Re: At workers' expense
Those people wouldn't be billionaires if they shared the value workers produced.
Those workers don't produce all the value. That's one of the many things Marx got wrong.
There is a cost of capital as well. And that capital can be used to vastly increase the productivity of labour. And if it doesn't make a return (a profit) then it gets invested elsewhere, where it can.
There's also a value to ideas, organisation and leadership. Sure we've all met shit managers, who reduce the overall productivity of the workers unfortunate enough to have to deal with them. But that isn't all management. Sometimes individuals can drive companies forward almost entirely down to their skill, knowledge and drive - and you can tell that although they need staff - most of that success is down to the person at the top. Although that effect tends to fall off as companies get bigger, and become more bureaucratic and lumbering.
But I've known several entrepeneur types who've built companies almost entirely on their own abilities. And would have succeeded almost whatever staff they'd had. So long as they hired people who could read and write and didn't steal the silver. If they're then able to attract brilliant people and build a successful team and culture that business can then jump to the next level and keep on growing, so I'm not saying that labour isn't important. But it's far from the only thing.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
