Learning about the odds is the first step towards growth, yet people who are experiencing a generational fortune of money are advising the poor on how to stop being poor. It’s like a fisherman guiding the fish to walk on earth. People with resources often believe that people who lack resources have opted for such a life, which is why they always find reasons to disgrace them, as if respect and prosperity all belong to people with money and resources.
The fact of rich people’s wealth is largely driven by the people with less money or resources, yet the disgrace continues with capitalists exploiting the poor with zero equality or equity in place of exploitation of excessive labour and lower wages. Karl Marx has advocated for the rights of labour against exploitation by capitalists; he himself experienced poverty to such an extent that his children died from it, and he was unable to afford both the funeral and living expenses. He argued that surplus value is produced by the employment of labour power. Capital buys labour power and pays the wages for it. Through his work, the labourer creates new value that does not belong to him but to the capitalist. Without the labour of the working class, capitalists cannot even earn their bread, let alone luxury, which is why Karl Marx’s tombstone is engraved with “Workers of all lands unite.”
The dignity of capitalists is derived from the hard work and sacrifices of the proletariat, but the wages and respect they receive do not reflect the effort they put in. Billionaires always have a personalised guidebook for exploitation, whether through ambiguous love, politeness, responsibilities, blame games, inequality, or respect. The world’s first richest person, John D. Rockefeller, started his business with an oil refinery. He owned a company, Standard Oil, which controlled 90% of the oil refineries in America. Rockefeller had the strategy of buying the competitors instead of fighting with them, which is why he controlled nearly all the refineries in Cleveland. That fact enabled the company to negotiate with railroads for preferential rates on its oil shipments. It acquired pipelines and terminal facilities, purchased competing refineries in other cities, and vigorously sought to expand its markets in the United States and abroad. In 1892, the Ohio Supreme Court held that the Standard Oil Trust was a monopoly in violation of an Ohio law prohibiting monopolies. Rockefeller evaded the decision by dissolving the trust and transferring its properties to companies in other states, with interlocking directorates so that the same nine men controlled the operations of the affiliated companies. In 1899, the holding company, Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), reunited these companies and operated until 1911.
Inequality goes back to the era of the Stone Age, leaving no trace of a founder, yet the concept remains. Thirty thousand years ago, hunter-gatherer bands buried some members in graves replete with thousands of ivory beads and jewels, while other members had to settle for a bare hole in the ground. Similarly, the term ‘inequality’ has developed into ‘hierarchy imbalance’; talent, merit and experience are no longer the top selection criteria. People who have money can sell anything, let alone their stupidity or an inferiority complex. Equity is the solution to peace, yet people are preaching imbalance in the name of equality.
Mark Zuckerberg, the 4th richest person with a net worth of 222.3 billion USD, developed Facebook, a social media platform with a manifesto of building a global community. He stated, ‘To help 1 billion people join meaningful communities… if we can do this, it will not only turn around the whole decline in community membership we’ve seen for decades, but it will also start to strengthen our social fabric and bring the world closer together.’ With all the ambiguous guidebooks, he chose to exploit people’s trust and help. The Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed third parties’ harvesting of data entrusted to Facebook, which they used to manipulate elections globally. Billionaires, businessmen and politicians are the exploiters of proletarians; instead of finding strategies for equity, they go with victim blaming, leaving no option for them but to choose lesser wages and disgrace so that living and death can be afforded.