Democrats want us to believe that there is some cohort of “good billionaires” who can be relied upon to fight for political progress. But as the right-wing turn of tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk suggests, this is nonsense.
Yup. Show me a billionaire who has paid their workers fairly from day one, followed every single law and regulation by the book, never spent a single dollar on lobbying Congress or contributing to political campaigns for quid pro quos, and never used underpaid contractors or foreign slave labor. You can’t, because there’s no such thing as a good billionaire.
It’s more than that. It necessarily requires that you pay workers less than the value they produce so you can take the excess value for yourself. It’s a fundamental requirement, and the fatal flaw of capitalism.
The guy who founded Costco and was its CEO up until a few years ago is this, if not very close. A business lauded for both how it treated its workforce, and its customers. Basically no turnover unless someone retires.
And even then, if they managed to amass that kind of wealth, it had to come from somewhere, i.e. consumers paying enough for their product that it made them a billionaire, meaning all these people found have paid less and that billionaire could be a millionaire or just middle class and more people would be richer.
While he certainly comes across as one of the more virtuous billionaires, his company Berkshire Hathaway, has massive investments in some of the worst and most damaging industries in the world, in terms of labor exploitation and ongoing contributions to the climate disaster. For example, his company owns 6.6% of Chevron and 27.2% of Occidental Petroleum, two massive exploiters of fossil fuels. That’s no good in my book.
Nope. That amount of wealth is only generated via exploitation. Exploiting workers or exploiting customers, or cutting corners and skirting regulations, failing to internalize externalities. Mostly all of the above
Some people think all profit is “stolen” labor value, and thus all wage labor is exploitation. I don’t think that’s true, but it is true that all for-profit firms have an incentive to pay their workers as little as possible, while getting as much productivity from them as possible, because that will maximize profits.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to cut other costs as much as possible, to maximize profits. This is why we see things like shrinkflation, planned obsolescence, or products just getting gradually crappier over time.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to externalize certain costs, like pollution, environmental destruction, or resource depletion, to, once again, maximize profits.
I love how swifties always say, “WhAt AbOuT tAyLoR?!”
And I say this as someone who loves her music.
She’s still a bad billionaire.
EVEN IF she paid everyone who works for her or her label above market rate, even if she charged her concert tickets below market value, even if she “goes green” with every CD, every piece of merchandise, the fact that she has more money than most people makes her a bad billionaire.
She could easily give half of her wealth away and still be okay.
Where do you think that wealth comes from? They don’t produce it. The workers create the value, which is stolen from them for the owners and shareholders.
To be fair to Taylor she is producing a show, but the wealth should be fairly distributed with the crew that make those performances possible
Unless her financials are public, it’ll be hard to do but the general principle is that everyone’s labour is worth the same.
She’s able to get more money through manipulation, whether intending to or not, through her fans buying multiples of her merchandise, to playing her songs on Spotify non stop to boost her profits etc.
Applying this principle, she’s gaining profit from the work of her fans who aren’t getting any compensation for their labour, resulting in millions of dollars.
Do you really belive that everyone’s labor is worth the same? So a miner that spends hours on end underground risking black lung or a ton of other nasty stuff and a Walmart greeter should have the same compensation?
Also, how is listening a song on Spotify “labor”??? Where can I get that job? Are you guys getting paid for being fans of someone?
Yup. Show me a billionaire who has paid their workers fairly from day one, followed every single law and regulation by the book, never spent a single dollar on lobbying Congress or contributing to political campaigns for quid pro quos, and never used underpaid contractors or foreign slave labor. You can’t, because there’s no such thing as a good billionaire.
Yes, even that one
It’s more than that. It necessarily requires that you pay workers less than the value they produce so you can take the excess value for yourself. It’s a fundamental requirement, and the fatal flaw of capitalism.
The guy who founded Costco and was its CEO up until a few years ago is this, if not very close. A business lauded for both how it treated its workforce, and its customers. Basically no turnover unless someone retires.
And even then, if they managed to amass that kind of wealth, it had to come from somewhere, i.e. consumers paying enough for their product that it made them a billionaire, meaning all these people found have paid less and that billionaire could be a millionaire or just middle class and more people would be richer.
I don’t have a problem with open lobbying per se. If it’s on behalf of all of the workers and customers as well and not just their own interests.
But can anyone identify such a billionaire?
And by definition that rules out any that step on their workers like bugs…
What about Warren Buffet? Out of genuine interest.
While he certainly comes across as one of the more virtuous billionaires, his company Berkshire Hathaway, has massive investments in some of the worst and most damaging industries in the world, in terms of labor exploitation and ongoing contributions to the climate disaster. For example, his company owns 6.6% of Chevron and 27.2% of Occidental Petroleum, two massive exploiters of fossil fuels. That’s no good in my book.
Taylor Swift?
Nope. That amount of wealth is only generated via exploitation. Exploiting workers or exploiting customers, or cutting corners and skirting regulations, failing to internalize externalities. Mostly all of the above
I assume you have examples?
Some people think all profit is “stolen” labor value, and thus all wage labor is exploitation. I don’t think that’s true, but it is true that all for-profit firms have an incentive to pay their workers as little as possible, while getting as much productivity from them as possible, because that will maximize profits.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to cut other costs as much as possible, to maximize profits. This is why we see things like shrinkflation, planned obsolescence, or products just getting gradually crappier over time.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to externalize certain costs, like pollution, environmental destruction, or resource depletion, to, once again, maximize profits.
I love how swifties always say, “WhAt AbOuT tAyLoR?!”
And I say this as someone who loves her music.
She’s still a bad billionaire.
EVEN IF she paid everyone who works for her or her label above market rate, even if she charged her concert tickets below market value, even if she “goes green” with every CD, every piece of merchandise, the fact that she has more money than most people makes her a bad billionaire.
She could easily give half of her wealth away and still be okay.
She’s a bad billionaire.
Where do you think that wealth comes from? They don’t produce it. The workers create the value, which is stolen from them for the owners and shareholders.
To be fair to Taylor she is producing a show, but the wealth should be fairly distributed with the crew that make those performances possible
Most of her wealth comes from merchandising anyway, i.e, profiting from the excess value created by the labor to produce goods.
But yes, the shows are also the same concept.
Unless her financials are public, it’ll be hard to do but the general principle is that everyone’s labour is worth the same.
She’s able to get more money through manipulation, whether intending to or not, through her fans buying multiples of her merchandise, to playing her songs on Spotify non stop to boost her profits etc.
Applying this principle, she’s gaining profit from the work of her fans who aren’t getting any compensation for their labour, resulting in millions of dollars.
Do you really belive that everyone’s labor is worth the same? So a miner that spends hours on end underground risking black lung or a ton of other nasty stuff and a Walmart greeter should have the same compensation?
Also, how is listening a song on Spotify “labor”??? Where can I get that job? Are you guys getting paid for being fans of someone?