$500 million purely in sales of software he wrote alone? That would be a feat for sure.

Nothing against him personally, just that buy-in-large this former colleague of yours would be an outlier, the ultra wealthy generally generate profits off the backs of other people's work.

The part that's wrong isn't doing well and making money, it's advocating against taxing corporations way more than we are, lobbying for loopholes, and engaging in rent seeking behaviour. Which is extremely, extremely common. Having some kind of cap on how much wealth you can amass seems sensible to me.

I'm sure he's worked hard and done well for himself, but are we really suggesting that once you have money, you don't "make your money work for you"? What that phrase really means is you can invest, which is only possible because of other people's work at the end of the day.

Yes, I am doubting a bit that after his real work of creating a product, that the rest of the money he's made is directly from that work, or made possible by a system that in general is profiting of the working class.

At a certain point allowing people to have vast sums of money is antithetical to democracy, which seems almost self-evident to most people no matter their other political views.

So no, your former work colleague hasn't done anything wrong, but doesn't mean it's a great way for us to structure society. *Gestures broadly to everything*

What on earth does anyone’s opinions on a march got to do with the topic at hand?

All of the world's billionaires have amassed their wealth off other people's labour.

If you can name me ONE billionaire who hasn't, I'll be extremely shocked. One billionaire who just worked for their money.

Selling something to investors is indirectly profiting off others labour, just in advance. You think the investors pull up their sleeves and generate billions? Lol. No no, they get workers to make whatever business profitable.

Some billionaires may have created something worthwhile (Taylor Swift, for example), even she has an army of workers who make her continued career possible. (Even though she definitely was a "self-made" billionaire starting without massive capital).

Billions is so much you can practically never spend it. And no one can work literally >1000x (or much, much more) harder than someone else. Or generate something so worthwhile they deserve billions.

You don't need the profit motive for people to create great things. The creator of insulin sold the patent for $1. And countries like Denmark (while still be capitalists) are proof that more people would be entrepreneurial if they have more of a safety net to try. We're probably missing out of tonnes of innovation simply because the person hasn't been given the chance through education or they're in poverty.

And we only have poverty because we live in a system where you can amass unlimited wealth, on the backs of everyday people, instead of the workers sharing in the profits of their labour.

Without the labour of others, or the proceeds from the labour of others (advertising, investment, etc), it's impossible to make a billion dollars.