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Interesting interview. He is yet another extremely wealthy man, who built his fortune on the back of Government that now claims that government is the problem..

• beaconstudios 4y ago
  It's a classic "great man of history" narrative, painting a Randian picture of the world being pushed forward by the overwhelming efforts of a few people. The reality is that nobody works hard enough to earn a billion dollars - that amount of money can only be made by short-changing the people who do the work.
  • metadat 4y ago
    While undeniably true, this view of reality may not be popular in this forum (unfortunately).
    • adampk 4y ago
      If a founder starts a company, a company that builds a very helpful product and service, hires employees and pays them creating jobs and ways for them to work on interesting problems, I am not trying to defend the other side of your point, I just honestly don't see where the "exploitation" comes into play?
      • metadat 4y ago
        At it's core, capitalism is about maximally exploiting labor. Some companies treat their employees better (Costco) or worse (Walmart), but at the end of the day it's all a byproduct of the structure and behaviors rewarded in capitalism. The "winners" exploit the hardest, otherwise potential profits are being left on the table and it opens an opportunity for another company (who is willing to go the extra mile to exploit harder) to enter and offer lower prices. Subsequently, the working middle class and poor people (the largest segments of USA population) have their own harsh realities to deal with, and don't have the luxury of choosing more humane yet expensive alternatives when they are purchasing goods and services.
        • mindvirus 4y ago
          Obviously poverty is a major issue, and as a society we can and should be doing a lot more to address structural inequality. However, is there a time or place in history when/where would be better to be poor than today in a modern day first-world capitalist country? To be clear, I'm not arguing that we're anywhere near an ideal or perfect state for this, but what are the alternatives that you see?
        • e40 4y ago
          And who here thinks the way Amazon warehouse employees are treated is a good thing? Drivers, too. Peeing in bottles. 14 hr shifts. Buffer companies between Amazon and the customer, so they can easily skirt labor laws, etc.
        • parasubvert 4y ago
          This falsely assumes that labor is the source of all value. It's not.
          • metadat 4y ago
            I'm open to being wrong, but can you elaborate on what sorts of real value can be created through means other than labor? In my experience, not much happens in life unless someone puts in the elbow grease.
    • beaconstudios 4y ago
      I know this place skews libertarian/neoliberal, but I try to inject a little spice where I can ;)
  • avalys 4y ago
    Do you think founders should retain ownership of the companies they create? Fred Smith’s wealth comes from the notional value of his ownership of a small fraction of an enormously successful and societally useful business. It’s not as if he has a bank account with billions of dollars in profits paid as salary in it, which you seem to believe. On what basis do you think he should have been compelled to sell his stake in the company he created? Yes, you’re correct that he didn’t earn a billion dollars. He created a company that investors value at $60B, and his remaining 6% share of it is worth $4B. That $60B was not taken from anyone. It was created - out of thin air - by organizing workers in a way that the world needed.
    • beaconstudios 4y ago
      > Do you think founders should retain ownership of the companies they create? No. The idea that a company is something you "own" rather than a group of people doing some kind of economic activity is a social construct, and one designed to disenfranchise the people doing the ongoing work. A company is a collection of assets and people - to own assets makes sense, to own other people's labour in an ongoing capacity does not. > On what basis do you think he should have been compelled to sell his stake in the company he created? I don't think he should - I think we should change the system that allows people to be worth billions off the backs of others. I don't want redistribution, I want reform.
      • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        So, FedEx owns a bunch of airplanes. Billions and billions of dollars worth of airplanes. Who bought them? The owners bought them. So you have three options: 1. The owners get some property rights ("ownership") for the money they put up to buy the airplanes and related other tools. Or, 2. When an employee is hired by FedEx, they have to come up with... something of the order of $60 billion / 100,000 employees, to pay your share of the enterprise you are becoming part of. Or, 3. We as a society don't have any capital-intensive companies. Who's going to buy the tools, if the one putting up the money doesn't get ownership? (And don't say "government". Government running private enterprise almost always winds up with too much mismanagement and graft.)
  • tomcam 4y ago
    How much money can a person make before they start shortchanging others?
    • beaconstudios 4y ago
      Infinity, if they're not exploiting people, by definition. If WhatsApp was a coop and still sold to Facebook for billions, they wouldn't be exploited.
