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People are billionaires because they “share with society”. They take a small fraction of the wealth and surplus they create. If you create $6 of value for every

• vasco 5mo ago
  Pro-tip: more often than not people are billionaires because their parent was a billionaire or multi millionaire
  • Detrytus 5mo ago
    Yes, and the contributions from those parents were so valuable that the society still owes them, even long after their death. That's why we pay our dues to their children and grandchildren.
    • vasco 5mo ago
      You might be living inside a philosophy book about capitalism. Do you know about the existence of Russian oligarchs and their offspring? Or Texan billionaires that one day woke up and found out they were living on top of oil? What contribution did they give to society?
      • Detrytus 5mo ago
        Well, I can give you Russian oligarchs - they came to their wealth during time of chaos, and mostly through stealing. But Texan oil billionaires? They won their wealth fair and square, if not for anything else then for just recognizing an opportunity and acting on it. Believe me, there are many people in this world who would blew it in stupid ways.
        • vasco 5mo ago
          I won't even argue about Texans even though you're wrong there, but since you accepted Russian oligarchs as a problem with this world view that having money = having contributed to society then I'm not sure what else to say. You already admit this model doesn't work as a proxy to merit in the case of using force and connections. Take another example, someone who won a lottery vs someone who hasn't, but otherwise lived the same life, in your world view one deserves it and the other doesn't. And their their offspring forever on as well? If you accept this now your list of exceptions is using force, connections and also luck. But we can keep adding examples and exceptions to the rule until at some point you need to admit that way of looking at the world is too flawed, no? BTW this luck aspect is the same as the "Texan got a knock on the door offering them millions forever because they have oil under their house" so I guess I did end up re-arguing that.
    • saghm 5mo ago
      > Yes, and the contributions from those parents were so valuable that the society still owes them, even long after their death. That's why we pay our dues to their children and grandchildren. You're ascribing a level of agreement with your opinions about who deserves what level of credit people deserve for results that are far beyond the scope of a single person to vast swaths of people who have no power to contest the system that has existed for so long that no one alive created. The reason I "pay my dues" to the grandchildren of random rich people from 100 years ago is not because I owe them but because there's literally nothing I can do to avoid it regardless of how plausible I find the extreme opinion you're confidently asserting is some sort of self-evident fact.
    • mcv 5mo ago
      Sorry, why would society owe their children? Where does this obligation come from? You're making a leap here that doesn't make sense. Also, it's not sharing with society that makes people billionaires, it's taking from society. Had all that profit gone to society, they wouldn't be billionaires. Now often (not always) they provide some value to society but that generates that profit, but quite often even that was based on taking from society. They take natural resources to exploit, monopolise a market, exploit workers, etc.
  • arjie 5mo ago
    That’s actually a pretty good thing. Becoming a multi-millionaire is quite achievable in this country and if that means I provide a compounding ability to my kids to provide a large amount of value to a large amount of people and capture some amount of that, that’s a good thing. Since 2/3rds of American billionaires are from industry, if it is true that their parents were multi-millionaires, that is wonderful. The fact that children here can take the platforms their parents build them and turn that into great value for the American people is a good thing and one of the reasons I am drawn to this country.
    • Rapzid 5mo ago
      You are drawn to the multi generational accumulation of wealth and power? The societal ill our founders were concerned about that's currently giving us a high grade fever? Brings to mind a certain creature that thrives in festering wounds.. It's in the tip of my...
      • zozbot234 5mo ago
        Yes, I'd rather people bequeath their wealth and power over the generations than they waste it in purely self-serving ways, such as by buying yet another luxury yacht. Of course many billionaires choose to donate much of their wealth to charitable pursuits as well.
• Carrok 5mo ago
  > People are billionaires because they “share with society”. They take a small fraction of the wealth and surplus they create. I truly cannot believe that anyone with an ounce of empathy or integrity could possibly believe a statement as absurd as this.
  • arjie 5mo ago
    Disbelief rarely alters reality. Eppur si muove.
