Let’s start with those that profit directly from human suffering.
So the entire Healthcare, agriculture, and processed food industries.
And obviously Ticketmaster.
Bread and circuses without bread and prohibitively expensive circuses brought to you by Ticketmaster.
Edit: I’m using him as an example of an other billionaire who is constantly defended even though he owns 6 mega yatchs and a few submarines costing him an estimated 75 to 100 million a year just in maintenance. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Look I love Gabe as much as anyone but nobody earns a billion dollars
Especially when steam could have a sliding scale for fees where developers with fewer sales could earn more profit from the sale which would greatly benefit the indie developers.
Instead it has the opposite structure where fees decrease as you sell many millions in revenue which has the opposite effect.
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To be fair
He did get the steam deck made, so that was kinda cool.
But maybe owning 6 yachts is a little less cool.
Unless the sub and boats were like research vessels he funds, that would be cool
But they aren’t.
Why can’t billionaires dump their money into funding scientific research? It’s not like there aren’t scientists out there with plenty of research to be done.
Or even maybe wherever he lives, he could like, fund the entire county school districts for the rest of existence and no one would have to worry about taxes.
Or maybe regularly cancel the medical debt of Valve employees and their families.
Like how fucking hard is it to redistribute your own wealth?
Like fucking Christ, that’s the part I don’t understand. They complain about taxes and shit at the top, but they do absolutely fuck all to make things better for large swaths of people. Or if they do, it’s after they die and $200m gets donated to a university and it prevents next year’s tuition from increasing.
who the fuck is he and why does everyone know him by face?
i feel morally superior to all of yall who are star gazing all the time, fuck, why do you all know who he is
He is Gaben from steam. The picture is used a lot in article headers.
It’s not a matter of “nobody should be allowed to be ultra wealthy,” it’s a matter of “nobody should be allowed to be unacceptably poor.”
If our civilization can generate wealth at an astronomical rate, then there is no morally defensible reason for anyone to be homeless, hungry, poorly educated, lacking medical care, drinking unsafe water, worked to death, or any of a number of other baseline metrics of civilization. All of those ills exist because wealth is funneled upwards at an unbelievable rate, leading to the existence of billionaires. All of that wealth should be used to raise everyone’s standard of living, rather than give a handful of people more power and luxury than ever appeared in Caligula’s wet dreams.
Of course the way that you accomplish that is by an exponentially progressive taxation system, and that will… probably make it impractical to be a billionaire, but frankly I think that focusing on helping the bottom end of the economic ladder is more productive than just talking about how it should be illegal to have more than a given amount of wealth.
I’m still surprised that taxing the rich is such a difficult bill to pass. Assuming we live in a democracy, the 1% shouldn’t be able to have such sway over the population.
Lots of people don’t understand taxes and lots of others think they’ll end up rich someday and then it will affect them.
The rich have special access to the legislative machinery that the rest of us don’t. The end of real democracy in this country began with the Supreme Court’s “corporations are people / money is speech” rulings. Ordinary people can’t compete with the influence that billions of dollars of bribes brings.
Citizens United and Regulatory Capture.
frankly I think that focusing on helping the bottom end of the economic ladder is more productive than just talking about how it should be illegal to have more than a given amount of wealth.
Agreed. Generally easier to sell to the public, too.
That said, there’s also a bunch of stuff that wealth hoarding and extreme capitalism will still cause problems with, which isn’t directly tied to people living in extreme poverty. Climate change is just one example. Infrastructure is another. There are collective challenges that we can’t meet because of wealth disparity.
Maybe we just need to assign billionaires goals to achieve. “Hey, Elno, reduce world hunger sustainably over the next four years by 15% or we take all your money. Jeffy boy, you’re on housing; get us to zero homelessness before 2030, or we’re nationalizing Amazon. Oil execs, you get to tackle greenhouse gas emissions (I mean, you made the problem, you get to solve it). We’re replacing half of the gas stations in the US with fast charging stations, and we’ll sell off 1,000 a year to private owners; get us to net zero emissions and you get to have whichever of them the Federal Government still owns by that point. Whichever one of you chuckleheads gets done first gets all the other guys’ beach houses. And go!”
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You decide not to feed it because it’s not your dog - it’s not your problem. But your whole house is completely stocked with food. You throw out large amounts of table scraps and leftovers daily.
How many people would consider that to be evil?
