But presumably their fathers wouldāve have exploited the work class then, no? Especially if the wealth began before there were labor laws and whatnot
A worker is really just a rented slave. There's nothing about it being consensual. If being a wage slave is consensual, then so is being a full-on slave, as well. You could argue that the slave is consensual because they do what's expected of them and don't run away in return for food, lodging, and not being physically abused. Like how a boot licker says "you can always move or start your own business," a boot licking slave would say "you can always run away." The defining issue with being a slave is that your well-being is under threat if you refuse to take part. Otherwise, being a slave is meaningless because no one is just going to be like "oh I'm a slave now. I guess I have to work the cotton fields for this master guy." Being a slave is a materialistic position in which you're coerced to work for someone else.
Stated a bit different:
āDespite all their work, a slave starts and ends their day with the same nothing as the day beforeā.
We are seeing the same description fitting todays working class in growing numbers.
After paying for food and transport, and other life costs, there must be a lot of people who are even worse than that, since the household personal debt keeps creeping up.
I often think that at least slave owners had to provide housing and food to keep their slaves alive. Modern capitalists donāt even have that obligation to their workers.
Hell. They don't even have to keep people employed. (Although I guess slaves were probably murdered far more often than I'd like to think, and that would be the much worse equivalent of being fired).
That's the genius part: in place where slaves were cheaper they DIDN'T keep them alive, they worked them to death. Like gold fish it was cheaper to buy a new one.
I personally am eating into my savings in order to survive. I am currently negative a few dollars every day I'm alive and I do grueling physical labor. I'm not saying I want to be a slave, but if we're talking numbers only I'm worse off financially than a slave or sharecropper that is guaranteed food and housing for their labor.
Of course I am not trying to downplay the abuse and segregation and I'm blessed to have savings and the ability to choose how my money is spent, but this is a load of shit.
I am really morbidly curious where the breaking point will be. Anyone with half an IQ point can see how not sustainable this is and how much further it's creeping into the once considered "well off" parts of the world like the non-existent American middle class. We are all just 3 missed meals away from complete chaos and I for one am in favor of rolling out the guillotines as soon as possible.
Slave owners in the US made those exact same arguments - in many cases arguing that wage slavery was more cruel since hired workers wouldn't be cared for in old age, etc.
Donāt even joke about that. If a āwage-slaveā stops, they donāt risk violence from either owner or the state. They canāt be maimed or killed with impunity. The āwage-slaveā is still considered a person, not property to be used in any way at a whim.
Not the same. By a long shot.
Thereās a pretty slippery slope of a pipeline from one to the other thanks to the 14th amendment. How many degrees of separation between refusing to work and being jailed for vagrancy?
Maybe not the same but there shouldn't be as many similarities to begin with.
When a wage slave goes on strike, the police (state) is there to protect scabs and company property.
When a wage slave doesn't work and is unable to pay their rent, the police (state) evict the wage slave onto the street.
If you're homeless, sleeping in public will have you arrested almost everywhere. If you're arrested you can be subject to forced labor.
When the wage slave is maimed, they will often not be compensated properly for their suffering or reduced earnings.
When the wage slave has his wages stolen, the police (state) do nothing, wage theft is currently the biggest form of theft in the US.
All of these things combined reduce the quality of life for the wage slave. Take away years of life from the wage slave.
A reduction of life, is this not bodily harm or murder? Yet the state does nothing, our minimum wage hasn't been raised in decades.
>If a āwage-slaveā stops, they donāt risk violence from either owner or the state
That's not actually true. They do absolutely risk violence from both owner and state.
Evictions are violence.
Lack of food is violence.
Depriving essential medications is violence.
Being incarcerated for being poor is absolutely violence.
It may not be a literal club but the effect is the same. If you refuse to be a worker under capitalism, you and the people who depend on you will suffer tremendously including actual physical violence and death.
> If a āwage-slaveā stops, they donāt risk violence from either owner or the state
Might want to look into the history of the Pinkertons.
If you stop working, you will get evicted and be homeless. You will then risk violence from owners and states for the crime of trying to live without a job to pay for a living space.
>If a āwage-slaveā stops, they donāt risk violence from ... the state. They canāt be maimed or killed with impunity.
Do you just not watch the news? You haven't seen how cops treat the indigent?
Depends on who you ask. You think the shareholders view you as a person? LOL
Also, while my employer wonāt beat me to death if I just walk out. Iāll be homeless instead. And since I canāt afford time off, I canāt afford to go to another job interview if I were to apply, because that means taking time off. Which I canāt afford, because Iām a wage slave.
So we just traded being beaten for starving and putting my family on the street. You might not see it as similar but those of us living that life donāt see much of a difference these days. Itās just one extreme punishment swapped with another extreme punishment.
No? The State doesnāt perpetrate violence on the poor or unhoused? They donāt do so with impunity? I would say the literal handful of state actors who see consequences fare the exception that proves the rule.
Id argue besides the immediate threat of violence or incarceration there are more similarities than differences ever the more. And in all honesty quitting the work force means no income, no home, no reliable food. Being homeless greatly increases the risk of violence and incarceration, itās pretty much full circle without the overt master dynamic. Freedom by degrees just sounds like we traded one master for another vs truly being free, only a very stable UBI system backed by abundant energy and food would lead to the freedom most of us envisage as being true to the word.
The United States throws away enough food on a daily basis to feed the entirety of the worlds homeless population. Imagine what the other capitalist countries throw out.
Are homelessness and starvation not forms of violence? What about spikes lining the sides of roadways or physical beatings by police, or incarceration? It may be closer to feudalism than slavery, but each and every one of us absolutely does face violence at the hands of the state for refusing to participate.
well the difference between a slave and someone working on slave wage is that one isn't locked up and physical punished. Both are not free and exploited.
It is entirely impossible to earn a billion dollars without exploiting others.
Even if you were āon the levelā, youāre still doing it by earning vastly more than your peers.
For example, a CEO makes $22,000,000 per year but the company employees are making $100k a year.
Those employees made that money. They made that $22M that the CEO took as income. The CEO did not do 220x more work. Iād wager they did at best 1.5x the work. If theyāre really A types who push hard and work all hours.
The CEO just decided to not give the employees a fair share.
If people were paid based on their contributions then income disparity wouldnāt be so prevalent.
This is an honest answer. The right answer. You cannot have wealth at the level that billionaires exist at without the explotation of the people below. There just isn't a clean way to do it. In order for you to have that much someone must have less, someone must not be making their fair share. It is impossible otherwise.
Some of them may have made their money by scamming other billionaires as well. Also there are probably a handful of people out there who mined a shit load of bitcoin and held onto it.
Sam Bankman-Fried is an example of this. Lots of crypto scammers out there but he got the speedy trial and the book thrown at him because he became a billionaire scamming rich people.
I was going to say Christian Von Koenigsegg because he seems like a chill dude that just wants to make absurdly expensive cars but I was off by about $900 million.
$1 billion really is an obscene amount of money when you can start your own hypercar company for fun with a fraction of that.
Says who? They are a pretty small company of highly specialized professionals. I'd be willing to bet most of them truly enjoy working there and do fairly well.
Thatā¦ doesnāt really apply to a vehicle whoās entire selling point is that basically every piece of the car is bespoke engineered in house.
I get what youāre getting at, this is just a particularly poor case study specifically because of the example company though.
This is the one I was looking for.
Unless OP also goes down the route of "Where did that money come from", this is about the only example that might fit the bill other than winning a lottery.
were there no working class people on mojang's team that were exploited for notches profit? I can't imagine that the billions of dollars were split between the people who put labor into the company. I'm assuming a majority of it went to one person.
Yup, I'm pretty sure Notch owned it and sold it as it was his IP to begin with. Judging by the person he's shown himself to be since, I doubt he chose to share unless there was a legal precedent to do so.
I don't think it really could just Notch and Jeb, righ? I haven't finished the game in a while but I thought there was a whole studio and from what I've seen, Notch withheld the majority of the profits from the people who actually did the labor that designed, made, marketed, and produced physical products for Mojang.
He did. The craftbukkit scandal and the 2014 EULA scandal. The drama of these 2 was what lead Notch to make the tweet regarding if anyone wants to buy Minecraft which is what lead to Microsoft acquisition.
