"Extract" here has two meanings:

1. Extracting from the market or the economy. It seems like (correct me if I'm wrong) this is what you're reading it as? Here you're generally exploiting what private equity calls "pricing power" or what economists call "enclosures" (or "rent-seeking") so inelastic demand (eg housing) or market protection (eg making municipal broadband illegal); and

2. Extracting from labor. This is the basis of the labor theory of value [1].

The point of comments like AOC's is mostly the second one, which is to say that you only become a billionaire by extracting it from your workers. And yes, this is a fundamental disagreement with many people. Some will say that the startup founder who makes a billion dollars deserves it by taking the risk or being the leader or however you want to frame it.

The counterargument is that that value simply wouldn't exist if it wasn't for those workers and their work. Even Instagram, which famously had only 13 employees when acquired for $1 billion, still needed those workers. It would've been nothing without them.

Take Google as another example. The profit per employee has famously been (at times) over $1 million per year.

The term for this is "surplus labor value".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

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taffer 6 hours ago | parent [-]

As the Wikipedia article states, the labour theory of value (LTV) was replaced by the theory of marginal utility in mainstream economics due to its major inconsistencies.

> Take Google as another example. The profit per employee has famously been (at times) over $1 million per year.

So, are you saying that the employees were exploited in some way? I could give you examples of how value is created without any work at all.

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overfeed 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> So, are you saying that the employees were exploited in some way?

Google ads "extracted" value from traditional advertising in newspapers and magazines, so the "exploitation" (or efficiency gains, if you're charitable) came at the expense of employees at other organizations worldwide.

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jmyeet 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> As the Wikipedia article states, the labour theory of value (LTV) was replaced by the theory of marginal utility in mainstream economics due to its major inconsistencies.

"Mainstream economics" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It didn't "replace" LTV. Marginal utility is simply an an ideological rejection of it with the confusion of price vs value that ignores class exploitation. The proponents of this were the gensis of the so-called "Austrian school" [1] and thus the fathers of neoliberalism [2].

> So, are you saying that the employees were exploited in some way?

Yes, objectively, as measured by profit. The counterargument is that many were well-paid compared to their non-tech colleagues. While true, they still created way more value than what they were paid.

> I could give you examples of how value is created without any work at all.

I'm all ears.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_school_of_economics

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

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taffer 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> > I could give you examples of how value is created without any work at all.

> I'm all ears.

Ageing whisky.

	▲	blocko 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There's a great deal of labor involved in building+preparing casks, storing them, monitoring, maintaining the temp/humidity of a space. Additionally, a good chunk of the price of aged whisky is just due to the fact that the product is constantly evaporating and you're getting a lower yield on the same initial input. Price increase != value created
	▲	overfeed 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Some laboror has to cask it first.

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taffer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> "Mainstream economics" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

As is "mainstream medicine" or "mainstream climate science". If you don't trust mainstream science, you must be either extremely smart or just delusional.

	▲	_DeadFred_ 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Soft sciences are not at all the same thing as hard science.