Ok, let's forget the crooks who get wealth they haven't worked for.

Now my believe is that for you to be extremely wealthy, self-made, then you either do it in one of two ways, you own a product or service that people really want or you manipulate the system ie find loopholes in the system and manipulate.

@2012, I'd like to hazard the following assertion: It is impossible to be a billionaire by simply providing what people need at a price, and without taking advantage of loopholes in government and society.

On the other hand, I'd like you to share some names of billionaires who break this rule.

A few from the top of my head, Oprah Winfrey, J.K. Rowling Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Kenyan: Narendra Raval, SK. Macharia.

All I'm saying is that the thought of us or our children believing that you cannot make your dreams come true through honest means would be sad.

I am back, @2012

First, to my surprise, my odds of being a billionaire are higher than I expected. I was groomed since childhood, I passed adolescence with my script safe, by 25 I had laid the foundations of 'my greatness'. And I am in more agreement with my father There are only a few moves to go, and inshallah, I am likely to join the billionaires club.

But still on the other hand, I am convinced that being of an exclusive economic class and having more wealth than others is immoral and unethical. For this I will turn to Dienes's idea of 'Psychological wealth' and Plato's Republic as key evidence along with other aspects of reason and truth, and of course, the general trend in history.

Moreover, my assertion that billionairehood entails crookedness, of price and social responsibility stands.

The main argument given for the validity of the billionaire class is given by Gregory Mankiw, a Havard prof who wrote 'In defence of the 1%'.

In this paper, Mankiw posits that billionaires earn their money justly from their respective marginal productivity.

Firstly, marginal productivity isn't easily and objectively determined. For example a book written by Rowling under a pseudonym won't be priced the same way if the name Rowling is on the cover.

Besides, does marginal productivity increase or decrease with time? Do prices reflect expected change accordingly? In my estimation MP is supposed to decrease, other factors held constant.

Again, accumulation of wealth necessarily means the use of surplus value for capital investment. Where does surplus value arise if all are paid 'by their deserts?'

Some of the answers to these questions are given by Didier Jacobs of Oxfam, in his 'Extreme wealth is unmerited'. In this work we are shown the ladder that makes for the billionaire class. The ladder is made of crime, cronyism, inheritance, monopoly, globalization and technology. In this case, the higher you go, the more the crime is sanitized.

For instance, Mankiw alludes to the unequal distribution of wealth in the US since 1970 due to uneven skills development. But think of how these skills are researched on and distributed within a population. The rich take their children to elite schools and prescribe lesser education for the masses. Just like in our new CBC curriculum.

The social organization needed to prop the mythology of price and economics is steeped in falsehood and false promises.

you are... just define the currency

Billionaires exist because of non-linear effects. If you don't understand that you'll miss the whole point. Non-linear effects work like this
- Two musicians compose a song using pretty much the same resources. One Song goes multi-platinum while the other doesn't even get played on the radio. The musician with the song that does super well could make even 100 Million USD from that one song while the other probably makes a loss coz of the production costs.
- Same thing for painters. Give two painters exactly the same materials. One can paint a masterpiece that becomes worth hundreds of millions while the other could end up with a painting in his basement.
- Two start ups work on different products. One goes global and achieves unicorn status while the other never gains traction.
Almost the same level of resources but very different outcomes. Technology and the internet has amplified these effects. Now you can build an app that in a short time has a billion users. In the old days that was just not possible. We have got into a situation with a lot of winner take all effects because of how interconnected the world is.

Please give an example of such a thing that has been accessible to all equally but has been used by the few billionaires.

Not having billionaires doesn't mean that there are no returns for work. The argument given is that of marginal productivity being the just deserts. Do you have another model?

If proof for this statement is the presence of a 'conscience' then we can also say that classical or operant conditioning is responsible for conscience. This is inimical to your assertion.

The role of government is to help people 'come out of the cave' as Socrates put it. This 'cave' describes a kind of political economy that must be transcended. Talk, encouragement of 'billionaire' thinking is a kind of thinking that keeps humanity in the cave. It does so primarily by reliance on perceived and tangible objects.

If, our ethic and aspiration is directed at the tangible object and we have non Pareto conditions - where we can only get better at the expense of others - then the more an individual makes, the more he/she must make others worse off.

So I can say the title you are proposing is a soft version of the one I put. But they are equivalent in fact. Or are very likely to be equivalent - treasury could decide to borrow heavily for welfare while the sharks feast.

I know we love toys, but this hasn't always been so, especially here in Africa. The colonizers found civilizations that had a different world view. And it was working well. What happened during the colonization was treachery against a philosophy that was so different from the one we think is necessary or the sweetest that can be.