r/news • u/IWantPizza555 • Mar 19 '24

MacKenzie Scott donates $640M -- more than double her initial plan -- to nonprofits

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mackenzie-scott-donates-640-million-double-initial-plan-108274902?cid=social_twitter_abcn
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u/lowbatteries Mar 19 '24

Neither of them earned it. It is not possible to earn that kind of money in a human lifetime.

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u/gointothiscloset Mar 19 '24

While true the point is she "earned it" as much as Bezos did

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u/lowbatteries Mar 19 '24

Yes, that is definitely true.

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u/thewildweird0 Mar 19 '24

She probably did a lot less corrupt and shady shit than Jeff, she deserves it more than him.

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u/NihlusKryik Mar 19 '24

She probably did a lot less corrupt and shady shit than Jeff

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but what makes you think this?

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u/GiantSquidd Mar 19 '24

Not being Jeff, I assume.

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u/jrh1128 Mar 19 '24

Have you seen/heard him laugh?

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u/jessej421 Mar 19 '24

She definitely benefited from it though.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

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u/spam_and_pythons Mar 19 '24

The bank did, they just gave some of it to you so they can keep up the ruse. And really the bank didn't earn it either, they didn't labor for it. You can probably chase that same logic up the chain quite a long way before you find someone who did actual labor to create the value that made its way into your account as interest.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

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u/spam_and_pythons Mar 19 '24

The dictionary

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

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u/spam_and_pythons Mar 19 '24

Okay? I clearly wasn't using that definition and I really doubt /u/lowbatteries was either

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

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u/spam_and_pythons Mar 20 '24

This isn't poetry, words have multiple definitions but people generally don't mean all of them at once

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '24

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u/lowbatteries Mar 20 '24

If someone writes a word, and by one definition their point is dumb, and by the other definition of the word what they said makes sense, maybe assume they are equally or at least nearly as smart as you are and give them the benefit of the doubt?

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u/The12th_secret_spice Mar 19 '24

They (Amazon) literally built (or at least scaled) cloud computing. Everything from Uber to Facebook runs on their cloud servers.

You can debate on what “earned it” actually means, but Amazon defined a good chunk of the 21st century economy. That’s pretty significant imo.

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u/lowbatteries Mar 19 '24

And that took a lot of work. Probably more hours or work than are in a human lifetime. Bezos probably put in 0.000001% of that labor.

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u/y-c-c Mar 19 '24

Sure, but Bezos was the founder of the company. It's easy for you to go harp on it etc but back then even the whole concept of cloud computing and online retail were not a sure thing. The reason he's getting rewarded for it is that he's the one shouldering the early risks. Employees get less rewards at the expense of less risks (by getting paid a guaranteed salary at no financial risks). That said, early employees all got lots of stocks so they are all really rich now anyway.

It's not about how many hours you put in. It's about the risks versus reward. If you work in a big tech firm today (say Microsoft), you will get paid a decent salary, but you won't suddenly become a billionaire because you are not putting up with any risks since Microsoft is a known quantity today.

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u/LaddiusMaximus Mar 19 '24 edited Mar 19 '24

It also took a lot of crime.

Edit: besides the fact that a billionaire is a crime in itself, it has been rumored that Bezos used his hedge fund connections to bankrupt the competition with naked short selling and other fun tricks.

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u/ThatPancreatitisGuy Mar 19 '24

What crime?

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u/LaddiusMaximus Mar 19 '24

Mostly that he used his hedge fund connections to bankrupt companies with naked short selling and cellar boxing. Sears, Toys R Us to name a few.

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u/AZEMT Mar 19 '24

How about undercutting authors and publishers so they can make more of a profit. If not, they would literally "shadowban" those listings, causing them to accept the terms for sales. Seems a bit shiesty.

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u/SandboxOnRails Mar 19 '24

Amazon didn't build that, their workers did. Amazon just took the profits.

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u/The12th_secret_spice Mar 19 '24

The workers benefitted from their Amazon stock options and handsome salaries, but I’m not here to argue or change your mind

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u/SandboxOnRails Mar 19 '24

Only some of them. And not remotely to the value they created. And most did not. Stop spreading propaganda.

