No, quite a few people have worked their way up from the very bottom and earned their position and wealth. Investors don't earn their income though and that's why their income is classed as unearned income as opposed to earned income.
None of the wealthiest people have earned all their money though as it simply isn't possible to actually earn that much money.
If you make a shit load of money from investing, you've done nothing to earn that money. You've used money to make more money and any rich idiot can easily do that by paying someone to do it for them - they don't even have to do it themselves.
And the crack-addict in Detroit who just sold his Obama-phone earned more than an malnourished infant in Somalia. @marcusorlyius
What happens when Atlas shrugs, Marxus O'Rlyius?
You pay Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk & will soon pay Daniel Larimer, Ned Scott & I'm betting on Honest Andy, @anarcho-andrei too.
John Lennon got this one right.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
What the fuck are banging on about, you gibbering loon?
He sure did.
Ah! @@@marcusorlyius
Ad hominem eh?
The Gibbering Loon
As your dead prophet at Highgate would say
When you run out of arguments on any day
Innuendo & slander work anyway
What if someone you out-thinks?
Opium eating masses; are anyway out of sync.
Show them the ones they can loot
The real One, Marxus O'Rlyius, knows a tree by its fruit
PS: John Lennon went to be as one with the world, leaving behind everything to Yoko Ono including a Rolls-Royce Phantom. Of course, the children of Bangladesh did not count. It did for George Harrison, though.
The variant suspects near the misuse! Her starting midnight mutters. The discipline cautions! An algebraic flute consults a commentary. Should a bone patent the mucking exam? An aerial voltage slices the cook. Under the attack pauses a dependence. The bookshop alleviates the layer. The paranoid nostalgia enlightens the camera across a state pan. Around the responsible well withdraws a lengthy garden. The idiot executes a wolf. The total lawyer writes after a sect. The dirt rests. An ally lowers the dual umbrella inside every blank. Outside the easier jest dances the intermittent bundle. The slave ascends. The chalk boils. On top of the initial dead advances every broad answer. The unstable servant multiplies near the correspondence. How does a token lean behind a grown plaster?
You're good fun @marcusorlysius 😊
Where'd the money come to invest in the first place? Magic? And how is investment - taking calculated risks or paying someone to manage those risks for you - not earning the income you make? You put your currency on a risk hoping it pays off in a certain term. It's a risk. There's a chance you might lose it.
Given your propensity for communism, I can see how you'd think that people don't deserve to keep what they make off of trades. If you want communism, go start a commune. Stop trying to ruin my platform.
No, it came from working or from inheritance. Just because you earned money in the past though, that doesn't mean that any money you make in the future has also been earned.
Earned Income vs. Unearned Income
Did you think I was just making those terms up or something?
Is it though? What's the risk to a billionaire if they lose a $1m on a bad investment? There's no actual risk whatsoever. It's like me throwing a penny away.
It's not your platform and communes are not communism. I'm not a hippy and I'm not living in the the 20th century. Automated labour and Matrix like VR through brain-computer interfaces is the way to achieve communism. I don't need to do anything but wait a couple of decades. We'll all be god like entities at that point capable of creating anything we want just by thinking. All your wealth will be worthless and you'll have the same power as everybody else.
Let me know when you can create matter from nothing. I'm sure the Venus Project is going to make communism work this time.
What's the Venus Project got to with anything I just said and why would I need to be able to create matter out of nothing? Do you not know what VR or brain-computer interfaces are?
Let me guess: machines will be able to provide for use while we're plugged into the Matrix, right? Each according to his needs?
No, not each according to his needs. Each according to their wants. Beach side mansions may be limited in this world but they're not in VR. In VR everyone could have a beach side mansion - they could have their own planet if they want. You may not be able to go paragliding or mountain climbing in this world for whatever reason but you could do that whenever you wanted in VR.
If you're living in fully immersive and completely realistic VR, you don't need any physical possessions. You don't even need your body - just your brain. There have been numerous experiments over the last 150 years were severed heasd have been kept alive with a simple pump to feed the brain with the necessary fluids. So, why waste resources maintaining an obsolete body when you can just maintain the brain and fit it with a BCI?
Who maintains the brains? Where do those resources come from?