And I can't believe people unironically defend multi-billionaires.

I have pretty much zero problem with someone like Musk being a Billionare.

Most billionaires made their money in finance or via generational wealth. Seeing a scrappy immigrant (Even with a $200k business loan) go from practically nothing to the richest man in the world, while doing things that actually have a positive impact on society is pretty much the epitome of the American Dream.

"Scrappy immigrant" whose father was a half-owner of an emerald mine in Zambia. I can't think of a more on-the-nose example of the evils of generational wealth.

So what was Musk's net worth when he was twenty?

Probably less than 0,1 per cent of his net worth today. Possibly less than 0,01 per cent.

Multiplying your net worth by a factor of several thousand is fairly rare, regardless of the circumstances you start in. Most people can't do it, even if they start reasonably well off. For example, Musk's own brother Kimbal couldn't.

> Multiplying your net worth by a factor of several thousand is fairly rare, regardless of the circumstances you start in

lol. No it isn't, maybe if you are born wealthy, but plenty of people have a negative net worth at 20 (no savings yet and student/car loans) and are home owners by 40.

Fair enough. But you are basically agreeing with me that those with non-trivial positive net worth in their youth will find multiplying it by several thousand times harder.

And we should rule out massive inheritance to be fair, too. That can cause sudden large jumps in net worth.

A person having 10 000 USD in their youth (far from wealthy, just not poor) would need to aggregate something like 50 million USD in their fifties. Possible, but rare.

Musk made his money from a combination of generational wealth and government handouts.

Your phrasing here is odd -- is it a moral wrong to have lots of money? Does having lots of money change the amount someone should be defended on arbitrary issues?

In the context of our society and with "lots" meaning billions - yes it is immoral. I'm sure we've all seen a number of graphics/chats/whatever trying to show wealth inequality, but this is the best one I've come across. Would recommend giving it a look and then asking yourself if having a lot of money isn't immoral.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

Because billionaires are the same people with the same rights like the other people.

That has no parallel to reality.

At all.

None.

Billionaires have far more rights than normal people. Their wealth affords those rights to them. "Rights" without ability to achieve actual results is just bullshit meant to placate the rabble.

What does it mean to talk about rights? Who cares if I have the “right” to buy twitter and change the way the entire world talks to each other when I have no earthly chance of ever doing it?

Let’s talk about reality, not possibility.

> Also, for the love of God, stop calling it a democracy.

The US is a democracy though

It's a Constitutional Republic.

That's semantic sleight of hand. The US is clearly a representative democracy.

One related opinion on this topic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-consti...

Yes, republics utilize some democracy. Are republics == democracy? No. Otherwise one of the two words wouldn't exist.

It's a square and rectangle situation. Republic is a subset of democracy.

If you’re only allowed a single word to represent anything, I’m afraid much of your sentence is incomprehensible because o many of those words simply can’t exist.

Which is a form of democracy...

Yea for sure, it's totally awesome when individuals hold absurd wealth because they never abuse it and we definitely don't have countless examples throughout history of this phenomenon causing harm to society.

And we definitely don’t have countless examples throughout history that shows the disastrous consequences of not allowing individual economic freedom and all it entails

Economic freedom is like free speech (and any other freedom, really). It can not be absolute unless everyone behaves in good faith, once you assume you have rogue players who exploit the good faith behavior of others you have to have rules.

So you will find literally no place where absolute freedom is practiced, and for good reasons.

Sadly, in case of economic freedom a rogue player who has billions can also have political power to lobby against inconvenient to them rules, and ah everyone wants to be on their good side.

Your fact-free, example-free, and above all pompous line of argument is an excellent antidote to your own ideas

I am not surprised that you are confused by my comment. Do you need me to provide the long list of times that the United States has gone to war with countries not participating in the global capitalist economic system?

Or maybe the number of ways that personal wealth is restricted throughout the world? Or how about the number of referendums around limiting personal wealth that have been submitted throughout history?

Or what about societies that successfully existed without what you would consider modern capitalism, whose ideas weren't necessarily proved wrong, but were victims of genocidal attacks by other capitalist countries?

Or should we discuss how the massive innovation and huge success of the United States, often attributed solely to capitalism, is actually (gasp) more complicated than a simple economic life hack?

I'm all ears Fred.

I have neither the time nor the crayons for this, so I’ll leave you with this very simple thought:

Economic system A fought economic system B in a decades-long cold war. System A won, on every level, including the standard of living for poor people. System A, therefore, works better than B. QED.

You are correct, it is a very simple thought, Fred. I encourage you to try a complicated thought in regards to this topic.

Kindly provide a single example of an alternative to capitalism that was in any way "successful" by metrics vaguely comparable to capitalistic success. No, you cannot point at China, their success over the past 5 decades was entirely a result of privatization and allowing market forces in their country.

Japan did not adopt a form of modern capitalism until the 1800s. The Byzantine empire was never capitalist. Ethiopia did not adopt modern capitalism until it was invaded by the west. Ancient Egypt was never a capitalist society.

> by metrics vaguely comparable to capitalistic success

If you measure by quality of life I'd say it's a dramatic loser.

If you unlearn decades of propaganda and realize the technological revolution was not created by simply stealing the value of labor from the worker and siphoning that up to the ruling class, and then combine that with the understanding that global trade controlled by massive banks created the capacity to destroy alternative economic systems, you might start to reveal the truth.

> You can't hold an adult conversation with people until you figure that out.

It’s a disingenuous argument, that’s normally completely aside from whatever topic is going on at the moment, I doubt anyone using it is interesting in “adult conversation”.