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[–] 134 points 5 months ago (16 children)

I am firmly convinced that most of the problems facing humanity can be traced directly back to billionaires like him.

It’s quite simple: you can only become that rich if you are an utterly inhuman, unscrupulous monster. Unfortunately, it is precisely these monsters who rule the world, and they have created systems that require you to be a monster in order to succeed.

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  • [–] 40 points 5 months ago

    I don't care at all about how they acquired their wealth.

    Its just not in anyone's best interest to have so much wealth horded and controlled by one person.

    He's using that money to influence social norms and political outcomes. It means he's pretty much the unelected supreme leader of the terran empire.

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Having power and wealth destroys empathy for less powerful people on a physiological level. That allows them to exploit people harder to get more wealth and power.

    Taxing they wealth away doesn't work. Maybe just put people in jail for every year they have x amount of dollar. You can be free or wealthy, not both.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Just an FYI, that goes all the way down the power chain. We tend to have less (instinctive) empathy for people below us. It's not we actively want to do them harm, but that we just don't think about them at all.

    E.g. when did you last take proactive action to help the exploited workers harvesting chocolate? You likely never even thought about them.

    The problem is that people like musk look down on us the same way. We get smashed by their indifference.

    The best long term solution is a tax system aimed at "regression to the mean". I.e. exceptional people can get rich. However rich, "average" people will regress back towards average income and savings. Conversely, an averagely capable poor person should easily climb back up to average income levels.

    Basically change the graph from a hump to a bathtub shape.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Your system has a flaw from my perspective. It ignores the effect of wealth on capability, especially in youth. People who are already less "exceptional" - say, mentally challenged - would stay poor through factors outside of their control. On the other side, people who are "exceptional" are most commonly so because of the benefits wealth brings, so the way i understand your system, it will cement the status quo - the rich stay rich because of virtue of being rich, the poor and uneducated stay poor because they are poor and unremarkable.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    It's not perfect, but no system is. The goal is to keep a level of equibility, while also allowing the good to benefit from their own efforts.

    If the rich invest in their children, and make them exceptional, that's fine. Trying to get parents not to do that goes against extremely strong instincts. The goal is to make climbing the wall harder, not impossible. If the child buckles down and takes advantage that's fine. If they slack off and coast, they will coast back towards the mean income level. They won't get the run away effect that happens currently.

    A lot more can be done at the bottom. Giving poorer children the education and support facilities needed to reach their potential would make a huge difference, for a relatively small investment from society.

    It's also worth noting that I'm also an advocate for UBI. There should be a floor on how poor people can be. As a society, we can afford to support that.

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  • [–] 24 points 5 months ago

    I am firmly convinced that most of the problems facing humanity can be traced directly back to billionaires like him

    No doubt about it.

    It’s quite simple: you can only become that rich if you are an utterly inhuman, unscrupulous monster

    Unfortunately, it is precisely these monsters who rule the world, and they have created systems that require you to be a monster in order to succeed.

    As for a solution..

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    That's what I keep saying about Taylor Swift, but people just tell me that I'm a crotchety old man.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    There are degrees of evil. Just as some cancerous cells can be benign, there also can be less harmful billionaires.

    It's important to concentrate on the ones that are an existential threat to humanity first and foremost so we don't lose the world pointlessly chasing after the harmless lumps.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I agree with you. But if that's where we are, I feel that statements like:

    ...you can only become that rich if you are an utterly inhuman, unscrupulous monster...

    Are unhelpful at best and actively alienating to potential allies at worst.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Have you considered that maybe he just works 1-10 billion times harder than the rest of us, and therefore earned that money fair and square?

    /s

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    Oh, right, sorry, I completely forgot that this guy has amazing tech-genius superpowers and works as hard all by himself as millions uppon millions of us pathetically useless plebs put together...

    Also /s, of course :)

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  • [–] -4 points 5 months ago

    that's true but capitalism is better than socialism because capitalism is real, socialism is a "what am i thinking of today" fantasy where all your protest dreams come true

    unicorns are rad

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  • [–] 62 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    This is an oversimplification.

    He ALSO stopped us from having good public transportation, built a dangerous deathtrap maze of underground tunnels, built cars that straight up murdered people, and blew up billions in taxpayer dollars multiple times.

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  • [–] 50 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    I hate people writing about his "worth". He's worth shit. He robbed 800 billion from us.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago

    Literally yeah exactly how it works. He skims the value created by labour and free gifts of nature and magazines pretend like it's a good thing.

    It's like imagine if this world is an all you can eat buffet, riches and bounty overflowing — enough for all. Then this asshole shows up and claims a whole row.

    Not how it should work.

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  • [+] -3 points 5 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

    Yeah, I doubt that. Sure, the overinflated stock makes the number go big, but he didn't get there without seriously harming everyone on his way.

    He's trying to break unions wherever he sees one. He's trying to break governments in different countries whenever he thinks they might threaten his way of life. He cheaps out on sensors that could make his shitty cars a little less lethal.

    He's a threat on everybody's pursuit of a good life to enrich himself just a little bit more. Just some billions, he definitely needs those. He's cancer, and he wants to grow.

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  • [–] 41 points 5 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 41 points 5 months ago (7 children)
  • [+] 17 points 5 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Part of the problem is all the fucking morons saying that the world economy isn't a zero-sum proposition. If the economy isn't zero-sum then we can just give everyone a billion dollars on paper and they could just buy their own houses. Inflation, what is that?

