- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
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Fill in the blanks:
A ______ billionaire is a good billionaire.
Former
Luigi’d
Expropriated
Billionaire is a pathology as far as I’m concerned.
Forbes sometimes publishes lists of good billionaires:
That wealth is the spilled blood of the working class
money is both power and violence
George Soros?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros
“As of October 2023, he had a net worth of US$6.7 billion,[9][10] having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations,[11] of which $15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune.”
This is great, but he still tanked the UK economy to make his fortune, didn’t he?
And although he regretted them, he promoted economic decisions to the Eastern Bloc, which lead to the rise of Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, etc.
From the Wiki, yeah:
“Soros is known as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” as a result of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion, during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.”
But who do you hate more? Billionaires or bankers? ;)
A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is 31.7 years.
Just a good way to ground an unimaginable number in something more familiar and drive home how ridiculous having a billion dollars is. I hear we’re on track for our first batch of trillionaires this decade.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
I hear we’re on track for our first batch of trillionaires this decade.
Unless we do something about the wealth, this is kinda expected eventually. Give it another decade after that and it would be wholly expected to have our first multi trillionaire, and honestly they wouldn’t even need to do anything to make that happen, they’d just need to invest in a board market ETF.
I’m not saying this is good, but this was inevitable due to how the markets and inflation work.
Edit: Also it will probably happen sooner than anyone realizes when you take into account private unmeasurable wealth like Saudi royalty.
This is actually great! Welcoming your example to my now collection of two, alongside Wealth, shown to scale.
And then there’s that Tom Scott video
Yes there is Luigi showed us the way.
Or just fucking stop consuming like idiots and assholes. You really think shooting CEOs in the street is going to change anything for the better without changing the bad behaviour that those CEOs are still salivating and precumming at the thought of exploiting??
In America, people may have to pay over $1000 a month for health insurance, which may or may not even cover all their medical needs. People still need Bank accounts; cities are built without public transportation so vehicles are required just for the ability to feed and clothe yourself. This isn’t a “consumer” issue, this is a systemic structures of our civilization issue, where the needs of the many are less of a concern to politicians than the loudest voices of the few.
Nevermind lobbyists writing laws wholesale; supply chain management systems owned end to end by single companies; and Wall Street / vulture capitalists destroying companies (and lately hospitals!?!) to extract their wealth.
We need to structure civilization so that Money isn’t the only, single end goal of all endeavors; and we need to ensure that Greed is kept in check.
Poverty exists not because we can’t feed the poor, but because we can’t satisfy the rich.
Brian Thompson was just a poor millionaire though. Perhaps one of the reasons why he was so easy to get.
My proof that ethical billionaires don’t exist is that there’s a line (I usually like to set it at 10 million due to living in a very high CoL area) beyond this line you will never need more money in your life. Money will no longer improve your standard of living and your savings are enough to ride out life in comfort.
When you reach or approach this line you have two options:
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Look at everyone you’re working with and help them reach that line - if you’ve accomplished that then start lowering the costs of your business to customers to help your customers reach that line.
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Squeeze harder so you get more money and everyone around you gets fucked.
If you chose #2 you are a fucking asshole. You cannot become a billionaire[1] except by choosing #2. You have actively chosen to push down those around you so you can watch number go up.
- The exception here is inheritance though someone with a sizable inheritance also has questions about using it to help those around them and, IMO, the estate tax should be near 100% and we should ensure that everyone has as equal a shot at life as we can. I loathe inheritance of wealth as a general concept though some things like having a family home are obviously pretty meaningful to a lot of people.
The premise that merely having more than you need is inherently unethical is completely arbitrary, doubly so when only applied to those who have the most.
I live a fairly simple and frugal lifestyle. The amount of money where I am living at the standard of living and want, and my “savings are enough to ride out life in comfort”, is likely a much lower number than most others in the US.
Does that make me more ethical than those others? I don’t believe so.
Well, inflation has made that more than 10 million, but yes I agree there is a number that says “I own a huge mansion, 10 cars, a yacht, and I eat caviar every meal.” That number is significantly less than a billion without having to work a day more.
