• AvaMadison_27@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Imagine how different the world would be if billionaires competed to solve problems instead of competing to become richer. What a world that would be!

    • Glaedr304@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      To be honest, I think the billionaires think they are solving problems. I also think that they believe if they had the money they could do more good with it. They are obviously wrong.

    • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      I had this vision of the military. Imagine a natural disaster like a tsunami is about to strike the Middle East. Here comes the carrier force and they start launching what looks like tomahawk missiles. Instead of blowing people up on the ground they open up in air and drop rafts and life preservers. The military has shown up to save countless people instead of murdering them.

  • TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    I knew there’d be folks in here claiming it’s “fake money.” They can liquidate when they want to, it’s not “fake.”

    • Gravitywell.xYz@sh.itjust.works
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      8 hours ago

      Not only is it real money when its invested, typically the rich can just borrow against those shares instead of having to liquidate anything to pay for things.

      For example when they need $40b to purchase a website or media corp to use so they can have better control of the narrative, they just get a loan because everyone knows they’ll be able to make the payments, instead of selling enough shares to tank the thing that inflates their networth beyond all reason.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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      10 hours ago

      They can liquidate part of it. If they liquidate all of it then most will disappear into thin air.

      If you’re Elon Musk and own a large part of Tesla and SpaceX and you sell all your shares, both companies crater HARD.

      Just remove stock from anyone who owns over 1% of any publicly traded company and nationalize all index funds’ assets (yes, that includes retirement funds). Problem solved.

      Or just cap total wealth at ~5 mill, indexed to the median income so there’s no need for legislation like with minimum wage.

  • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 hours ago

    Correct (when it comes to billionaires; Sam Altman and his ilk intentionally caused the RAM shortage by buying RAM their companies are not using and should be held accountable).

    Billionaires would be impossible in a properly civilised society, which would implement progressive taxes so that anyone with a wealth above, say, ten times the median wealth of the population or 25 times the wealth of the poorest person (citizen or not) in the nation (whichever’s lowest at the time) are taxed to the point that their wealth can increase no further, with the resulting income being invested on public services so that personal wealth is irrelevant except for luxury items.

    • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      Quit making perfect sense. You’re making the capitalists nervous and ruining the hopes and dreams of all the Questrader’s out there. /s

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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    11 hours ago

    That’s the thing; the billions don’t sit in a bank account but in the stock betting market. They would be heavily taxed otherwise.

    • JC1@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      Just tax unrealised capital gain then. A progressive tax too so small investors wouldn’t really be penalized much.

  • 87Six@lemmy.zip
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    12 hours ago

    I think we should extract the water from Sam Altman’s body and use it to cool a datacenter

  • cryowatt@lemmy.zip
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    7 hours ago

    The billionaires are using AI to try to take control over PCs, because that’s the last place where you can still own something outside of their control. The fake AI demand and channel stuffing that is preventing home users from buying RAM and GPUs is an attempt to push everyone into using cheaper devices like phones and tablets. Fuck the oligarchy and the rich. Install Linux and flip off the billionaires.

  • Venator@lemmy.nz
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    13 hours ago

    It’s not underused if they’re running windows with a few tabs open in chrome with sites that have similar ram usage to chatgpt… 😅

    Wasted in terms of bloat maybe in some cases, but it is being “used” 😅

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      14 hours ago

      they like to hoard it, and use other peoples money thats why. thier net worth is actually in thier stocks/investments for the most part.

      • ManWithThe105IQ@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        If their money is in stocks and investments, that means they are investing in companies which employ people. Lol at calling that “hoarding” let alone that its their own money to spend it on solid gold rocket cars if they wanted. A man making a product that a billion people choose to buy for $1 each, is not the reason you are poor.

        • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          That’s not really how it works though. The money you pay for stock goes to the person you bought the stock from not into the company to pay the employees

        • JC1@lemmy.ca
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          8 hours ago

          No, unless a company releases new stock options that are diluting the value of the current shareholders, the money doesn’t go to the company, it goes to the shareholders that sell the shares. Their money doesn’t create employment, it realises the capital gain of other investors. And companies don’t want to dilute the shares as their sole purpose is to increase shareholder value. And even though they sometimes do, it’s pale in comparison to stock buybacks which are exactly the opposites, removing money that could be used for R&D or for workers and raising the imaginary value of their company by inflating investors shares.

        • homosapien@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 hours ago

          A man cannot develop and maintain a product that made a billion. He has to employ people. And if he does not exploit them for their surplus labor value, he CANNOT become a millionaire

          • ManWithThe105IQ@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            A man paying another man to make a produxt for X and then selling for Y does not mean “exploitation”, and if it did, good. Somif you want to define that scenario as oppression, then nobody cares about your meaningless word.