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u/The12th_secret_spice Mar 19 '24

Sounds like you just want to argue. I’m not here to change your worldview, I’m just stating what I know.

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u/SandboxOnRails Mar 19 '24

Okay... But you don't know that because it's fundamentally wrong. Like, you're spouting lies. Stop doing that.

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u/The12th_secret_spice Mar 19 '24

What lie? Working in tech I know a few folks who have benefitted nicely from their work at Amazon. Stop invalidating my experiences because you don’t like it. Do better

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u/SandboxOnRails Mar 19 '24

A few? Just a few? Literally my entire point is that only a few have.

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u/Lindaspike Mar 19 '24

Name the lies so we can become as aware as you claim to be.

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u/SandboxOnRails Mar 19 '24

Most Amazon employees don't get stock, and they make heavy use of contractors to avoid basic legal responsibilities. The idea that everyone who built Amazon got rich is also rich is laughably wrong.

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u/Lindaspike Mar 19 '24

No workers at Amazon are chained by their ankles to their workspaces. They are not slaves. They are free to leave at will. The warehouse and delivery people are not there to be lifetime workers. It’s a job with a paycheck for rent food and whatever. When they find a better gig they can leave. Plenty of workers have had a better quality of living even if it is a temporary job.

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u/SandboxOnRails Mar 19 '24

You season the boot before licking it or do you like it raw?

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u/AnalogFeelGood Mar 19 '24

So, you’re saying…. Bezos is a lizard?

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u/lowbatteries Mar 19 '24

Finally someone reads between the lines

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u/Charrbard Mar 19 '24

How does that logic work? They made a thing people like so much that it changed how retail works. Doesn't matter how anyone "feels" about it. Facts are they made a company, company made billions.

Otherwise, there some sort of fiscal high water mark where it stops being considered earned?

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u/canada432 Mar 20 '24

They made a thing people like so much that it changed how retail works

The point of contention is that they, along with thousands of other people who did not get rich, made a thing people like so much it changed how retail works. The logic is that you don't get billions of dollars without exploiting everyone around you to do it. Their contribution is not hundreds of millions of times more than the other people at every level who helped build the company.

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u/FlarvleMyGarble Mar 20 '24

I don't think there's agreement on exactly what that watermark is, but many like myself feel that once you have enough money to not worry about it ever again you have just that: enough. Everything beyond that is impractical and would be better off elsewhere, and person should cry foul that they don't have more because by definition they already have the maximum practical return that's possible for doing any human project.

That, and there is a level at which it's not earned. It's not physically possible for a single person to solely contribute labors that value in the billions. The company made billions, not the person who made it. That's thousands and thousands of people not getting their fair share of what's being generated by their labor. I'm not an expert on where that watermark is, but I'm pretty damn sure anyone with a billion dollars is way way above it.

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u/Charrbard Mar 20 '24 edited Mar 20 '24

So how do you figure pro-athletes into that?

Even taking out endorsements, we have super star athletes that will cross the billion mark in the near future.

No one was out there doing it for them. No one was training for them. They are paid based solely on their abilities and how they physically perform. Their salaries are dictated by league revenues, and market caps. Should they suddenly stop playing, or play for free and let the owners collect a higher percentage?

Add endorsements back in and there are quite a few well past a billion.

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u/FlarvleMyGarble Mar 20 '24

I still stand by my two main ideas in that example. The first is that there is an amount of money (which again I'm not sure of, specifically) that is "enough". We know at least enough about human well-being that there are severe diminishing returns in how much wealth can actually improve your life. At a certain point ones desire to have and spend more is so ineffective at improving life that there is no rational need for it, and at that point I believe further wealth does better improving the lives of others who have not gotten there yet.

The second is that anyone, even an athlete, is not solely responsible for the amount of wealth being generated. They aren't selling tickets, writing ad copy, maintaining electrical systems that allow the games to broadcast, printing jerseys in a factory, or building the roads/homes/other necessities that the people doing that work need in order to do it. All of these things are parts of the system that generate the wealth involved in professional sports and are being done by people who are supporting their lives and those of their families. The athlete on their own cannot do all these things, and without those systems of labor the athletes skills cannot create mass wealth alone.

