What, did he blow-up his competition? Murder them? Kill their families? Did he bomb villages? Nuke cities? Did he use slavery? Did he poison people's water? Did he kick families out of the company town with pinkertons? Did he spill oil on beaches? Did he use eminent domain to steal property? Did he pay his employees horribly?

Oh you mean he vanquished other companies without using any kind of force what-so-ever? Oh he bundled! (which every company does) Oh he used market leverage! (which every company does)

Did they use the government + legislation to become successful? (unlike most large companies) No, they made fools out of the largest tech company on earth, IBM.

Netscape lost why? Because of their own incompetence, as proven by the rise of Firefox. Did Microsoft stop the rise of Java, nope, turns out it's slightly common these days. Did they kill Apple? Nope, Jobs would tell you himself that Apple was its own worst enemy. And on, and on, and on. Did they stop the rise of Android or iOS? Nope, couldn't even begin to. Music, movies? Nope, nada. How about search? Har har. Do they dominate tablets (despite practically inventing the field)? Nope. Do they dominate gaming? Nope. Intuit? You know that story. How about Linux? They would have loved to have killed it, they couldn't even touch it. How about Apache? Turns out it's doing pretty well these days. Social anything? Nope. Shopping anything? Nope. Payments anything? Nope. Databases? Nope, at best they're a modest player. It's a really long list.

So... the problem was what exactly? They had market power for a few years (maybe ten years tops), and then it faded.

There was nothing particularly terrible about how Gates produced that money.

I sincerely don't think there is a "pretty way" to make ~$60b. You're going to have to be willing to be a hard ass and take some unethical routes.

I think that's an unfounded assumption.

Name somebody who has made that much money ethically.

Warren Buffett?

Not quite. At different points in his career, Buffett had large holdings in tobacco and coal. Plus, to this day, owns a decent percentage of Coca-Cola - which I would argue is a pretty unethical investment.

I would argue that he is an outlier.

Fortunately, all that was asked for was an existence proof.

I think the onus lies the other way. Go through the list of the 10 wealthiest billionaires and explain how each has earned their wealth either ethically or unethically. Please. Maybe just the top 5 even?

You're right, but I don't think it's a ridiculous one to make.

Which is exactly why people should reflect a bit before lauding them for producing in such a way.