Stop pretending that the meritocracy exists, and then I'll stop using them as an example to the opposite.
Meritocracy does exists, to a point. Pretending that it does not is foolish.
But, that's just part of the story. Regulatory capture exists as well. Shady dealings, too.
I'm pretty sure that you're using/having one of the services/products that those three put on the market. I'm willing to take that one step further and claim that you're pretty satisfied with their products and services. And I'm 100% sure none of them forced you to hand them your money. You did it gladly.
If you think it's easy (not hard work) to create online Walmart or Windows or iPhone, what are you waiting for? Create something that millions of people are willing to pay you cash money for and you'll be able to use yourself as an example in the posts like the one above.
The reward they got for their contribution is proportional to its value. Its so huge that you can safely say the World before Amazon/Windows/iPhone and the World after A/W?iP. They literally changed the World.
You picked the wrong billionaires to shit on. If you want some better examples take a look at those in finance. Mitt Romney, Paul Singer,... corporate raiders would be better examples. Getting wealthy by destroying companies and lives of their employees.
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It's safe to say that we disagree.
Having an idea does not. Implementing that idea and putting it on the market does.
He had the execution. Fun fact - Gates, Allen and Ballmer worked in the same motel used by prostitutes while debugging Basic that they were trying to sell to Atari. Thin walls and all that.
Is there a better system out there? Slavery did it, feudalism did it, communism did it, capitalism does it.
We, as a species, started dirt poor wandering around searching for food. When you look at the historical development, of all the systems we tried - capitalism performed the best.
Your position that everything would be fine if only those dirty billionaires didn't steal all that money for themselves is indefensible. Judging capitalism by some idealistic system that doesn't exist is just not fair.
Try this for a change: Capitalism is bad when compared to X, where X is a system that actually exists (existed) in the real World.
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It would be if that were my position. I argue against capitalism, not the people in it.
That's so easy. Capitalism is bad when compared to communism, which has existed for 190,000 of the 200,000 years of the existence of homo sapiens; we just didn't have a name for it back then ;-)
Slavery, feudalism and capitalism are the same, all modes of production in which the owners of the means of production exploit the labor of the working majority, there's no difference between the three in a systemic sense (hence the "wage slave"). The communism you refer to isn't communism at all; it's state-capitalism, again exactly the same model of production in which it's the government minority that owns the means of production. Learn what communism is and don't simply go by what countries like to call themselves; the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not a democracy, nor a republic and certainly isn't for the people...
But here's a point of agreement though ;-)
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I'll take the capitalism of today over that communism all day long.
Not the biggest fan of my wife dying during childbirth or getting my tribe raided by the neighbours.
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No, you'll take the technological progression of today over the non existence of technology back then. Defenders of capitalism have this special talent for confusing progress with economy... I'll even take it a step further and claim that capitalism incentivizes a wholly wrong kind of innovation and arrests true progress through silly schemes like "Intellectual Property Rights" and "Patents".
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I'm afraid that you made an excellent argument not only for capitalism but for the systems that preceded it as well.
190k years with no visible progress at all. The State emerges and 10k years later - we went to the Moon.
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You're ignoring the existence of chieftains, little monarchs, that ruled over us during that period. Are the archaeologist of today finding the ordinary graves of ordinary humans or that of the rulers? Even then some animals were more equal than others.
Fair enough. But 10k years later you've got two of us arguing on the blockchain-powered website instead of worrying whether or not we'll please the local warlord ;-)
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