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Do we need billionaires?

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Re: Do we need billionaires?

#11

Post by ggm »

It's very unlikely any mainstream political class is going to take serious action anywhere to forbid them, but a few take action to limit them. Too few I think.

The (mis-attributed to Lenin and Stalin) quote "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." is quite big in this. A little humility and a lot more tax-paying could save the trillionaire classes from the tumbrils but they lack the emotional intelligence to see it and as long as they make a few thousand millionaires below them they have useful idiots to decry any changes.

On the plus side, workers are in short supply. The future needs more people who can do things other than thinkers, and robots (bless their hearts) don't spend money as consumers so the other side of the billionaire equation demands new people to come into spending class: this means Africa, Asia and South America levelling up.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#13

Post by shrubby »

Human being, with very few exceptions, is corrupted by power. And a billion dollars is immense amount power.

You can make your opponent's life a living hell with a hundred thousand and buy or figure out a way to frame extortion material from almost any decision maker with a million.

See how wars are being started tweeting from the toilet seat by a man who has never known anything but power to harm others.

See the many "formerly normal" people ending on a private island, doing horrendous things to children.

We tried to figure out examples of people with power who weren't corrupted by it, at least to some extent, and came up with very few.

It's a human trait we know very well, but do very little about.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#16

Post by shevy-java »

I don't necessarily intrinsically have a dislike against billionaires per se. However had, if you look at the USA, where basically billionaires are dictating policies (Elon mass-firing people at DOGE, showing a chainsaw and right-arm gesture antics) - this simply undermines and cripples democracy. This, in addition to it being unfair that they aren't really contributing their due share to society usually; and no, creating a legal foundation to avoid paying taxes, including "Bill Gates Foundation" (see the benefits it has) when you avoided paying taxes before, does not fix anything at all. The model that is currently used, is broken by default.

The ancient greek did not have this problem. Modern democracy does. And let's not even get into the issue of Putin-Trump being suspiciously a corrupt tandem team, just as Yuri predicted in the 1980s (!!!!!) already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9apDnRRSOCk

(Flood the zone with shit is based on an older KGB strategy, and the chinese had this under an even older stratagem name, though not necessarily based on information-overload; I'd call the KGB strategy primarily information-overload. The chinese stratagems are named a bit differently, e. g. holding the dagger under the cloak, or attack west while convincing the enemy you would attack east; sun tsu also built on the older chinese stratagems.)

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#17

Post by shevy-java »

shrubby wrote: post #13

Human being, with very few exceptions, is corrupted by power. And a billion dollars is immense amount power. You can make your opponent's life a living hell with a hundred thousand and buy or figure out a way to frame extortion material from almost any decision maker with a million. See how wars are being started tweeting from the toilet seat by a man who has never known anything but power to harm others. See the man…

> See how wars are being started tweeting from the toilet seat by a man who has never known anything but power to harm others.

To be fair: it is not Trump only who is addicted to warfare. You have a whole industry that benefits from war and thus wants warfare. Trump is just, in addition to being corrupt, really really not that clever. And now he is old and has dementia - amazing how the USA can so easily become subverted by Russia here. The KGB won.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#18

Post by folkrav »

joncrane wrote: post #4

We need intensely ambitious and competitive people. We shouldn't use money to keep score.

Money pays the bills, not ambition and competition. Every freaking thing out there uses money to keep score. There's no reason we should not use money to keep score of the people hoarding more and more of the money bags, and actively using their money towards leaving the rest fighting over am ever shrinking pot.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#19

Post by trolleski »

The issue is not the money, the issue is massive wealth imbalance which is best reflected in the $ class owning the current political players. In other words, oligarchy must be stopped, and democracy defended.

Re: Do we need billionaires?

#20

Post by Rebuff5007 »

Every conversation about the existence of billionaires misses the point: Its not about whether or not billionaires should exist. Its about whether they should exist at the same moment in time when there are people cannot get healthcare or have a decent roof over their head, or a number of other basic things.
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