You can’t own a yacht with 10 million
I’m gonna be that guy… but yes you can.
What many perceive as Yachts, the big boats that the ultra wealth have, are not the sole size of yachts.
This is a yacht for under 600k
Seriously… how much do people think yachts are. Not everyone is buying bill gates’ $500m yacht.
They are very expensive to maintain
Oh, you ray of sunshine.
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Yes, that includes Gabe Newell and the Costco guy.
Gabe proves there are less-bad billionaires though
Newell and Sinegal (Costco) prove that some billionaires are able to brainwash people into believing that they’re good people instead of believing their wealth could be redistributed to those in need instead of being used to buy a yacht collection. As long as there are people starving and homeless and the climate crisis is a thing, there will not be a single billionaire that isn’t an evil piece of shit.
Newell and Sinegal (Costco) prove that some billionaires are able to brainwash people into believing that they’re good people
Except that’s not what happened here and I see Gabe N get shit on on Lemmy a lot so I don’t know why you think you need to preach to me.
Because you’re the one calling them “less bad” when they’re consciously making the choice to accumulate unfathomable amounts of wealth while people around them are starving and can’t afford to have a roof over their head.
Newell is less bad. It’s not my fault you’re too simple minded to understand shades of gray so I’d rather not hear about it
If someone agrees with you there are no good billionaires but adds a slight caveat, you could probably be less abrasive and just move on with your life instead of arguing and potentially pushing people away from your point of view even further.
Exploitation is exploitation is exploitation
Eh, I feel like everyone in the billionaire club is playing a slow game of poker trying to get the first “trillionaire” title. I’m expecting that when Gabe shows his hand it will be revealed that his fleet of yachts is also equipped with luxuries such as nuclear armaments.
Gabe’s net worth hasn’t increased as far as I’m concerned. I think the bad billionaires would typically be those who obsess with growing their net worth assets.
I don’t care to hear about any reasoning about “bad” vs “good” billionaire nonsense. There are people in the world that need immediate access to food and shelter, but won’t get either largely due to billionaire cunts hoarding the wealth to try and get a top score into the history books.
It’s a class of people that shouldn’t have come into existence. Their being is a strain on the rest of humanity and nature in general.
I’m not defending all billionaires, but there is nothing wrong having net worth of at least a billion because the assets came from your own company. What is more questionable is how can someone go over one billion worth of assets.
The reason they got that money in the first place is because the company charged the customers enough to generate that profit, they could just as well have cut their profit and made that billionaire a multimillionaire and all customers would have kept more money in their pockets.
They also make the decision to accumulate this wealth instead of redistributing it to those in need, that’s a conscious choice that they make.
I mean dont you dare generalize a group of people unless they’re people the echo chamber agrees not to like.
There is no need for billionaires. They have more money than they know what to do with and could solve a lot of world issues and still have enough money left over to not know what to do with it. There’s literally no reason in hoarding all that money if you’re not going to spend it. It’s a necessity for literally everyone else while they hold onto it to make themselves more powerful. If all the billionaires were hoarding all the food and we had to deal with the scrapes, people would be going absolutely crazy. Even though that’s pretty much exactly what they are doing when people can’t make enough money to buy food. Throw everything else like medical care and housing into the mix and what you end up with is a few people living a life of luxury while they are literally keeping your life away from you.
One single billion at any one time is more than any one person should have. There really should just be a cap. Like, 999,999,999 is the highest your bank account can get, anything after that just flows into public programs.
The game Zelda: A link to the past had a max capacity of 999 rupees (money). If you picked up more, nothing happened. That’s how life should be.
What happens when something already owned grows in value past the arbitrary maximum? Net worth is, after all, a function of how valuable everyone else thinks the stuff you own is. It’s a price tag.
If you buy a rookie baseball card for $5, and he has a great year and now your card is worth $100, did you deprive anyone of $95 by continuing to own it?
I’m not super concerned with “things” and their value. If a person makes $1b a year and wants to buy a $1b yacht every year then they have a bunch of yachts. The point is that money went back into the economy. Now, if they have 2 and want to sell 2 for $2b all at once… sorry, no. There is a wealth cap.
