Billionaires are infinitely smaller than money printers (and they are created by them). Did you got the scale?
Do we need billionaires?
61–70 of 144 posts
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#62Yes, because we need to respect private property rights. All criticisms of people using money to corrupt government is actually a criticism of government power. You need to limit government's coercive power.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#63No. Because no single man should have so much power: a person as a single point of failure, no-one is smart enough to think of everything and everyone has blindspots in their reasoning, awareness and wisdom. Billionaires especially because people around them become sycophants. Billionaires don't talk to regular people anymore, they are in an elitist bubble out of touch with other people's reality.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I feel like we could have like a >95% income tax when you are worth more than like $20 million and it wouldnt actually matter too much to the people who would cap it out? It wouldn't matter, because the ultra-wealthy generally don't have much income relative to their wealth. Elon Musk (in the article listed at $817B of wealth ) was reported to have had $1.52B of net income between 2014 and 2018, and had no taxable…
Exactly, at that point it shares need to be taxed. SpaceX is valued at ~$1T Dollars and you own 60% of the shares? OK now you are paying taxes on those 60% every year, not on the income it generates, but on the value of what you own. Same for land - Anything above X size or # of properties gets taxed at 50% the land value each year. Now would this happen? Who knows, and also it will have other effects, like devaluing…
Devaluing the stock market would be a good idea since it would detach people's retirement funding from the decisions made by mobs of speculative gamblers.
But would require a return to pension funds or some other collective funding.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#65I heard a while back that the average person will see about a million of their currency over their lifetime. So we can take a million dollars to be about 1 lifetime's worth of money. Elon is currently sitting on 817,000 lifetimes worth of money. I feel like we could have like a >95% income tax when you are worth more than like $20 million and it wouldnt actually matter too much to the people who would cap it out? Of…
Billionaires are characterized as such due to their net wealth.
They don't actually have that amount in cash silently rotting in bank accounts.
What wealthy people, and people more generally, do have is ownership of assets and debts, where the grand sum >= +1B$. Case in point, Elon owns significant portions of valuable companies.
Patent nonsense such as
> So we can take a million dollars to be about 1 lifetime's worth of money. Elon is currently sitting on 817,000 lifetimes worth of money.
belies a gross misunderstanding of these valuations. No, Elon is not sitting on whatever money. He might only have 1Ks or 10Ks splashed throughout several accounts. If he is mid-transaction, then that figure may come into play, but only briefly. Some billionaires, sure, they may actually have cash of that magnitude on hand ready for deployment. For plenty of even more down-to-earth wealthy folk, even 2K burns a hole in their pocket because they haven't found where to invest it yet.
And so what is Elon and others like him supposed to do? Divest his "money" to the general population in search of equal outcome (and not equal opportunity)?
We need a few people to rise to pinnacles, this is one effective path to creation of markets. Allowing them to concentrate such power and wealth unchecked, though, is a great mistake. And that's on us, the people.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#66Yes, because we need to respect private property rights. All criticisms of people using money to corrupt government is actually a criticism of government power. You need to limit government's coercive power.
Naaaah. Property entails obligations.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
But when they fail, they fail upwards. These risks are always on the backs of everyone else. For example, they take risks by using chemicals (that they know) can kill people, by the time people get cancer they are retired, there are no claw-backs. More recently you commit actual fraud, get convicted but then get a pardon and somehow end up with money again running the next "scam". These people never take real risks.…
Ebola is a bad example as the easiest way to prevent it is to ban bushmeat markets (or at least some types of bushmeat), but for some reason that's never discussed.
> Wild meat, also known as “bushmeat,” refers to the meat of wildlife species hunted or collected for human consumption. USAID staff developed the Wild Meat Learning Agenda to generate and share evidence to inform efforts to improve wild meat programming and to understand those connections to food security, health, and conservation. The Learning Agenda defines learning questions and associated activities to address those questions.
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#68"The problem isn't that we have billionaires but that the system doesn't make more millionaires and billionaires" Discuss?
lmao, that's a good one
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#69My favorite way of conceptualizing the difference between being a millionaire and a billionaire is relative purchasing power. If I have $100k in the bank, so not even a millionaire, a billionaire has 10k times more than me. If Let’s say I imagine making a normal purchase for someone with six figures in assets, like a car, and let’s say the car costs $20k. Imagine what that feels like. It’s a big purchase, right? Probably will use a loan for it, pay it off for a while. For someone with $1 billion (10k difference), the car is the equivalent of something that costs me $2. They don’t even have to think about it, it affects their total monetary position not at all. If on the other hand I’m a millionaire, and I’m imagining buying the same car, it’s a bit easier: equivalent to me with $100k buying something that costs $2000. Still though, a $20k purchase for a millionaire is just a $20 purchase for a billionaire.
I know net worth != purchasing power, but they are likely correlated enough for the examples to be broadly accurate.
The quote defending the billionaires also reminds me of this piece from a recent Harper’s about the march in support of the ultra-rich: https://harpers.org/archive/2026/05/billionaire-blues-thomas...
Re: Do we need billionaires?
#70Yes, because we need to respect private property rights. All criticisms of people using money to corrupt government is actually a criticism of government power. You need to limit government's coercive power.
Naaaah. Property entails obligations.
ok lets do tyranny of the majority then - fuck it. Maoism for everyone.