It's not inconsistent. Most founders are trying to create companies that provide economic value; one can believe that the creation of economic value is a good thing, while also believing that more of the economic surplus created should directly go to the common good.
The corollary is obvious. Tax the ultra-rich at high marginal rates to force them to contribute back to the society that made their success possible in the first place.
So a single person having that much can certainly be a good thing, or a neutral thing, or a bad thing. But it’s not something that I have to think about fixing.
The literature is really clear that taxing the rich won’t do what you think it will do. It’s also surprising because this sentiment somehow thinks the rich are not already taxed. Wealth is taxed during transactions, not at rest. And the rich buy stuff like all others.
It's not a universally held belief that a company founder must try to make as much money for themselves as possible.
Entrepreneurs, like everyone else, have values, and some of the values are in conflict with some of their actions. I have a hard time imagining anyone (excluding sociopaths) who legitimately believe their actions don't create any conflict with their values. Discussing the conflict between "I want to start a company" and "I believe there's a maximum amount of wealth that one can morally or ethically acquire" seems super relevant to the audience here.
> He signed some paperwork, then later 500 million shares (or however many) came into existence and he had them. Who did he take them from?
I don't think it's worth getting hung up on whether anyone "took" wealth versus created it, because I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive. I would argue MS "took" money from people via unfair bundling practices, many of which were anticompetitive and landed the company in hot water. If you want to be simplistic, MS under BG took money from everyone who was forced to buy a windows license despite not wanting or needing one, at the very least.
I am hung up on this because I do think they're mutually exclusive. You can't create something that already exists. You can't take something that doesn't exist. Something has to exist in order for you to take it. If you created something, it impossible that you have taken it.
The quote implies that there is some big pile of money out there and rich people are just greedy people who take more of it than everyone else. While poor people are ... polite I guess? and only take a little amount. If someone honestly believes this then the only question is, why don't you just take more of this money? I mean it's apparently all just there for the taking and the only differentiating factor of the rich is their willingness to take more of it, right? There couldn't possibly be anything else that rich people do that results in them being rich.
Edit: Apparently this statement needs further clarification. What do those shares represent? A share of the profits. And what are the profits? Literally the difference between the company's revenues and expenses. It's literally the difference between the value created by workers and the salary the company paid them in return for that value.
So _of course_ Bill Gates took that wealth from the company's workers. That's what profit is!
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Now to expand on the broader idea, in a Democratic Socialist economy where the stock corporation is replaced by the worker cooperative, he would not have had the right to claim 500 million shares. Those shares would have been distributed to the employees of Microsoft based on some metric of contribution to the company. Or would never have existed in the first place, and each worker would have had a vote in how the company was run and the profits distributed.
In either method, Bill Gates would have gotten some still significant portion of the value the company created, but no where near the amount he walked away with in our current economy. The rest of that value would have been distributed to the company's workers in one way or another - profit distributions, shares, dividends, what have you.
In the minds of many - myself included - that is a much more equitable system. Bill Gates took the money from the people who helped create it in the first place. And he took a share that far out paced his contribution to the creation of that value.
He was able to do that because our economic system is set up around authoritarian companies, where the founders and CEOs have near dictatorial power (or oligarchical power with the board). And dictatorships are rarely equitable.
Can we at least agree that - whether voluntary or not - the share literally represent the excess value taken from workers?
Cause that's what I was saying in response to the question. Those shares represent the value taken from workers.
As to it being voluntary, it's not. There's a massive power differential in the negotiations. That's what unions were meant to help solve, but unions can't really solve that power differential (they were never strong enough) and they've got their own problems of corruption and power.
The idea behind a worker cooperative based system isn't that workers take stock as payment instead of cash. They still get a cash salary. They also get ownership of company and a right to decide what happens to the profits.
There are several approaches to how you design that system. In one you do away with the concept of stock (ownership shares) altogether - it's a one person one vote system. In another you keep the concept of ownership shares and workers earn shares in proportion to their time at the company. Maybe you keep an aspect of negotiation and the shares they earn are tied to their negotiated salary.
But you no longer allow outside investors to purchase ownership of the company. Or founders to maintain a controlling share long past the point where their contributions have been matched or outweighed by the rest of the company's employees.
In this system we recognize that companies, like countries, are communities that should be run democratically by the people involved in them for the people involved in them.
This doesn't make sense. This would imply that a Microsoft employee had more money before working at Microsoft than they did after working at Microsoft. That is objectively not the case.
That's what it means to take something. Someone else has something. You take it. They don't have it anymore.
When an employee works at Microsoft he creates value. He didn't have that value before he did the work, he created it through the work done there.
Microsoft pays him a salary in return for his value.
However, the salary Microsoft pays does not match the full value he created. The difference is Microsoft's profits. The company is taking those profits from the workers who created the value in the first place. They didn't have that value when they joined, they created it there, but it's still taken from them at time of creation.
Those shares represent a right to a share of those profits. Stock shares literally represent a right to the excess value taken from the workers who created it.
So who did Bill Gates take that money from? The workers who created the value the money represents.
And this is how you wind up with massive wealth inequality and all the problems that creates.
People recognize the problems with wealth inequality. The recognize the problems with unions (which have their own power problems and corruption problems). They recognize the problem with having the government redistribute the wealth (which is still better than allowing the inequality to continue to grow).
But we're so ingrained with the idea that the way things are is the way they should be that we rarely talk about a pretty obvious solution - let those who generate the wealth have democratic control over what happens to it at the time of generation.
Perhaps I could sit at home alone and write fragments of Windows kernel code by myself. These would be of very little value to me. However, they might be of tremendous value to Microsoft who has the whole rest of the Windows kernel and licensing agreements to distribute it and a sales staff to sell it and etc and etc and etc.
So I trade my fragments of Windows kernel code which do not benefit me very much to Microsoft. In exchange Microsoft gives me money, which is much more useful to me than code fragments because I can use it to buy food and shelter. I have actually received something that is of more value to me than the thing I gave up. The code fragments on their own could not have gotten me food or shelter.
Microsoft on the other hand, gave up money that is of less value to them than these code fragments. They can use the code fragments to create more value than they could with the money by combining them with their other assets. Value is relative, not absolute. Nothing is being stolen by paying someone a price they agree to for something, just because you have a better way of making use of it than they do.
Will I be liable for a company's losses under your system?
This is a strange sentiment to find on a board that is at least partially targeted at aspiring company founders.
For example the money Bill Gates is giving away is mostly in the form of shares of Microsoft. Those didn't exist before he started the company (with others of course). He signed some paperwork, then later 500 million shares (or however many) came into existence and he had them. Who did he take them from?
Later on other people decided they also wanted shares of Microsoft and assigned them a monetary value. Did Bill Gates somehow force them to want the shares he had? To the extent that he "took" money it was in exchange for shares of a company that other people found valuable.