Rags to riches stories why they tick me off.

[Faith No More]

Tell me, Faith No More, what magical work can your father-in-law possibly have done that would justify him being a multi-millionaire while most of his employees who did the actual work and/or the employees of the company that bought it probably never saw that kind of dough?

edit: I don't even want to argue that becoming rich by founding a company is immoral per se. My point is rather that your example is not a good argument in favor of rags to riches stories because it relies on an unnamed workforce which has necessarily not gained riches. They may very well have received a decent wage, but that's again not the point.

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Well, I'll tell you about the company I work for and how my father-in-law became a millionaire.  He worked day in and day out for a psychopathic boss that treated his employees like shit to the point that it was abuse.  My FIL was his right-hand man and was as loyal as he could be to this man, working weekends and overtime whenever he was needed.  He had offers for better jobs, but my FIL has a very deep sense of loyalty to his employer.  He stuck with this man that treated him and the people he was in charge of poorly, because that was what he was taught to do.

His job was building hot patchers, which are used in road maintenance to transport and apply asphalt while it's hot, and one day, when he'd had enough, he quit and decided to build his own prototype and ask his brother who was a successful businessman to start up a company.  He spent a year designing and welding his prototype in his own garage, and then entered the market under his own brand.  He drove day in and day out to municipalities across the country showing off his machine to convince people to buy it, and when they did, to save on shipping, he or one other guy would drive the machine cross-country to the place that purchased it.  It was touch and go for several years, but the man is a work horse.  He put everything he had into his business.  Eventually, he overshadowed his former employer and started doing quite well.  He was able to hire more and more welders, which Michigan has thousands of unemployed, and he worked every day, right along side his employees, selling, repairing, and delivering the machines they were making.

His business was valuated at several million dollars, but he was never really interested in selling his baby.  He was too worried about the company and what would happen to his employees.  He eventually got an offer well above the valuation price from an investment firm, but he turned it down.  They came back with more and more, and he then decided that because of his health problems(which are actually due to his former employer) and his age, he would hand it off to them as long as the deal was right and he felt the company was in the proper hands that wouldn't dismantle it and leave his employees high and dry.  He made sure that nothing would change, and he's contractually obligated to run the company for five more years.

I understand that stories like this can be used and abused to keep people down and that this is a rare occurrence.  I also understand that my father-in-law was somewhat lucky, because even though he was poor, he grew up in an area that was well off, and I understand his story is not justification to minimize the contribution of the workforce.  I made my comment, though, in jest at Brian's black and white mentality where everything is either good or bad and shades of grey don't exist.   And I think if he truly wants to be the social activist he galavants about as, it would do him some good to understand nuance.