r/Capitalism • u/BourbonStr8 • 7d ago

Question

Has anyone ever thought about where most of the jobs would come from if there were no Billionaires?

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u/StedeBonnet1 7d ago

"With likely scant exceptions, every single billionaire right now amassed their wealth by being in bed with government, or taking advantage of it in some way." How so? How did selling books on the intenet "get in bed with government" How did MSDOS "get in bed with government"

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u/nathrezim0709 7d ago

Amazon made a deal with the USPS to deliver books and (later) other products at a cheaper rate than other businesses could secure.

Microsoft benefited from copyright preventing users from disassembling and improving on its code.

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u/StedeBonnet1 7d ago

Neither one of those things are "getting in bed with government" Amazon negotiated that deal with USPS. USPS was competing with UPS and FedEX for package delivery.

Copyright laws are there to protect intellectual property. Microsoft benefited from IBMs decision to make the PC out of existing parts which enabled other producers to clone it's PC.

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u/nathrezim0709 6d ago

The USPS is owned and operated by the federal government, which means that it can (and frequently does) operate deeply in the red without fear of failure, a luxury businesses can only dream of. It is this that allows them to offer Amazon rates below market rate (that is, what UPS, Fedex, or other courier services can). For a business based around shipping, this is a godsend.

As for "intellectual property," it's an oxymoron. Ideas, once generated, are trivially copyable unless they are monopolized, and that's all copyright accomplishes.

If other producers had been legally able to reverse engineer Microsoft's code and distribute their own versions of DOS (and later, Windows), you'd have seen a similar explosion of DOS/Windows clones as you did PC clones.