The issue with Billionaires now is that money isn’t in the economy. The more they hold, the harder it is to get enough.
Greed is a horrible thing.
I think you have exactly the opposite impression of wealth than how it is in reality, then. Billionaires typically have only a tiny amount of their wealth in liquid funds (what you call “holding” money) - most of their wealth is in investments, and hence “in the economy”. So the thing you’re proposing already holds.
Kill them anyway
The issue with Billionaires now is that money isn’t in the economy.
Again, the baseball card growing in value by $95 took $95 away from no one. No one is deprived of cash in their wallet as a result of another person’s purchase appreciating in value.
Also, their net worth is not cash sitting in a vault, it’s investing into businesses that are running within the economy. It literally all is actively in the economy. You literally can’t become a billionaire without doing that. Saying/implying that billionaires “hoard” wealth is deeply ignorant.
They should still be shot
Grow up.
Billionaires don’t have 1 billion in their bank account
How would you even know? If I had 150bn, I’d have at least ONE in several overseas banks so it looks like I have nothing.
I have some money and I’m not stupid enough to have more than 10K in cash. I’m sure billionaires have financial advisors that tell them how to invest their money
Maybe they could use 32-bit twos complement arithmetic so if you have $2147483647 and you add one more dollar, suddenly you have NEGATIVE $2147483648. When you call customer service, they tell you that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Heh heh.
could solve a lot of world issues and still have enough money left over to not know what to do with it.
There is no world issue that can be solved by just throwing money at it. Those issues have had MUCH more money thrown at them than all of the net worth of all billionaires on Earth combined, without being solved.
It’s just not that simple.
There is no world issue that can be solved by just throwing money at it. Those issues have had MUCH more money thrown at them than all of the net worth of all billionaires on Earth combined, without being solved.
That seems obviously false, unless you’re proposing that all the charities in the world are scams and don’t actually do anything. I guess you could argue that as you throw money into saving lives, the low-hanging fruits get picked and the cost rises, so you can never saturate all the charities - but this is a very weak argument, since saving 99.99% of all the people in the world from hunger or poverty would be about as good as 100%. Just because there’s diminishing returns doesn’t mean it’s a doomed cause.
That seems obviously false, unless you’re proposing that all the charities in the world are scams and don’t actually do anything.
Charities do more than throw money at problems. This doesn’t contradict my point at all, which is that money alone is not the answer–if it was, all of these problems would have been solved by now.
As a small example, you can’t truly solve world hunger until you achieve world peace, and you can’t buy peace.
Yup. Show me a billionaire who has paid their workers fairly from day one, followed every single law and regulation by the book, never spent a single dollar on lobbying Congress or contributing to political campaigns for quid pro quos, and never used underpaid contractors or foreign slave labor. You can’t, because there’s no such thing as a good billionaire.
The guy who founded Costco and was its CEO up until a few years ago is this, if not very close. A business lauded for both how it treated its workforce, and its customers. Basically no turnover unless someone retires.
And even then, if they managed to amass that kind of wealth, it had to come from somewhere, i.e. consumers paying enough for their product that it made them a billionaire, meaning all these people found have paid less and that billionaire could be a millionaire or just middle class and more people would be richer.
That is kind of true. But on the assumption that the corporation (in this case Costco) is doing more good than bad, like generating fair jobs, it would benefit most to see that business grow. If you dont generate profit because you distribute everything to your employees or customers, you will never be able to grow. So Costco will stay with 10 employees forever and only those businesses that exploit workers and customers can grow.
You could argue that there is really no need for businesses to grow as big ss many are today and I would completely agree, but that has to be regulated by law.
Non profits are a thing and they are able to grow, hell, you would expect them to grow more because less money goes to the pockets of a CEO and more goes to growing the company.
It can also make profit without billions going to the pockets of a single person, if that money was just redistributes to all employees the business would probably grow even faster because more qualified people would want to work there and would be happier working there.
