority, as well as keeping out the invaders. At some point, when the wealth gap is extreme enough and the circumstances of enough people is sufficiently degraded -these arguments stop holding weight.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Is Bill Gates degrading or improving the lives of people on the whole? Same question for Elon Musk.
    - hezag 6y ago
      But was the improvement on people's lives produced by the work of Gates or Musk alone? Or it required hundreds of people working to make it possible?
      - sokoloff 6y ago
        The latter of course, which is tangentially related (not contradictory) to my question.
      - refurb 6y ago
        Of course he didn’t do it alone. But the people who got in early with Gates or Musk made out like bandits. And the bigger question is - would Microsoft or Tesla happened at all with Gates or Musk? I mean, at least in Musk’s case everybody thought he was guaranteed to fail. I don’t begrudge his $1B of wealth in the least - he put his money where his mouth was when everyone else said it was dumb - but he was right. It’s not like they Gate and Musk kept all the wealth for themselves. Didn’t Microsoft create several hundred millionaires? But if Gates and Musk were the key drivers for the very existence of the companies I don’t see any issue with them getting the lions shares of the returns.