601–610 of 653 posts
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There is a pretty big difference in scale. How would you feel if you could barely afford ramen and your neighor was using prime steaks as fire wood?
Sure it would feel bad, but would my feelings justify taking the steaks from them?
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Most super-wealthy folks are not going to spend anywhere on the order of $200B or even $20B (in the broad timeframe of Elon's payout) on their own consumption. Even if Elon spent $100B on a mission to Mars or whatever it is that he cares about, would you really have reason to object to that, any more than if the money was spent by NASA? (The whole Apollo program and surrounding stuff probably cost on the order of tha…
Elon and people like him are currently spending a similar amount of money on building AGI, how's it going, any reason to object? Asthma and lung cancer from Elon's gas turbines, polluted water everywhere, high electricity prices everywhere, RAM and SSD price hikes, Micron and Nvidia completely stopped making equipment for consumers, disinformation is everywhere, the internet is full of slop . Oh, seems like billionai…
Power corrupts, end of story. Democracy (limited terms), taxation and anti-monopoly regulation are examples that show a path to cure the disease. Nobody should be trusted with too much power for too long.
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Not the same. We eat to get macro nutrients: fats, protein, and carbohydrates.
Why do we need those? Oh right thermodynamics. Don't let the label fool you. Thermodynamics is the study of energy flows at the fundamental level, not only heat.
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> , Constitutional systems will enumerate the rights of its citizens such that they cannot simply be taken away by a simple majority of any body. Only if those are enforced. The wealthiest are the ones with the power, as they can pay for the guns.
Again, we're talking about a functioning democracy. If you take an example of a non-functioning democracy, it's not a good way to describe a functioning democracy.
Ultimately it comes down to who has the power. The more that power is concentrated the more fragile it becomes. It doesn't change overnight.
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> President Roosevelt rejected funding the war with taxes, and went instead with war bonds. War bonds covered about half the costs. Roosevelt was not shy about taxation, before or during the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1935 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1937 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Income_Tax_Act_of_1... "A 5% Vict…
And the population proved that they are willing to make massive contributions to important causes, without having to be forced at gun-point with taxation.
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When was the last time you heard a bank owner or large industrialist being against the taxation of everyday people? Even the famous/infamous billionaires never come out against income tax for normal people. At most they're against taxation of themselves. When did you hear the owner of a bank or a large hedge fund or a major industry talk against income taxes which the poor pay? The rich are 100% pro taxes. It funnels…
Trump's BBB brought more than $1 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy.
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Sounds very hard actually. If you asked me to spend a significant fraction of Bill Gates' money I wouldn't even know how to begin. How would you do it? Do you have a way to earn his trust, a service to offer him that he values a lot, a way to steal from him, or anything like that? Melania apparently managed to do it with true love and kindness. Are you capable of sincerely loving Bill Gates for a period of several ye…
I don't think it's that hard. MacKenzie Scott Bezos managed to give away nearly half (not accounting for appreciation) of the wealth she obtained from her divorce in a few short years.
Notably, she played a huge part in how Amazon was structured due to her influence on Bezos.
I do find it very interesting though the apparently common pattern here of ‘woman gives away massive fortune she got from x to make the world better/rehabilitate her image’ or something.
Meanwhile, the men all seem to go on hooker binges. See Bezos, and now Gates (vs Epstein files).
No one, including the people getting screwed at the end, are actually innocent, but some definitely are more guilty than others eh?
Excerpt from one of the related emails (written by JE): "great proposal„ however, it needs to be more around deception alice -bob. communication. virus hacking, battle between defense and infiltration.. computation is already looked at in various fields. camoflauge , mimickry, signal processing, and its non random nature, misinformation. ( the anti- truth - but right answer for the moment ).. computation does not inv…
When he was alive a lot of people said Epstein was really smart. But I have read some of his emails, and all of the ones I have seen are full of spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization errors. I would not gotten out of sixth grade if I wrote like that.
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I've found that problem solving intelligence and language skills are not that strongly correlated. He clearly had some kind of skill to keep his operation running, even before you consider the more cynical explanations in the other replies.
He was an asset being managed by intelligence service officers, this is the only explanation. A failing math teacher at a New York prep school leading to a job at Bear Stearns and then as a wealth manager for billionaires... let's say it doesn't add up unless there were other reasons than his own ambitions and organization skills. Mossad or the Russians engineered his life.