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Absolutely I'm willing to agree to that.
I am only pushing back on the statement, "it is impossible to amass a billion dollars without exploiting the labor of the working class."I certainly don't think that's the majority of billionaires. If your definition of exploiting the labor of the working class includes "having any employees that aren't part owners of the business," then of course the number of billionaires who can say that is vanishingly small.
But they do in fact exist, and I think the majority of people are aware of that. Therefore, making statements like "all billionaires exploited labor" makes the average person think your position is uninformed at best and disingenuous at worst.
I think there is a slightly different claim we're each making, and it's confused by the term "billion". I think we both agree that it's an arbitrary value that was used in the interest of an oversimplified claim above, but I think we can disambiguate the points we're making if we generalize it.
Your statement that "it is possible to be an X-aire without exploitation of the working class" is technically correct for the value of X=billion.
But I think the claim I'm making (and the oversimplified claim that was originally made) is that: for any given point in time, in any given capitalist society, there is a value X beyond which you cannot reliably amass and retain wealth without unethical exploitation.
The post above set X at a billion, maybe it's not a billion, maybe it's 100 billion. 100 years ago maybe it was 100 million, and in 100 years it'll be 100 trillion. But the point is that there exists a value beyond which ONLY exploitative practices can get you; or in other words, you will never be the richest man in our late-stage capitalist society by winning the lottery or through steady, ethical investments.
Man, I feel like we reached an agreement and now you're trying to walk it back. :P
And while I don't necessarily disagree with the point you're making, it feels like a setup to goal shift. Like, any example that gets brought up to counter the narrative can now just be dismissed as, "oh, but he's not enough of a billionaire."
And let's be real, a billion dollars, right now, is almost certainly beyond that arbitrary dollar amount X you speak of. There's only 3000 of them in the world! The *world! There's 8 trillion of us. How much more selective do we need to be??
Yeah, I know it sounds like a goal post movement, but I didn't make the original claim, and in fact thought the original claim was oversimplified, but that there was a truth to it. I think that in order to best illustrate that truth, "billion" had to be removed as it was a red herring.
And yeah the first half of it sounds like I'm setting a variable X, where X makes me right, but the fact that such an X exists is the point I'm making. If you agree then we're on the same page. The alternate claim would be that it's possible in our late stage capitalist society to be the richest person using purely ethical, non-exploitative means, which I don't believe is possible. And for a value of X=a billion, I think it's just very unlikely.
I mean, I certainly think it's possible to become the richest man on earth through purely ethical means. It's wildly, incredibly unlikely, but strictly possible.
You could become a recording artist that self publishes your own music, only distribute online, and become unprecedented levels of popular. Sell each mp3 for $5 and sell a few trillion of them.
Is that likely? Absolutely not. Exceedingly unlikely. But becoming a muliti-billionaire in general is exceedingly unlikely. This is one of the lesser likely ways for sure, but it's fathomable, at least in the sense that it's a coherent narrative that strictly could occur.
What about that scenario is strictly impossible? Not vanishingly unlikely, but literally could not happen?
I certainly think it’s possible to become the richest man on earth through purely ethical means.
Maybe in general, but it's impossible in our current late-stage capitalist society.
What about that scenario is strictly impossible?
Because anyone who tries to do it would be quickly usurped by someone else willing to be unethical.
How do you unethically usurp a popular musician's fame in a way that lets you earn more money than them, given the parameters of my above example?
I assume you're going for the "is it impossible, or just highly improbable" route again. Is the musician example intended to be something that is possible? Do you think that example is possible? I think that even healthy, sustainable competition would prevent that example from ever happening. Which is part of the point: if you only have ethically run businesses, you'll always have healthy competition, and thus none of them can ever reach such an absurd amount of wealth over the others.
But let's say you're an unethical multi billion dollar corporation in the music industry whose bottom line is being impacted, and you're willing to do whatever to get part of that. Let me ask you, what would you do to get your piece of the pie? Feel free to just look around for inspiration :(. You'd likely start by offering to buy them out. If they refuse you have several options: creating a copycat that sounds similar, but pump out 10x more tracks to flood the market, pay off all "radio stations" (whatever companies you pay to stream music in random stores and clubs, etc) to prioritize your music, pay SEO professionals to ensure your products appear before yours, pay lawyers to find something to litigate over to stun your ability to make any more music. Someone who is actually in the music industry could probably come up with better ideas than me, but the point is, a company willing and allowed to play unethically will always beat out the ones that aren't.
