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Do billionaires work monday to friday like all 9-5s?
(aussie.zone)
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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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Notch is a billionaire. He made Minecraft as a solo project, it became what it was, then he sold it to Microsoft.
Not saying that most billionaires didn't get there via exploitation, but I don't think it's a strict prerequisite.
Notch initially developed Minecraft by himself when he started the project in May 2009. However, as the game gained popularity, he founded the company Mojang in 2010 and brought on additional developers to help improve and expand the game. By the time he sold Mojang and Minecraft to Microsoft in 2014, it was a collaborative effort with a team of developers.
A fair point. It's been a while since then. I didn't recall that.
That said, he's just an easy example. There's a few other people who could be used. There's a billionaire who was an early Bitcoin adopter for example.
And it certainly would have been possible for Notch to become a billionaire without hiring people. The company only had 25 employees in 2014, and was doing $330million in revenue every year. There's certainly a path he could have tread to still becoming a billionaire without hiring anyone.
It would have been harder, taken longer, and not been as profitable for sure, but doable.
I don't believe it, it's just too many things to do, not just the development but everything around it. And once you lose momentum, people go and find some other game to play. Timing and luck are very important.
The argument is usually there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. As in every part of the system is exploitative. The computer he used to program exploited workers and natural resources. The clothing he wore made in sweatshops. All the food made by exploiting animals, etc.
Therefore those with the most money must’ve cumulatively exploited more than others regardless of how they made the money because the exploitation is unavoidable.
Sure, but that argument is specious as hell, right? Like, if everyone in the United States decided to give you a $5 bill, does that instantly make you a bad person who exploited labor to get where you are?
"There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" is simply a rhetorical device to outline the flaws in the system. It completely breaks down when used as justification to villainize someone.
Your position could be equally stated as, "anyone who has more money than me is a worse person than me, and anyone with less money than me is a better person than me." It's a misuse of the "no ethical consumption" idea on its face.
I think the argument makes more sense when applied to villainize billionaires. Like there’s makes more money and then there’s makes many orders of magnitude more money. You’re much closer to a millionaire than a billionaire.
Then “anyone with money then me” becomes “anyone with 10,000x more money than me” and you can see where the arguments starts to make sense again. Did this person work 10,000x more than me? Obviously that’s impossible and therefore someone must’ve been exploited.
The issue is that becoming a billionaire has more to do with being lucky than it does with direct exploitation.
If everyone in the US chipped 5 dollars into a pool, and it was randomly given to one person, that person would be a billionaire.
And yes, they have a huge concentration of other people's labor represented in that cash. But the person who won the pool isn't a bad person because of that. They didn't exploit anyone themselves. Just because someone somewhere at some point under capitalism was exploited, that doesn't lay the moral condemnation at the feet of the lottery winner.
Exploitation is a loaded term, with many negative connotations. It's more neutral to state the same thing as, "Nobody gets to be a billionaire without accruing the surplus value of other people's labor."
And that's true of Notch, too. Minecraft wouldn't exist without countless people who built the computers, the OS, the Java language, built out the Internet, operate the electrical grid, operate the payment networks, litigated and legislated copyright law, et cetera.
Now, you might say that all of those people got compensated for their labor, and it's true. (That's why the negative connotations of exploitation don't apply.) However, the result of their labor unlocks immense value, which they do not share in because of the way the Internet developed. We could easily imagine a different scenario in which the online services won, an alternate reality in which Notch worked as a programmer for PepsiCo-Prodigy-AOL, and got paid a very good salary to create Minecraft for it. Then, it would be fair for the company to reap all of the subscription fees generated by putting the game on their network service.
We can say that in both scenarios, as long as we're imagining, Notch would have put in the same amount of work. In one, though, he'd live a decent, middle-class life, with a corporation reaping the surplus value of his labor. In our world, he's a billionaire, benefiting from the surplus value of others' labor.
Okay, to be clear, are you arguing that the dichotomy we are choosing between is Notch becoming a billionaire or a corporation reaping the benefits of his labor? I think if those are the options, I prefer the universe where Notch is a billionaire, lol.
I don't think that's what you're saying, but I'll admit I've read your comment a few times, and couldn't really latch on to what you point was.
But to just free associate off of what you said, I think there's a lot of value to many in the safety of a job vs the life of an entrepreneur. I'm in that situation myself. I know I could easily make 1.5-2x my current salary if I just stood up and LLC and did all my work as a 1099 employee. I'd be able to keep all my current clients and basically nothing would change. I could set my own hours and not have a boss to answer to. But it comes with a lot fewer safety nets, and it means that all the unpleasantness and risk of "running a business" would all fall on me.
Am I running the risk that I could build a billion dollar product and giving all that surplus capital to my company? Sure. But the odds of that are terribly low, and honestly, it's a gamble I'm more than willing to take to avoid having to deal with the overhead and risk of striking out on my own with no top cover.
The point is to explain what people mean when they say that nobody becomes a billionaire by their own effort alone. It's impossible for one, single human to generate that much value. Notch just got incredibly lucky.
You have a good point about the difference in risk versus reward of entrepreneurship compared to a job. People often choose the job because the alternative is destitution. It's not a free choice. Rates of entrepreneurship are much higher in countries that have a robust social safety net. Places like the U.S. actually have a relatively low rate.
Ok but how much more money have made Microsoft with Minecraft exploiting other people?, I'm not saying they isn't a billionaire I'm just saying at some point people start delegating work or like in this case selling it to someone who can delegate the work to make even more money.
You're moving the goalposts though, you realize that right?
Your initial position was that you have to have exploited people to be worth a billion dollars (with an implicit "directly exploited," since if you can't make any money without indirectly exploiting people, which would make your point even more pedantic than I'm being.)
Other people later exploiting others to profit off your product is irrelevant. Hell, it'd be irrelevant if you made your billion dollars and then started exploiting people yourself. You still would have, in fact, become a billionaire without exploiting people to do so.
What about the billions Microsoft paid which are made off exploiting other people? Dirty money..
Sure, but if that's the argument, then everyone who has ever bought a laptop that shipped with Windows on it is equally guilty.
Perhaps even moreso. Those people are giving money to Microsoft. He took a billion dollars away from them.
But like, this is classic motte and baily. Your initial position was "all billionaires exploit labor for profit," but when under scrutiny you just retreat to "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so he's guilty by virtue of simply participating in the system."
Oh I would classify everyone who gives M$ money as guilty.
Wow you want to regulate private business? Sounds pretty woke /s
Read this idiots post history everyone