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It depends on the location. Here's a different point of view: Carlos Slim has so far been relatively unable to compete in the US. Some people argue that he doe
by crdb 11y ago
It depends on the location.
Here's a different point of view: Carlos Slim has so far been relatively unable to compete in the US. Some people argue that he does well in countries like Mexico because in those places, he can run a monopoly (like his telecom company) or oligopoly with price fixing power, generating large margin at the expense of his customers (who don't have much of a choice in the matter). Thus, his business has plenty of reserves for things like 3 day workweeks - at the expense of the population, in exactly the zero sum game you describe.
But when you look at modern American billionaires like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, they made their fortune by working intensely hard and smart in very competitive markets, and inventing or making available to the mass-market products that created billions of dollars in value. It can definitely be argued that a single individual can create billions of dollars of new wealth, and not on the "back" of others - there's a lot of very wealthy early Microsoft and Apple employees out there, and billions of dollars of value created for its customers over the last couple decades.
- witten 11y agoNot disputing the hard work, but at key points in Microsoft's history, they've held and exercised tremendous monopoly power, generating large margin at the expense of their customers.. Just like Slim's companies in some respects.
- crdb 11y agoRight, but the difference is that their monopoly was in a created market, vs Slim's which is the definition of a bad monopoly (sole supplier of a utility). Their margin was the reward for the creation of something new, not taking a cut on a natural resource. But I agree that it's not black and white - companies lie all over the spectrum (you could argue that Slim is getting paid for the effort of putting out a telecom network in Mexico). A clearer example is Google: it has an effective monopoly on search, but it's not because it has lobbied Washington to stop people from using other search results, it's because it was the best search engine, spread like wildfire, and kept the market ever since. People use Google not because there's no other (legal) search provider available, but because it's still the best way to find things on the internet. Because of this instinctive understanding of the value created, it's much rarer to see Brin and Page criticized for their wealth.
- crimsonalucard 11y agoI'm going to start off by saying that my initial comment on rich people not doing anything and being freeriders was mainly an angry comment directed at people like the author of this article. My mistake for not making that clear. There are certainly many rich people who work hard. Despite that, this does not mean that hard working rich people deserve their wealth... Onward: >But when you look at modern American billionaires like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, they made their fortune by working intensely hard and smart in very competitive markets, and inventing or making available to the mass-market products that created billions of dollars in value. It can definitely be argued that a single individual can create billions of dollars of new wealth, and not on the "back" of others - there's a lot of very wealthy early Microsoft and Apple employees out there, and billions of dollars of value created for its customers over the last couple decades. I disagree. Those innovative mass market products may be created under the leadership of one hard working man, but it is fundamentally impossible for a complex product like the iphone to be entirely the work of one man. The iphone, the boeing 747, and many other complex projects can only be built with the expertise and labor of multitudes of people. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates cannot build such wealth without exploiting the labor of their corporate empires.