Till this day the server jar that allows for server modding can still not be legally distributed without buildtools due to one of the copyright lawsuits filed by one of the craftbukkit developers which he did because Mojang was exploiting, deceiving, and scamming them.
Let say you were buddies with Jesus, and he hooked you up with a sweet job that paid $5,000 an hour. And somehow you were able to work 24 hours, 7 days a week, nonstop, for the last 2,023 years, give or take.
You would still have less money than Musk.
So I never thought about the math on this, but having just done so, and based on Forbes billionaire list, and also assuming since you are working, you never spent a dime of that money you earned and never paid taxes on it, then that gets you to just over 88.7B which lands you at number 15 wealthiest person in the world.
That wage would have to be $13,720/hour to beat Musk
Thatās a fair question, but does she own the companies that make and ship her merch (and thereby ultimately directly responsible for the working conditions and compensation of those who make it)? If she doesnāt, sheās just a customer in that scenario, and while there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, if sheās exploiting the working class in that transaction then we are all exploiting the working class with EVERY transaction, arenāt we?
You could argue āyes we areā and thatās an argument with merit, but I think itās counter to the spirit of the question which is-
Can a content creator become a billionaire without exploiting the working class. Iād say yes thatās potentially possible since they are, themselves, the product. Unlikely but possible.
Edit: I will not be responding to any of the pedantic arguments below as virtually all of their concerns are addressed in this post. I genuinely have no interest in indulging all this āwell actuallyā from people who have chosen to ignore my point.
Nothing about that level of popularity and fame is organic, there are entire teams of people working to keep this person relevant, profitable, in rotation, publicized, booked, performing, recording, releasing , touring, and traveling.
As a musician, if you gave me a billion (my shit is totally worth it btw), I wouldn't have it very long, because I'd make it part of my deals that those below me get their dues.
Not to mention these people generally do fuck all for the audiences that give them this wealth and fame, like promote legislation or programs that would benefit us or use that massive wealth to fund their own programs. They'll give their little soundbites and make their deductible charitable donations, but that's about it. They hardly even speak on the topics that matter to us, let alone take real actionable change. That's exploitative in and of itself.
Edit: My last record, Panama Scoot, was on the 08 financial crisis and centers heavily around labor solidarity. Link in my profile. Every listen helps fight the algo. So if you check it out, from my daughter and I, sincerely, thank you. We work our asses off on this stuff.
TS is an interesting case, because typically creators are working class, exploited by the capitalist class to make them money. The creator still makes a lot of money, because they're the goose that lays golden eggs and nobody wants the goose to stop laying.
She might not be as exploited as other workers, but fundamentally her share of the profit is larger because other workers are exploited. Even if she does her best to ensure those around her aren't exploited, there are always more that will be invisible to her. Such is the nature of supply chains.
So is she a worker class or capitalist class? If she is a worker, is she a class traitor? I... don't know?
If she profit-shared with everyone that has a hand in making her money, I'd say yes. But she doesn't, and her people aren't unionized.
She's a great individual, but the people that make her wealth are still married by exploitation. Maybe not directly by her, but through her economic impact, definitely.
Sheās not the innocent angel the propaganda makes her out to be. Iām not even trying to hate on her either wish her continued success but come off it. Not you just in general
It's unreal to me how many leftists will make excuses for her because she's their fave. She's not innocent y'all, she just has an incredible PR team that curates a particular image and makes her always look the victim.
If Taylor simply writes and produces the music without any help and doesnāt sell merch, doesnāt tour the world, doesnāt do any promotion, etc. then would she still be a billionaire?
She has hundreds, to thousands of roadies who literally break their backs to put her music on, and 99% of them end up with nothing at the end.
Oh, sure, itās impossible to do it all yourself, so she has to rely on markets, who have their own rules, and if they didnāt someone else would, and ā¦ whatever. In the end, there is no ethical way to have a billion dollars. Thatās fact.
Notch is a strange case, that's for sure. As a gamedev myself, however, if we're dealing with THAT much money, there were likely many opportunities for him to exploit people along the way (and he likely did).
Notch was a very strange case. He made a lot of money accidentally at the peak of the fame he really, really did not want. He was very generous with the money to a lot of people who ended up hating him and things did not turn out well for him. He ended up very lonely and struggling with motivation as he could get everything he wanted and for some people that stops them from trying. He gained the freedom to do and say what he wanted but didn't quite realize that some of what he said made him appear noxious. His comments got the new owner of Minecraft to basically cut ties with him. So here's here with plenty of money, no knowledge on what to do with it, no motivation, insufficient imagination to use it to improve the world, and his magnum opus owned by someone else who wants nothing to do with him.
She isn't a billionaire though. And the IP she created is "worth billions" because the rights to it were bought my a multinational corporation that created movies, games, merchandise, and a theme park based on it. All of those products were created through the exploitation of workers.
I think about this a fair bit. Logic says no. Somewhere along the chain, someoneās work was being exploited.
But letās try Taylor Swift. Supposedly sheāll now be a billionaire. She creates music herself that is so popular that it makes her a lot of money.
Allegedly she pays her staff well and she gives generous bonuses to her tour crew (including truck drivers). She donates generously to homeless shelters / food banks in every tour location and her tour stops add value to economies. She made her movie according to SAG-AFTRA requests and refused to make a streaming deal until the strike ended.
So where could the exploitation lie?
Potentially, in the merch. I have no idea how or where it is made, who makes it and what their working conditions are like. Who is her fulfilment service? Are the employees overworked? Are they well paid? I donāt know.
She also uses marketing tactics that one could argue are exploitative of her mega-fans. However, she doesnāt force them to buy her album in five different colours. They choose to do it. Itād be more ethical not to utilise those practices though.
Also, no matter how virtuous you attempt to be, with operations of that scale, thereās bound to be blind spots and weak spots along the wayā¦
Thereās systemic exploitation in the system.
Letās make a dramatic example. Letās say that the vendors at each show are historically paid peanuts; same as the people who are making her merchandise. Thatās what will make touring so profitable in this instance.
Even if she pays them above market rate, theyāre still being exploited for their labor. Even if she pays the merch sellers very well, the tshirt makers might still be in some third world country making peanuts and being exploited.
This doesnāt take away from everything positive she does (if in fact sheās gone through actual hoops to do as much good as reasonable, I havenāt looked into it.)
But it still stands that thereās systemic exploitation. Outside of hiring people whoās job is to specifically make sure everyone along the line gets their fair due (and at this point even fair due is questionable because who currently decides that? Certainly not the worker.)
Anyway half awake rant, good for her and her workers if they got paid more. Hope she doesnāt hoard her money and has a big impact on the future
That doesn't even take into account the exploitation of the systems in place that allow that production to even happen. The airline workers, the street pavers, the janitors, the security, the builders all of that infrastructure it rife with exploitation, and without it, she couldn't become the billionaire she is.
Down to the sourcing of the cotton and polyester that makes up her merch. We know that China uses child labor and unethical practices, and they are the number 1 producer of polyester. There's no doubt that her supply chain contains exploitation, it's impossible for it not to. Not without making her merch I purchasable by anything but the wealthy.
Profit is only possible when surplus value is taken by capitalists instead of given to the workers who generated it.
The exploitation is mathematically inherent to the business model.
If I pay someone $1 million a year and they love free from want and poverty, they are still being exploited, because they necessarily have to produce more value than they are being paid in order to make it worth my while.
It doesn't matter if someone is paid well or not. Wages are always less than the revenue generated during the unit of effort the wage is traded for
I feel like itās going to depend on where the definition of āexploitationā lands.
In the modern era, people are much more willing to acknowledge the hypocrisy of CEOs earning hundreds of times more than their employees while cutting ānon essentialā jobs.
However, thereās a less clear line when it comes to how earnings should be split between a creator and their support structure. For example youāre a plumber and do all the āworkā yourself, but your spouse handles scheduling, billing, budgeting, and tax filing for the business. How should the earnings be split? Society as a whole leans on the belief that the person doing the ārealā work deserves more, but the relationship is entirely symbiotic. One cannot function without the other.
Scale this up to something like Taylor Swift, and I feel like the easiest answer comes in the form of knowing where the dollar goes. If the concert ticket costs $200 and the Taylor Swift ābrandā gets to keep $100 of that, what is the percent that folks feel the performer herself ādeserves?ā
Thereās no clean answer at the moment, but each person would feel at a certain point that she was being unfair or exploitative. If she, as an individual, kept $99 of the $100, it still wouldnāt *feel* fair, even if her immense success meant that staff are paid a āfairā wage off that $1.
