Everytime I look at small problems or big global problems, if you follow the money trail, it all leads to some billionaire who is either working towards increasing their wealth or protecting their wealth from decreasing.
Everything from politics, climate change, workers rights, democratic government, technology, land rights, human rights can all be rendered down to people fighting another group of people who defend the rights of a billionaire to keep their wealth or to expand their control.
If humanity got rid of or outlawed the notion of any one individual owning far too much money than they could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, we could free up so much wealth and energy to do other things like save ourselves from climate change.
The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive. Those people always come up with unending lists of reasons why we just can’t survive without people of unimaginable wealth and power.
It’s not the billionaires. It’s the enablers.
So what we need is to get rid of Americans?
We are all working class. Do not be divided by imaginary boarders
Great point and one I often circle back eventually when I have these discussions with my friends.
I’m starting to think that it is another one of ingrained human traits … we always want a world with protectors, leaders, figure heads … it’s like being children and wanting to be comforted by a parent, a mother or father.
Except it’s a twisted kind of need that we outgrew a long time ago because we are all becoming very capable, knowledgable and intelligent enough to exist on our own. Modern technology, the internet and mass communication is making us more aware of the world and each other and we are realizing that we don’t need figureheads any more.
We’re all made to think that we don’t, won’t or can’t possibly think like this. We’re made to believe that the world and humanity is one big dumb mob that would crumble without a leader.
I believe the opposite is true … it’s our supposed leaders, figureheads, strong men and billionaires that have all the incentive to keep the world as it is because it would mean they would lose most of their power and wealth … and with it their positions as leaders and figureheads.
The Emperors are strutting about the world completely naked … and we have to keep up the pretense that they are wearing the most beautiful fashions imaginable.
More is never enough for those people.
When we see an older woman collecting 50 cats in her home and she still wants more … we call her crazy.
When a billionaire successfully argues against being taxed so that they accumulate more wealth … we put them on the cover of Forbes magazine.
It’s kind of easy to have more cats, the second one not so much
Here’s a good visualization of the wealth the richest people on earth command vs pretty much everyone else: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Hey thanks. That is IMPRESSIVE and deserves a post of its own, please do it
Good idea, will do tomorrow.
I stopped when it got to the trillion comparison. Surely I can find a better use out of the next two weeks of my life.
Well, you do you, but the trillion comparison has many, many other comparisons, further info, and interesting possible real-world uses for that money in the scroll. It really is recommended.
Though admittedly it does take some time, like a long interactive video.
Also… That’s should say something for the issue of inequality, itself, lol
I’ve worked for a few small business tyrants that did horrible things as well. It’s more of a system issue. Billionaires do the most damage of any individuals, but I think it would be pretty similar if CEOs made small amounts of money (the corporations themselves often lobby for their interests), or if there were only small businesses (they’d probably just form national organizations to lobby for their shared interests).
I agree with the idea of compensating someone who worked at managing an organization … it takes work, talent, education and experience to do that and do it successfully.
What I don’t believe is in rewarding leaders who led their organization, business or corporation into ruin while punishing those who worked under them.
The current system rewards and encourages bad immoral behaviour and we wonder why the system is bad and immoral.
Why are you do concerned just about billionaires? Why don’t add millionaires to the pool too?
A million dollars today doesn’t go as far as it used to.
Agreed.
Its not the billionaires its that they are not paying back 50% to society.
I think billionaries are a symptom, not a cause, of the disease.
Some people are born in positions where they already have massive wealth and they grow up with connections to make it larger and larger. So that’s what they do.
But the real issue is the system that keeps everyone in debt for life. Many would like to stop working and enjoy their lives instead. They don’t need much. Just don’t want to work and get by with decent living standard.
Yeah OP needs to spend more time with poor people. People are no better than billionaires on average, billionaires just get all the media attention.
That would be one of the ways to deal with excessive wealth … get rid of excessive inheritance. If you are billionaire … you get to leave two million dollars per child but nothing more.
Two million dollars to start any life would be more than enough for anyone.
