> I hear this argument a lot, and I'm confused. What's the alternative here? The billions these people have literally wouldn't exist if it weren't for them. iPh

> I hear this argument a lot, and I'm confused. What's the alternative here? The billions these people have literally wouldn't exist if it weren't for them. iPhones and social networks and electric cars don't spontaneously materialize themselves. These things indeed don't spontaneously materialize themselves out of thin air. They materialize themselves because of the work of millions of people. The researchers and laborers that build the foundations (internet, roads) that made the innovation possible in the first place. The researchers and other companies that build the phones, social networks, electric cars, etc that these people iterated upon. The hundreds of thousands of people that work for these companies, that actually build the phones and the cars, etc. These people created a good iteration on an existing idea and got lucky by doing it at the right place and at the right time. Surely they worked hard, and they had some positive contribution, but they did not fundamentally change the world or create billions by themselves. If Bezos hadn't build Amazon, we would have other online shops. If Zuckerberg hadn't build Facebook, we would have other social networks. If Apple hadn't made the iPhone, we would be using other smartphones. None of these were particularly innovative - they were all iterations on existing technology that happened to capture the market mostly by luck. Society would likely not have been significantly different if any of these had not been created, we would just be using something slightly different but very similar. Why reward individuals with such tremendous power for (essentially) winning the lottery?