I mean, artistry is inherently popularity driven, and we can see how knock offs rarely impact the demand for the original.
Damn, how many Minecraft or Minecraft adjacent games have come out in the last 15yrs? Have any of them made any dent in it's sales?
Look, you've set up a motte and bailey here. If I point to any example that concretely exists in real life, like Minecraft, you'll just say that the "X" wealth value is too low. If I say a hypothetical that doesn't exist, you'll say it's an impossibility. You're effectively asking me to prove a negative here.
If you truly, in your wildest imagination, can't think of a single way, no matter how extremely and unbelievably unlikely, that someone could become the wealthiest person on earth without exploiting the labor of others, I'm happy to agree to disagree on the issue. But it seems like that's more a lack of imagination on your part than anything.
Hell, here's a simple one. Elon Musk decides to will his entire fortune to a random stranger drawn by lottery, you end up winning, and then he dies. Congrats, you're now the richest person on earth. Did you exploit someone's labor to get that money?
All money on earth has at some point belonged to someone who did, and I'm not culpable because the $20 bill in my wallet was once probably owned by Jeff Bezos (or, you know, someone who's dead and evil). Are you now responsible for every ill thing that Elon Musk has done because you won his death lottery? Did you commit some evil acts on your path to becoming the richest person on earth?If you truly, in your wildest imagination, can’t think of a single way, no matter how extremely and unbelievably unlikely, that someone could become the wealthiest person on earth without exploiting the labor of others, I’m happy to agree to disagree on the issue.
So wouldn't you be relying on the unfalsifyability of your claim? Reminds me of Russell's Teapot. Your claim is that there is a vanishingly small, yet unprovably non-zero chance of something being true, therefore your claim must be true. I'm ok with conceding that.
But it seems like that’s more a lack of imagination on your part than anything.
I never said I was imaginative :D
Hell, here’s a simple one. Elon Musk decides to will his entire fortune to a random stranger drawn by lottery, you end up winning, and then he dies. Congrats, you’re now the richest person on earth. Did you exploit someone’s labor to get that money?
That's the lottery example again. It sounds like we both agree it was accrued unethically, but would you agree that for such a person who is handed that wealth to maintain it, they would need to behave unethically?
All money on earth has at some point belonged to someone who did, and I’m not culpable because the $20 bill in my wallet was once probably owned by Jeff Bezos (or, you know, someone who’s dead and evil). Are you now responsible for every ill thing that Elon Musk has done because you won his death lottery?
Slippery slope?
I think we've now both accused the other of Russel's teapot, lol. Your claim that it's impossible to ethically become a muliti-billionaire is equally unfalsifiable, at least feasibly. I don't feel like I'm claiming anything absurd here. If you won a lottery that made you the richest person on earth (that was in some way devoid of any of the ethics concerns of the normal lottery system), then you would have become the richest person ethically. Or, at least, without having exploited excess value of other people's labor.
This isn't a Russel's Teapot because I'm arguing for a logical construction, not a point of fact. I'm not saying that such a person exists and you can't prove they don't. I'm arguing that it's almost tautologically true that if those events could happen, then my position holds water. I'm only arguing that it's within the bounds of the possible.
As for maintaining the money in a way that's ethical, sure, why not. Just throw it into a savings account that earns 2%/yr. Split it among a ton of banks and credit unions to stay within the FDIC insurance limits where possible. If you have 200billion dollars, that's 4billion a year to live on. Seems pretty easy to maintain your wealth that way. Am I missing something there?
I don't know what you're driving at with the "slippery slope" statement? Do you think I'm advocating that we should all be held accountable for the crimes of every dollar we have ever had in our possession? Or are you trying to imply that I'm arguing for always taking money indiscriminately? Regardless, I think it's reaching pretty hard in either direction.