But to inherit multi millions or even billions is a completely unfair advantage to everyone else. Imagine if you were a natural born psychopath or you just have an unnatural shortage of empathy for others and you inherit half a billion dollars … do you think that person would go on to do good things in the world?
As it turns you to can’t blame billionaires for everything. Also what would that even mean? Are just going to take away there money as soon as the hit the billion dollar mark? What does that mean for millionaires?
Also the billionaires would just make it look like they have 990 million dollars.
Are just going to take away there money as soon as the hit the billion dollar mark?
You want us to take something else from them?
Wealth disparity and concentration of power into a corrupt ruling class of plutocrats gets pretty toxic to human rights and democracy pretty quickly.
Listen to some behind the bastards episodes, look into people like the koch brothers, or Amazon’s union busting, or any of the large political scandals in the past 100 years (eg. Like the business plot) - and you’ll usually hear of some wealthy ahole involved funding some shitty attack on where ever.
Somethin to remember, money is very important to how our current society functions, it gives a lot of power to those that have a lot of it, but it itself isnt something anyone needs. Say, you get rid of all the billionairess and redistribute all of those funds so that everyone is well above the poverty line now. All of these folks that have a lot more money now want to use that money. They’ve been putting off medical care so they try to setup an appointment. Getting rid of all the billionaires didnt create more doctors though. They can only tend to so many people regardless of ability to pay. Say, folks want to eat out and treat themselves. Certainly more people than before will be able to, but not everyone, kitchens and staff can only output so many meals, again regardless of ability to pay. And that’s overlooking how many people no longer work there, that hated it there and only tolerated for the funds to survive.
Basically money does not actually create any resources or services, redistributing the money doesnt mean you have enough resources to cover what that money could buy. That’s the main goal here, having resources for everyone. Capitalism sucks and getting rid of billionaires is important, but dont get complacent with that underlying mission. We need to be working on providing needs to people in a way that doesnt require money. It involves a lot of volunteer work and a lot of automation.
This is the circular argument I often have with my friends about wealth and it all boils down to just power.
When billionaires lay claim to enormous amounts of money, it gives them an equal amount of enormous power.
Have that wealth redistributed to millions of people and that wealth no longer matters and no one person has any great level of power.
It’s our own belief that we need or see that it is necessary to have individuals with enormous wealth that is the problem. The belief that our world can only exist of there is infinite wealth.
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won’t happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won’t with that way, ever.
I envision a gradual change … where billionaires are just steadily taxed into non existence, where their wealth is just slowly absorbed into public services everywhere and at the same time any individual that accumulates enormous wealth is discouraged. It would be a process that would last decades or lifetimes and eventually to a point where individual excessive wealth is eliminated.
where their wealth is just slowly absorbed into public services
yeah this is in line with the plan of not needing money, providing resources and services without need to pay. Things like public housing, free public transit, etc.
That’s the frustrating thing I see about this debate about billionaires. There is more than enough wealth and resources around the world to have enough food, water and shelter for every living human being on the planet. If we wanted to we could also provide each one of those individuals with an education for the first 20 years of their lives.
Instead we would rather bottle up all the wealth and resources in the world and keep them under the control of a few hundred people who do nothing but keep that wealth away from everyone else and allow the world to stagnant in place for no reason other than to maintain their positions of power.
If we freed up all the available wealth and energy we have for one another towards creating highly educated, highly mobile productive people … we would have engineers, doctors, scientists, inventors, technologists and mathematicians everywhere working on every known problem we have.
Instead, we use the majority of all our energy and capabilities in fighting one another for the right to eat, to find a home or just to live another day.
Wealth still isnt the same as resources. Just because you could afford to purchase an education for everyone doesnt mean we can provide one. It also doesnt mean everyone would want or be able to achieve these higher careers.
Correct and I agree … it’s about creating the opportunity for people.
In our current system, not everyone has the opportunity for an education. For those that have the opportunity, they often don’t or can’t take the chance because they can’t afford it. So instead, those that could have possibly become a professional at something do not because they couldn’t afford it.
