Capitalism rewards those who control more capital. Period.
Goods, materials, labor sources, infrastructure, intellectual property, supply chains, real estate, contracts, and political influence. The more of all of that you control, the more you reap financial rewards.
The most idealistic view of capitalism is that you earn such reward by improving the world and providing what people need. You invent a product, process, IP, etc. and people pay you money for materially improving their lives or meeting a need.
But that is far from the only way to gain such control. Using your massive wealth to gain political influence. Using both your wealth and political influence to buy or destroy your competition. Using unethical methods like collusion to remove choice from consumers, to force them to buy your product, to raise prices because you can.
Hell, you can even do everything to destroy a good productive company and still make bank. David Zaslav at Warner Bros is proving that you can buy a profitable company, merge it with a company in massive debt, put that debt on the profitable company, use that debt to justify massive cuts that make the company less productive with fewer profit streams including cancelling finished movies for tax write-offs, destroy the stock valuation of the company screwing over the shareholders, force a new sale/merger to a MAGA billionaire to save the company, and fly away from the wreckage on your $886 million dollar golden parachute richer than when you started.
A 16 year old barista does much more to contribute to society than David Zaslav did, but the rewards are not even close.
Capitalism rewards those who control more capital. Period.
Goods, materials, labor sources, infrastructure, intellectual property, supply chains, real estate, contracts, and political influence. The more of all of that you control, the more you reap financial rewards.
The most idealistic view of capitalism is that you earn such reward by improving the world and providing what people need. You invent a product, process, IP, etc. and people pay you money for materially improving their lives or meeting a need.
But that is far from the only way to gain such control. Using your massive wealth to gain political influence. Using both your wealth and political influence to buy or destroy your competition. Using unethical methods like collusion to remove choice from consumers, to force them to buy your product, to raise prices because you can.
Hell, you can even do everything to destroy a good productive company and still make bank. David Zaslav at Warner Bros is proving that you can buy a profitable company, merge it with a company in massive debt, put that debt on the profitable company, use that debt to justify massive cuts that make the company less productive with fewer profit streams including cancelling finished movies for tax write-offs, destroy the stock valuation of the company screwing over the shareholders, force a new sale/merger to a MAGA billionaire to save the company, and fly away from the wreckage on your $886 million dollar golden parachute richer than when you started.
A 16 year old barista does much more to contribute to society than David Zaslav did, but the rewards are not even close.