        • mrpxilo@lemmy.zip
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          9 hours ago

          It’s not their money. These people have 5 aces in their hand. They cheat and then instead of golden rocket cars, they buy the media, our politicians, and secret compounds where they brainstorm how to dismantle democracy and start cults.

          It’s just that the cheaters that top the leaderboard also know how to play the game, so they overlap legitimate investors and business owners. Musk and friends don’t need to cheat every hand because the deck is already stacked in their favor.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Because they think they know better than us hoi polloi. Seriously. There’s a psych term that escapes me, but once a person gains wealth and power, they think they know better than the rest of us and the rules don’t apply to them.

      One of the most horrifying things I know about humans is that almost all of us are susceptible to this and it’s not simply a matter of people kissing their ass, though that certainly “helps”.

      • Hal@piefed.nz
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        3 hours ago

        One of the most horrifying things I know about humans is that almost all of us are susceptible to this and it’s not simply a matter of people kissing their ass, though that certainly “helps”.

        This doesn’t have to be true. I have explained to one of my kids when asked why I don’t think the rich are good people.

        Me: Well, what would you do with a billion dollars?

        Them: buy lots of toys

        Me: ok, after you have bought all the toys in the store, what would you do?

        Them: Buy toys for all my friends… Well maybe they could have the ones I’m not using. Buy a house? Buy you a new car?

        Me: What would you do after you had bought all that and still have almost all of the billion dollars left over, since a billion is so huge?

        Them: um, buy houses for the people that don’t have houses? And food for the people that don’t have enough food?

        Ultimately I believe that to have a billion dollars for any decent length of time you are probably a bad person, because even a kid’s instinct is to use that money to help others’, even people they don’t know.

        While wealth might make people bad as you imply, I think an equally valid option is that good people don’t stay wealthy because they use the money to help others.

      • ManWithThe105IQ@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        Rich people are generally better than poor people. They even have all these copium theories to explain it “poverty causes crime!” Etc rather than both poverty and crime being caused by low IQ. The myth of “the noble poor and the evil rich” comes from Christianity because Christianity is about how a homeless dude was God.

        • ttayh@lemmy.zip
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          9 hours ago

          Imagine having an iq of only 105, bragging about it, and spouting iq-justified nazi shit

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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          13 hours ago

          Okay you have to be a troll, but just in case you aren’t: If poverty was caused by “low IQ” (which btw IQ is correlated with education so that’s a circular argument even if true) rich people who are dumb wouldn’t exist.

          • ManWithThe105IQ@lemmy.world
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            13 hours ago

            Nothing in that reply us true or makes sense. First, no, low IQ is caused by a “bad education”. In fact, IQ test results are MORE accurate if taken at an early age before school could have any possible effect. IQ is also a better predictor of life outcomes than education is and even than what your parents’ outcomes are. Lastly, no, the fact that some dumb people manage to get rich wouldnt disprove the claim. Its like saying that height isnt a factor in the NBA because an average height guy is in the NBA. Of you look at rich people on average, they are smarter. Or vice versa, if you look at people with low IQ at age 7, they (as a group) will make less money.

          • ManWithThe105IQ@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            No, they steal because they are genetically predisposed to anti-civilization behavior in general, hence why “poor people” also commit more rape. You are delusional if you thought poor people were noble and stealing bread to feed their children.

    • Guy Dudeman@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Because they don’t actually have the money. The value of their holdings are used as collateral on loans. They use the loans to pay for their expenses and are just constantly in debt. This avoids all tax consequences for them. And it is fucking stupid.

    • Zephorah@discuss.online
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      14 hours ago

      Dealing with investments and the stock market is like going to a casino. Unless they inherited legacy accounts, they made their money gambling.

      Cuban is probably the most obvious example. The man placed a risky bet on shorts and won. Gallway, for all his faults, discusses the luck factor that he stumbled into based on someone else’s gambling failures.

  • qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de
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    13 hours ago

    That’s not how net worth works. Being a billionaire != having billion $ in a bank account.

    • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      12 hours ago

      They’re still financially obese parasites whose wealth should be taxed until it doesn’t exceed a reasonable amount (say, ten times the median or 25 times the lowest, whichever comes first), though.

    • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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      11 hours ago

      Yeah, most of it is all smoke and mirrors but they all own media companies which make it seem more than it actually is.

    • kamen@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      It doesn’t state that it’s in one person’s bank account.