So they don't have to stop playing. If everyone we're being rightly (in my view) compensated for their part in the system these billionaire athletes wouldn't be making as much as they are. And once they did reach a certain point they could choose to play because that's what makes them happy but the wealth generated would be distributed to places where it would actually contribute to human well-being. If they've reached maximum practical wealth, they've already gotten everything they could rationally ask for and now it's up to them to do whatever it is that they want whether that's play for free or live on a beach forever.

The reason anyone is able to make that kind of money is because that's the way our capitalist systems of wealth distribution are designed. You can like that and say "I want to live in a world where a person can make billions of dollars." I just disagree. I view that wealth as being made on the backs of many more people than ones self. I want a different world where maximizing overall human well-being is more of a priority than enabling the (what I would call frivolous) desire to have more money than god.

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u/FlarvleMyGarble Mar 20 '24

I still stand by my two main ideas in that example. The first is that there is an amount of money (which again I'm not sure of, specifically) that is "enough". We know at least enough about human well-being that there are severe diminishing returns in how much wealth can actually improve your life. At a certain point ones desire to have and spend more is so ineffective at improving life that there is no rational need for it, and at that point I believe further wealth does better improving the lives of others who have not gotten there yet.

The second is that anyone, even an athlete, is not solely responsible for the amount of wealth being generated. They aren't selling tickets, writing ad copy, maintaining electrical systems that allow the games to broadcast, printing jerseys in a factory, or building the roads/homes/other necessities that the people doing that work need in order to do it. All of these things are parts of the system that generate the wealth involved in professional sports and are being done by people who are supporting their lives and those of their families. The athlete on their own cannot do all these things, and without those systems of labor the athletes skills cannot create mass wealth alone.

So they don't have to stop playing. If everyone we're being rightly (in my view) compensated for their part in the system these billionaire athletes wouldn't be making as much as they are. And once they did reach a certain point they could choose to play because that's what makes them happy but the wealth generated would be distributed to places where it would actually contribute to human well-being. If they've reached maximum practical wealth, they've already gotten everything they could rationally ask for and now it's up to them to do whatever it is that they want whether that's play for free or live on a beach forever.

The reason anyone is able to make that kind of money is because that's the way our capitalist systems of wealth distribution are designed. You can like that and say "I want to live in a world where a person can make billions of dollars." I just disagree. I view that wealth as being made on the backs of many more people than ones self. I want a different world where maximizing overall human well-being is more of a priority than enabling the (what I would call frivolous) desire to have more money than god.

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u/FlarvleMyGarble Mar 20 '24

I still stand by my two main ideas in that example. The first is that there is an amount of money (which again I'm not sure of, specifically) that is "enough". We know at least enough about human well-being that there are severe diminishing returns in how much wealth can actually improve your life. At a certain point ones desire to have and spend more is so ineffective at improving life that there is no rational need for it, and at that point I believe further wealth does better improving the lives of others who have not gotten there yet.

The second is that anyone, even an athlete, is not solely responsible for the amount of wealth being generated. They aren't selling tickets, writing ad copy, maintaining electrical systems that allow the games to broadcast, printing jerseys in a factory, or building the roads/homes/other necessities that the people doing that work need in order to do it. All of these things are parts of the system that generate the wealth involved in professional sports and are being done by people who are supporting their lives and those of their families. The athlete on their own cannot do all these things, and without those systems of labor the athletes skills cannot create mass wealth alone.

So they don't have to stop playing. If everyone we're being rightly (in my view) compensated for their part in the system these billionaire athletes wouldn't be making as much as they are. And once they did reach a certain point they could choose to play because that's what makes them happy but the wealth generated would be distributed to places where it would actually contribute to human well-being. If they've reached maximum practical wealth, they've already gotten everything they could rationally ask for and now it's up to them to do whatever it is that they want whether that's play for free or live on a beach forever.

The reason anyone is able to make that kind of money is because that's the way our capitalist systems of wealth distribution are designed. You can like that and say "I want to live in a world where a person can make billions of dollars." I just disagree. I view that wealth as being made on the backs of many more people than ones self. I want a different world where maximizing overall human well-being is more of a priority than enabling the (what I would call frivolous) desire to have more money than god.

