Re: How much money do you need?
WOW. Just wow. You have absolutely no clue.
You said "For someone to be rich, others must be poor". Who did Bill Gates rob to become rich? Answer: nobody.
A company (or person) makes money by performing services or delivering goods that the customer desires. If they make (or perform) crap, they make no money. If they perform well, they make a ton of cash. But there's no coersion involved. It's a FREE market. So you don't make people poor in the process of gaining wealth. It's just not a true statement.
And here's an interesting follow-up thought: Of all those people/companies that bought MS products, do you think they gained anything from it? Like maybe more productivity/better performance of their own companies? You have to give the customer some credit for spending their money wisely. They didn't pay Mr. Gates' company scores of billions of $ for no reason.
And you also need to learn the meaning of a term: "zero sum game". A capitalistic economy is NOT a zero sum game. Wealth gets created. That's the main reason you don't need to make others less wealthy in order to become more wealthy.
Note that this is different than poker. In poker, it is actually worse than a zero sum game, unless you play without a rake. In that case (no rake), it is exactly a zero sum game.
If you look at the world's fastest growing economy (China), you will see that they have made a decided turn towards an open market economy (read: capitalism). Their economy pretty much sucked before that. And the Soviet Union's economy also sucked gas.
If you look at less economically-developed countries, they usually have one of two problems (sometimes both): Lack of education and/or dictatorship. Ignorance and oppression are the two great causes of poverty. Not capitalism.
Bobby
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