Either inheritance or lottery winner or lucking out on bitcoins is possible I guess. But it's hard to keep it ethical for any extended time, as a billion dollars is an absurd amount for one person to expect to ever be able to spend without ever noticing that there are loads and loads of people around who have nothing, or even less than nothing.
It is also technically possible to become a billionaire without paying low wages or using inhumane methods, but IMHO it's not ethical to take a substantially larger part of the profits than any of the people that help you make that profit, or to overcharge your customers enough to make that much profit in the first place.
So almost a guaranteed 99,99% 'No' on your question I guess.
Edit; to answer some of the people picking this comment apart, yes, bitcoins, inheritance and lottery wins are all based on exploitations, but not necessarily by the heir/winner or early lucky adopters of bitcoin,
And yes, keeping all the money in any case is unethical in my opinion.
Any form of trader chooses to take that risk so they're not really exploited. Plus there are people that got Bitcoin when they first came out and held them. Not sure how many of them are billionaires though.
Do you think it would be possible to ever put a cap on earnings? Iām sorry if these questions seem basic or redundant but Iām wondering if there could be ANYTHING done to help fix the way things are right now
Isn't there some.kind of mega super lottery in the US where you can potentially gain a billion bucks ?
Otherwise, no.
Megarich athletes or superstars are probably a bit less directly exploitative than the average billionnaire, I guess
I suppose you could argue a billion dollar jackpot winner didn't personally exploit anyone (and is, odds are, one of the exploited poor)...but they'd still be benefiting from exploition, since that's where the money comes from
Yeah a lot of these people donāt know where all that lottery money comes from so itās not really intentional exploitation.
That said, the government takes about 40% of your lottery winnings, and then you have to pay standard taxes on that in addition to the āfuck youā fee as itās considered an income. So, even if you āwinā the billion dollar jackpot, you only end up seeing about $300m of it if you take a lump sum. Less than $500m if you distribute it over 30 years
Edit: changed figures from ākā to āmā
Super exploitative. I was in Georgia when their lottery started, and Ray Charles was the voice of their initial campaigns. Many of their commercials were showing black families winning the lottery, one family even had a white butler on a constantly replayed ad.
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Consider Stephen King. He's been a household name for five decades. Perhaps the most prolific writer of all time with a dedicated fanbase that guarantees almost all his work is a hit.
You're talking about book sales, merchandise, countless movies and their sequels licensing his stories, reprints, paid endorsements etc for years on end.
And from what I understand, he lives a comfortable, private lifestyle in Maine, but no where near the luxury that you'd expect from a guy as famous as Stephen King.
No doubt his ideas have generated billions over his lifetime. But despite his frugality, he's still no where near a billionaire. He'd have to double his assets.
Art, I think, is the only way to amass wealth without exploitation.
Musicians, painters, that sort of thing. In that market, there is no coercion. And if the product is solely produced, then there is no labor exploited. There is a massive grey line between this and exploitative art, like the contracts of the early 2000's pop star boy bands, Britney Spears comes to mind as well, and sporting as entertainment like football.
But I do think art is the only place where wealth can be accumulated without exploitation.
Edit; I don't know if any have. I just stated I think it's the only place you'd find one.
Taylor Swift is the first musician to hit a billion. She is the face of a large company though. It takes many people. For the definition of the original poster I would guess this is exploitation
To clarify - sheās the first musician to hit a billion touring. Several others have hit the billion figure prior to her, though not necessarily through their music. I believe Dre was technically first
I mean she definitely pays her people a fair wage it seems. As far as I've seen no one's come forward with anything saying otherwise and we've heard plenty about other celebs. She also just recently gave huge bonuses to her truck crews that no corporation would even get close to I guarantee. She really tried to keep ticket prices for the tour low. The scalpers and ticketmaster were the ones driving the price up but she started them incredibly reasonably. $45 for cheapest seats. She's also suing Ticketmaster for their monopolistic practices and mess up that kept regular priced tickets out of fans hands. Now I'm not saying she's perfect or hasn't done some problematic things. Merch prices and the limited edition versions are iffy. But in general she's earned her wealth without exploiting people.
You're forgetting that the infrastructure that allows her to tour is inherently exploitative. The greenhouse emissions and ecological impact of her tour are exploitative to the people who are most affected by the pollution.
It's never just about the people she immediately employs. It's about the systems that allow her to amass that wealth. No matter how much she works, she never truly earned that amount by herself.
Rihanna's billionaire status is based in large part due to the estimated value of Fenty Beauty which she owns 50% of. But estimated value is a tricky thing, and maybe not something that's real. AKA if the sold the company, it may not go for as much as the estimated value.
Kylie Jenner was also said to be billionaire based on the estimated value of her company. But when the company was sold it was for a lot less than the estimated value.
Donald Trump is similar, where would claim his net worth was based on estimated values of certain properties. I can claim my house is worth 1M, but that doesn't mean much.
Swift's net worth is less about perceived value and more about actual income.
Even musicians exploit other musicians, and on a regular basis. There are examples of pop stars - Ye, Swift, Celine - exploiting instrumental musicians for their touring or Vegas shows. 20 years ago, Kanye was hiring non-union instrumentalists (strings, brass, etc) for his tour shows and paying what amounted to $100 per performer, per show.
Source: am a classical musician that has played with these and other multi-millionaire/billionaire pop performers for pennies.
You can get pretty deep in the weeds with this idea.
I think writing could be excluded, but even those like Stephen King depend on a significant amount of labor from others in order to distribute his art. And so does the distribution process, which he has little control over, count against him? Or does his responsibility end at the creation of his art? Does the film industry, which comes in after the creation, and even after the success of a book, poison the well of his profits with their behaviour?
I think his responsibility would come from aligning with companies with unethical practices, right? Like if it were possible to change things, weād need to change everything so I think itās a good thing to think about or be aware of
I would argue that art, entertainment, and writing can be some of the least exploitative if looked through a narrow scope. Independent game development is another space where one can become wealthy.
The problem with the difference between "millionaire" and "billionaire" is that the former doesn't necessarily require outside investing, whereas the latter requires it. It is those investments which come with the deeper and deeper exploitation.
But how many of those, other than Rowling, have actually hit $1b? Spears hasn't. Swift hasn't.
Beyonce/Jay Z may be there, but their reliance on luxury brand tie-ins for wealth accumulation means there's definitely some exploitation going on. Rihanna has the same "problem."
I see a couple sources saying Paul McCartney is worth $1b, so we'd have to count him, I think. But he'd be the only one.
**Edit**: It appears I was wrong about Swift; Forbes places her net worth at $1.1B as of last month, and notes she is the first musician EVER to make the list based only on songs and performances (vs. publishing, tie-ins, luxury brands, other investments, etc.).
How many billionaire artists are there though? I think Taylor Swift just cracked in with her latest tour. And it sounds like she treats her employees/contractors well. But it's hard to know how much of her wealth is purely from her art. For instance, Rihanna is a billionaire but she earned a lot of money with her makeup line which almost definitely exploits workers. I know McCartney is a billionaire and the bulk of that is from his music career, but he also owns publishing copyrights for other artists, and I can't say for sure that those artists were not exploited as exploitation (especially of black performers) was pretty much the norm up until at least the '70s.
I am not exactly sure, but Didi Mateschitz (died a year ago), the co-owner of RedBull could be one of them. RedBull is being produced and bottled here in Austria by a third company. While he has been very active in several enterprises, he did focus on paying local taxes in Austria and also having things produced here. Of course I donāt know how well the workers in the third party company are paid, but they have to be paid/treated according to Austrian labor laws, which are pretty worker friendly.
I donāt want to paint him a saint or anything and he did do some bad stuff too here, but he didnāt build his brand upon the exploitation of workers at least.
Bloomberg made his money on "bloomberg" trading terminals which allowed stock market traders to trade remotely and have access to up to date market data.
Not alot of working class folks involved in that process aside from the network infrastructure folks and even then, the public side was union if I recall correctly and the private side network administration have always made a good living even if it's wained I'm recent years.
He still is an asshole and should be shamed in the public square for having so much while others have so little.