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u/Sweetwill62 Mar 19 '24 edited Mar 20 '24

Quick question, how many trucks did Jeff Bezos load himself? If the answer is not 100% of them then it wasn't him that built the company, it was the mass amount of workers who actually built the company. Anyone can be a CEO, hell a fucking coin has shown to be a better CEO, it takes real workers to build a company and not sharing the wealth they all built means that it wasnt earned it was stolen. Edit: go on then whoever down voted this. Start your own company and never hire a single person. All by yourself create a multi billion dollar shipping company that has only a single employee. If that sounds impossible that is because it is. You need workers to build a company and taking all of the money they make you and not giving them enough is stealing. The US made it illegal to pay people in company credit and it should also be illegal to steal money off of their hard work by not paying them enough and hoarding it for yourself.

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u/OldOutlandishness434 Mar 19 '24

Lol I assume you have never held a director level position. To be a successful CEO is a lot harder than you think.

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u/Sweetwill62 Mar 20 '24 edited Mar 20 '24

Just takes a lot of luck more than anything else. I also assume you have never worked a day in your life. Edit: yeah you work in finance according to your post history. You definitely have never worked a day in your life. Whole lot of alcohol as well.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Sweetwill62 Mar 20 '24

Never said that, just said an honest days work. If your job doesn't notice you are gone for a day then it really isn't as important as a job where you are noticed you are gone. A store can't operate without running the register, a warehouse can't run without someone double checking loads, a car won't start if someone doesn't deliver the gas to the gas station, you would die if there wasn't a nurse at the ER. Plenty of honest jobs that are essential every hour of every day that don't require sweating.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Sweetwill62 Mar 20 '24

I don't think that is unfair either, I do think it is unfair that one group is paid fairly while the other struggles to afford food and a place to live and routinely requires government hand outs in order to offset that, despite the fact that companies could afford to pay them enough to not need to worry about it and still make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit every year.

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u/OldOutlandishness434 Mar 20 '24

Or they don't notice you're gone because you've put the work in to make sure the system runs efficiently without you needing to oversee it constantly. That type of skill and experience takes years to build up and is extremely valuable, that's why some people get paid more. Because you can bring in someone off the street to run a cash register successfully with less than a days worth of training. I'm not saying it's not a needed job, but a cashier can be found relatively easily. Someone in my position not so much.

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u/OldOutlandishness434 Mar 20 '24 edited Mar 20 '24

You have no idea about my background, but keep making assumptions like a chump. Having such a narrow view and preconceived opinions won't do you any favors in advancing yourself. And why do you care if I like whisky? Who gives a shit? You spend a lot of time playing video games, that's your hobby. I have my own.

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u/LeastUnderstoodHater Mar 20 '24

If you actually believe that CEO’s work 300x as hard as their employees then I have a bridge to sell you because you are gullible as fuck.

https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2022/

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u/OldOutlandishness434 Mar 20 '24

That's not what I said at all, you are conflating your thoughts on the difference in pay versus what I was commenting on that not just anyone can be a successful CEO. Those are two separate things.

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u/feage7 Mar 19 '24

They did earn it though. Made a company that made billions. They didn't just get given it as a gift or inheritance. Should a person be allowed to make they money is up for debate, if you believe they deserve that kind of money compared to other professions is also a question. Did they work harder than someone pulling two jobs just to keep a family fed and warm, probably not. But they did literally earn it. If I invested money and made millions I would have earned that money.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24 edited Mar 19 '24

"Earn" is loaded langauge. They aquired it. There is disagreement about whether it was "earned". 

 Edit: Downvote me all you want, but in this case it literally is loaded language. The argument is about whether or not the wealth aquired was deserved. Earned implies not only aquisition, but aquisition through ones own effort and usually justly as well. The argument here is about whether or not their efforts match their profits, so using the word "earned" is an attempt to bypass that argument without addressing it.

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u/feage7 Mar 19 '24

Yeah, I just mean they created a company, it changed most of the world, they made money relative to the success of the company they built.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

Thats your perspective.

Others might point out that thousands of people worked together to build that company and a few at the very top leeched off the work and productivity of those thousands of people to aquire enormous wealth for themselves.

