613
Almost every problem in the world would be dealt with meaningfully if we outlawed billionaires.
(self.showerthoughts)
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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I'm not sure that I agree. While I would support something like outlawing billionaires or at the very least, a tax bracket that claws back significant chunks of what they are draining from society, there are vast nuances to these issues beyond "the billionaires want it that way." When you say "everything from ... can all be rendered down", I think it's pretty important to recognize how much detail and nuance is lost in that rendering down.
Billionaires and the accumulation of wealth are just stand ins for the accumulation of power in a capitalistic society. When power is removed, it creates a vacuum. Who fills it? In the ideal, I know most of us would say "the people" but this is an insanely complex balancing beam to maintain without some group of assholes finding a new, non-capital way to extract and centralize that power.
None of this is to say that eliminating the notion of a billionaire is a bad idea. I'm with you all that the very idea of a billionaire is heinous and impossible without vast exploitation. I just do not think that issue being solved would be even close to some panacea for all of the world's problems. There would just be twists in the existing problems and fun new ones.
Exactly. Don't hate the players, hate the game. We are too focused on finding a scape goat to see the inherit system is the problem.
Hate both, where it's appropriate. Some of these players perpetuate the game that we all hate. Elon Musk is a player who has become part of the structure of the game, fighting regulations and damaging democracy for the sake of his own capitalistic endeavors. Someone mentioned below that Dolly Parton could be a billionaire. Not gonna hate on Dolly Parton who I assume did not come by her wealth through being an asshole, but more just being successful and our current "game" rewarding her with more than she would have in a better society. I would tax the absolute fuck out of her though.
you know what, give each one the chance for a nice life. dolly wants a recording studio and school and whatever at her ranch? wants to run a theme park? cool, I can't imagine her community saying no.
fuckerberg wants to run a cringe mma gym under his apartment?maybe contribute a few lines to vlc or something every year (with extra review)? sure. no more than anyone should have.
shitty Jeff wants to be an aging beach himbo, maybe help people train at an outdoor gym? be my guest.
but they won't. not until you already have a gun in their mouths, and at that point, its less effort to just kill them.
We're looking at two extreme ends of the pole here. Zuck, Bezos, Musk are the shittiest public billionaires. There are also more secretive ones who are arguably even more destructive. These people have absolutely justified their own downfall, if it ever comes to pass. On the other side, Dolly doesn't even technically count on this list because she has given enough away to not be a billionaire. Those are the easy cases where almost every reasonable person agrees on the "right" thing to do.
Now, we have to remember that there are people who exist at every little increment along that scale of giving back to general shittiness for the global population. Focusing on the billionaires themselves and their lifestyles or whatever is not the answer. We need to focus on making effective tax brackets, effective regulations on the avenues billionaires generally target for power (political institutions, media companies, etc), and effective spending of the increased income from those new taxes to help raise the lower class to a more equitable position. That's a socdem perspective though, because I do not foresee capitalism collapsing in my lifetime and I like to be pragmatic.
well I'm saying billionaires so we absolutely don't catch any splash damage.
what are we even arguing about?
Not sure anybody is really arguing in this entire thread. Just discussion of edge cases and the gray areas on an interesting shower thought.
valid. parton is an edge case, an extreme outlier, or she would be if she counted. which she doesn't.
so I feel like its a pretty good validation of the metric.
The player are the ones writing the rules of the game. They're the ones bribing the refs.
I think theres enough bitterness and hate in my heart for both. I've got too many fucking scars I never needed to have, watched too many people die for no Fucking reason.