Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

All would have been built without creating the billionaire

I can point out at least two of those that would almost certainly not have. If you can't immediately point them out, quit smashing at your keyboard before your brain turns on.

Of course. And even without billionaires these things would have happened.

Probably not. The financial incentive for someone to apply their skills, time, effort, and money towards an enterprise requires the prospect of a substantial ultimate payout.

We'd also better go ahead and round up and kill a few million people that Bill Gates saved through all that unethical money. But seriously. You can make the case that inequality is policy failure, but punishing a few successful people is worse than lifting up unsuccessful ones.

Bill Gates has estimated to save about 120 million lives(about 1/3rd of the US pop if we're keeping score). The existence of Bill Gates pretty much justifies the existence of billionaires in the US has ever created just via his own philanthropy.

let's be honest. billionaires didn't *invent* google. well, they weren't billionaires at the time

They quit their PhDs for the money. It doesn't actually matter they hadn't made it when they did so.

If you can't imagine a way that these ventures could be organised without leading to massive accumulation of wealth and power, perhaps you're just too caught up in a a particular mindset. There are good objections to be made here, but this isn't one of them.

how is this not an objection? it's the calculation problem in another guise.