Internally the person can justify his actions “You feed a stray dog one time, it will nag you forever, maybe call up his buddies because there is free food, and now suddenly you have a pack of stray dogs on your farm that are causing all sorts of trouble”. Such nuances are always present(I will stop with the dog analogy, because your original example and my addendum, dehumanizes people in need to dogs). but such is the harsh reality, that often arises with a direct personal transfer of wealth, people tend to form a dependency on the table scraps and those that provide them(even though they are losing literally nothing) resent it.
The solution you may ask to greedy billionaires and hungry homeless people, SOCIETAL or GOVERNMENTAL INTERVENTION, think about it, its the failure of whoever the fuck is in charge that a select few of their citizens have exploited the system so well that their wastage is equivalent to the GDP of a small country, and similarly there are many people that only dream of a roof over their heads!!
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I totally agree, but also the pop star billionaires are the least offensive type. If you’re targeting them before the other billionaires, you got played and are doing it wrong. The richest most politically powerful billionaires are the biggest threat to freedom.
strat is to target all billionaires equally
See that picture of the homeless man on top? Bill Gates has literally saved hundreds of thousands of men like him through his charitable foundations. It depends on the person not the size of the bank account.
You know what would help them?
A house.
That wouldn’t help, as they wouldn’t have the means to furnish it or maintain it or pay the taxes on it. What they need is medical care for the sizeable portion that have mental illness keeping them down. And all of them need an economic system that doesn’t let hard luck cases get thrown under the bus.
You wouldn’t believe how many of them have jobs and just need a house. It’s the majority actually.
Right. Bill Gates is horribly evil and rich, and like many people in his shoes, he decided to be a philanthropist to fix his image. What if millions of other people had gotten that money instead of him? What if Windows hadn’t been monopolistic? What kind of world would we be in today? A better one, most likely.
Agreed. Any downvotes you got/get are simple shills of the mindsets “rich people bad” and “Windows bad”, both of which are very prevalent here. Multiple people here (not all) throwing those downvotes around would be doing the same shit if they were billionaires, or worse.
Wish we could all be like Pepe.
To me this is the silliest possible counter propaganda. They want to get people fired up about a super popular billionaire that actually works really hard and over pays her people. So then they can paint a picture of radicals who’d have everyone living in the slums no matter what they were able to do with their talents. They won’t even wait to see the real responses. They’ll put their own in, grab the screen cap and deride us all as anarchists.
Getting some Pol Pot vibes from this. Ideology can lead to some really weird conclusions.
Somone like Taylor Swift isn’t destroying people’s lives and she’s not overworking other people to make that money.
Sure she has too much money, but that can be solved by having more sensible tax policies. Show me where she’s bribing congress and donating to the GOP to keep her taxes low.
These kinds of memes only exist to prove how edgy people are but they don’t accomplish anything. Saying “I’m so hardcore I even hate the billionaires people like” doesn’t do anything other than push people away from whatever movement you claim to support.
But congratulations, you’re the edgiest socialist edge lord on the internet. That sound you hear is the Swifties (who might otherwise care about the issues you care about) heading towards the door.
People like Elon Musk and Donald Trump divide people so they don’t think about what they’re doing. You’re helping them.
bvbv
and don’t stop to help and the person would have lived if you stopped but instead that person dies then yes, you are evil
Also that’s actually a crime in many places. Well here in Finland at least. You have a duty to render aid if no-one else is there. Obviously you can just drive by an accident if someone is already helping but if there’s no-one else around, you’re required to stop to help, by law.
Ahhh yes. Celebrities can just magically end world hunger and stop world suffering
No, they can’t. They’re just the canary in the coalmine, so to speak.
The point isn’t “Taylor Swift is immoral”. The point is “the system is immoral and the evidence for it can be seen by looking at, for instance, Taylor Swift.”
Being against billionaires doesn’t mean one is genocidal ffs.
People like Elon Musk and Donald Trump divide people so they don’t think about what they’re doing. You’re helping them.
No U, bootlicker.
These kinds of memes only exist to prove how edgy people are but they don’t accomplish anything. Saying “I’m so hardcore I even hate the billionaires people like” doesn’t do anything other than push people away from whatever movement you claim to support.
