Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Almost every problem in the world would be dealt with meaningfully if we outlawed billionaires. (lemmy.ca)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Everytime I look at small problems or big global problems, if you follow the money trail, it all leads to some billionaire who is either working towards increasing their wealth or protecting their wealth from decreasing.

Everything from politics, climate change, workers rights, democratic government, technology, land rights, human rights can all be rendered down to people fighting another group of people who defend the rights of a billionaire to keep their wealth or to expand their control.

If humanity got rid of or outlawed the notion of any one individual owning far too much money than they could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, we could free up so much wealth and energy to do other things like save ourselves from climate change.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

My argument would be that by eliminating the means of wealth being an avenue to power, it will merely shift to the government that is enforcing those rules. Those same shitty people will infiltrate that government and use it to inflate themselves while oppressing others. There was no utopian society prior to capitalism and fiat currency, and there won't be one after.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that this is an impossible problem to solve. I just do not think eliminating the notion of a billionaire is the cure for all of your listed ills. I agree with you that it would absolutely have impacts on all of them, but we would still wake up to world hunger, climate change, etc.

Each of your listed issues is a complex, multi-faceted problem. We cannot boil down that nuance just so we can point to our favorite enemy, deserving as they might be. Fight them too, but don't lose sight of the bigger picture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

It's an alternative that has never been attempted in human history and yet everyone is afraid of the notion of 'Limiting Wealth'.

I am not arguing from the point of view of utopian socialism or a redistribution of wealth ... rather, I'm saying that everything in our capitalistic world more or less stays the same way. The only difference is that no one person is allowed to gain a certain level of wealth. Everyone is still free to be as ruthless and capitalistic as they please but their ambitions are given an upper ceiling ... for example $100 million of total wealth. All excess wealth beyond that is taxed completely.

Isn't $100 million for one individual more than enough? What is the sense in accumulating more than that other than a pathological desire to want to gather something that you don't need. Even worse is the thought that as one accumulates more wealth than they can possibly require means that they have to siphon it from others around them. Uncontrolled, unlimited and runaway growth at all costs is medically known as a cancer. Billionaires are literally cancerous growths on civilization that are slowly killing the entire organism.

Creating a system of 'Limited Wealth' wouldn't affect the majority of everyone .... it would only affect a handful of individuals ... yet it would benefit all of society.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Can you please point out where I said anything against almost anything you said here? Are you here to have a discussion about your shower thought or just grandstand your political opinion to a group that by large already shares it? Thank you for starting the thread, but not sure I'm going to reply to any additional messages because I'm not sure that you're actually reading any of mine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Never been tried lol