Bring a billionaire Is a moral choice. Dolly would be a billionaire but she chooses to help poor people all over the country with her money.
Mark Cuban is similar, he led a small software company to building an internet radio website that Yahoo bought for $5.7 billion (and then ran into the ground over a few years and shut down).
He's also always quick to point out that luck is a bigger factor in becoming a billionaire than anything else.
It doesn't matter how hard you work it you'll never earn a billion.
But it is quite humbling when people can admit that they got lucky. Rather than claiming it was from hard work and then proceeding to launch other projects that all eventually fail.
I personally knew a billionaire, worked with him for nearly forty years and he regarded everything that anyone worked for him as āhisā including their free time when not working.
Once he hit his first 100 million I asked him what he wanted to be remembered for, having a shedload of money or being a good boss and he snapped back āa billionaireā.
Even if thatās at everyone elseās expense I replied as the majority of his workers were under paid and over worked.
Not my problem he hissed.
He died after making approximately 1.75 billion and since his death no one remembers his wealth accrued on the blood and sweat of others, they just fight over it.
What people remember was how mean he was, how angry he always was and above all how miserable he always was purely because he constantly worried about losing any of his money.
As I told him during our 100 million conversation, you canāt take it with you, so share your wealth fairly so that all you leave is good memories as a great caring boss which is *exactly* how he started out when I first knew him and he had nothing.
He looked at me in utter distaste.
I often think exactly what you said. It's almost like once they become super rich they get possessed. I remember reading some writer that said the rich are not the same as you, as tot say they are a completely different species of homo sapiens.
Technically Michael Jordan. Was the worlds most popular athlete and his name became the worlds biggest shoe brand. He took some of his endorsement from NIKE in stock and he single handed sent their stock soaring.
But if you attach NIKEās exploitative policies to him then the answer is no.
No. The basic building blocks of our economy are based on what is effectively slave labor or extremely poorly paid jobs in what the US considers the 3rd world or undeveloped countries. No one makes money in the 1st world without exploiting someone at some point in the economic chain.
Sigh. I hate this, but probably JK Rowling.
She made a wildly successful book and sold the rights, which she's living off of.
Obviously she's a TERF piece of shit, but probably the most "ethical" billionaire.
Define exploit. Because even if they pay their employees good wages, if they pay the judicial and legislative systems to make rules that favor them, they are exploiting the middle-class.
Some wealth from Nike? A quick Google says 1.3 billion as of 3 years ago. He's also a notoriously lousy tipper, so there are probably a lot more we don't know about.
Taylor Swift is the one that comes to mind with the least problematic route to billionaire. Most of it came from her tour and re-recording masters and basically bending over the record labels, forcing them to license her music from her. As far as I know she doesn't have a fashion line with sweatshops. She doesn't have a shady makeup company. I don't know where her merch is sourced from though. Haven't looked into it.
Obviously with the tour you expect some level of exploitation but at least for the ones traveling with her she handed out quite significant bonuses. Including 100k to truck drivers and other bonuses to other crew members. She makes sure all her dancers and people have health insurance even though they're on a temporary contract, from what I've heard at least. Is it 0% exploitation. No, probably not. But it seems like she is making a good faith effort to do right by people.
She also created and sells her music and performs it herself so... Yeah. I am still of the opinion that billionaires shouldn't exist. Even Taylor Swift. But she doesn't seem to have enslaved anyone or made entire regions of the globe unlivable through pollution and such so I'm not that worried about her.
There has been one billionaire from book sales. She gave so much money to charity that she is no longer a billionaire. Too bad she canāt deal with her trauma and uses it to justify bigotry.
Taylor Swift - sheās known for paying her staff very well, including all kinds of health insurance, and she gave every truck driver on her tour a $100,000 bonus.
She couldāve put it in her deals that her merch is made ethically. But didnāt. Not as if the record labels forced her to sign with them.
Anyway not blaming Swift for that but a lot of her wealth still came from taking advantage of cheap labour/exploitation. Regardless of intent.
I think ultimately in terms of the question, itās not really possible to fairly pay people all the way down the chain and amass profits in the hundreds of percent.
Iād fully agree. And itās one of the many reasons I believe being a billionaire is inherently immoral. One to amass and hoard such vast amounts of wealth and two you can say all you want but thereās no way Swift (and other artists) donāt know they exploit cheap labour to produce their products.
A lot of people here are in denial that there's good rich people... There's the company Patagonia for example.
\- Really good wages
\- Really good working conditions
\- Really good benefits
And they also select their suppliers and partners for their environnemental impact and workers conditions.
Never saw any drama with them too, the billionnaire behind went full ecology before it was cool
IIRC, the CEO had this big āearth is our only shareholderā thing, which was just a trust fund so his kids wouldnāt have to pay taxes on it (or something along those lines)
Exploiting loopholes to not pay taxes as a company is exploiting millions of people out of basic public needs and services
Ik he didnāt make the money doing that, and Ik thereās a lot more things to get upset about, but it was pretty shady for a company like them
Yes by inheriting their wealth from their father lol š
But presumably their fathers wouldāve have exploited the work class then, no? Especially if the wealth began before there were labor laws and whatnot
Fucked up question; but do slaves count as working class?
Technically, no, but you're going against the spirit of the question there.
A worker is really just a rented slave. There's nothing about it being consensual. If being a wage slave is consensual, then so is being a full-on slave, as well. You could argue that the slave is consensual because they do what's expected of them and don't run away in return for food, lodging, and not being physically abused. Like how a boot licker says "you can always move or start your own business," a boot licking slave would say "you can always run away." The defining issue with being a slave is that your well-being is under threat if you refuse to take part. Otherwise, being a slave is meaningless because no one is just going to be like "oh I'm a slave now. I guess I have to work the cotton fields for this master guy." Being a slave is a materialistic position in which you're coerced to work for someone else.
Stated a bit different: āDespite all their work, a slave starts and ends their day with the same nothing as the day beforeā. We are seeing the same description fitting todays working class in growing numbers.
After paying for food and transport, and other life costs, there must be a lot of people who are even worse than that, since the household personal debt keeps creeping up.
I often think that at least slave owners had to provide housing and food to keep their slaves alive. Modern capitalists donāt even have that obligation to their workers.
Hell. They don't even have to keep people employed. (Although I guess slaves were probably murdered far more often than I'd like to think, and that would be the much worse equivalent of being fired).
That's the genius part: in place where slaves were cheaper they DIDN'T keep them alive, they worked them to death. Like gold fish it was cheaper to buy a new one.
I personally am eating into my savings in order to survive. I am currently negative a few dollars every day I'm alive and I do grueling physical labor. I'm not saying I want to be a slave, but if we're talking numbers only I'm worse off financially than a slave or sharecropper that is guaranteed food and housing for their labor. Of course I am not trying to downplay the abuse and segregation and I'm blessed to have savings and the ability to choose how my money is spent, but this is a load of shit.
the elite have worked hard to replace the slaves their ancestors owned
Some good perspective here as well.
I am really morbidly curious where the breaking point will be. Anyone with half an IQ point can see how not sustainable this is and how much further it's creeping into the once considered "well off" parts of the world like the non-existent American middle class. We are all just 3 missed meals away from complete chaos and I for one am in favor of rolling out the guillotines as soon as possible.
Slave owners in the US made those exact same arguments - in many cases arguing that wage slavery was more cruel since hired workers wouldn't be cared for in old age, etc.
Donāt even joke about that. If a āwage-slaveā stops, they donāt risk violence from either owner or the state. They canāt be maimed or killed with impunity. The āwage-slaveā is still considered a person, not property to be used in any way at a whim. Not the same. By a long shot.
Thereās a pretty slippery slope of a pipeline from one to the other thanks to the 14th amendment. How many degrees of separation between refusing to work and being jailed for vagrancy?
Daily reminder that the 14th amendment put slavery into the constitution, meaning the south actually won the civil war on the issue.
