A man's labor and intelligence can eventually earn him $10k to buy a car. Over a long career, one might eventually amass a fortune on the order of $1M. Kim might (hypothetically) have an IQ of 150 and be willing to work punishingly long hours where our analogous car buyer went home to be with his family. But it's completely farcical to state that he's 10,000 times smarter or harder-working than a baseline human, that's absurd - it's far more reasonable to assume that he assigned the value of the efforts of others to himself, stole, manipulated, scammed, or otherwise acquired that $175M illegitimately. And that's ignoring that it was $175M in cash, as if it was pocket change to him; there's no good explanation for him to have that much in investments much less in physical money lying around.

I feel the same about Musk's or Bezos' mind-boggling fortunes; Jeff isn't making $2M per hour while his exhausted employees make $16/hr (while peeing in bottles on a breakneck pace through the warehouse) because he's foregoing all human needs and limits, packing boxes at hypersonic speeds for 60 hours per day without rest. Obviously, he makes $2M/hr because their labor is worth $25/hr or more and he diverts the excess for himself.

I have no sympathy for Kim Dotcom, but he is not proven to be some drug cartel boss or criminal overlord. Reason he had so much cash is obvious - because back in 2012 crypto wasn't yet so successful. And the guy was US government target for a long time before arrest so he had good reason not to keep money in banks where it's easy to arrest them.

Like it or not, but if he would do anything illegal other than "copyright violation" of US companies he'll surely be in prison in New Zealand a long time ago.

That's not how it works. The majority of their wealth is in the stock of their companies. They don't earn anything until they sell their shares, and then the money comes from whoever wants to own the shares.

Sounds like you rediscovered Marxism?

Your accusative tone implies that's a bad thing, is that the case?

No. I don’t mean to imply it’s bad or any accusations. Just trying to point out some fact.

According to the last 107 years of history, yes.

Marxism is probably the most evil ideology around, by the evidence of suffering it has caused.

Soviet Union (1922-1991):

- Political repression, Gulag system, and forced labor

- Economic inefficiencies and consumer goods shortages

- Suppression of religious and cultural freedoms

- Estimated deaths: 10-20 million (including famines, purges, and Gulag deaths)

China under Mao (1949-1976):

- Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution chaos

- Suppression of intellectuals and traditional culture

- Collectivization and economic mismanagement

- Estimated deaths: 30-60 million (primarily from Great Chinese Famine)

Cambodia under Khmer Rouge (1975-1979):

- Forced labor and "return to year zero" policies

- Extreme social engineering and intellectual purges

- Near-total economic collapse

- Estimated deaths: 1.5-3 million (Cambodian Genocide)

North Korea (1948-present):

- Extreme political repression and personality cult

- Severe economic hardship and technological backwardness

- International isolation

- Estimated deaths: 240,000-3.5 million (1990s famine), 400,000+ in prison camps

Ethiopia under the Derg (1974-1991):

- Red Terror campaign of political repression

- Economic mismanagement leading to famine

- Civil war and ethnic conflicts

- Estimated deaths: 430,000-1.75 million (famine and Red Terror combined)

Cuba (1959-present):

- Political repression and limits on personal freedoms

- Economic hardships, especially post-Soviet support

- Mass exodus of citizens

- Estimated deaths: 3,000-4,000 (political executions)

Venezuela (under Chavez and Maduro, 1999-present):

- Economic collapse and hyperinflation

- Widespread shortages of food and medicine

- Erosion of democratic institutions

- Deaths: Difficult to quantify, but increased mortality due to shortages

East Germany (1949-1990):

- Stasi surveillance and political repression

- Restrictions on personal freedoms and travel

- Economic stagnation compared to West Germany

- Estimated deaths: 327 killed at Berlin Wall, thousands in prisons

Romania under Ceaușescu (1965-1989):

- Severe austerity measures and poverty

- Brutal suppression of dissent

- Disastrous social engineering policies

- Estimated deaths: 10,000-15,000 (political repression)

Vietnam (1975-present):

- Initial period of harsh re-education and collectivization

- Suppression of political dissent

- Economic hardships until later reforms

- Estimated deaths: 165,000 in re-education camps, tens of thousands in land reform

Just little correction. Modern Vietnam as marxist as China.

Basically it's now non-democratic country with wild capitalism.

These weren’t true Marxism. When me and my communist buddies take over next time you will see a real people’s utopia. Not like the last 47 times. I promise. Word of honor. Everyone will get a pony.

That's a lot of good information, and I'm no scholar of the various -isms, but are the above attributed directly to Marxism (and I'm not sure where the boundaries lie between Marxism, Communism and Socialism), or should they be attributed to malevolent dictatorships?

... My assumption is that you believe, and above is all evidence pointing in this direction, that Marxism leads to malevolent dictatorships.

Whilst the example of the actions above aren't literal examples of what Marx espouses, they're the end result of societies that have attempted to pursue Marxist ideals. Emergent behaviour.

