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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.
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.
But I think we're still talking past each other. Imagine a contrived situation where people are picking apples, and each have their own basket they're collecting them in, and their own strategy for collecting them. I'm saying that person A's strategy will never result in them having the most apples, and to me it sounds like you're saying "well if they happen upon a secret trove of apples, then they would have the most apples". Which, yeah, you're right, but that's not my point.
Or like how the optimal strategy to the Secretary Problem is to search ~37% of applicants without accepting, and then take the first one that is better than all of them. No, you're not guaranteed to accept the best applicant, but it's still provably the best strategy for any random set of applicants.
Seems pretty easy to maintain your wealth that way. Am I missing something there?
You would not remain the richest person in the world with that strategy, any other strategy that gains more than 2%/yr would overtake you.
Edit: I probably am moving goal posts here at this point, but you are helping me refine what it is I'm actually trying to say. I agree that ethical behavior could theoretically result in the most profits, but I'm also convinced that it is not even close to the winning strategy in our current society.
The issue is that your example fails to be analogous in that no one has ever had a winning strategy to becoming a billionaire. If there was an implementable strategy that anyone could do if they were unethical enough, there would be a hell of a lot more than 3000 of them in the world.
The only way to become a big-apple-person in your example is to find the treasure trove. You aren't physically capable of beating people up quick enough to steal all their apples. No current billionaire strategized their way into that position. They all found the apple lotto pile. Sometimes that pile is called Minecraft, and sometimes it's called Amazon, but they all became billionaires by finding a giant pile of apples.
And absolutely not on any strategy that makes more than 2% overtaking you. If I have 200billion dollars, at 2%, and you have 1billion at 10%, it's gonna take you nearly half a century to even reach my starting balance. Yeah, sure, you'll overtake me eventually, but that's more likely to happen because I died than because you ended up making more money than me.
And this is once again you moving the goalposts. What does it mean to "maintain that level of wealth"? Stay the richest for 5 years? 10? 20? 100? Your whole life? What if I die the day after I got the money? Do I have to invent an immortality potion to ever be able to claim to have "maintained" it? If you are unwilling to define what you mean by that, I'll just be aiming for an ever expanding, nebulous, "that's not quite enough."
this is once again you moving the goalposts.
I still maintain that I didn't set the original goalposts, but yeah, I hoped I had made my edit in time for you to read it. I'm enjoying the respectful discussion, regardless.
no one has ever had a winning strategy to becoming a billionaire.
If that were true, wouldn't there not exist any billionaires?
If there was an implementable strategy that anyone could do if they were unethical enough, there would be a hell of a lot more than 3000 of them in the world.
Not if the game is zero-sum, the initial conditions for each participant are randomized, and some execute the strategy better than others. You can take the 100 best battle royale players in the world, all of them execute their strategy perfectly, but at the end of the day they can't all be winners as defined by the parameters of the game. In the real world the parameters aren't clearly delineated, I'd say the limit on the number of excessively rich people possible is emergent based on various factors (laws, how unethical parties are willing to be, amount of value being generated, etc.).
(And to head off the "how can you say zero-sum, but also wealth is being generated?". If the volume of exchanges of value between parties exceeds the amount of value being generated, then there is effectively always a cap that parties have to operate within, thus it is effectively a zero-sum system for those parties despite total value in the system increasing.)
The apple gathering metaphor was intended to convey my point about the difference between a wealth gain attributed strategy vs good fortune. We would need to extend it quite a bit to talk in terms of ethical apple picking, at which point I think we would just be talking about actual dollars.
No current billionaire strategized their way into that position. They all found the apple lotto pile.
And we've circled back to where we disagree. "Billion" (or rather, X) doesn't happen purely by chance. There exists a value over-which you cannot get purely by chance, it takes unethical exploitation, and there are people beyond that value.
What does it mean to “maintain that level of wealth”? Stay the richest for 5 years? 10? 20? 100? Your whole life?
This seems like a red herring. The rate of change that employing a certain strategy gets you is the more relevant quantity. An unethical strategy will diverge into unreasonable amounts of wealth territory, whereas an ethical one won't ever (and I have to keep saying, in this late-stage capitalist society.)
Of course billionaires can exist without having a winning strategy. Notch didn't set out to be a Billionaire. He just played infiniminer and thought it was cool, so he asked Zach Barth if he could make a spinoff. Facebook was started because Zuckerberg was trying to trick a chick into sleeping with him. These billionaires didn't have some Machiavellian scheme to become billionaires. They just made a thing that happened to dominate their respective industries. It happens when someone is first to market in a field that is prone to natural monopolies.
And of course money is a zero sum game. There's a limited amount of currency in circulation. That's true on it's face (ignoring government's creating more, etc.)
But I think the issue that we are actually disagreeing on is your claim that someone can't get more than X dollars by chance.
My counter to that is, "sure they can, by winning an X+1 dollar lottery." And I don't think you've made any sort of counter to that point other than, "yeah, but they couldn't keep it without being unethical," without ever providing a timeframe that you would consider sufficient to meet the definition of "keeping it."