You must log in or register to comment.
they think that if for one brief moment they have the most billions, they will exist forever.
I mean they will in a way. If we have reliable history books in the future they will surely teach about the oligarchs of the early 21st century, just like I learned about the Robber-Barons of US history.
deleted by creator
Although I am agnostic atheist, I do wish that heaven and hell are real so that the greedy are given due punishment in the afterlife.
What separates a person’s last dying breath from a baby’s first one?
Heaven and hell don’t need to be real, neither does any other metaphysical concept. When we die, we owe it to the people after us to leave the world in a better place.
I agree with the sentiment though. Fuck billionaires.
It would be better if people stopped fucking billionaires. Really we don’t need their spawn.
I feel like this is part of how wealth concentrates, but idk.
The shroud has no pockets
It’s their version of setting the high score in the game of life
In a way.
This world IS hell and them gaining larger and larger parts of it for their own benefit…
Capitalists are demons. Or might as well be, outcome’s the same in the end.
Not that it makes it any better, but the billions they have are mostly imaginary. It’s not cash or even concrete numbers on a bank account. It’s just a speculative valuation of what they own and most of the value comes from stocks on a company. Stocks that only have value as long as they are desirable for someone else and there is no surplus of them on the market. They could never cash out that value and even trying to cash out a significant portion would crash the stock price and their wealth. But as long as they possess this assumed wealth, they are granted almost unlimited credit to cover any purchase.
“ they are granted almost unlimited credit to cover any purchase.”
This is where I feel tax policy should step in, if it hasn’t already. I get that unrealized or non liquid wealth is theoretical based on valuation. But as soon as it’s used as collateral there’s an income aspect that should be taxed. Basically, once you start using that wealth to secure loans, it’s not really “unrealized” anymore and should be taxed.
Might not be a bad idea, anything beyond a single HELOC gets taxed 25% off the top, or something else that someone smarter about economics than I would certainly be able to come up with.
Just like the president, who now has more executive powers than ever, still doesn’t run things the way you think they do. They have an inner circle. It also could be thought of in a way like other countries inside of the empire don’t really have sovereignty. Also, you could rethink the whole idea of a dictator. I mean if the capitalist class wants to defend themselves, they’re going to obfuscate their involvement. Like, you need a fall guy and the fall guy is a gambler. And sometimes he comes out winning and sometimes he gets beaten up in the street.
The Gospel According to Luke
18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 19 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother.’ ” 21 He replied, “I have kept all these since my youth.” 22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 23 But when he heard this, he became sad, for he was very rich. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
This one in Matthew feels relevant here too:
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[a] destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Here’s my personal fave:
20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
Exodus 21:20
deleted by creator
and verses like this are contradictory to his general philosophy, therefore obviously not part of it.
No, Jesus condoned slavery. Both explicitly by using slavery as a metaphor, and using it in his parables, and implicitly by never once simply saying, “hey guys, maybe humans shouldn’t be seen as property.”
Instead he said things like:
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
(Law that includes separate rules for treating your Hebrew vs Gentile slaves, and how to properly enslave the offspring of your current slaves)
Jesus never spoke of slaves in any way that would suggest he had any problem with the practice whatsoever. And he was certainly in a position to make a statement about it.
The New Testament is also full of pro-slavery sentiment by his followers in: 1 Peter, 1 Timothy, Colossians, Ephesians, and probably others.
Sounds like a pretty dogshit philosopher if he can’t even say slavery is bad while literally surrounded by the practice.
The Gospel according to Capitalism
Greed is good
Yes, the mentality behing it is flawed. But those are the people that make it to the top in the current economic system.
Being a billionaire should be listed in the DSM as a mental illness.
Not even as a joke. I oppose systems that create macro wealthy and powerful. Those systems create sociopaths.
deleted by creator
Hypothetical situation, you are a normal person you’ve likely struggled all your life with bills and debts and then one day you randomly find yourself a billionaire. Perhaps you inherited it, or won the lotto. What would you suggest a person in that situation do? This is would be a once in a lifetime opportunity, , you could finally not have to stress about money, but in order to save your soul should you give it all away to charity and go back to your normal life as though nothing had happened?
The difference between not stressing about money and having a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
Honest answer? Call up a fiduciary firm in LA, NYC, London, Tokyo, or Paris, whichever you are closest to. Demand to speak with a partner. Let them know that you are working with 11 figures liquid, that will get you a senior partner. Set up a massive trust with the entire lump sum, there y ensuring the best ROI you can get. Split off $5 million blind and bridge trusts for yourself and any family and friends you want to help. Turn the rest of the money over to a board that must be made of 2 fiduciaries one from a NYC firm, one from a firm in any of the other aforementioned cities, and 3 data analysts. 2 must be from Oxfam, the third must be top of the field. Those 5 board members then run “The Sovereign Trust for Humanity’s Poor,” which then use a percentage of the ROI to set up trusts for the poorest people in the world first. Not for their government, or some other organization. They get life changing money to spread around their community.