So true. Learn from the edgy George Floyd protests and the Palestine protests, which at best accomplished nothing and more likely played a key role in cutting off formerly-rising popular support for the causes they were advocating. Being edgy feels good to the person doing it, but it makes everyone else say “fuck that guy and whatever they’re in favor of.” Be smart not angry.
These meme would be far more effective if it didn’t have the bottom picture at all.
Which world do you live in? People voted for Donald Trump, a guy who wanted to shoot BLM protestors and says he’ll let Israel do whatever they want.
The edgelord bullshit only makes you popular with people that agree with you. It has demonstrably failed to bring people to the causes you care about.
I think the person you are replying to agrees with you
The only smart guy in this thread⏫
I just think that at $1BN net worth or whatever, you start getting taxed on 99.99% of everything you earn or gain in worth after that.
This way people still get stupid rich, and if someone ever has $10bn you can easily just sound the alarm then and there and say nope, fuck this guy.
The tax curve just just be exponential and it should be basically vertical at $1bn.
Up until the 70s or 80s I think, in the United States, the top tax bracket was 90%.
10 million is fuck off money. We don’t need to go another 990 million dollars. Just set it to 10 million dollars.
I mean yes and no.
Yes, no one needs more than $10 million. But there are legitimate use cases for wealth far beyond that. Let’s imagine someone develops an immutable cryptocurrency tool that is used globally to track political spending and keep governments honest. Hypothetically, this tool revolutionizes transparency and unravels corruption on a massive scale. Shouldn’t the creator of something so transformative be allowed to enjoy significant wealth—enough to provide for their family, loved ones, and even those who helped them along the way?
That kind of lasting wealth—the kind that lets someone own $10 million estates worldwide, fully staffed, with taxes paid indefinitely—is realistically covered at $1 billion. It’s feasible at $100 million, but it’s not at $10 million. A $10 million cap is “personal freedom money,” but it’s not “dynasty money.” And while dynasty wealth can be problematic, it’s also worth acknowledging the good that such wealth has sometimes enabled.
I love it when athletes, for example, use their success to buy their parents a million-dollar home or fund life-changing initiatives. If we cap wealth at $10 million, it prevents figures like LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo (love or hate him), Serena Williams, David Beckham, or even Rob Dyrdek from reaching the level of wealth where they can fund truly transformative projects.
Allowing higher wealth ceilings enables people who do reinvest in society to make a broader impact. Sure, some of these incentives are tax-driven, but the outcome still benefits society.
I get that not everyone uses their wealth for good. But there’s a meaningful gap between a $10 million cap and a $1 billion cap where good things can and do happen.
Can we negotiate to $500 million as a compromise?
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Yeah I’m down with that concession.
Let me say fuck anyone really who can’t get here?
I’m allowing more than I am comfortable with on lyrical of argument.
500M is not only ridiculous but achievable given our agreement.
10 million is significant wealth that provides for family and loved ones. Unless maybe you’re the Duggar family.
The great thing about a 10 million dollar cap is it doesn’t prevent you from getting more money. You just have to shift money first. And if you can’t shift it fast enough then the IRS steps in to do it for you.
No compromise because you didn’t give any example where 10 million isn’t enough.
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It’s nice to say no, but across history there have been so so many societies that have allowed exactly that at similar scales.
I’ll share it again…
That time Oprah and Ellen cosplayed as poor people by going to the bank…
No but see these psychopaths aren’t physically that dangerous and are smiling in a not-unpleasant way, so it’s okay. /s
I wouldn’t call her a good billionaire, but I think she’s as benign as billionaires get. At least she does things like pay her employees a good wage and gets people involved in the political process.
And, as far as I know, she isn’t responsible for anyone’s deaths.
I’m sure she still stepped on a lot of necks up the pyramid, but compared to a shit ton of other billionaires out there…
Billionaires can’t be benign. It’s impossible to make a billion dollars in a lifetime without taking more than you deserve. Someone overpaid for the product or someone was underpaid for the work (probably both). Billionaires prey on that loss, and it’s not as if they are Robin Hood giving back to the poor. If that’s not malignant, I don’t know what is.
“As benign as billionaires get” and “benign” are not the same thing. See also the “I’m sure she still stepped on a lot of necks up the pyramid” part.
Why do you think I said benign and not what I actually said?
I wasn’t arguing with you. I was supporting you. Weird of you to assume the worst?
Weird of you to assume the worst?
Welcome to the internet. First time?
