image transcription:
big collage of people captioned, "the only people I wouldn't have minded being billionaires"
names(and a bit of info, which is not included in the collage) of people in collage(from top left, row-wise):
- Alexandra Elbakyan, creator of Sci-Hub. perhaps the single-most important person in the scientific community regarding access to research papers.
- Linus Torvalds, creator of linux kernel and git, courtesy of which we have GNU/Linux.
- David Revoy, french artist famous for his pepper&carrot, a libre webcomic. inspiration for artists who are into free software movement
- Richard Stallman, arch-hacker who started it all. founded the GNU project, free software movement, Emacs, GCC, GPL, concept of copyleft, among many other things. champions for free software to this day(is undergoing treatment for cancer at the moment).
- Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VLC media player for 2 decades now
- Ian Murdock, founder of Debian GNU/Linux and Debian manifesto. died too soon.
- Alexis Kauffmann, creator of framasoft, a French nonprofit organisation that champions free software. known for providing alternatives to centralised services, notable one being framapad and peertube.
- Aaron Swartz, a brilliant programmer who created RSS, markdown, creative commons, and is known for his involvement in creation of reddit. he also died too soon.
- Bram Moolenaar, creator of vim, a charityware.
on the bottom right is the text reading, "plus the thousands of free software enthusiasts working tirelessly."
The problem with that thinking is that his wealth wouldn't be possible without a ton of other people's work. His work relied on hardware and other software, and was built on the work of his predecessors, like all software is. He certainly came up with a good product and did well with it, but it wasn't done in a vacuum. There's no such thing as a "self-made" billionaire.
I can't believe that anything that one person produces is worthy enough for a billion dollars. It's like saying it's worth more than a year's worth of work from 65,000 people (based on min wage in the US). Nothing can be worth that much, in my opinion.
Oh I don't dispute that, I couldn't list all the names that I'm sure were involved in making Windows a viable system. I think a lot of them did make tons of money, at least I hope so. I don't mean to suggest one man invented the whole thing by himself.
My question is if no one man is worth a billion dollars - why are athletes worth several million. Unions aside, I know these people would be playing their sport even if nobody paid them at all. And I'm not saying they don't work hard. I just don't see how anything one person does in sports is worth several millions of dollars a year.
I'm with you in that I think some athletes are overpaid. That being said, there's so much difference between several million and a billion.
For reference, one million seconds is 11 days. One billion seconds is 31 years. The numbers don't seem that different when they're written down, because our brains can't really grasp those numbers, but the difference is enormous.
I agree with bringing into question earnings like some athletes get, but the billionaire problem is much bigger and more urgent.
That's also true, though at some point I think having hundreds of millions might just as well be the same as having billions. Not saying I would turn it down either - if someone offered me that kind of salary to do what I love. But I do have two relatives who are considered (on paper) to be billionaires, a cousin and my older brother. My brother bought a 19 million dollar mansion in Florida and now wants me and me mum to come live with him there - it's very tempting. I mean to him, money isn't an object because, it's not something he has to worry about.
In a way it's nice, in a sort of Great Gatsby way - being around the rich makes you feel rich, and you get to benefit from the blessings. I don't think it's necessarily an evil thing to be that rich. A lot depends on what you do with that money and also, whether you made it on the backs of slave labor or exploitation (and in many cases it's almost impossible not to have done so).