[dkyc]

I wouldn't say this is a straw man. Every billionaire being exploitative/criminal is a real political position among the American Left, see e.g. this tweet [0] by Robert Reich. He was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, so not some extremist weirdo.

[0] https://twitter.com/rbreich/status/1193526297647108097

[tylerhou]

When leftists say "exploit," it's because they regard paying workers less than the marginal value they produce with labor exploitative. (Cf. boss makes a dollar, I make a dime.) They claim that it's unfair that that product of labor goes to the company's owners — hence, to fix this, leftists want to "seize" or "democratize" the means of production. (Sitenote: this a core tenet of capitalism: value going to owners.)

Others would disagree that this is exploitative because they believe that wages should be set by the market.

It's clear that workers are not compensated for all of the value they produce, and that the excess value goes to owners. The disagreement is whether this is exploitative. Leftists argue that it's not fair for owners to capture value without contributing any work. Rightists argue that capital is a scarce (i.e. limited) commodity, so owners deserve to be compensated for providing capital. Who you agree with is up to you to decide.

Pg's blog post strawmans "exploit" because he uses a different definition of exploit than leftists use. This might be because he misunderstands leftism, but the cynical believe that he is deliberately strawmanning them for his own gain (since pg benefits from capitalism). A more honest blog post would examine whether value going to owners or founders is exploitative or not.

[loeg]

This is a disingenuous strawman of "leftism." Not all lefties are communists.

[tylerhou]

Not sure if you're being serious, but assuming you are...

Nowhere did I state that all leftists are communists. In fact, seizing the means of production is also a socialist idea. One key difference between socialism and communism is that communism abolishes all private property in addition.

In leftist circles in the US, leftism colloquially refers to people who advocate for some form of social democracy, with most leftists supporting at least socialism. Those who support more center-left policies (like Keynesian economics and the welfare state, without advocating for socially democratic programs) are called "liberals," not leftists, despite the fact that they are left-leaning (in the US's sense of left-leaning).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/12/stop-calli...

> Moving left doesn’t necessarily make one “more liberal.” At a certain point, the traveler leaves the province of liberalism for one that is more correctly identified as socialism, radicalism or leftism.

https://theconversation.com/the-difference-between-left-and-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ask_Politics/comments/6xlxpa/whats_...

> Leftist: They believe the free market system is inherently flawed to favor the rich and powerful and believe that the government should either work within the framework of the market system but heavily regulate it and pay for more social services and welfare through higher taxation on the rich and corporations (social democracy) or abandon the free market all together in favor of socialism.

> Liberals are socially liberal and typically believe in democratic capitalism and the welfare state.

> Leftists typically believe in socialism and are against the ideas of capitalism.

[glaive123]

Well said, thanks for this clear explanation.

[travisporter]

I think Robert Reich is more left of center than the current political party since the 90s, in an increasingly polarizing nation. Here's the quote:

There are basically 5 ways to accumulate a billion dollars in America: 1) Profiting from a monopoly 2) Insider-trading 3) Political payoffs 4) Fraud 5) Inheritance

[dsr_]

To disprove this, one must simply enumerate the 2000 or so billionaires and determine how they each made their money; then categorize them and see if a significant percentage (say, 5%? 10%) do not fit these five criteria.

[jackpirate]

This is a needlessly divisive interpretation of that tweet. The tweet lists 5 concrete ways of becoming a billionaire, and you're putting words in the author's mouth by labeling them all "exploitative/criminal", which were not used at all.