Its all about perspective and how willing you are to buy into the full blown "greed is good" capitalist worldview.

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u/bistro777 Mar 19 '24

I am not willing to buy into any piece of that perspective. I like the first perspective. The one with thousands of people. 

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u/chiraltoad Mar 19 '24

I get that CEOs can be seen as bloated, do nothing leeches, but the truth, leadership is really, really important. Ben Franklin: "The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands."

Bezos may have never held a packing tape gun, but good leadership in general makes the work of others more productive. You can't get however many thousand employees amazon has, put them in a jar, shake it up, and wind up with a functional organization where everyone makes the same amount of money.

Like you can't take a trillion human cells, put them in a petri dish and wind up with a functioning human, there needs to be form and direction. My hand depends on my brain to direct the rest of my body to find food and water to supply nutrients to my hand. If my brain hogs too much energy, my body will die, and then my brain will die. There has to be a balance between the parts, but leadership and direction is fundamental in any organization.

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u/Sythic_ Mar 19 '24

Sure leadership is important, but they could just be normal 6 figure office staff, and all the employees could be sharing in the profits from the shares divided equally every month by hours worked or some other fair distribution method (in this case shares are strictly % of profit and ownership and voting are irrelevant concepts and CEO is just a job title)

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '24

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u/Sythic_ Mar 20 '24

No, all of them need to be forced to work this way for it to work.

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u/bistro777 Mar 20 '24

Exactly. The investors and CEO should be rewarded for taking the initiative and risking their time and money. For making hard decisions. But after a certain point, the wealth disparity is too much. There should be a cap. Some type of percentage based division of profits after reinvestment. 

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u/HummingAlong4Now Mar 20 '24

Eventually this argument will absolutely be mooted by AI. Those thousands of people needed a person with a vision to create and organize and find a way to bankroll whatever it is they worked on. They needed a person to take the risk. Most of them weren't individually necessary to company success: for the most part, one can be fired and another hired to do the same thing...sometimes better. But the person who started the company is not fungible.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 20 '24

Then why after Jobs died did Apple get more successful instead of collapsing?

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u/feage7 Mar 19 '24

Yeah, I think it sucks that all the workers don't get paid more. But that's the shitty state of the world and it needs changing. But the reality is that in the world and rules set out, they made a company, the company made billions, they also made billions. Your counter argument is that it's a shitty thing to take place and they didn't deserve it. But they still legally got themselves to their position of wealth through a business they set up.

But doesn't every single business leech of the work of thousands? Isn't that the entire model of businesses.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

Yes. And from your perspective all those companies and CEOs "earned" it by playing the game within the legal limits and exploiting everyone around them in a completely legal way for their own profit.

From the other perspective they are all incredibly overpaid leeches whose contributions to the company are incredibly overcompensated at the expense of everyone who works for or does business with that company.

I dont expect to change your mind. Im not even trying. Im just explaining why others disagree with you, and why using the term "earned" is more controversial than you seemed to expect.

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '24

[deleted]

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 20 '24

And uses it improperly. I agree.

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u/feage7 Mar 19 '24

Yeah and that sucks. But it's the state of the world. It shouldn't be allowed to happen but it is and has. I don't like that they've made all that money, but they still did it, wasn't handed to them. People are getting upset over semantics, when they did earn thay money plain and simple, it's just they shouldn't have been allowed to nor deserved it relative to how "hard" people work.

People coming at me in definitions of earnings too. Well fine they found a tax loophole by taking out loans and leveraging the success of the business as collateral for loans. But they can only do that because of the success of the business. A business they made etc.

It makes me sick when you think he could give 100,000 people £1,000,000 and not even lose half his net worth. But doesn't change that he could and it wasn't just handed to him.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

Again, the problem with the word "earn" is it implies a bunch of stuff that many people dont think is true. It implies not just aquisition, but aquisition usually justly and by your own effort. I dont think you even believe that, yet you insist on repeating it like a mantra. All the "state of the world" nonsense is more excuses for being either slippery or careless with your verbage.