Three scenarios:
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The company makes 100B in revenue, pays its employees a fair wage, distributes 5B to the C-suites and makes 50B in total profit
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The company makes 100B in revenues, pays its employees a fair wage, distributes 10M to the C-suites, distributes 9.99B in bonus to all employees and makes 50B in total profit
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The company reduces its prices, makes 95.01B in revenues, pays its employees a fair wage, gives 10M to the c-suites, makes 50B in total profit
What’s the difference?
Hint: there’s no difference except the number of people being treated better
NPOs have CEOs as well and many earn salaries in the millions. NPOs are the exact right example, though, but not for the reason you are talking about. Non-profit does not inherently mean lower-ranking employees get a bigger share.
The big difference is that NPOs dont have shareholders or owners, which is how billionaires become billionaires, by owning companies worth billions.
But you should know that most NPOs rely almost entirely on government grants and donations. They couldnt even survive a single year on their own revenues.
If you want to establish the NPO concept in the free market, you would need to ban private ownership of ocmpanies. It could work but there is no way it will ever be implemented.
Funny how you ignored everything but the non profit bit. The reason they rely on donations and grants is because they’re mostly charities, there’s no reason a private company couldn’t reinvest 100% of its profits and try to adjust its prices to be closer to breaking even. Hell, life insurance for road users works exactly this way around here, prices are adjusted based on how much they need to pay for claims and we’re the place that pays the least for that type of insurance in North America, everything is paid for by car owners and it will covers anyone involved in an accident with a car, may they be in the car or riding a bike or walking on the sidewalk, it’s still cheaper than anywhere else for those who pay for it.
Tell me, from the companies’ perspective what the difference is between the three example I gave? You’re the one who said it’s not realistic to lower prices.
I think you are not familiar with how economy works. No offense, really, Im not an expert either but I dont really have the patience to go over everything in detail. Reinvesting profits is what ALL companies do. What youre suggesting was the opposite, you said profits should be distributed to employees or customers.
The difference between your examples is that 1 is a different company than 2 and 3. They are not different scenarios for the same company.
There are reasons why CEOs earn a lot and you cant change that by telling companies “but why not just give the money to your other employees, it would be better for them”. Thats not how economy works. Im not saying the way things are is good at all, but youre not offering an alternative. What youre suggesting would require that owners and shareholders would give a shit about the wellbeing of their employees and customers.
What a nice non answer that also ignores dividends and wealth accumulation and the fact that profits = revenues - spendings including wages :)
“ThEy’Re NoT tHe SaMe CoMpAnY!”
It’s what we call a thought experiment, the end result is the same, the difference is who gets to keep more money.
I’m done with people like you defending billionaires and being unable to think about alternatives, have a good life.
I think you are ignoring his main question though. Are those not legitimately three different options companies have? Do they not have wildly different outcomes on the workers?
No, companies do not actually have the option to simply cut the upper managements salary by 99.8%. And even if they could, it would simply end in all management leaving the company the next day, the company going bankrupt and all of the empolyees losing their jobs.
Im not trying to defend management salaries in the millions. It is damn unnecessary and should be taxed appropriately. But simply denying that thats how the world works right now is bs.
And even if they could, it would simply end in all management leaving the company the next day, the company going bankrupt and all of the empolyees losing their jobs.
The management would all leave? I wonder how often that actually happens? I’d totally believe never. If you offered the management a lot less money, they could walk, but more likely, only some would walk. And in any case, then you could also promote employees from within the company. I bet there’s a department manager that wouldn’t mind the huge pay increase that comes with a c-level promotion, even if it does come with a million dollar bonus rather than a billion.
If you adjusted salaries slowly, say over the course of 5 years, managers could leave (if they really wanted to) gradually, you’d have time to replace people for a much smoother transition.
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Taylor Swift?
Nope. That amount of wealth is only generated via exploitation. Exploiting workers or exploiting customers, or cutting corners and skirting regulations, failing to internalize externalities. Mostly all of the above
I assume you have examples?
I love how swifties always say, “WhAt AbOuT tAyLoR?!”