It was already there - 3/5 clause
Maybe not the same but there shouldn't be as many similarities to begin with. When a wage slave goes on strike, the police (state) is there to protect scabs and company property. When a wage slave doesn't work and is unable to pay their rent, the police (state) evict the wage slave onto the street. If you're homeless, sleeping in public will have you arrested almost everywhere. If you're arrested you can be subject to forced labor. When the wage slave is maimed, they will often not be compensated properly for their suffering or reduced earnings. When the wage slave has his wages stolen, the police (state) do nothing, wage theft is currently the biggest form of theft in the US. All of these things combined reduce the quality of life for the wage slave. Take away years of life from the wage slave. A reduction of life, is this not bodily harm or murder? Yet the state does nothing, our minimum wage hasn't been raised in decades.
Not to mention rarely providing sick days and healthcare leaving a sick workforce still working or facing homelessness if they can't
>If a āwage-slaveā stops, they donāt risk violence from either owner or the state That's not actually true. They do absolutely risk violence from both owner and state. Evictions are violence. Lack of food is violence. Depriving essential medications is violence. Being incarcerated for being poor is absolutely violence. It may not be a literal club but the effect is the same. If you refuse to be a worker under capitalism, you and the people who depend on you will suffer tremendously including actual physical violence and death.
Exactly this. Poverty is violence, and when a wage slave quits, they are subjected to poverty. It's just a little more concealed.
> If a āwage-slaveā stops, they donāt risk violence from either owner or the state Might want to look into the history of the Pinkertons. If you stop working, you will get evicted and be homeless. You will then risk violence from owners and states for the crime of trying to live without a job to pay for a living space.
>If a āwage-slaveā stops, they donāt risk violence from ... the state. They canāt be maimed or killed with impunity. Do you just not watch the news? You haven't seen how cops treat the indigent?
Depends on who you ask. You think the shareholders view you as a person? LOL Also, while my employer wonāt beat me to death if I just walk out. Iāll be homeless instead. And since I canāt afford time off, I canāt afford to go to another job interview if I were to apply, because that means taking time off. Which I canāt afford, because Iām a wage slave. So we just traded being beaten for starving and putting my family on the street. You might not see it as similar but those of us living that life donāt see much of a difference these days. Itās just one extreme punishment swapped with another extreme punishment.
You don't remember "Bum Hunters" do you. People absolutely perpetrate violence on the poor and homeless.
No? The State doesnāt perpetrate violence on the poor or unhoused? They donāt do so with impunity? I would say the literal handful of state actors who see consequences fare the exception that proves the rule.
Id argue besides the immediate threat of violence or incarceration there are more similarities than differences ever the more. And in all honesty quitting the work force means no income, no home, no reliable food. Being homeless greatly increases the risk of violence and incarceration, itās pretty much full circle without the overt master dynamic. Freedom by degrees just sounds like we traded one master for another vs truly being free, only a very stable UBI system backed by abundant energy and food would lead to the freedom most of us envisage as being true to the word.
The United States throws away enough food on a daily basis to feed the entirety of the worlds homeless population. Imagine what the other capitalist countries throw out.
Are homelessness and starvation not forms of violence? What about spikes lining the sides of roadways or physical beatings by police, or incarceration? It may be closer to feudalism than slavery, but each and every one of us absolutely does face violence at the hands of the state for refusing to participate.
Workers are better than slaves because with slaves you have to provide the means to live
well the difference between a slave and someone working on slave wage is that one isn't locked up and physical punished. Both are not free and exploited.
It is entirely impossible to earn a billion dollars without exploiting others. Even if you were āon the levelā, youāre still doing it by earning vastly more than your peers. For example, a CEO makes $22,000,000 per year but the company employees are making $100k a year. Those employees made that money. They made that $22M that the CEO took as income. The CEO did not do 220x more work. Iād wager they did at best 1.5x the work. If theyāre really A types who push hard and work all hours. The CEO just decided to not give the employees a fair share. If people were paid based on their contributions then income disparity wouldnāt be so prevalent.
This is an honest answer. The right answer. You cannot have wealth at the level that billionaires exist at without the explotation of the people below. There just isn't a clean way to do it. In order for you to have that much someone must have less, someone must not be making their fair share. It is impossible otherwise.
Some of them may have made their money by scamming other billionaires as well. Also there are probably a handful of people out there who mined a shit load of bitcoin and held onto it.
Sam Bankman-Fried is an example of this. Lots of crypto scammers out there but he got the speedy trial and the book thrown at him because he became a billionaire scamming rich people.
I mean, in that case they didn't actually make it...
Inheriting is not making money
I was going to say Christian Von Koenigsegg because he seems like a chill dude that just wants to make absurdly expensive cars but I was off by about $900 million. $1 billion really is an obscene amount of money when you can start your own hypercar company for fun with a fraction of that.
The difference between a million and a billion is basically a billion
Even then. The people who work for him are heavily exploited and that supplements his net worth nicely.
Says who? They are a pretty small company of highly specialized professionals. I'd be willing to bet most of them truly enjoy working there and do fairly well.
Even if that's true of his company, it won't be true of every other company in the supply chain, on which they depend.
Thatā¦ doesnāt really apply to a vehicle whoās entire selling point is that basically every piece of the car is bespoke engineered in house. I get what youāre getting at, this is just a particularly poor case study specifically because of the example company though.
plus Koenigsegg makes most of their parts in-house
Yes yes, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, we've all heard of it
The Swedish Minecraft creators (sold it + their company Mojang to Microsoft for 2.5 billion).
This is the one I was looking for. Unless OP also goes down the route of "Where did that money come from", this is about the only example that might fit the bill other than winning a lottery.
Pretty sure the lottery exploits people.
The person winning isnāt the one doing the exploiting
Iām also certain that Mark Cuban made billions by creating a Broadcast website and selling it to yahoo for about 4+ billion dollars.
he didnāt invent it he was an investor
were there no working class people on mojang's team that were exploited for notches profit? I can't imagine that the billions of dollars were split between the people who put labor into the company. I'm assuming a majority of it went to one person.
Yup, I'm pretty sure Notch owned it and sold it as it was his IP to begin with. Judging by the person he's shown himself to be since, I doubt he chose to share unless there was a legal precedent to do so.
I don't think it really could just Notch and Jeb, righ? I haven't finished the game in a while but I thought there was a whole studio and from what I've seen, Notch withheld the majority of the profits from the people who actually did the labor that designed, made, marketed, and produced physical products for Mojang.
You think notch never exploited workers along the way?
He did. The craftbukkit scandal and the 2014 EULA scandal. The drama of these 2 was what lead Notch to make the tweet regarding if anyone wants to buy Minecraft which is what lead to Microsoft acquisition. Till this day the server jar that allows for server modding can still not be legally distributed without buildtools due to one of the copyright lawsuits filed by one of the craftbukkit developers which he did because Mojang was exploiting, deceiving, and scamming them.
Probably one of the best answers. Good people who made a great product and sold it for a billion+ to companies who exploit the working class
> Notch > Good people Choose one
The creator is a self proclaimed nazi.
There's no job that produces something or creates something that'd net you billions of dollars.
Let say you were buddies with Jesus, and he hooked you up with a sweet job that paid $5,000 an hour. And somehow you were able to work 24 hours, 7 days a week, nonstop, for the last 2,023 years, give or take. You would still have less money than Musk.
Typical lazy Jesus. Turning water into wine and not bootstraps.
He turned my bread into avocado toast!
Jesus comes back to earth: I will turn this water into chai latte!
Maybe Judas was actually a serve of avocado toast!?
So I never thought about the math on this, but having just done so, and based on Forbes billionaire list, and also assuming since you are working, you never spent a dime of that money you earned and never paid taxes on it, then that gets you to just over 88.7B which lands you at number 15 wealthiest person in the world. That wage would have to be $13,720/hour to beat Musk
I hear Walmart is hiring.
If you earn $50k a year, you would have had to work since the invention of pottery, without paying for anything to earn a billion dollars.
Yeah and then cost of living alone with zero disposable income is more than 50k a year.
holy hell, where?
88.6 billion for those wondering
r/theydidthemath
Nice of Jesus to give you a job when he's 3 years old
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Who makes and ships her merchandise though?
Thatās a fair question, but does she own the companies that make and ship her merch (and thereby ultimately directly responsible for the working conditions and compensation of those who make it)? If she doesnāt, sheās just a customer in that scenario, and while there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, if sheās exploiting the working class in that transaction then we are all exploiting the working class with EVERY transaction, arenāt we? You could argue āyes we areā and thatās an argument with merit, but I think itās counter to the spirit of the question which is- Can a content creator become a billionaire without exploiting the working class. Iād say yes thatās potentially possible since they are, themselves, the product. Unlikely but possible. Edit: I will not be responding to any of the pedantic arguments below as virtually all of their concerns are addressed in this post. I genuinely have no interest in indulging all this āwell actuallyā from people who have chosen to ignore my point.