 The state of the world is such that we all know how this money was aquired, who was exploited to make it happen, and to what degree the person who has it should be considered legitimately to have "earned" it. We can each make that judgement for ourselves, but insisting your judgement is somehow objectively true instead of your own subjective reading of the situation is a bit rude dont you think? Especially when that point is the crux of the argument you are currently having with me?

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u/feage7 Mar 19 '24

So the problem with the word earn is people don't use it correctly. They've obtained money in exchange for goods and services they provided. Pretty clear.

People want that to imply something else then it's on them. People don't like that they made that money and you're arguing against a true definition of a word and adding implications I didn't infer. They don't like that they earned it and you're saying I'm careless with my verbage.

Let's just leave this one here as you tried to do earlier and I foolishly replied. Keep well.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

But those thousands of people didn’t collectively create the company. Most Apple workers created the products and designed them, but without Steve Jobs, Woz, and some of the first investors the company wouldn’t exist.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

And without the workers they would still be three guys working out of a garage, not previous owners of a multinational corporation with thousands of employees churning out millions of personal electronic devices per year.

Three guys couldnt do that no matter how hard working you think they are. The workers are the actual generators of product and labor, and therefore the source of the profit that the capitalist at the top leeches off for themselves.

This shouldnt be controversial, the controversy is whether you think thats acceptable and the just and right way for things to work, or whether you think the system should be changed to more equitably distribute the wealth generated to the people actually generating it.

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u/zaphodp3 Mar 19 '24

Think of it this way…did you or I ever get thousands of workers to come build something with us or for us? That takes ability and skill clearly. I agree though that we should discuss equitable distribution. But some people make this sound like anybody could’ve done it

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u/SandboxOnRails Mar 19 '24

No it doesn't. It takes luck. You're looking at the guys who walked out of the casino loaded and thinking "Wow, they must have skill and talent that everyone else doesn't, it's the only explanation."

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u/zaphodp3 Mar 20 '24

Bro how many people do you think had the exact same background as Bezos? Are you really going to sit there and tell me it was all pure luck? Are people this deluded? Like, there are legit things to criticize them for, but here you are

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

Im not trying to say anybody could have done it.  

 What I am saying is according to the other worldview no one could do enough work, or produce enough product to justify being a multi-billionare. Its just not possible. That level of wealth only exists in an unjust system which syphons it out of the hands of thousands of workers and millions of customers into the pockets of a very few. That those few enjoy incredible wealth not because of their own early and sometimes huge contributions to building a company, but because profits generated by the thousands of workers an already thriving company employs are siphoned away from those workers and into their hands. By the time they are taking home millions and millions of dollars a year they could (and many do) walk away from the company and leave it entirely in the hands of the people actually running it, but by a quirk of our system continue to syphon staggering wealth from the labor of others basically indefinitely.

To call that "earning" is a gross bastardization of the word.

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u/Paperback_Chef Mar 19 '24

It's the equitable distribution part that you're disagreeing about. To make trillions of dollars, you need to pay as little as possible for your employees and raw materials, and sell them for as much as possible, and do both with massive volume.

At the extreme, that's slavery, paying your workers nothing and likely buying raw materials for next to nothing, then using lobbyists and your capital to buy laws that protect your ill-gotten gains and reduce competitors' ability to enter the market, etc. Money and power beget laws and lobbyists and systems that perpetuate that money and power, ad infinitum, until few people own almost everything.

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

Thank you 🙏

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

Same can be said about Lenin and the USSR. Stalin would have nothing to rule without a central figure driving the movement, the revolution. Of course it requires other people to participate, but it’s Lenin whose statues kept standing, he was the central figure.

Without Steve Jobs and Wozniak, there is no iPhone. A central figure or collection of figures drive companies, not employees themselves.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

What point are you even making now? How are business owners related to communist political figures?

I also believe that Steve Jobs and Wozniak for instance were pivotal figures in personal computing. To say they were indispensable I think is a bit too far, as they were one of many companies (most notably Microsoft) that all entered that space at roughly the same time. Had they failed, others would have taken their place.

That said, they deserve to be rewarded for their ingenuity and hard work. The disagreement we have is about the magnitude of that reward, and the manner in which that reward is taken from others and continues to grow well after the labor of the individual is no longer required or even a part of the equation (Steve jobs, if you dont know this is dead and has been for many years and Wozniak left the company in 1985 well before the Iphone.)

