Don’t be too harsh he’s a cool dude, but he unfortunately has some capitalism good musk good sentiments that I’ve been trying to dismantle for some time now and i thought I’d ask for help with this.

Or you can just dunk.

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[–] Wheaties@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago

The inheritance thing suggest to me he's already thinking about flaws in the "meritocracy", he just hasn't considered all the implications.

The one percent isn't self-made. Their success is built off of society -- contingent on it. The same way your or I don't generate our own electricity, don't crack our own petroleum, don't purify our own water, don't grow our own food -- Bill Gates does not write every line of code for windows, Jeff Bezos does not box every product for shipping, James Walton does not keep his aisles stocked. Every day you and I depend on the labor of other people to live the lives we live, and we contribute our own labor into the pool. Every day, Jeff and BIll and James and their class make millions on the labor of other people -- but they don't have to contribute their labor back. The money they take is a privilege bestowed by the simple fact of ownership. They own the warehouses and shops and companies that everyone else work in.

More over, none of them would be where they are if not for the work that was already done by society. Bill Gates relied on the invention of Allen Turing, on the free programming done between universities and research firms on the early DARPANET. Jeff Bezos relied on the already built internet infrastructure and the postal systems ran by government. James Walton just ate up local groceries that had already established profitable ventures.