> if someone else makes money it somehow precludes others from doing it?
There is an easy way to see that and it is if the median inflation-adjusted hourly wage has risen in the US since the early 1970s. Or if inflation-adjusted weekly earnings have risen. They have not, with GDP growth, both have fallen.
That this even has to be discussed shows the deep control those heirs who expropriate surplus labor time from workers have over discourse, the media, forums like this (run and controlled by an accelerator) etc.
Workers create wealth at a mature company. Some of that pays the electricity bills etc., but then the rest goes to either dividends to the heirs, or to wages. That is the "preclusion". The heirs expropriate the profits of the surplus labor time from the workers creating the wealth. They are shorted on their wages. Sometimes this is explicit like the cabal between Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt that came out in the lawsuit.
Insofar as Bill Gates and invention - it takes a hell of a lot of gullibility to swallow the fantasy you concocted. Kemeny and Kurtz created BASIC. Gates hacks into a military research computer at Harvard and steals computer time from it according to Paul Allen's book (and Harvard admin found out and had proceedings) - they port BASIC to the Altair.
Then IBM comes to Microsoft. IBM got wealthy with computers on taxpayer funded government contracts and a monopoly which was lightly overseen. Gates's mother is on the United Way board with IBM CEO Opel who helps makes this meeting happen. Microsoft sells Seattle Computer Product's Qdos to IBM (Gary Kildall said it was a complete ripoff of his Drdos). A purchased ripoff of another product, sold thanks to family connections. So much for "invention".
At times like the current one, with real wages falling since the early 1970s despite economic growth, that this is even discussed is a sign of how the heirs have bought and paid for the narrative as well.