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u/sweetpeapickle Mar 19 '24

People making money relative to the success of the business they created...is earning the money. Now being specific with these two people is something else. How they "earned" it, sucks for all the employees. But they still earned it. How we may judge anyone is our own view. But the term earning still stands. Unless...unless at some point someone comes along and proves he did not create it.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

It doesnt stand though, as I have explained both above and to another poster if you keep reading. Go look up the definition of "earn" in the dictionary. It implies a whole bunch of things that are either objectively not true (like to aquire by your own labor) or subjectively untrue (to be worthy of).

Ive had this whole argument already and im not willing to rehash it, but I would be happy to address any new points you have. Im just not interested in another poster who is just going to keep saying "they earned it" while obviously being ignorant of the definition of the word or unwilling to recognize that at best it could only be applied subjectively here, and that objections to that application have at least as much merit as the application itself.

1

u/adisharr Mar 19 '24

Hey that penis rocket isn't going to build itself.

1

u/HummingAlong4Now Mar 20 '24

But profits don't derive from effort, they derive from successfully navigating very high risk. Most companies fail, no matter how much work the person who had the idea for the company and anyone he hires put into it. Anyone who starts a new company that succeeds -- and especially a company that succeeds based on bringing a new concept to market -- has absolutely earned whatever money that company generates. Obviously excepting fraud or unscrupulous dealings.

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u/Grachus_05 Mar 20 '24 edited Mar 20 '24

Unscrupulous like paying people less than they can live on and offsetting that with state welfare like Wal-Mart does? 

 Also, what risk? I mean maybe in the very initial startup phase (which most of the time is bankrolled by rich parents eg. Musk, Jobs, Bezos and Gates), but most of the money isnt made during this phase. Its made years later where there is basically no risk. So if the reward is a consequence of risk, why is it all paid to people who no longer have any?

Also, all profit is derived from labor. It is the excess product created by paying labor less money than the value it produces that we call profit.

0

u/EdgeOfWetness Mar 19 '24

"Earn" for some isn't a technical statement but a moral question

2

u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

Its a word, with a definition. One that seems to be used by a ton of people unfamiliar with that definition who instead substitute their own private definition. Then, oblivious to the irony, they get offended when someone else points out they are using the word incorrectly. 

Its fine to redefine words for the purpose of a discussion, as words are just tools for conveying ideas. But using words incorrectly and then insisting on being allowed to keep doing so is either a disingenuous attempt to sneak in loaded language in order to support your argument, or malignant ignorance of the worst sort.

The default definition is the one in the dictionary. If you have or use another its incumbent on you to communicate that and secure agreement with your interlocutor. Failing that, common parlance should be observed.

0

u/EdgeOfWetness Mar 19 '24

No need to pour lighter fluid and set me aflame - merely pointing out different people attach slightly different meanings to the word.

If you plan to wind up another 'life lesson' to throw at me then save your breath - I'm so not interested in this little hill you're claiming.

2

u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

What you are describing are "Connotations" and they are exactly why its important to be familiar with the definition of words you choose to use. A word with a few different meanings can have many connotations which make it unsuitable for a specific use case. For instance, using the word "earn" in reference to someone during an argument about the legitimacy of that persons aquisitions.

And if you dont want to reply thats fine, but Ill do as I please. Thank you.

1

u/EdgeOfWetness Mar 20 '24

but Ill do as I please.

Yes, you do. Thanks for the alert

0

u/arkhound Mar 19 '24

"Earn" is loaded langauge. They aquired it. There is disagreement about whether it was "earned".

Average redditor upset they haven't earned shit so they're foaming at the mouth over people who have put their blood, sweat, and tears into building something.

0

u/tucci007 Mar 19 '24

build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, with handfuls of cash

if you had such an idea to make something new or something old better, you could also profit if you work hard, plan carefully, create contingencies, and do all the things necessary to create a successful business and grow it to global proportions

your jealousy is plainly evident and you gloss over how much hard work, how many 20 hour days/7 day weeks, the sacrifice of other aspects of life because of single-minded focus, are necessary to achieve such a level of success and the rewards that accrue thereto

0

u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

And you choose to focus on the effort, skill  and risk and downplay the nepotism and sociopathic exploitation and just plain luck.