To be ridiculously reductionist, if Capitalism gets us Epstein and Communism gets us the stats you've provided, I know what I'd choose for my family (hint: being alive beats any alternative).

It's not just emergent behaviour. Marxism encourages communists to rise up in violent revolution against their own countryman.

"A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists." - communist manifesto

It's hard to directly quantify what causes what, but in general capitalism happens naturally when people's freedoms are protected, and on the contrary (Marxist) socialism must be forced on people with violence. It doesn't lead to, but requires a totalitarian authority to implement properly.

I don't think that all of them were malevolent either. Most of them probably thought that it would work, and that the end justifies whatever means, or that suffering is necessary for the reward in the end.

Interesting points, thank you!

I'm going to noodle over that distinction of natural capitalism versus forced socialism.

I'm thinking along the lines of family-level (and maybe extended to friends and family / cooperative small village) socialism is natural, but on a societal level, of the scales we see today, capitalism is natural. Cooperation versus competition. Very interesting.

I don't think that way, at all. Capitalism at the core simply means that everyone can own stuff, and everyone gets to keep what they produce. Ownership means that the owner gets to decide how to use the things they own. Capitalism doesn't mean that things aren't shared, it just means that whoever owns the stuff can decide if they want to share. People naturally want to help each other, so they share stuff that they own. People share their things more readily with people they know. Maybe because they might get the favor returned, or they just want to make them happy.

Capitalism doesn't mean competition over co-operation. It simply means that you don't have to co-operate if you don't get equal rewards, or if you don't get rewards proportional to your effort. People hate to co-operate if someone else gets the rewards. People love to co-operate if they get a fair share of the rewards, which is what happens under capitalism.

Owning stuff leads to trading and markets, which leads to the law of supply and demand and the price system. Just by looking at prices of things, people can make rational decisions about what to produce and what to consume. People are pushed to produce things that are scarce and expensive, and they are pushed to consume things that are abundant and cheap. This is a form of self-organized co-operation, where everyone co-operates automatically by just acting rationally. By looking out for themselves, they help allocate resources for the whole community. The lack of this mechanism is one of the major reasons why totalitarian socialism fails. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

> if Capitalism gets us Epstein

What does it have to do with capitalism? People like that or much worse thrive in non democratic states with no rule of law and absolutely no public transparency (e.g. Beria). It's just we don't really get to hear about them..

That's non-sensical.

Bezos and Musk provided more value to society than one of their employees.

The convenience of Amazon wouldn't exist and it saved normal people a ridiculous amount of man-hours.

If you contributed something more valuable to the world you could also get more than $1M for your lifetime.

> But it's completely farcical to state that he's 10,000 times smarter

That's now how it works though. Someone with an iq of 101 isn't 1% more valuable than someone iq100. A man can easily be worth 10,000 times more with an iq of 150 than some average shlob.

> it's far more reasonable to assume that he assigned the value of the efforts of others to himself, stole, manipulated, scammed, or otherwise acquired that $175M illegitimately.

Easy, sure. Reasonable? No, it isn't. He wasn't phishing Grandma's facebook to get her to send him her life's savings. He had a service that other people wanted to use, they paid him for it. None of them complained that he wasn't providing the service. One user even sued the US government, claiming they seized his own personal documents when they seized the servers (had no backups of it). Quite a few were using it in ways most would consider legitimate.

> I feel the same about Musk's or Bezos' mind-boggling fortunes; Jeff isn't making $2M per hour while his exhausted employees make $16/hr (while peeing in bottles on a breakneck pace through the warehouse) because he's foregoing all human needs and limits,

Jeff Bezos was never making $2mil/hour at all. This is what happens when your economics education consisted of a dozen r/latestagecapitalism meme pictures.

Jeff Bezos famously had an $80,000 salary. I make more than that, and I'm a loser. The rest of you are probably making x2 or x3 as much, maybe more. He had assets of many millions of shares of stock, with an estimated worth of many billions depending on share price on any given day. It'd be like claiming you make $750,000/hr because your home's worth that much (according to Zillow, and only until you try to sell it and find out it's quite a bit less).

I don’t think the money in question was forfeited in the sense that the US uses, only seized pending an investigation. The lack of a corrupting incentive alone makes the seizure less suspicious in my eyes.

I don't know about you, but where I come from this looks like punishment through process. Not even trying to defend this Kim dude, just pointing out just because the process is "fair" doesn't mean its fair. Yes that is not a very well articulated point, but this is something which many people should have a feeling for in their bones.

I agree that process can be used as punishment. But I don't see any evidence that Dotcom has been uniquely or unfaithfully subjected to processes, or that his treatment is unusual given the charges he's facing.

Remember: he's not being charged just for copyright infringement. If he was, then freezing his assets would be unusual. He's being charged with money laundering and racketeering, two crimes that involve illegal flows of money.

He hasn't been sentenced, let alone seen court yet. You don't have a right to flee a warrant for your arrest?