"The worship of billionaires has become our shittiest religion"

[jamesd at echeque.com]

On 2019-12-13 10:52, Razer wrote:
> jamesd at echeque.com wrote:
>> On 2019-11-09 12:11, Razer wrote:
>>> "Nobody should have a billion dollars, and those who do are something
>>> other than fully human."
>>
>> Without billionaires, we don't get the kind of technology that needs a
>> billion dollars.
>>
>> Some people, quite a lot of people, get rich by stealing it, for
>> example Biden, Obama, and the Clintons.  But most rich people get rich
>> by creating wealth, or inherited it from parents that created wealth.
>>
> 
> 
> You forgot the pirates of Silicon Valley in your list, and every single
> startup that ripped off PARC and Netscape. There's no reason technology
> should cost billions of dollars except for the desire of, not the
> creators...

Without billionaires, no access to space.

Without wealthy people, no transistors.

Every transistor, every integrated circuit, is built by an engineer who 
learned from an engineer who learned from an engineer ... who learned 
from the fairchildren, who learned under Shockley, who arguably invented 
the transistor, and certainly invented how make reliable transistors, 
and make them in large numbers.

Lenin discovered that all industry, including all steelmaking, had been 
shut down because the people who made steel were dead or fled, so he had 
to hire a bunch of people from big American companies to re-open the 
steel foundries and train people to manage the making of steel.