Democrats want us to believe that there is some cohort of “good billionaires” who can be relied upon to fight for political progress. But as the right-wing turn of tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk suggests, this is nonsense.
Any individual that wants to horde so much money and wealth that could satisfy the lives of millions of people is not a good person.
It’s like having a million sandwiches and thousands of hungry people around you … but you’d rather keep all your sandwiches and screw everyone else, even though you will never be able to physically eat all the sandwiches you have in a lifetime.
Being a billionaire is not a sign of intelligence, it’s a mental disorder and a person who lacks human empathy.
Not to be that person, but most people forget that the net worth oft these people is not liquid. They can not just wave a magic wand and give people money.
It’s usually in shares of their very highly valued company which they can’t give up because they wouldl give up control. Billionaires are not about money, they are about power.
What keeps you in power does not align with doing good. Thus the giving pledge exists, it allows giving away the money while you don’t lose control in your lifetime.
Most billionaires do some kind of philanthropy. Gotta control where the money they would pay in taxes ends up. Even this is about power.
Their survival bias makes them believe that they know best what’s good for the world. Taxing them would just increase their philanthropy, which is a good thing even though not perfect. Let’s start somewhere.
It’s usually in shares of their very highly valued company which they can’t give up because they wouldl give up control.
To be that guy, they still can access the wealth provided by those shares without liquidating them. That’s exactly what they do too. They use shares as leverage to obtain loans, and then they spend the loan money. It’s called the “buy borrow die” strategy and they also use it to avoid taxes because loans aren’t considered income.
That is the fallacious paper millionaire argument. They have more than enough liquidity, can take loans against their “non-liquid” wealth, and are anyway working with multi-year plans to sell assets and have enough liquidity. I believe this is also explained in https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ and there they also explain that the US market cap is bigger than their stocks and so. So they could sell a lot in one go, of course losing “efficiency”, but the market would be able to cope without any issue.
I think we are on the same side here judging from the rest of your comment, but I find it important to refute this typical argument, because it does not help that there is some sort of billionaire apologism by saying that they “don’t actually have this money in their bank account to spend”.
If a company is set up right from the start, you could have voting shares that aren’t stock based, and that can be a way to maintain control of your company without hoarding the wealth via stock, but if it’s not like that from the start, it would be very hard to make that change after the fact.
It’d probably be better if that was more common, but I still don’t think they’d give up their shares worth money on the market, and then I still think these types of shares would have off market value?
I’d like to know why all of these billionaire fellating people are on decentralized social media. Go on back to one of the corporate garbage platforms run by the broligarchs if you think this is such a great way to run society.
Youre not talking about running the government, which isnt really expensive, youre talking about the whole country.
“10 people cant pay for a whole country of 340,000,000 including all of its infrastructure and industry, they dont have that much money”.
Can you reflect on how fucking ridiculous this statement is?
Whats next? “Elon Musk cant even buy a planet, hes not that rich”
What makes more sense in a society? One person who controls a billion dollars or a thousand people with million dollars?
The billionaire locks up all that wealth and it doesn’t do anything for anyone … sure it might make someone even more money but it essentially locks away that potential wealth from a larger group of people.
If you had 1,000 millionaires, then they would all go out to perform all kinds of other activities and businesses that would be smaller but at least benefit even more people.
Driving wealth to smaller and smaller groups of people only drives more and more wealth to fewer people while everyone else suffers.
Redistributing millions or billions of dollars might not change much … but at the very least it would be a hell of a lot better than what we have now.
Yes but we are letting the companies get this big. But competition whatever. So we could split them back up. And Elon WHY is Tesla stock do high. There isn’t a reason.
I have no problem with splitting up Microsoft or Google, but the founders would still get shares in both companies. Ideally those companies wouldn’t lose value after being split
If the people saying “kill all ceos” understood the basics of how a world worked or were past their edgy teens, they would also be smart enough not to grab for violence against entire groups as a first resort.
Yes suck, hitlermelon, mexican currency and everyone running the american health insurance companies are not good people, obviously.