The other half is also true … there are some people who have the opportunity and have the wealth but choose not to do much with that opportunity because it wasn’t their passion.
The same thing would happen if you handed out scholarships to everyone … some would take up the opportunity to fulfill their goals and do great things … others wouldn’t care and probably wouldn’t participate … and many others would take part without achieving much because they weren’t capable.
The difference is that everyone was given a free choice to decide if they wanted to or not … in our current system, no one has a choice because they have to fight an unfair fight in order to get what they want … and more often than not, they can not win.
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won’t happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won’t work that way, ever.
Why not? “We” designed, built, and used such a switch before. It’s #7 in this diagram:
And what is France ruled by now?
Ah, but when was the last time they flipped that switch?
I mean immediately after the French revolution, power passed into the hands of a bunch of (and I’m just looking at them randomly on Wikipedia here) what appear to be noblemen and aristocrats.
They certainly didn’t hand it over to the likes of me and you.
Getting rid of all the billionaires didnt create more doctors though
Wrong, more people can afford to go to college. The extra tax base also allows for the creation of new schools.
I agree we should switch away from currency. Look at the stuff people do for fake internet points. We don’t need money to create.
We certainly have the tech and the numbers to ensure the starving artist meme is finally laid to rest. Imagine what creations or inventions we are missing out on because it’s not profitable right now.
I think a world without money is a fantasy.
Money is just a means of trading time, time that I put in, for time that you put in.
Some things like being a doctor are harder than being a fast food worker, it takes years of training, and hard work. It makes sense that their time is worth more.
There is a ceiling though where you’re not actively contributing “time” you’ve previously committed time that’s just appreciating because it’s “invested” in paying people for their time. That’s where the problems come in because you have effectively a years work of thousands of people in your pocket, which is a concentration of unchecked power.
Taxing billionaires out of existence ensures that money is invested (in a democracy) by the voters (through their representatives) and keeps the concentration of power from distorting the politics.
This issue isn’t billionaires, it isn’t capitalism, it’s and always has been throughout history, concentration of power. It’s past time we fixed this unforeseen loophole created by the modern world where a handful of individuals become as powerful as a country.
When you have bosses that aren’t “gods among men”, that can’t just buy up their competition to squash it, it’s much easier to negotiate with them to pay you a fair salary. You’re not just a number. Similarly, you can get more done in politics because nobody’s got so much money that they can significantly grease palms/run a campaign by themselves/etc.
You make more money that harder you are to replace. In the case of the billionaires, they are theoretically hard to replace so they make a ton.
Of course you don’t need to be a billionaire to to be wealthy. You can just be good at business and managing money.
“Taxing them out of existence” is the craziest and dumbest idea I’ve heard in a while. You can’t just do that as it is there money that they rightfully earned. There also would be the issue of the people who have 990 million dollars. Do you want to tax them to oblivion to?
Billionaires are not the problem
There is nobody that’s worth a billion dollars, that’s wealth hoarding. There is no reason our government should endorse that level of wealth hoarding. It hurts infrastructure, it hurts innovation, it hurts national security, it hurts the press, and it hurts our democracies.
It’s the same rational for why we shouldn’t have monopolies and why we have laws against them. Concentration of wealth/power is a very bad thing.
I genuinely do not believe you can be a good person and make a billion dollars. You have either scammed your customers, scammed your employees, or both. There should be a limit on individual wealth.
Do agree we should increase competition
The “loophole” is how capitalism works. Here’s my super simple definition of capitalism. Capitalism just distributes resources based on capital. The problem is that capital is a resource that needs to get distributed. Sure a doctor and fast food worker are both being paid for their time. But not the hospital owner, not the restaurant owner. They’re being paid for their capital, they had the capital to own this business, so they own the capital it generates.
I dont think Im really disagreeing with you though, taxing the owner class on a much more aggressive sliding scale of wealth definitely needs to happen, but we need more public sector workers for all that taxed income to be put to use for. The system is flawed and needs changing, just remember that the work still needs to be done regardless of the solution.
