[pdonis]

> Your skills only have value if you're using them.

Yes. That's true of everyone, including those that you are calling "capitalists". But that being true, and a person knowing that it's true and acting accordingly, are two very different things.

> Capitalist vs laborer is basically someone who doesn't work, but their money does vs someone who has to work.

If you think that Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, etc., don't work, you are egregiously mistaken. They work very, very hard. They just don't work at the same things that low level tech workers do. That's because they understand, as many, if not most, low level tech workers apparently do not, that the best use of their work--their labor, the hours they put in doing whatever it is they do--is to maximize the return on their capital. So they optimize their work towards that goal. Whereas most low level tech workers don't even think in those terms--and that is why they are at the mercy of the "capitalists" who do.

(The usual economist's term for a person who doesn't work, but "lets their money work", is "rentier", and the associated behavior--getting into a position where one can have a steady reliable income without having to work--is called "rent seeking". There is certainly an element of that in the way many rich people act, but I don't think it's the primary issue in the context of this discussion.)

The real argument for those "capitalists" being overpaid is not that they don't work, but that most of the work they are doing is not actually creating wealth; it's just transferring wealth from others to themselves. But that has nothing whatever to do with them being "capitalists" instead of "laborers" and "laborers" being underpaid. It has to do with our entire system of social incentives being screwed up because for decades now we have increasingly allowed short-term viewpoints to undermine the long-term stability of our social institutions. "Class warfare" rhetoric, in fact, is one of the ways that has been done.

[MarkMarine]

You're standing up a bunch of straw men to argue with here.

I didn't say half of what you're asserting, just trying to clear up the definitions of some terms you were getting wrong in the context that you were using them in. If you want to talk about this, which is essentially Marxist theory, and then argue against it... some familiarity with the source material would be good to acquire.

[pdonis]

> You're standing up a bunch of straw men to argue with here.

I'm not sure what you're basing that on since I'm responding to things you explicitly said.

> If you want to talk about this, which is essentially Marxist theory

I have no idea what you are basing that on. The only thing I said that was at all related to Marxist theory was my reference to "class warfare"; yes, Marxist theory was one of the culprits in using class warfare rhetoric to obscure economic realities. Which is why countries that tried to run themselves according to Marxist theory were abject failures that killed many millions of their own people, either through incompetence or through deliberate "can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs" logic.

[MarkMarine]

You’re inventing things I said out of whole cloth. Did I talk about tech CEO’s? Nope. Did I say wealthy people work or don’t? Nope. Just tried to give your misguided definitions some basis in reality.

Second: I know you have no idea what I’m basing that on. That is my point. You don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re just going off half cocked about whatever you THINK I’m talking about. I just gave you a subject you could choose to educate yourself about if you wanted to sound sensible about the windmills you’re currently tilting at. But from your response I see that isn’t going to happen.

[dragonwriter]

> Which is why countries that tried to run themselves according to Marxist theory

There aren't any, despite Leninist theory often being presented with a misleading (in the context of “running a government”) prefix of “Marxist-”. (There are a number that tried Leninist theory, or theory descended from it such as Maoist theory.)