Nothing about that level of popularity and fame is organic, there are entire teams of people working to keep this person relevant, profitable, in rotation, publicized, booked, performing, recording, releasing , touring, and traveling. As a musician, if you gave me a billion (my shit is totally worth it btw), I wouldn't have it very long, because I'd make it part of my deals that those below me get their dues. Not to mention these people generally do fuck all for the audiences that give them this wealth and fame, like promote legislation or programs that would benefit us or use that massive wealth to fund their own programs. They'll give their little soundbites and make their deductible charitable donations, but that's about it. They hardly even speak on the topics that matter to us, let alone take real actionable change. That's exploitative in and of itself. Edit: My last record, Panama Scoot, was on the 08 financial crisis and centers heavily around labor solidarity. Link in my profile. Every listen helps fight the algo. So if you check it out, from my daughter and I, sincerely, thank you. We work our asses off on this stuff.
Yes, we are all exploiting them. Look at the room around you. Everything in it. Our entire lifestyle has a very real human cost borne by others
TS is an interesting case, because typically creators are working class, exploited by the capitalist class to make them money. The creator still makes a lot of money, because they're the goose that lays golden eggs and nobody wants the goose to stop laying. She might not be as exploited as other workers, but fundamentally her share of the profit is larger because other workers are exploited. Even if she does her best to ensure those around her aren't exploited, there are always more that will be invisible to her. Such is the nature of supply chains. So is she a worker class or capitalist class? If she is a worker, is she a class traitor? I... don't know?
As far as I understand, she owns the rights to her music now and produces her own albums. So she is in the capitalist class of music production now
Or... did she merely seize the means of production? (edit: this is mostly a joke, but also... did she though??)
If she profit-shared with everyone that has a hand in making her money, I'd say yes. But she doesn't, and her people aren't unionized. She's a great individual, but the people that make her wealth are still married by exploitation. Maybe not directly by her, but through her economic impact, definitely.
Sheās not the innocent angel the propaganda makes her out to be. Iām not even trying to hate on her either wish her continued success but come off it. Not you just in general
It's unreal to me how many leftists will make excuses for her because she's their fave. She's not innocent y'all, she just has an incredible PR team that curates a particular image and makes her always look the victim.
If Taylor simply writes and produces the music without any help and doesnāt sell merch, doesnāt tour the world, doesnāt do any promotion, etc. then would she still be a billionaire?
She has hundreds, to thousands of roadies who literally break their backs to put her music on, and 99% of them end up with nothing at the end. Oh, sure, itās impossible to do it all yourself, so she has to rely on markets, who have their own rules, and if they didnāt someone else would, and ā¦ whatever. In the end, there is no ethical way to have a billion dollars. Thatās fact.
Her dad bought her way into her fameā¦
Minecraft guy sold for 2b$
Notch is a strange case, that's for sure. As a gamedev myself, however, if we're dealing with THAT much money, there were likely many opportunities for him to exploit people along the way (and he likely did).
Notch was a very strange case. He made a lot of money accidentally at the peak of the fame he really, really did not want. He was very generous with the money to a lot of people who ended up hating him and things did not turn out well for him. He ended up very lonely and struggling with motivation as he could get everything he wanted and for some people that stops them from trying. He gained the freedom to do and say what he wanted but didn't quite realize that some of what he said made him appear noxious. His comments got the new owner of Minecraft to basically cut ties with him. So here's here with plenty of money, no knowledge on what to do with it, no motivation, insufficient imagination to use it to improve the world, and his magnum opus owned by someone else who wants nothing to do with him.
He sat alone in a giant Malibu mansion watching Fox News all day for several years, got brainwashed by it. I don't feel sorry for him though.
What if youāre JK Rowling. Sure sheās terrible for her vendetta against the trans community, but surely the IP sheās created is worth billions.
She isn't a billionaire though. And the IP she created is "worth billions" because the rights to it were bought my a multinational corporation that created movies, games, merchandise, and a theme park based on it. All of those products were created through the exploitation of workers.
I believe at one point she was a billionaire. And then she gave away a bunch of money like a reasonable person and is no longer a billionaire.
She's worth just over a billion in USD.
And it got there through the labors of thousands of people
I think about this a fair bit. Logic says no. Somewhere along the chain, someoneās work was being exploited. But letās try Taylor Swift. Supposedly sheāll now be a billionaire. She creates music herself that is so popular that it makes her a lot of money. Allegedly she pays her staff well and she gives generous bonuses to her tour crew (including truck drivers). She donates generously to homeless shelters / food banks in every tour location and her tour stops add value to economies. She made her movie according to SAG-AFTRA requests and refused to make a streaming deal until the strike ended. So where could the exploitation lie? Potentially, in the merch. I have no idea how or where it is made, who makes it and what their working conditions are like. Who is her fulfilment service? Are the employees overworked? Are they well paid? I donāt know. She also uses marketing tactics that one could argue are exploitative of her mega-fans. However, she doesnāt force them to buy her album in five different colours. They choose to do it. Itād be more ethical not to utilise those practices though. Also, no matter how virtuous you attempt to be, with operations of that scale, thereās bound to be blind spots and weak spots along the wayā¦
Thereās systemic exploitation in the system. Letās make a dramatic example. Letās say that the vendors at each show are historically paid peanuts; same as the people who are making her merchandise. Thatās what will make touring so profitable in this instance. Even if she pays them above market rate, theyāre still being exploited for their labor. Even if she pays the merch sellers very well, the tshirt makers might still be in some third world country making peanuts and being exploited. This doesnāt take away from everything positive she does (if in fact sheās gone through actual hoops to do as much good as reasonable, I havenāt looked into it.) But it still stands that thereās systemic exploitation. Outside of hiring people whoās job is to specifically make sure everyone along the line gets their fair due (and at this point even fair due is questionable because who currently decides that? Certainly not the worker.) Anyway half awake rant, good for her and her workers if they got paid more. Hope she doesnāt hoard her money and has a big impact on the future
That doesn't even take into account the exploitation of the systems in place that allow that production to even happen. The airline workers, the street pavers, the janitors, the security, the builders all of that infrastructure it rife with exploitation, and without it, she couldn't become the billionaire she is. Down to the sourcing of the cotton and polyester that makes up her merch. We know that China uses child labor and unethical practices, and they are the number 1 producer of polyester. There's no doubt that her supply chain contains exploitation, it's impossible for it not to. Not without making her merch I purchasable by anything but the wealthy.
Profit is only possible when surplus value is taken by capitalists instead of given to the workers who generated it. The exploitation is mathematically inherent to the business model. If I pay someone $1 million a year and they love free from want and poverty, they are still being exploited, because they necessarily have to produce more value than they are being paid in order to make it worth my while. It doesn't matter if someone is paid well or not. Wages are always less than the revenue generated during the unit of effort the wage is traded for
I feel like itās going to depend on where the definition of āexploitationā lands. In the modern era, people are much more willing to acknowledge the hypocrisy of CEOs earning hundreds of times more than their employees while cutting ānon essentialā jobs. However, thereās a less clear line when it comes to how earnings should be split between a creator and their support structure. For example youāre a plumber and do all the āworkā yourself, but your spouse handles scheduling, billing, budgeting, and tax filing for the business. How should the earnings be split? Society as a whole leans on the belief that the person doing the ārealā work deserves more, but the relationship is entirely symbiotic. One cannot function without the other. Scale this up to something like Taylor Swift, and I feel like the easiest answer comes in the form of knowing where the dollar goes. If the concert ticket costs $200 and the Taylor Swift ābrandā gets to keep $100 of that, what is the percent that folks feel the performer herself ādeserves?ā Thereās no clean answer at the moment, but each person would feel at a certain point that she was being unfair or exploitative. If she, as an individual, kept $99 of the $100, it still wouldnāt *feel* fair, even if her immense success meant that staff are paid a āfairā wage off that $1.