People thought the world without chattel slavery was a fantasy at one point.
Yes we simply added more steps to it, but progress is progress
The problem is you can’t just get rid of billionaires. They are just people who made a lot of money by getting really lucky.
It is also important to note that they do give back there money in many cases as a billion dollars is a huge amount of money. Honestly 10 million dollars is a lot. You can’t just make the wealthy successful people go away because you are jealous.
At the end of they day the richer you are the more unhappy you are. If you basic needs are met you can’t become more happy with more money.
It’s not luck, it’s how money works. Money buys you ownership. And there are many things that generate money for the owner. Businesses, stocks, real estate. It’s a feedback loop that concentrates wealth like we see today.
It is also important to note that they do give back there money in many cases
no they dont
Yup. This is why the world had no problems before billionaires existed.
The problems were always the same since we left the cave our ancestors emerged from … modern billionaires only exacerbate the existing problems we always had a billion times more.
They are also the ones stonewalling everyone’s incentive to want to do anything significant about our world’s problems. Instead of doing anything to fight about climate change which will severely affect our world … we are fighting regional wars that shouldn’t even be conflicts in the first place. And yes, much of the global problems we are facing today stem from a global corporate system which is controlled by a handful of billionaires … they are the root of why we fight and they are also the solution to how these conflicts will end.
No problems at all (WW sounds in background)
Almost every billionaire in the world would immediately target any country that tried this for absolute and total destruction.
Sanctions on day one, exposure of phoney corruption scandal on day two, false flag invasion of another country on day three, deposed leader on day four, and splitting up of territorial sovereignty on day five.
Okay, perhaps not that quickly, but you get my drift. I mean, people like Peter Thiel have used people like Jordan Peterson, along with his own connections to white supremacists, and million dollar contributions to Donald Trump to ruin America in the span of a decade… And that’s just one billionaire applying some loose change because he’s a weird self-hating gay racist monarchist. Imagine what a bunch of billionaires really trying to destroy a country could do.
There’s two answers to that …
This is a primary reason to get rid of billionaires because they are capable of becoming the next Hitler or at the very least, funding and supporting the next Hitler
The second answer to that is … by your own words, it is an admission that billionaires exert way too much control and influence in our world. If one individual has that much control and power where they are capable of influencing or even changing a government, then that is not a democracy … that’s an oligarchy … or at least a plutocracy (a system run by money). Allowing any one individual to have so much money and influence defeats the purpose of wanting to organize or even conduct a democracy.
It reminds me of the ancient Greek idea of ‘Ostracism’ … where we get our modern word ostracize
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism
A system where citizens identified a possible tyrant or upcoming tyrant in their government and then everyone just voted them out of everything for ten years. It wasn’t a perfect system but even back then, everyone knew that if you allowed someone to gain too much power over everyone, then eventually you end up with a tyrannical leader who would want to take control of everything and everyone.
They already donate to both sides in order to insure their influence. So Ostracism of one or two politicians isn’t really going to be and effective preventative measure.
There’s the “joke” about the king/billionaire being asked, “Aren’t you worried about people rising up against you?” He replied, “No, I’ll just pay other people to kill them.”
That worked in ancient Rome for a long while … until there was no one significant left to kill or fight against … then the hired hands started looking at their king/billionaire and realized that they could just kill their leader and take all his wealth.
The problem with your idea is that it’s not just about the amount of money, but the fact that some people will find ways to have more money, more power. As soon as you draw this line, you’ll have an new level of the richest people.
So in order to really make a difference you would need to spread wealth evenly and no one would be able to earn more than that. And the same goes for losing money of course. This way people will not have the incentives anymore, but i think this will eventually move to a new commodity , because it is just in our nature.
While I largely agree, I also note there will always be greedy outliers who will seek and find ways to skirt the system. We can minimize the ways, but humans are innovative AF, especially when told “you can’t.” I think it’s almost more motivating than “you can.”