And I say this as someone who loves her music.
She’s still a bad billionaire.
EVEN IF she paid everyone who works for her or her label above market rate, even if she charged her concert tickets below market value, even if she “goes green” with every CD, every piece of merchandise, the fact that she has more money than most people makes her a bad billionaire.
She could easily give half of her wealth away and still be okay.
She’s a bad billionaire.
Where do you think that wealth comes from? They don’t produce it. The workers create the value, which is stolen from them for the owners and shareholders.
To be fair to Taylor she is producing a show, but the wealth should be fairly distributed with the crew that make those performances possible
Where do you think that wealth comes from? They don’t produce it. The workers create the value
This is such a deeply unserious argument when used in this case. “I can’t wait to see the front of house guy!” say all the wine moms and 14-year-old girls waiting in line outside the stadium. “And the road manager too!”
Fuck it you’re right. She can lug her own shit around and set the stage and work the sound system. That’s why she earns billions!
Some people think all profit is “stolen” labor value, and thus all wage labor is exploitation. I don’t think that’s true, but it is true that all for-profit firms have an incentive to pay their workers as little as possible, while getting as much productivity from them as possible, because that will maximize profits.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to cut other costs as much as possible, to maximize profits. This is why we see things like shrinkflation, planned obsolescence, or products just getting gradually crappier over time.
For-profit companies also have an incentive to externalize certain costs, like pollution, environmental destruction, or resource depletion, to, once again, maximize profits.
Unless her financials are public, it’ll be hard to do but the general principle is that everyone’s labour is worth the same.
She’s able to get more money through manipulation, whether intending to or not, through her fans buying multiples of her merchandise, to playing her songs on Spotify non stop to boost her profits etc.
Applying this principle, she’s gaining profit from the work of her fans who aren’t getting any compensation for their labour, resulting in millions of dollars.
So the defining factor is her work, not her staff. Her staff doing the same work at another place wouldn’t generate the same profit. And if you think listening to songs on Spotify is work…
I don’t have a problem with open lobbying per se. If it’s on behalf of all of the workers and customers as well and not just their own interests.
But can anyone identify such a billionaire?
And by definition that rules out any that step on their workers like bugs…
What about Warren Buffet? Out of genuine interest.
While he certainly comes across as one of the more virtuous billionaires, his company Berkshire Hathaway, has massive investments in some of the worst and most damaging industries in the world, in terms of labor exploitation and ongoing contributions to the climate disaster. For example, his company owns 6.6% of Chevron and 27.2% of Occidental Petroleum, two massive exploiters of fossil fuels. That’s no good in my book.
He disowned his granddaughter for having the temerity to appear in a Johnson&Johnson kid’s documentary about how the rich talk and act behind closed doors.
Gabe Newell. Costco guy. Im sure theres europeans as well.
Oh theres communist billionaires too, im sure stalin and lenin and chinese ones were wery respectful of the working class, never had a genocide where up to 20% of the population (that is one in every five. Every fifth post in this thread, gone) were killed for not being the right nationality. And they never exploited entire nations forcefully.
But its okay, fuck everyone in a certain group, dehumanize them and talk about violence against them because a few do bad things. Surely the solution is not to use it to fuel political anti campaign to swing the pendulum hard in the other way by limiting power rich can have in the us via providing the myriad of evidence we already have.
No instead sit on internet and make literal hitler speeches where you replace the word “jews” with “rich” and wonder why everyone thinks far left and right are the same Nazis
Yes, even that one
General strike is the best and most effective means we have. If we wait for AI and robots to replace you, you loose your bargaining power.
Crash the fake economy. Your fucked either way might as well go down swinging and on your terms.
When you do it, I’ll do it. But I’m not wasting my life if it’s not a community effort.
Been on strike since the election. Come join me!
My industry doesn’t strike. It wouldn’t work. BUT I hope that all works out for you.
However, striking only works for so long. And, with Trump as president, I doubt there will be much striking allowed once he changes those laws or just replaces you with people from the concentration camp.
Good Billionaire is Thousander.
We should feed them to the orca