Add in stipulations that trust beneficiaries are NEVER allowed to have more than $50,000,000 in wealth at any time, and that they should pressure their governments to create a maximum wage.
Spend all but a reasonable portion on materially, directly improving the world
Then retire on a million
I’m with you, but a million ain’t enough anymore to retire.
I have ambitions that, if realised, could generate income, but I don’t currently have enough cash to invest into. Game dev and music, particularly. I’d start a dev studio and actually hire talented artists, for example, so I don’t have to rely on my poor skills. Will it make lots of money? Who knows. But it’s better than sitting on a hoard and living on interest.
One can live their entire life with a lot less than a billion. Even putting 99% of it away to a good cause leaves 10 MILLION. Again excessive for a lifetime.
My theory is that when you get that first Billion with a B, something fundamental breaks in the human brain.
They don’t think like us normal folks anymore, even multimillionaires are “other” to them.
Because it’s not about money for them, they’ve already surpassed that concept, it a about power. Us peasants aren’t quite evolved enough to understand that yet.
Still begs the question why they need tax cuts then? It doesn’t give them more power, it doesn’t really give them much more money (in the grant scheme of things).
It’s not just about power. For many, it’s also a way to keep score, to feel better about themselves compared to others. (Not trying to justify; it’s still a sickness.)
Look how much Bezos and Musk feuded over which one of them was the “richest” man in the world. Or, hell, just the fact that they’re still running companies when they already have more money than most countries.
I mean Elon Musk once scoffed and told sponsors to go fuck themselves for daring to pull their advertising from Twitter. I don’t think he understood that it was business and that some businesses run by running ads paid for by sponsors.
It’s like he forgot what a business was…
It honestly is a waste for a true capitalist. Like, if you have enough money to cover all your expenses, while also having 2-3x your fun money expense, why aren’t you following the capitalist ideal and doing something with it?
Start a nonprofit that suits your interests, buy a company you believe it, spin up scholarships, blow it on a do nothing project, but for fucks sake do something with it!
In their eyes, they sort of are. “Investing” your money into stocks gives you the feeling you’re giving back to the world with it, while also giving you the feeling it’s secure, still belongs to you, and is earning you more.
Meanwhile, the people actually living this ideal create trusts for philanthropic efforts. They wave goodbye to the money completely, asking for no return but worldly benefit. There’s not nearly enough people like that in the world though.
In France, they’re buying medias to bring about a fascist state and using islamophobia and the fear of the enemy from within to justify an increasingly violent police state.
I guess they are bored and need to ruin something else.
Please! It’s islamphobia and “narcotraffic” (i.e. small-scale pot dealers, who have no future anyway because of racism, classism, prejudice, and Paris-centrism.)
Amassing wealth is an obsession. These people get a dopamine rush anytime their line goes up. Which is how they got there in the first place. At some point, the value doesn’t really matter anymore but the obsession remains.
Greetings, your most experienced armchair psychologist
At a certain point, money is not about wealth or what you can buy with it but rather about power. And in life’s twists, those who amass a decent amount of wealth and power come to believe they are “chosen” because of how society treats them. The poors worship the rich. if we were living in a sane society, these amounts of wealth would be looked at disgustingly by society. Shit is beyond fucked and I don’t think anything can unfuck modern society.
if these people were any kind of Christian they would be worried about the end of their mortal lives. Instead they are speedrunning everything Christ taught us NOT to be.
I’m poor now but one day soon I’ll be a billionaire and then those poors better watch out!
They just like sitting on a Dragons hoard.
At least in D&D no dragon hoards that much, and the chromatic dragons have a legitimate reason for it.
The wealthiest dragon you’ll encounter in any fantasy setting, we aren’t talking about Shadowrun or Cyberpunk where the real life billionaires are dragons, is an ancient red wyrm. They will have 1.5 million to 5 million gold pieces of treasure. 1 gold piece is ⅒ of an ounce of gold. Therefore the absolute wealthiest dragon in all of D&D and Pathfinder is only worth about $1,200,000,000, and that is only one of them. 99.99% of all other dragons would be worth less than a billion.
The chromatic dragons have to eat their hoard just before they die. If they don’t have enough gold to pay Tiamat, then she eats their souls.
Also, gold is a nice soft bed according to every metallic dragon I have encountered.
I think once your net wealth hits 100mil, it should buffer overflow to NaN and you have to start over.
