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Well, this is annoying (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 139 points 2 months ago (8 children)

I am firmly convinced that most of the problems facing humanity can be traced directly back to billionaires like him.

It’s quite simple: you can only become that rich if you are an utterly inhuman, unscrupulous monster. Unfortunately, it is precisely these monsters who rule the world, and they have created systems that require you to be a monster in order to succeed.

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  • [–] 40 points 2 months ago

    I don't care at all about how they acquired their wealth.

    Its just not in anyone's best interest to have so much wealth horded and controlled by one person.

    He's using that money to influence social norms and political outcomes. It means he's pretty much the unelected supreme leader of the terran empire.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 months ago

    I am firmly convinced that most of the problems facing humanity can be traced directly back to billionaires like him

    No doubt about it.

    It’s quite simple: you can only become that rich if you are an utterly inhuman, unscrupulous monster

    Unfortunately, it is precisely these monsters who rule the world, and they have created systems that require you to be a monster in order to succeed.

    As for a solution..

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)

    For him, giving someone enough money to become a multi millionaire on the spot takes as much money relatively as handing some change to a beggar does for me. He could hand out $100,000,000 every single day (!!!) and even if he doesn't gain wealth in any other way, it'd take him almost 22 years to run out of money. Or he could pay 400,000 people $100,000 a year to just go around and tell everyone how great he and everything he does is and the money would last 20 years.

    Wealth like that is a serious threat to society, probably even the most serious threat.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    The problem is he doesn't have wealth. He has value. His VALUE is 800b his actual wealth is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that.

    If he just started handing out 100m a day he would go broke in very short order and would cause a cascade of problems for a fuck load of honest actually hard working people that depend on him not fucking over the companies he owns by functionally imploding the company.

    We stopped tying power to real money ages ago. Money can be passed around and flows to keep an economy healthy. If you actually managed to horde billions of dollars in actual useable wealth that would be more impressive and frankly likely actually better for the economy then what these fucks are doing. More then likely still not ideal.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Having power and wealth destroys empathy for less powerful people on a physiological level. That allows them to exploit people harder to get more wealth and power.

    Taxing they wealth away doesn't work. Maybe just put people in jail for every year they have x amount of dollar. You can be free or wealthy, not both.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Just an FYI, that goes all the way down the power chain. We tend to have less (instinctive) empathy for people below us. It's not we actively want to do them harm, but that we just don't think about them at all.

    E.g. when did you last take proactive action to help the exploited workers harvesting chocolate? You likely never even thought about them.

    The problem is that people like musk look down on us the same way. We get smashed by their indifference.

    The best long term solution is a tax system aimed at "regression to the mean". I.e. exceptional people can get rich. However rich, "average" people will regress back towards average income and savings. Conversely, an averagely capable poor person should easily climb back up to average income levels.

    Basically change the graph from a hump to a bathtub shape.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    Your system has a flaw from my perspective. It ignores the effect of wealth on capability, especially in youth. People who are already less "exceptional" - say, mentally challenged - would stay poor through factors outside of their control. On the other side, people who are "exceptional" are most commonly so because of the benefits wealth brings, so the way i understand your system, it will cement the status quo - the rich stay rich because of virtue of being rich, the poor and uneducated stay poor because they are poor and unremarkable.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    It's not perfect, but no system is. The goal is to keep a level of equibility, while also allowing the good to benefit from their own efforts.

    If the rich invest in their children, and make them exceptional, that's fine. Trying to get parents not to do that goes against extremely strong instincts. The goal is to make climbing the wall harder, not impossible. If the child buckles down and takes advantage that's fine. If they slack off and coast, they will coast back towards the mean income level. They won't get the run away effect that happens currently.

    A lot more can be done at the bottom. Giving poorer children the education and support facilities needed to reach their potential would make a huge difference, for a relatively small investment from society.

    It's also worth noting that I'm also an advocate for UBI. There should be a floor on how poor people can be. As a society, we can afford to support that.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    That's what I keep saying about Taylor Swift, but people just tell me that I'm a crotchety old man.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    There are degrees of evil. Just as some cancerous cells can be benign, there also can be less harmful billionaires.

    It's important to concentrate on the ones that are an existential threat to humanity first and foremost so we don't lose the world pointlessly chasing after the harmless lumps.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I agree with you. But if that's where we are, I feel that statements like:

    ...you can only become that rich if you are an utterly inhuman, unscrupulous monster...

    Are unhelpful at best and actively alienating to potential allies at worst.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Have you considered that maybe he just works 1-10 billion times harder than the rest of us, and therefore earned that money fair and square?

    /s

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Oh, right, sorry, I completely forgot that this guy has amazing tech-genius superpowers and works as hard all by himself as millions uppon millions of us pathetically useless plebs put together...

    Also /s, of course :)

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  • [–] -4 points 2 months ago

    that's true but capitalism is better than socialism because capitalism is real, socialism is a "what am i thinking of today" fantasy where all your protest dreams come true

    unicorns are rad

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