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Have you misread my comment so much that you think I am in favor of billionaires? I absolutely know how much good could come from taxing billionaires on their wealth rather than their "income". I understand that the world economy isn't zero-sum and that every billionaire is a parasite that sickens society as a whole. Please re-read my comment and see that I am not a bootlicker.

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  • [–] 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    His value is inflated speculation bs. I think investors are overleveraged on Elon’s meme stocks and are keeping those stocks inflated.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    investors are overleveraged on Elon’s meme stocks and are keeping those stocks inflated

    True. However, since the overleveraged investors include almost all of the people effectively CONTROLLING the whole already inherently corrupt system that is the stock market, it has tons of EXTRA insurance against the bubble bursting.

    Whether that's enough to protect his meme stocks from any semblance of objective valuation forever remains to be seen, but for now, it's holding steady 😮‍💨

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    Wealth hoarding is a psychological illness and shouldn't be allowed in society

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    i just wish we had some kind of functional safety net for retirement such that individuals weren't forced to hoard wealth out of fear like they are now.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Hoarding wealth with good reason is fine but someone like Musk isn't doing it out of fear. He has more money than he can possibly use and could give away like 90% and still be safe. What even motivates him? It's pure selfishness

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    So like, both my wife and I grew up washing and reusing tinfoil. We were never so poor we actually needed to tighten the belt that much until we had been together a while, but like I still catch myself doing it. Some generational traumas take really weird forms. The most generous interpretation of space Karen's actions I can think up is that he's acting out over traumas he was taught (rather than experienced firsthand).

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  • [–] 38 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    It’s important to note that even with all that money he still is far less happy than the average American. Imagine having so much wealth, not knowing what to do with it, having spent it on a botched penis enlargement and now no amount of money can fix even that.

    Not to mention that by now the list of failures and broken promises is getting very long: hyperloops to prevent investment into rail, colonies on mars to avoid deal with all the shit he’s help wrong on earth, full self driving if you don’t mention that full doesn’t mean full and the cemeteries full of people who have died believing it did mean that, and how could I forget

    Lying about Epstein and rigging the presidential election so a childfucker can destroy the country you weren’t even born in and barely pay any taxes for.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago

    There was a 2010 study showing that money was correlated with happiness up to about $75k, then plateaued. The expectation was that once you could afford your needs and didn’t have to worry about the basics, the rest of happiness would come from the life you built.

    Then a few years ago, all the headlines were screaming that it was debunked and money did in fact buy happiness. However, in true news media form, they screeched about the wrong thing - there was still a plateau, but it occurred past 100k. This isn’t really surprising - the cost of living certainly rose in the 13 years between the two studies. Inflation went nuts in the COVID era, and we definitely never deflated back.

    But it does suggest how truly miserable some billionaires must be inside when they can’t find happiness with 10,000x more money than the average person’s threshold to find their joy.

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  • [–] 17 points 5 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 34 points 5 months ago (29 children)

    If we killed Elon Musk and took all of his assets, we could buy every homeless person in the US a $990,000 house.

    If we killed Elon Musk and took all of his assets, we could eliminate world hunger for 24 years.

    If we killed Elon Musk and took all of his assets, We could buy every NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL team. We’d have enough money left over to also buy the top 20 European Soccer teams.

    If we killed Elon Musk and took all of his assets, we could fund NASA at its current budget for 40 years.

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  • [–] 29 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Alternatively if we just took all his assets and didn't kill him we could put Elon Musk to work in an emerald mine in South Africa and get some added value.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    These are true facts, however it's also true that we already have a number of unsold homes on the market greater than we have number of homeless people. We already make enough food to feed everyone. We just choose to let people sleep hungry on the streets. That's what our democracy has voted for.

    So what does musk's billions and trillions matter? He could have two trillion tomorrow, and we'd still have enough money as a country to take care of everyone, and we would count up the votes that say not to.

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  • [+] 2 points 5 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Nah. Do what rich people actually do, take a loan out against the stock holdings.

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  • [+] -1 points 5 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Huh, I had no idea that bootlickers were allowed to post here, but here you are, showing your ass to the world.

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  • [+] -10 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Your plan is too bloodthirsty.

    We just need the assets.

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  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    The execution part is a warning to others.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah im against bloodshed generally as a rule but I bet the altruism would skyrocket.

    Put this into a trolley problem and see the results.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    When that one healthcare CEO got shot the health insurance companies paid out on their promises for like a solid week. How long do you think on Musk would drive "altruism"?

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    [–] 15 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Value is subjective. I know a lot of folk who think he's worthless.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    He won't be the last Trillionaire, and then then they'll start heading for Quadrillionaire status.

    At some point, they will form alliances, fund a private military, take over a landmass, and establish their own nation, and start causing some real trouble.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago

    Correction: capitalism is better than socialism because our taxes pay for one person to have a trillion dollars instead of everyone having health care.

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  • [–] 28 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Musk isn’t worth US$800B, it’s how much he’s been permitted to hoard.

    No one can earn a billion dollars, that level of wealth concentration can only ever be forcibly extracted from the work of millions of others, or gifted from someone who did.

    Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

    Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

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  • [–] 15 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Okay but hear me out: guillotines are really fucking cute.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I’m by no means against deploying a sharp edge with guardrails, I just see guillotines taking many forms.

    You could take their money at the same time as their heads, but I’d argue it more fitting for the experience of extraction to be drawn out.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    This isn't about the symbolism. This is about the actual machines. I think they're cute. We're at least chopping up some watermelon even if we run out of billionaires.

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago

    Luigi was right.

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  • [–] 25 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    worlds biggest cancer cell continues growing

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