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Re:Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
by tsimionescu on Thursday July 16, 2020 @05:53AM
(#23857362)
For every story of entrepreneurial success, there are countless others of failures. The vast majority of people are not just too dumb to see the opportunities, as you have arrogance to imply. They are well aware of the risks, and can't afford to take them.
Plus, an economy can't run on business founders alone. It requires workers that actually, you know, do the work, and who are willing to be paid for a less than that work is worth (you know, 'profit').
If anyone is living in an echo chamber, I assure you it is not the 99%. It's the smug 1% hoarding wealth and justifying it to themselves by thinking 'anyone could do this if they were as smart/hard working/enlightened as me!' while forgetting the luck and connections and old money that got them where they are.
Re:Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
by nickpp on Thursday July 16, 2020 @06:53AM
(#23857635)
Yeah, to succeed you first have to believe you CAN succeed. Plenty of limitations you’re so very sure about, but have you even ever TRIED?
Re:Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
by pietrovismara on Thursday July 16, 2020 @08:02AM
(#23858101)
So you really believe that everyone can become rich if they just put in the hard work? That's such a naive view that I don't even know where to start to debate it.
Re:Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
by nickpp on Thursday July 16, 2020 @08:27AM
(#23858274)
I never said that. Read again.
Re:Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned
by tsimionescu on Thursday July 16, 2020 @09:11AM
(#23858619)
This reminds of a joke about drawing an owl: you first draw 2 vertical ovals, slightly superimposed, one bigger, one smaller. Then you draw a triangle on the smaller oval. Then you draw the rest of the owl.
Sure, you can't succeed if you don't try. But you also can't succeed if you don't have anything to eat, and for the vast, vast majority of people, trying is likely to make that a real problem.
You seriously misunderstand how little money people at the bottom actually have, and how little access to the kind of credit you'd need to start a business. Like, saving for a car when their old one breaks down will probably take some people months or years. Saving to buy shares????
> That’s what "They" did.
A minuscule handful of them, if even that. For every Jack Ma there's a thousand Mark Zuckerbergs or Bill Gatess who were born with a silver spoon and will die with a silver spoon, as will 3 generations of their children at the very least. The descendants of the people who laid the railroad tracks, the large slave plantations, all of these people are the vast majority of the top. Even people like Elon Musk are still coming from a background of pretty high privilege. The people who were born in the bottom 50% that you have ever heard of (outside show-business) can probably be counted on at most a few people's hands.