I don't doubt that most of them worked very hard and took a lot of risks to get where they are now. I respect these people immensely. But no human could work hard enough or provides enough of a service that they deserve to earn tens of thousands of times more than the people who actually do the labor.

Bardeen co-invented the transistor and the theory of superconductivity, yet even though his work was recognized with two Nobels, he didn't die a billionaire. Zuckerberg made a social network barely different from the others, but because he was able to market it better, or was just at the right time at the right place, he's now a billionaire. I respect Zuckerberg, but if he is able to earn 35e9 USD and Bardeen isn't, even though both did what they loved, the system is broken.

Who, at the front end actually did that work, and how were they compensated ?

They were compensated based on whatever they agreed to. What beyond that should they get? And who would decide such an arbitrary thing - what government panel of bureaucrats should that be left to?

At the very front-end is the founder, who typically works without pay as necessary, and typically works far harder than their employees, while shouldering far more responsibility. Millions of businesses get started under that exact scenario every decade.

Employees get paid for their labor. An entrepreneur doesn't have such legal protections or guarantees and is paid for their risk (it's critical to note that 95%+ of all new businesses fail over five years). When I create something, I do so without taking a paycheck initially - perhaps for a very extended period of time. Try convincing an employee to do that at a routine job bagging groceries.

If the employee didn't like it, they were welcome to go through the extremely difficult process of starting and building a successful business instead. It's dramatically more difficult to build a business to the point where you can earn $60,000 per year, than it is to get a job making $60,000 per year.

Sam Walton didn't start out being rich. If his 37th employee didn't like the terms of employment, they were welcome to compete with him if they could. He contributed a million fold more to the business succeeding than any given grocery bagger, and also took on drastically more personal risk. Beyond that, the morality of it is such that the property of Wal-Mart belonged to Sam Walton, and there's no need for entrepreneurs like him to apologize for that ownership, it belongs to them fair and square (the sole counter argument is to say that violence should be used to steal property and to mostly or entirely abolish private property rights). If an employee wants their own property, then let them create it, and let them provide the money to pay employees for their labor.

You make an excellent and fair point if it stops at this. The problem starts when the successful business starts to take advantage of loopholes with their wealth(lobbying, offshoring income, jobs) to advance their ability to make profit at the expense of the labor that doesn't have this ability. So although the pact seems equitable in the beginning- it breaks down one side take unfair advantage of their position. German labor is an example of where the workers have managed to gain from the productivity of the companies mostly through organized labor but also because the companies realize its better to share the wealth. Hence- I'm only guessing we don't see super-rich German billionaires.

This would all be fine and good (just, even?) if nobody was ever coerced into agreement or agreed under duress. You seem to neglect the role of power in extracting preferable terms (and thus wealth).

There often isn't anything "fair and square" except in this idealized notion of some perfect environment you've painted.

What would help equal the playing field in negotiations is if the potential employee had the backing of a union to enforce a fairer contract.

A single laborer vs a well-monied and well-lawyered corporation is not a fair negotiation. See Apple & Google colluding to keep wages down for software engineers.

Union contracts with employers could also ease the damage to the middle and lower classes done by automation.

> Sam Walton didn't start out being rich.

Sam Walton is an outlier. His actions are responsible for driving down the wages and benefits of a sizable number of people and making them dependent on government services for what should be be provided by their employer.

That only scratches the surface and I have done it. I think more through analysis needs to be done.

Well, it came from being the children of people who provided a good or service, and likely in large part due to illegal unfair competitive advantage.