This is so stupid.

You can’t “earn” a billion dollars doing the thing that the vast majority of people do for money, which is selling your labor.

No one can argue with this.

We all understand that if people who own a lot of capital give a lot of it to you, you can grow that capital into more than a billion dollars.

Most people do not have access to the kind of capital required to do this. Most people never will. The avenues open to the vast majority of people on Earth cannot lead to becoming a billionaire.

Paul Graham knows this, and he is being deliberately obtuse.