    • throwaway894345 5mo ago
      Stating something as fact doesn’t make it so. :shrug:
  • ai_slop_hater 5mo ago
    Why is this absurd?
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • onion2k 5mo ago
      Two sorts of people become billionaires from share price increases. The founders and the early investors. Neither are thousands of times more impactful than the other early hires, but they get to keep billions of dollars while the early hires only get a handful of millions. And the slightly-less-early-hires who were too late to get equity usually get nothing more than their salary, regardless of their impact. I don't have any problem with people getting insanely rich from stock price increases, but the argument that it's society sharing the value they created ignores the fact that they were only responsible for the initial foundations of that value, and not all the work that continues later.
      • zozbot234 5mo ago
        > Neither are thousands of times more impactful than the other early hires, but they get to keep billions of dollars while the early hires only get a handful of millions. That's a meaningful tradeoff of risk vs. return. If you choose to be an early hire rather than founding your own risky venture, that ultimately means you value the security of "only" getting millions over a lottery ticket that might or might not be worth billions.
• gloxkiqcza 5mo ago
  In an ideal capitalistic world billionaires are people that provide most value to society, yes. In the real world it’s questionable to say the least because they usually do not do fair win-win business, they do cutthroat “I’m gonna abuse my position to the absolute limit, what are you gonna do about it, you have no other choice” business. People that don’t do that don’t end up billionaires because they can’t compete with those that do.
  • adrianN 5mo ago
    The definition of „value“ in capitalism is already contentious, so even in idealized capitalism billionaires can provide „value“ that does not align with the „value“ of most of the people.
• throwaway894345 5mo ago
  Billionaires extract a vast amount from the economy and pay a tiny fraction of that back in. It’s not “creating value” to replace millions of middle class retail jobs across the country with tens or hundreds of thousands of largely poverty line jobs and parking the delta in shareholder investment accounts. Without billionaires, money stays in the community where it circulates (workers and small business owners make money and they spend it). With billionaires it is extracted from the communities and hoarded in investment accounts a thousand miles away.
• saghm 5mo ago
  > People are billionaires because they “share with society”. They take a small fraction of the wealth and surplus they create. That's certainly an opinion that some people have, but as the parent comment stated, companies don't run without employees, so the idea that the value created is solely attributed to the founders or other executives is not an empircal fact like you're claiming it is. There's no scientific formula for "how much of this result of a bunch of actions that multiple people took over the course of a few years is attributed to each of the people"; the only way to have any sort of objective delineation of that like you're describing is if you already bake in assumptions of how valuable each piece is before you've started, which just moves the opinions one later deeper. I can't prove you wrong any more than you can prove the parent commenter wrong, because what you've said is based on so many premises that I fundamentally agree with that seem like universal laws to you.
  • tjwebbnorfolk 5mo ago
    > companies don't run without employees, the idea that the value created is solely attributed to the founders That's why the owners get to keep what is left AFTER paying employees. It's called profit. One way to become a billionaire is when you offer that stream of future profits securitized as "stock" to other people who buy those future profits from you and collectively value those securitizations at over a billion dollars. The owner takes the risk that there is no (or negative) money left over after paying employees and all other costs. As a result, if there is money left over, they get to keep it. I suppose I should remind you that the vast majority of businesses fail. The entire dataset visible to you is imbued with survivorship bias. Welcome to money 101. This is how all business works everywhere. Nobody thinks that value is created "solely" by the owners. That's a fake strawman.
    • js8 5mo ago
      > The owner takes the risk that there is no (or negative) money left over after paying employees and all other costs. This is not true, and somewhat confusing, because "takes the risk" means two distinct things - making decisions and living with the consequences of them. Economic production is a collective effort. The management of the company is who usually makes the decisions; these might coincide with owner (especially in small business) but often they're just another employee. On the other hand, bad decisions made by management affect everyone in the company, not just the owner. The rich enough owner rarely lose their livelihood (we have limited liabilities btw), but the employees might lose the only source of income. And the system where you have only one person (owner as main manager) making decisions ("take risks") that can negatively impact many people (his employees, customers and what not) is structurally risky, it actually increases the risk of something going wrong (aside from it being a moral hazard). (POTUS is an extreme example of this.) The risk is shared (collectively owned, if you will) and so should be the decision-making.