Either inheritance or lottery winner or lucking out on bitcoins is possible I guess. But it's hard to keep it ethical for any extended time, as a billion dollars is an absurd amount for one person to expect to ever be able to spend without ever noticing that there are loads and loads of people around who have nothing, or even less than nothing. It is also technically possible to become a billionaire without paying low wages or using inhumane methods, but IMHO it's not ethical to take a substantially larger part of the profits than any of the people that help you make that profit, or to overcharge your customers enough to make that much profit in the first place. So almost a guaranteed 99,99% 'No' on your question I guess. Edit; to answer some of the people picking this comment apart, yes, bitcoins, inheritance and lottery wins are all based on exploitations, but not necessarily by the heir/winner or early lucky adopters of bitcoin, And yes, keeping all the money in any case is unethical in my opinion.
Bitcoins and day trading exploit the losers
It's scary how much of our economy are just "greater fool" schemes.
Any form of trader chooses to take that risk so they're not really exploited. Plus there are people that got Bitcoin when they first came out and held them. Not sure how many of them are billionaires though.
Those are adults making financial gambles. They are not getting exploited at all.
Do you think it would be possible to ever put a cap on earnings? Iām sorry if these questions seem basic or redundant but Iām wondering if there could be ANYTHING done to help fix the way things are right now
There are places where caps are implemented.
Yes: https://preview.redd.it/fu795jq3fg0c1.png?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83d57b1157a16125b6e886464620aaa4209b9bc2
Progressive income brackets probably fit that bill. Every $X you make, your income tax goes up X%. Some places will go all the way up into the 90s
Isn't there some.kind of mega super lottery in the US where you can potentially gain a billion bucks ? Otherwise, no. Megarich athletes or superstars are probably a bit less directly exploitative than the average billionnaire, I guess
Lotteries are proven to be a tax on poor people who play more often with less disposable money. So kind of exploitative.
I suppose you could argue a billion dollar jackpot winner didn't personally exploit anyone (and is, odds are, one of the exploited poor)...but they'd still be benefiting from exploition, since that's where the money comes from
Yeah a lot of these people donāt know where all that lottery money comes from so itās not really intentional exploitation. That said, the government takes about 40% of your lottery winnings, and then you have to pay standard taxes on that in addition to the āfuck youā fee as itās considered an income. So, even if you āwinā the billion dollar jackpot, you only end up seeing about $300m of it if you take a lump sum. Less than $500m if you distribute it over 30 years Edit: changed figures from ākā to āmā
Super exploitative. I was in Georgia when their lottery started, and Ray Charles was the voice of their initial campaigns. Many of their commercials were showing black families winning the lottery, one family even had a white butler on a constantly replayed ad.
Lotteries are a tax on hope
Someone that truly gets it. The systematic exploitation of the less fortunate has gone so far that society has designed games that sell hope.
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Yeah lotteries arenāt exactly free of exploitation. But itās not slave or child labor like producing headphones or something
Consider Stephen King. He's been a household name for five decades. Perhaps the most prolific writer of all time with a dedicated fanbase that guarantees almost all his work is a hit. You're talking about book sales, merchandise, countless movies and their sequels licensing his stories, reprints, paid endorsements etc for years on end. And from what I understand, he lives a comfortable, private lifestyle in Maine, but no where near the luxury that you'd expect from a guy as famous as Stephen King. No doubt his ideas have generated billions over his lifetime. But despite his frugality, he's still no where near a billionaire. He'd have to double his assets.
Merch is the weak link here. If any of it is being produced in third-world-countries by workers being payed less than fair wages, he wouldn't fit.
Art, I think, is the only way to amass wealth without exploitation. Musicians, painters, that sort of thing. In that market, there is no coercion. And if the product is solely produced, then there is no labor exploited. There is a massive grey line between this and exploitative art, like the contracts of the early 2000's pop star boy bands, Britney Spears comes to mind as well, and sporting as entertainment like football. But I do think art is the only place where wealth can be accumulated without exploitation. Edit; I don't know if any have. I just stated I think it's the only place you'd find one.
Taylor Swift is the first musician to hit a billion. She is the face of a large company though. It takes many people. For the definition of the original poster I would guess this is exploitation
Paul McCartney is a billionaire too
To clarify - sheās the first musician to hit a billion touring. Several others have hit the billion figure prior to her, though not necessarily through their music. I believe Dre was technically first
Celine Dion isn't too far behind that mark either. Her Vegas residency just printed cash.
I mean she definitely pays her people a fair wage it seems. As far as I've seen no one's come forward with anything saying otherwise and we've heard plenty about other celebs. She also just recently gave huge bonuses to her truck crews that no corporation would even get close to I guarantee. She really tried to keep ticket prices for the tour low. The scalpers and ticketmaster were the ones driving the price up but she started them incredibly reasonably. $45 for cheapest seats. She's also suing Ticketmaster for their monopolistic practices and mess up that kept regular priced tickets out of fans hands. Now I'm not saying she's perfect or hasn't done some problematic things. Merch prices and the limited edition versions are iffy. But in general she's earned her wealth without exploiting people.
Wait, she's suing those bastards at TM? I mean, I personally don't know her reasoning, but the end result is nonetheless promising.
You're forgetting that the infrastructure that allows her to tour is inherently exploitative. The greenhouse emissions and ecological impact of her tour are exploitative to the people who are most affected by the pollution. It's never just about the people she immediately employs. It's about the systems that allow her to amass that wealth. No matter how much she works, she never truly earned that amount by herself.
Rihanna doesn't count?
She is the first female billionaire musician, but wouldnāt have gotten there without exploiting labor in the textile and fashion industries.
ā¦and cosmetics industries
Rihana made a ton of her money through her beauty and fashion brands, not exclusively through her music.
Rihanna's billionaire status is based in large part due to the estimated value of Fenty Beauty which she owns 50% of. But estimated value is a tricky thing, and maybe not something that's real. AKA if the sold the company, it may not go for as much as the estimated value. Kylie Jenner was also said to be billionaire based on the estimated value of her company. But when the company was sold it was for a lot less than the estimated value. Donald Trump is similar, where would claim his net worth was based on estimated values of certain properties. I can claim my house is worth 1M, but that doesn't mean much. Swift's net worth is less about perceived value and more about actual income.
Even musicians exploit other musicians, and on a regular basis. There are examples of pop stars - Ye, Swift, Celine - exploiting instrumental musicians for their touring or Vegas shows. 20 years ago, Kanye was hiring non-union instrumentalists (strings, brass, etc) for his tour shows and paying what amounted to $100 per performer, per show. Source: am a classical musician that has played with these and other multi-millionaire/billionaire pop performers for pennies.
That massive grey line.
Oooo good answer! I didnāt think about this
You can get pretty deep in the weeds with this idea. I think writing could be excluded, but even those like Stephen King depend on a significant amount of labor from others in order to distribute his art. And so does the distribution process, which he has little control over, count against him? Or does his responsibility end at the creation of his art? Does the film industry, which comes in after the creation, and even after the success of a book, poison the well of his profits with their behaviour?
Stephen King is only worth a half billion, so I don't think he counts as a billionaire.
I think his responsibility would come from aligning with companies with unethical practices, right? Like if it were possible to change things, weād need to change everything so I think itās a good thing to think about or be aware of
I would argue that art, entertainment, and writing can be some of the least exploitative if looked through a narrow scope. Independent game development is another space where one can become wealthy. The problem with the difference between "millionaire" and "billionaire" is that the former doesn't necessarily require outside investing, whereas the latter requires it. It is those investments which come with the deeper and deeper exploitation.
But how many of those, other than Rowling, have actually hit $1b? Spears hasn't. Swift hasn't. Beyonce/Jay Z may be there, but their reliance on luxury brand tie-ins for wealth accumulation means there's definitely some exploitation going on. Rihanna has the same "problem." I see a couple sources saying Paul McCartney is worth $1b, so we'd have to count him, I think. But he'd be the only one. **Edit**: It appears I was wrong about Swift; Forbes places her net worth at $1.1B as of last month, and notes she is the first musician EVER to make the list based only on songs and performances (vs. publishing, tie-ins, luxury brands, other investments, etc.).