      • tomcam 4y ago
        Is a co-op as a whole allowed to make a profit? I’m confused. In a previous response you said making a profit is exploitation
        • beaconstudios 4y ago
          Depends on who you ask - I'm fine with it and haven't said otherwise. What is a problem is when one person profits off the work of another (as in, pays them less than their fair share), which is basically all salaried employment.
          • tomcam 4y ago
            If the co-op is sold at a profit, and those profits are distributed to the workers (who obviously all put in the exact same amount of work and time, right?) then they are profiting off the work of others, aren't they?
            • beaconstudios 4y ago
              For starters, not everybody in a coop has to earn the same amount or get the same payouut from a sale. They just all need voting rights. The point of cooperatives is to be owned by all their members, not just the founders. Second, yes the profit in the marketplace is still exploitative to a degree, but we don't have a viable alternative so there's not much to do about that. I don't believe there's much point critiquing something when there's no alternative.
• patentatt 4y ago
  I don't even want their 'charity,' I just want systems in place to prevent anyone from accumulating that amount of wealth in the first place. First, the basis of philanthropy is to have all the 'normals' grovel at the feet of the all-mighty wealthy begging for handouts. It stokes the wealthy persons ego and also gives them additional power. Second, there's no reason to believe that the wealthy philanthropist has any better idea of how to deploy their capital than the other institutions that would otherwise. Look at Gates, for example. He spent a decade or so and billions of dollars reshaping US public education and at the end of it basically admitted complete failure. That money should have never been his to direct in the first place. So no, we should want their greed exposed and not papered over by philanthropy so that the public eventually realizes that people accumulating and hoarding that much wealth is damaging to society and enact appropriate taxation schemes to claw back what they have stolen and prevent anyone else from ever doing it again.
  • foobarian 4y ago
    I think one really good feature of Western capitalism is that the corporate sphere provides greedy sociopaths with an escape valve before they turn the path of Hitler, Putin, Stalin, etc. As hard it is to stand and watch these folks get rich on the backs of little people, it is still preferable to them climbing the military dictatorship ladder.
  • tomcam 4y ago
    How much wealth should one be allowed to accumulate?
    • wizardforhire 4y ago
      We’ve already answered this question in the US as a society time and again. Heres sort primer to for anyone that is not up to speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antitrust_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antit...
      • tomcam 4y ago
• bell-cot 4y ago
  Those 19th century Robber Barons were, some exceptions aside, notably less charitable than most sepia-toned histories makes them out to be. Their 19th century abuses of workers also make almost anything happening in the modern first world look like coddling by comparison. And back then, mainstream Christian churches were a far more important social institution. Acting as the "generous Christian" was probably far more important to one's standing in "well-born" society.
• missedthecue 4y ago
  air ports are funded by landing fees. FedEx pays as much as $7k every single time they land.
  • FYYFFF 4y ago
    Not fully. Nor are the air traffic control costs paid by airlines. The entire ATC infrastructure is government run and funded and most of the airports are run by local governments. Very few airports actually make money or are profitable for the agency that runs them. They are subsidized. Done with the idea that they are essential for communities and are a part of our underlying infrastructure. \ Also: look at what FedEx pays in Fed taxes. Its zero most years.
    • missedthecue 4y ago
      Airlines aren't the only people who use air traffic control. The military has more than 5x more aircraft than the largest airline in the US (American). And 8x more than Fedex. Then there are all the general aviation aircraft.
• MisterTea 4y ago
  > The fact is that everyone "stands on the shoulders of giants". This phrase always bothered me because the giant isn't a single person but a stack of people. Knowledge is cumulative.
• kfarr 4y ago
  Yes air travel is subsidized, and if you look up ground transportation it's even worse. The Fed pays for insanely huge amounts of motor vehicle infrastructure for which ground shippers barely pay a small portion relative to their resource usage and negative externalities.
  • tesseract 4y ago
    The Fed[eral Reserve] specifically? I'm simultaneously surprised and not.
    • tomcam 4y ago
      For clarification, no. I am certain that person met the federal government. The Federal Reserve is a private enterprise (disgustingly) that only takes from the government. It does not give.
      • kfarr 4y ago
        Correct I meant the federal government, not the federal reserve.