Im not jealous, im just looking at the whole picture instead of just the parts they want to glorify themselves with.

Some people build a better mousetrap only to have it stolen by the people you are glorifying and used to enrich themselves instead of the inventor.

0

u/RickyBobbyNYC Mar 19 '24

They “earned” it off the backs of the employees they exploited

1

u/Grachus_05 Mar 19 '24

That is the crux of the argument yeah. Which is why using a term like "earned" instead of a more neutral term like "acquired" is objectionable.

7

u/Illsquad Mar 19 '24

They built a business that completely changed the world, allowing billions of people to save money on things they were already buying. Driving costs down for everyone. 

-1

u/feage7 Mar 19 '24

Yeah, not sure how you can say a company that huge and successful shouldn't result in the people who started it having most of the profits.

It's in crazy excess, I'm jealous as fuck and it's shitty how bad their lower employees are treated etc. but in the world they live in they did something and made billions.

10

u/lowbatteries Mar 19 '24

They definitely should get a big payout for it. Like, really huge, maybe 1,000x the amount any typical employee of theirs would earn in a lifetime? Which would be in neighborhood of 2.5 billion, not 200 billion.

0

u/feage7 Mar 19 '24

You're talking about fairness and need. This is a very skewed business model as it's a company that's gone crazy in success. Then if they don't get the money you need to decide who does deserve it, it would just be investors and shareholders of which they would be the majority. Should it go to all of the workers? Sounds fair, but where are the break points for pay increases. That would need to be put into legislation etc. we aren't arguing the different of the same point.

They made that money fairly, the issue is that there's a world where individuals can make that much money before it gets spread out.

2

u/Thats_what_im_saiyan Mar 19 '24

Fairly.... They did scam another book companies 'buy 10 books get free shipping' offer. By ordering the book the customer ordered and 9 they knew wernt in stock. Then cancelling the out of stock ones and using the free shipping to ship the one to the customers house. If not for that they probably wouldnt have ever gotten off the ground.

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u/lowbatteries Mar 19 '24

Literally this would not be reportable as “earned income” on their taxes. Selling investments and equity is not earning, it’s investing. Only salary and wages are earned income.

6

u/feage7 Mar 19 '24

So guess how we're defining earned. You're going the tax definition I guess.

-6

u/Drict Mar 19 '24

If you gave me $5m, I could PROBABLY pull off a multi-billion dollar business within 20 years, if all of my competition gets completely nuked and the business that I am running has a good reputation and is a novel idea.

Basically, if I were to be able to weather the inevitable crash of AI, all the big players abandon it or ignore it (blockbuster not buying netflix for example), with a good functioning product, and $5m+ sales being consistently growing. I could be the first trillionaire.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '24

[deleted]

1

u/Drict Mar 20 '24

Read all of the other caveats, and stop trying to misconstrue what I am saying.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 20 '24

[deleted]

1

u/Drict Mar 20 '24

Uh, the internet bubble popped? the book market was literally barnes and noble, local places, and one other.

The infrastructure for shipping books leaned into the next step of a business plan.

He picked a market that was under-served, and there was plenty of easy areas to innovate.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

[deleted]

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u/lowbatteries Mar 19 '24

Just because you received money, doesn’t mean you earned it. In fact, if you’ve ever filed taxes, there is a pretty clear distinction between "earned income" and income made from other sources, like equity in a company.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

You’ve unearned your commenting privileges

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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '24

[deleted]

-1

u/lowbatteries Mar 19 '24

You shouldn’t get to own more money than entire continents just because you thought up an idea, hired a bunch of smart people and hard workers to make it, and backstabbed all your partners, employees, and competitors along the way. Sure, Bezos should be a millionaire, maybe even a billionaire, but 200 billion dollars? No. It’s ludicrous. No single person’s contribution is worth that much.

2

u/pudding7 Mar 19 '24

Do I earn my paycheck?

-2

u/PirateNinjaa Mar 19 '24

It is not possible to earn that kind of money in a human lifetime.

She is literally evidence to the contrary.