That means society and laws must change to treat them as equals and to tax ultra rich more while removing money as a tool of influence from politics. I can’t see anyone not getting behind that.
But idunno, I see people going “all ceos, landlords and rich are stinkin fukin evil, kill em all”.
Idk seems kinda violent and totalitarian. Seems like theyd want me dead too since I dont like them killing people they define as needing to be killed.
Idunno, makes me not want to respect any of them or their political beliefs or their side.
Y’all see how you are actively giving fuel for the right? And now looking at the centrist threads, driving away people who dont like extremes by labling them as the enemy?
Your argument lacks credibility. If people didn’t like extremes then we’d have similar outrage from those centrists when Elon Musk throws a Nazi salute or when people hurt cops and storm the Capitol building. Instead we get apologists and excuses. Meanwhile protestors of injustice are treated as if they’ve committed genocide caused they hurt a Walmart and people actually committing genocide get excused.
People don’t worry about extremes. They worry about change of the status quo.
Also, the systemic issues within our country and the ability to ignore the system as a whole by the privileged is what gives you the power to say something like “reeorting to violence as a first resort” as if we haven’t had ample evidence of attempts to bring accountability and change to the system that just gets ignored. Not only is it not a first resort but to the people who are suffering daily… Why should they care what level of resort it is? We excuse businesses for doing whatever it takes because “shareholder value” but when it comes to the poor and suffering they just follow the exact letter of the law and then some.
Any individual that wants to horde so much money and wealth that could satisfy the lives of millions of people is not a good person.
It’s like having a million sandwiches and thousands of hungry people around you … but you’d rather keep all your sandwiches and screw everyone else, even though you will never be able to physically eat all the sandwiches you have in a lifetime.
Being a billionaire is not a sign of intelligence, it’s a mental disorder and a person who lacks human empathy.
Modern age dragons, sitting on their hoards while occasionally burning a peasant village to keep those dirty plebs in line.
You know… you don’t really need the qualifier “modern age”. There weren’t dragons in the middle ages or at any period in human history.
Sorry to be that guy, I guess I’m that guy… 🫤
Well, you know what to do with dragons
Sir/ma’am/other, you are on the internet. There are many responses to that.
Donkey_from_shrek.gif
There are many responses. Not all of them are right
No, they are right.
All the many responses.
Just not right -in this circumstance-
Will someone stop this man from yelling “dragon”?
https://youtu.be/ZmJybbWkinc
Hoarding is hoarding
If a little old lady hoards 20 cats we call her crazy … a man hoards $400 billion dollars and we call them a genius
Not to be that person, but most people forget that the net worth oft these people is not liquid. They can not just wave a magic wand and give people money.
It’s usually in shares of their very highly valued company which they can’t give up because they wouldl give up control. Billionaires are not about money, they are about power.
What keeps you in power does not align with doing good. Thus the giving pledge exists, it allows giving away the money while you don’t lose control in your lifetime.
Most billionaires do some kind of philanthropy. Gotta control where the money they would pay in taxes ends up. Even this is about power.
Their survival bias makes them believe that they know best what’s good for the world. Taxing them would just increase their philanthropy, which is a good thing even though not perfect. Let’s start somewhere.
To be that guy, they still can access the wealth provided by those shares without liquidating them. That’s exactly what they do too. They use shares as leverage to obtain loans, and then they spend the loan money. It’s called the “buy borrow die” strategy and they also use it to avoid taxes because loans aren’t considered income.
That is the fallacious paper millionaire argument. They have more than enough liquidity, can take loans against their “non-liquid” wealth, and are anyway working with multi-year plans to sell assets and have enough liquidity. I believe this is also explained in https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ and there they also explain that the US market cap is bigger than their stocks and so. So they could sell a lot in one go, of course losing “efficiency”, but the market would be able to cope without any issue.
I think we are on the same side here judging from the rest of your comment, but I find it important to refute this typical argument, because it does not help that there is some sort of billionaire apologism by saying that they “don’t actually have this money in their bank account to spend”.
If a company is set up right from the start, you could have voting shares that aren’t stock based, and that can be a way to maintain control of your company without hoarding the wealth via stock, but if it’s not like that from the start, it would be very hard to make that change after the fact.
