The other, important, difference being that I am not required to fund the billionaire. If I object to the actions of a billionaire, it's not my money that's being misused.
An excellent point! But that is something that a billionaire may do. And often the answer to that is government action - see how often a government will actually take said action. It is something the government by its very nature will do, and there is no counterbalancing force.
The immediate rebuttal that comes to mind is that the government does not dismantle the billionaire's monopolistic scheme because of regulatory capture, and because the billionaire has effectively suborned the government. If you are about to make that argument, I suggest you introspect a little, as you would only be making my point; the "representative government" is not spending its resources according to the will of the people in any case.
Most of them are tax avoiding, so yes, they are using your money. Or at least causing your money to be spent on other things than it would if they contributed proportional to their advantage.
>What other internet browser could I use in the 1990s besides IE?
Netscape? Opera? Lynx? All of which predate IE.
>What other phone can I use besides a Google or Apple phone?
A dumb one. Or install something like LineageOS. And if your complaint is that they're not as nice, well, they're not required to be. Philosophical positions and moral boundaries have a price, and convenience is a small one to pay.
>How do I avoid giving Nestle or Unilever money? By avoiding a massive list of thousands of brands?
Yes. That's exactly what you do. With the exception of certain pharmaceuticals, the vast majority of the stuff they sell is not necessary. If you don't want to support billionaires, don't be suckered into the consumerist trap. It's not hard to live with, and want, less stuff.
Honestly, the sibling comment about billionaires capturing critical infrastructure and monopolizing it is a much better argument than this. But you're not even trying to look at the issue from my perspective. If you object to the way your government is spending its money, as many citizens have done over the past twenty years, what can you actually do about it? The consequences of withholding your money from the tax man is much more severe than doing so from Bill Gates or Charles Koch.
I’d take a flawed government with some semblance of an electoral process and representative taxation over dependence on a benevolent individual.
For every Bill Gates there is a Charles Koch.