The thing with TS is that she is not supposed to be like other billionaires. Other billionaires, most of them, have a different motivation, this is, to make more money. They are supposed to be entrepreneurs but at that level they are more like gamblers. TS is supposed to be an artist and her motivation is supposed to provoke a reaction in people’s emotions through her craft, which is making songs. Hell, at this point she could be singing and composing for free and giving away money. She could just license her next album to some cause, like fighting against cancer, and just let them use the gainings to fight cancer. That’s why I don’t even give her words my attention. She demonstrated that her motivation seems to become richer and richer. As any other billionaire she has all the attention she wants and more, because in the end she is like any other billionaire, a hoarder forgetting about the importance of other people’s lives.
You are not talking to someone who thinks there is such a thing as a good billionaire.
No, I know. I guess, instead of replying I was using your comment to reflect on the idea of the billionaire-artist.
I don’t disagree.
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You could also argue there are no good millionaires by the same logic.
The existence of billionaires is a systemic problem, largely not a personal failing.
I’m not a swiftie, but the message here should be “We need better redistributive institutions” or “We need a new economic system”, not “Artist being an unexceptional artist (in terms of industry behavior) is BAD because she is one of the more successful ones”
Swifties triggered.
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“What about…?”
Weird, I feel like there’s a word for this. 🙄
It’s interesting to me that Swifties look over the fact that she entertains company with Patrick Mahomes’ brother, someone that is in the midst of settling his sexual assault case and only received probation (likely b/c his connections). Or that she continues to attend events of an organization that routinely tries to stifle legitimate protests and would treat their players like garbage if the NFLPA didn’t exist.
In the end, she’s like everyone else. You look over the sins of those that are somehow tied to your group but make a huge stink about when it’s others.
Ok, so Taylor Swift seems to get the billionaire hate here. I’m wondering, when it comes to successful artists, what’s the opinion on Dolly. She’s not a billlionaire, but she is worth several hundred millions, so it’s close enough. She seems to be beloved by almost everyone.
Dolly gives free books to every kid, helped rebuild Gatlinburg after the fires, and is now helping rebuild East TN after the hurricane. Also, water is free at Dollywood.
She gets a pass, but she’ll still have to give up most of her wealth when the revolution comes.
Taylor Swift is known very well for donating. She donates millions to food banks in every city she’s toured. She also donates on a lot of those gofundme fundraisers, one in which particular really moved her and she penned the song “Ronan”. An incredibly sad and tragic song that will make parents cry, knowing she’s singing about a baby that died despite medical complications, brought Ronan’s mom at some of her concerts, and of course donated to the cause. She regularly funds gofundme campaigns, so overall she seems like a pretty decent person.
I hate the use of her private jet and constant flights, but if you’re that big and hated by some people, then she can’t take regular airplanes because she can be assaulted and murdered. I wish there was some mega jumbo jet that was shared by the rich and did stops in certain cities, like as if it was “public transit” for the rich. That would be great because at least the uber wealthy would be a bit safer from being murdered that way while also certainly cutting down on significant emissions. I’d still hate it and want them to cut back more, but it would be no contest how beneficial sharing one jet versus 100 of them constantly flying everywhere would be. Some of these rich assholes fly insupplies from other countries, exotic food, etc. That pisses me off.
Taylor shouldn’t be a billionaire and I’d love for her to donate and help people out more than she’s already doing. Maybe one day people will see Swift is a bit better than other billionaires, having worked her ass off during the Eras Tour while also gifting millions of dollars to all the dancers and her staff that supported the concert. I went to her Eras tour concert with my spouse, and holy hell that was a phenomenal concert. She basically danced and sang constantly for the entire 3.5 hours or whatever. And she did that back to back for two years? Absolutely insane how much work that would take. I don’t think she gets enough credit, as I do love her music but she’s very hated for some reason.
Taylor should not have that much wealth. It’s insane. I hope she continues to give it away and donate even more than she’s already doing. Would love if she funded progressive parties and stuff like that, to give us more of a choice than the Democrats or the Pure Evil party. Maybe one day she’d be held in high regard like Dolly Parton, but let’s see. For now, I think she’s “one of the better billionaires”, but she shouldn’t be one. They shouldn’t have all the wealth.
Edit, made some slight corrections as I whipped this up on mobile.
You leave Dolly the fuck alone.
You hear.
