generals3 said:
Drathnoxis said:
The system is broken. The ways to become rich are the exact opposite of the ways to be a productive member of society. The majority of people are exploited so that a select few can hoard an unfathomable amount of wealth. I don't see how this can be sustainable. How long until the people rise up and eat the rich?
It's so frustrating, because if everybody worked together, we could all live very comfortable and easy lives. But instead capitalism is set up so that the majority of effort only benefits a small minority.
I don't entirely agree. While there certainly are (a lot) of people who become rich while creating little value for society this doesn't go for all of them. Bill Gates accumulated his wealth through the creation of microsoft, hardly a useless feat. Amazon is used by millions and surely can't be called useless. While we could question whether the feats of starting up successful companies deserves the billions their creators now own, I think we can agree these people didn't acquire their wealth without being productive? They took risks, worked and still work more than you and I and their companies have become part of the lives of millions of people.
But off course when you see CEO's getting huge bonuses for taking absurd financial risks (banking crisis) or laying off thousands to slightly increase the already profitable margins we can ask ourselves if they truly deserve all that money. I think we really need to start distuingishing the rich who have become rich through innovative entrepreneurship and those who have become rich by making others poorer.
First of all, no the wealthy do not work harder than most people. Most people work harder than the wealthy. Second, Most wealthy gain their money by taking part of what other people should have earned rather than doing the work themselves. They earn money from other's work so that they do not have to do the work themselves. By underpaying people for their work, they essentially create a siphon draining the wealth from those households, communities and cities where these people live and work and accumulate it into fewer and fewer hands. The CEO taking financial risks is not any riskier than the average person taking out a mortgage or putting a lien on their car or home to be able to survive. Although it involves less money due to them having less money, it is a higher risk because if it doesn't work out they can lose everything and become Homeless, starving and destitute if things do not work out for them. The CEO usually has enough money put back that they would be considered wealthy regardless if their risks flop, they will still not lose their ability to provide food, shelter or transportation for themselves. The risks that the poor take every day are MORE than those that are taken by the wealthy due to what is at stake if they lose.
People also tend to forget that even though Bill Gates tries to do some nice things now, when he was getting started he screwed people over, fired them and stole their work, took credit for their work and was taken to court repeatedly for his malignant actions. Years ago, when discussing Bill Gates with an old programmer father of a friend, I too though that the "cleaned up version" of the " Bill Gates Story" was reality, then he proceeded to show me numerous documents that told the truth about what happened. Bill Gates harmed the people responsible for his success to become successful himself. The vast majority of the time, for someone to breach the financial barriers to become successful, they are screwing people over and taking from them to be able to get to that point. It is extremely difficult for people to gain the capital needed to break the barrier to be successful without taking it from someone else.