• onion2k 5mo ago
  People are billionaires because they “share with society”. I appreciate that this is a flippant remark, but there are crypto billionaires proving that there are exceptions to this assertion.
  • autoexec 5mo ago
    Contributing nothing isn't even the worst case. There are also people who make their fortunes costing society. The Sackler family made insane amounts of wealth as literal serial killers. The CEO of Nestlé make a ton of money killing babies. The folks at DuPont made huge profits knowingly poisoning people (and ultimately the entire planet). Some of the wealthiest individuals are also the most sick and dangerous people who have ever existed and are responsible for incalculable damages to society. The worst part is that they usually bribe their way out of any actual accountability for what they do.
• js8 5mo ago
  If they want to "share with society", it's nice, but they can do it after taxes, just like everyone else. Even if a rich person reinvests everything, the control over large amount of money is what makes it problematic. Also the idea that welfare doesn't go to investments is wrong. When you buy groceries (or anything really), there is a decision made by the management of the company you buy these things from to reinvest part of it to maintain or build productive capacity. There is no need for a "capitalist" (owner of the enterprise) to insert themself into the process, they are useless middlemen who get a cut, essentially. (They are not so useless when they do actual managerial work, but then they can be just an employee like everyone else.)
  • landl0rd 5mo ago
    You could always replace him with a "banker" who instead loans you the means of production on credit, but nobody is going to make you a lathe for free out of the goodness of his heart, nor buggies for your grocery, nor the produce for your shelves and meat for your coolers. The banker makes you take the risk because, if it fails, he probably takes your house. Believe it or not co-ops exist just fine and some do very well. It sounds like what you would like is a co-op and I will be quite happy for you if you start one.
    • js8 5mo ago
      Bankers are even worse than shared ownership due to moral hazard (that's where muslim and christian view of money lending comes from), but yes, as a socialist I am in favor of coops.
  • energy123 5mo ago
    What's your solution to the local knowledge problem? Capital markets are like other markets. Capital gets allocated to where it's needed, holding aside market failure (which is what regulations are supposed to fix). Capital owners seek out the best return/risk, and because they are on the ground and diverse in views and skills, that solves for the local knowledge problem. This is where startup seed funding comes from, capitalists like YC who are good at it rather than some incompetent. It's why bad companies eventually lose the ability to raise, freeing up societal resources. What appears to be implicit in your comment ("There is no need for a capitalist") is an advocacy for central planning for capital. Although you also say "they can pay taxes" so maybe that's not what you're advocating for. If you want to know what I think is best, it's possibly a wealth tax applied on global wealth, along with stronger regulations around media concentration, political spending, and a few other things. But to eliminate capital markets and push it all into a central planner is bad.
• antirealist 5mo ago
  I think this is essentially correct. I'm sorry you're getting downvoted. I think there seems to be a prevailing attitude here (and in the world in general) that making money is 0 sum and you get it by taking taking it from others, rather than the reality (in free-ish, market-ish economies) that most people make money by adding value to other people's lives and being voluntarily paid for that value. Similarly there's a sentiment that policies are bad because billionaires lobby politicians, as opposed to that most people want terrible policies (though the lobbying can definitely be bad). I guess one important nuace is that it's not all billionaires for whom this is the case. You have lots of Carlos Slim style 'get a government monopoly and collect the rents'. So it's a bit messy.
• ndsipa_pomu 5mo ago
  Almost all billionaires are parasites who don't really "create" anything except figure out ways to either game the money markets or underpay employees. There's also all the various shenanigans they employ to avoid paying a fair share of tax, so they're mainly "stealing from society". The level of wealth hoarding by certain people would be classed as a serious mental illness if they were hoarding something else, but it's actually far more damaging to the rest of the world that they hoard wealth.