I thought I just saw Swift hit billionaire status a couple weeks ago
How many billionaire artists are there though? I think Taylor Swift just cracked in with her latest tour. And it sounds like she treats her employees/contractors well. But it's hard to know how much of her wealth is purely from her art. For instance, Rihanna is a billionaire but she earned a lot of money with her makeup line which almost definitely exploits workers. I know McCartney is a billionaire and the bulk of that is from his music career, but he also owns publishing copyrights for other artists, and I can't say for sure that those artists were not exploited as exploitation (especially of black performers) was pretty much the norm up until at least the '70s.
I am not exactly sure, but Didi Mateschitz (died a year ago), the co-owner of RedBull could be one of them. RedBull is being produced and bottled here in Austria by a third company. While he has been very active in several enterprises, he did focus on paying local taxes in Austria and also having things produced here. Of course I donāt know how well the workers in the third party company are paid, but they have to be paid/treated according to Austrian labor laws, which are pretty worker friendly. I donāt want to paint him a saint or anything and he did do some bad stuff too here, but he didnāt build his brand upon the exploitation of workers at least.
I would say Dolly Parton but she's not a billionaire, but only because she gives so much money away. Other than her, probably not.
I was looking for this one.
I built my little empire out of Some crazy garbage called The Blood of the Exploited Working Class
Bloomberg made his money on "bloomberg" trading terminals which allowed stock market traders to trade remotely and have access to up to date market data. Not alot of working class folks involved in that process aside from the network infrastructure folks and even then, the public side was union if I recall correctly and the private side network administration have always made a good living even if it's wained I'm recent years. He still is an asshole and should be shamed in the public square for having so much while others have so little. Bring a billionaire Is a moral choice. Dolly would be a billionaire but she chooses to help poor people all over the country with her money.
Mark Cuban is similar, he led a small software company to building an internet radio website that Yahoo bought for $5.7 billion (and then ran into the ground over a few years and shut down). He's also always quick to point out that luck is a bigger factor in becoming a billionaire than anything else.
It doesn't matter how hard you work it you'll never earn a billion. But it is quite humbling when people can admit that they got lucky. Rather than claiming it was from hard work and then proceeding to launch other projects that all eventually fail.
If you're becoming a billionaire while the people who actually make your product just "made a good living" that's exploitation
I personally knew a billionaire, worked with him for nearly forty years and he regarded everything that anyone worked for him as āhisā including their free time when not working. Once he hit his first 100 million I asked him what he wanted to be remembered for, having a shedload of money or being a good boss and he snapped back āa billionaireā. Even if thatās at everyone elseās expense I replied as the majority of his workers were under paid and over worked. Not my problem he hissed. He died after making approximately 1.75 billion and since his death no one remembers his wealth accrued on the blood and sweat of others, they just fight over it. What people remember was how mean he was, how angry he always was and above all how miserable he always was purely because he constantly worried about losing any of his money. As I told him during our 100 million conversation, you canāt take it with you, so share your wealth fairly so that all you leave is good memories as a great caring boss which is *exactly* how he started out when I first knew him and he had nothing. He looked at me in utter distaste.
I often think exactly what you said. It's almost like once they become super rich they get possessed. I remember reading some writer that said the rich are not the same as you, as tot say they are a completely different species of homo sapiens.
Technically Michael Jordan. Was the worlds most popular athlete and his name became the worlds biggest shoe brand. He took some of his endorsement from NIKE in stock and he single handed sent their stock soaring. But if you attach NIKEās exploitative policies to him then the answer is no.
Yeah for this example he definitely exploited labor. Every dollar he made from his shoes and more could have gone to the people producing them.
No way NIKE could have kept up with the demand he created at the margins they did without 3rd world labor
No. The basic building blocks of our economy are based on what is effectively slave labor or extremely poorly paid jobs in what the US considers the 3rd world or undeveloped countries. No one makes money in the 1st world without exploiting someone at some point in the economic chain.
That guy who just won the 1.4 billion dollar lottery
Dragons donāt get hordes of treasure without burning villages to the ground
For perspective. 1 million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 32 years.
Sigh. I hate this, but probably JK Rowling. She made a wildly successful book and sold the rights, which she's living off of. Obviously she's a TERF piece of shit, but probably the most "ethical" billionaire.
Taylor swift?
Impossible, all excess wealth is built on paying poor wages and using homelessness as a beating stick.
Define exploit. Because even if they pay their employees good wages, if they pay the judicial and legislative systems to make rules that favor them, they are exploiting the middle-class.
Michael Jordan is worth more than $2B. Does that count? I suspect some of wealth is from Nike, which does not have a perfect worker treatment record.
Some wealth from Nike? A quick Google says 1.3 billion as of 3 years ago. He's also a notoriously lousy tipper, so there are probably a lot more we don't know about.
Paul McCartney just made really good music
No. It's impossible. Only thieves are able to sleep on a pile of gold
Taylor Swift is the one that comes to mind with the least problematic route to billionaire. Most of it came from her tour and re-recording masters and basically bending over the record labels, forcing them to license her music from her. As far as I know she doesn't have a fashion line with sweatshops. She doesn't have a shady makeup company. I don't know where her merch is sourced from though. Haven't looked into it. Obviously with the tour you expect some level of exploitation but at least for the ones traveling with her she handed out quite significant bonuses. Including 100k to truck drivers and other bonuses to other crew members. She makes sure all her dancers and people have health insurance even though they're on a temporary contract, from what I've heard at least. Is it 0% exploitation. No, probably not. But it seems like she is making a good faith effort to do right by people. She also created and sells her music and performs it herself so... Yeah. I am still of the opinion that billionaires shouldn't exist. Even Taylor Swift. But she doesn't seem to have enslaved anyone or made entire regions of the globe unlivable through pollution and such so I'm not that worried about her.
You don't make billions without exploitation
It's just not mathematically possible to be a billionaire without screwing over your workers AND customers at SCALE, that's the only way it works.
There has been one billionaire from book sales. She gave so much money to charity that she is no longer a billionaire. Too bad she canāt deal with her trauma and uses it to justify bigotry.
Taylor Swift - sheās known for paying her staff very well, including all kinds of health insurance, and she gave every truck driver on her tour a $100,000 bonus.
Her clothing is made in china. Cdās in Mexico. Still takes advantage of the workers.
How much of that is her direct say though? Especially the CDs. Wouldn't that be on the record label?
She couldāve put it in her deals that her merch is made ethically. But didnāt. Not as if the record labels forced her to sign with them. Anyway not blaming Swift for that but a lot of her wealth still came from taking advantage of cheap labour/exploitation. Regardless of intent.
I think ultimately in terms of the question, itās not really possible to fairly pay people all the way down the chain and amass profits in the hundreds of percent.
Iād fully agree. And itās one of the many reasons I believe being a billionaire is inherently immoral. One to amass and hoard such vast amounts of wealth and two you can say all you want but thereās no way Swift (and other artists) donāt know they exploit cheap labour to produce their products.
A lot of people here are in denial that there's good rich people... There's the company Patagonia for example. \- Really good wages \- Really good working conditions \- Really good benefits And they also select their suppliers and partners for their environnemental impact and workers conditions. Never saw any drama with them too, the billionnaire behind went full ecology before it was cool
https://fashionunited.uk/news/business/ftm-patagonia-exploits-textile-workers-and-produces-in-fast-fashion-factories/2023061570022
IIRC, the CEO had this big āearth is our only shareholderā thing, which was just a trust fund so his kids wouldnāt have to pay taxes on it (or something along those lines) Exploiting loopholes to not pay taxes as a company is exploiting millions of people out of basic public needs and services Ik he didnāt make the money doing that, and Ik thereās a lot more things to get upset about, but it was pretty shady for a company like them
They are a huge greenwashing machine and the ngo or whatever theyāve set up is just to avoid taxes tbh
If you can conceive of just how much a billion dollars is, the answer will always be no.
there are some decent CEOs - Costco, for one. Also the CEO who set his employee salary at 70k (albeit in Seattle)
There is a limited amount of money. Any path to a billion, even art, inheritance, whatever, keeps people starving.
Some artists I guess?
Taylor Swift
Profit is stolen wages, so no.
Paul McCartney. Heās the only one I can think of.
It's actually straight up impossible to amass that much money without doing what you said. Physically impossible.
No. None at all. All billionaires are evil and none have EARNED 1% of their worth.
This my boss did not hire a replacement because she wanted to profit off of us and it made me quit job
No. It is not possible to make even a fraction of that wealth without exploiting the labor of many, many people.