It’d probably be better if that was more common, but I still don’t think they’d give up their shares worth money on the market, and then I still think these types of shares would have off market value?
You do know that billionaires don’t actually have billions of dollars in a vault in a Scrooge McDuck fashion, right?
I’d like to know why all of these billionaire fellating people are on decentralized social media. Go on back to one of the corporate garbage platforms run by the broligarchs if you think this is such a great way to run society.
A billion dollars distributed to 1,000,000 people is $1000.
All the wealth billionaires in the US hold is not enough to pay for the government to run for one year.
Let’s not pretend giving away all their wealth would fix all of our problems.
Youre not talking about running the government, which isnt really expensive, youre talking about the whole country. “10 people cant pay for a whole country of 340,000,000 including all of its infrastructure and industry, they dont have that much money”.
Can you reflect on how fucking ridiculous this statement is?
Whats next? “Elon Musk cant even buy a planet, hes not that rich”
There are about 800 billionaires
That’s exactly the point. Why should 800 fucking guys have a mountain of wealth when working people have to be on welfare to make ends meet?
“800 people cant pay for a whole country of 340,000,000 including all of its infrastructure and industry, they dont have that much money”, better?
What makes more sense in a society? One person who controls a billion dollars or a thousand people with million dollars?
The billionaire locks up all that wealth and it doesn’t do anything for anyone … sure it might make someone even more money but it essentially locks away that potential wealth from a larger group of people.
If you had 1,000 millionaires, then they would all go out to perform all kinds of other activities and businesses that would be smaller but at least benefit even more people.
Driving wealth to smaller and smaller groups of people only drives more and more wealth to fewer people while everyone else suffers.
Redistributing millions or billions of dollars might not change much … but at the very least it would be a hell of a lot better than what we have now.
The billionaires have their wealth in businesses, it’s not locked up. People don’t just put a billion in a savings account
Yes but we are letting the companies get this big. But competition whatever. So we could split them back up. And Elon WHY is Tesla stock do high. There isn’t a reason.
I have no problem with splitting up Microsoft or Google, but the founders would still get shares in both companies. Ideally those companies wouldn’t lose value after being split
If the people saying “kill all ceos” understood the basics of how a world worked or were past their edgy teens, they would also be smart enough not to grab for violence against entire groups as a first resort. Yes suck, hitlermelon, mexican currency and everyone running the american health insurance companies are not good people, obviously. That means society and laws must change to treat them as equals and to tax ultra rich more while removing money as a tool of influence from politics. I can’t see anyone not getting behind that.
But idunno, I see people going “all ceos, landlords and rich are stinkin fukin evil, kill em all”. Idk seems kinda violent and totalitarian. Seems like theyd want me dead too since I dont like them killing people they define as needing to be killed. Idunno, makes me not want to respect any of them or their political beliefs or their side.
Y’all see how you are actively giving fuel for the right? And now looking at the centrist threads, driving away people who dont like extremes by labling them as the enemy?
Your argument lacks credibility. If people didn’t like extremes then we’d have similar outrage from those centrists when Elon Musk throws a Nazi salute or when people hurt cops and storm the Capitol building. Instead we get apologists and excuses. Meanwhile protestors of injustice are treated as if they’ve committed genocide caused they hurt a Walmart and people actually committing genocide get excused.
People don’t worry about extremes. They worry about change of the status quo.
Also, the systemic issues within our country and the ability to ignore the system as a whole by the privileged is what gives you the power to say something like “reeorting to violence as a first resort” as if we haven’t had ample evidence of attempts to bring accountability and change to the system that just gets ignored. Not only is it not a first resort but to the people who are suffering daily… Why should they care what level of resort it is? We excuse businesses for doing whatever it takes because “shareholder value” but when it comes to the poor and suffering they just follow the exact letter of the law and then some.
It’s not about extremes and never has been.
I think January 6th was a dangerous precedent to our democracy and Elon Musk is cringe (I’m not going to x anymore)
Am I the mythical centrist?
Let’s not pretend that assets work like cash.