I don’t think this is semantic though. The initial post said that “Nobody earns a billion dollars. It can only be stolen and exploited from other peoples’ labor.”
That statement does not read as “they were at least involved indirectly in some behavior at some point in their life that was in some way unethical.” It is purporting a direct relationship between their achieving a billion dollars and an active exploitation of others direct labor. That is why I pushed back against it.
And here is my issue with including indirect exploitation in the consideration. It vastly waters down culpability. A billionaire is just as guilty of indirect exploitation as you or me or the Pope. There is literally no action at all that one can take that I couldn’t make some argument for being a form of indirect exploitation. So when you say that billionaires are exploitative for indirect exploitation reasons, it seems churlish. It loses all meaning because it’s basically tautologically true. Why should I care about it if the person telling me that the billionaire is exploiting people is actively and continuously engaging in the exact same type of exploitation?