It is farcical to a Marxist maybe, with infinite patience for labor theory of value despite century worth of contradictory evidence.
> One reason for the measure’s current strength is that the balance of power seems to have moved in favour of capital, and against labour, in recent decades. The decline of trade unions, and the addition of China to the global market, have weakened workers’ bargaining power; in the past 15 years, corporate profits have been regularly equivalent to more than 10% of American GDP, and at a much higher level than they were between 1960 and 2000.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/12/04/expensiv...
But I’m still Graham’s Billionaires Build la-la land is still a reality, though.
It is obvious that you can't really have any social advancement without any supporting social dynamics. Also odds are overwhelmingly against any given individual becoming a billionaire from a commoner background… yet the examples are numerous, and particularly in tech.
I'm not commenting about merits of Graham's observations as am not a venture capitalist. But the LTV bit you were on, that's some ancient bullshit. I lived in the tail end of USSR, could observe first hand how well it worked.
Of course millionaires and billionaires can still _work_ themselves in the sense given above, i.e. in a way that creates value. And one could argue that one can be a self-made (no exploitation of others) millionaire. But it becomes farcical to claim that a person can become a billionaire without exploiting people. Any person on Earth would need much more than one lifetime to create a Billion USD worth of value _through their own labor alone_.