This then that makes the argument very hard to respond to.

"No I didn't mean this [virtuous example]. I meant the vast majority of [unnamed nefarious actors] which I don't need to elaborate about as their existence is obvious."

Once you say it's just hyperbole and you don't mean it literally, then the only way to prove it is a statistical argument.

"The overwhelmingly share of company founders and companies are bad and don't earn their money." is a big claim that requires more than vibes.

A tremendous amount of advertising towards kids which very explicitly uses tactics to exploit their insecurities and get them to pressure their parents (many whom can’t really afford it) to buy them gratuitously overpriced shoes or other products which the kids don’t actually need at all.

It’s an industry of low-grade exploitation, generating products that people mostly don’t need. It’s bizarre. It fits squarely into the category AOC is trying to define here.

Yeah, you can choose between two worlds: in the current one, Nike is producing shoes in you don't want to really know circumstances and is paying LeBron ~$40M a year.

In another world, LeBron is still a millionaire, getting a nice $1M a year. The rest, a mere $39M, which in Paul Graham terms is just a couple months from turning into a billion, goes to the hopeless kids actually churning out the god damn shoes.

LeBron did nothing wrong. The system is this corrupt.

Nike has some of the best labor policies of all the shoe companies now. Their controversies were in the 90s.