• AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Imagine despising the country that facilitated the acquisition of your embarrassing hoard of wealth to begin with this much.

    Does Jeff treat his parents that gave him a quarter million to start with this much disrespect as well? Or was their facilitation of his success one that he actually acknowledges?

    • herrcaptain@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      I genuinely love your use of the word embarrassing here. We need to normalize treating insane personal/family wealth as an embarrassment instead of something to be respected. With very few exceptions you only become a billionaire through inheritance of wealth undoubtedly built on exploitation, or by exploiting others yourself. They should be embarrassed by that.

      • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        I don’t think there are any exceptions. A billion is such an unfathomably large amount that I’m pretty sure you MUST rely on exploitation to ever acquire that much.

        • herrcaptain@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          I allowed for the possibility of a rare exception just in case. The two possibilities that come to mind are Notch (creator of Minecraft) and Taylor Swift. Both certainly depended on the work of others to become a billionaire, so there was likely some degree of exploitation (obviously in the Marxist sense there was) but maybe not at the scale of people like Bezos. I certainly haven’t heard of Taylor Swift’s employees pissing in jars on a warehouse floor.

          Swift had very wealthy parents from the outset so while she wasn’t billionaire-rich to start, she enjoyed huge advantages that most musically -inclined kids never would have. She certainly seems to enjoy the obscene wealth she has now, what with her disregard of the environment while jet setting around the world. I say all of this as a legit fan of her music, even though I hate that she isn’t massively donating her wealth.

          I’m less sure about Notch. It sounds like he’s a bit of an internet edgelord these days so I’m not super optimistic that he grew his wealth “fairly”.

          That said, I fundamentally do agree with you and strongly believe that billionaires should be taxed until they’re no longer billionaires.