Comment on The sickness of infinite greed cannot be sustained on our finite planet
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
This is what’s really crazy.
A long time ago, I was having a conversation with a workmate. Guy earned as much as me. I asked him what he’d buy with $1 billion that he couldn’t buy with $50 million.
He couldn’t name one actual experience/object that he’d need the extra money for.
Still insisted that he wanted the billion.
Power.
Not a nicer car. Not a better vacation. Not a bigger house.
The ability to buy companies, fund institutions, shape industries, influence politics, and absorb enormous losses without changing your lifestyle.
At a certain point, more money stops buying a better life. It starts buying more control.
The ability to use money as a weapon
For us that just means putting 3 to 5 lbs of loose change in a thick sock. =\
It used to be philanthropic stuff - because buying public opinion/legacy is pretty expensive. So you fund a big charity, do some speeches, and are celebrated for being so generous.
Seems like the major expenses now are donating money to fascists and buying big boats.
But $1B (at today’s levels of value - the number isn’t the issue, the relative value and lost opportunity cost of distributing some of this back to the people is the issue) is an obscene amount of money. You could invest it in some safe asset making 2% per year and yearn $54k per day ($20M/year)
Have they ever done philanthropy that wasn’t for avoiding taxes or laundering money?
The reputational aspect is definitely a big part of it - they want to be seen and remembered a certain way. Bill Gates is a good example, but he blew all that up by raping children (maybe). Before the Gates Foundation, he was viewed by the public as a typical evil miserly cutthroat businessman who was also a weird nerd. Gates Foundation & making sure everyone knew about it did a lot to sway public opinion.
And the actual people at the Gates Foundation did great work - they helped to control and eradicate deadly diseases in the global South. But it isn’t like Bill was doing that work, he was just allowing someone to cut the checks.
Melinda Gates has done a lot with the Gates Foundation. I personally have been mostly funded by them for most of my career. This includes many failed attempts in some areas, and in others lead to new vaccines for meningitis for epidemic response and routine use. There are many other amazing things the foundation has funded, but that is the success I have directly been a part of.
If you gave me the choice between 50 million and a billion I’d take a billion too; but if you gave me 50 million no one would hear from me again as I would quit my job, move somewhere quiet, and keep to myself.
Just for clarity’s sake.
The question was ‘What can you buy with a billion that you couldn’t get with $50 million?’
Right, but you said they insisted they wanted the billion. I’d want the billion too, but if I had 50 million I wouldn’t be complaining that I didn’t have a billion.
I wouldn’t quit my work with 50 million. I’d turn it into a big corp then invest in more. I’d likely work just as much but it would be to make more cash to invest into more companies so I can see my own agenda play out in ways I want.
Someone that would fuck off with 50 million would fuck off with 5 million and that’s exactly why you won’t ever have that opportunity.
That’s not me saying it’s a bad thing that you’re like that, just the reality of how some people think.
“If I had a horde of money I’d try to make it an ever bigger horde so I could tell people what to do.”
Yes, that exact attitude is the problem with billionaires and why simply being a billionaire is a sign of mental illness, because people without a hording disorder will fuck off long before they get to a billion.
You’re part of the problem.
Still insisted that he wanted the billion.
That demonstrates the underlying problem. When you can quantify something, people can compete over it. To most people money is THE quantifiable thing about humans. We literally call a person’s money number their “net worth.” It’s not “oh that guy with all these relationships and virtues and vices has just seen his net assets exceed one billion.” It is “he is now worth one billion.”
So with it carrying such cultural weight and such quantifiability… I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes the problem really as is simple as “number go up.” Unfortunately, simple problems can still have impossibly complex solutions. How do you change the nature of a person, and then do it en masse? How do you break one feedback loop and get into another? (the people in control would make society more decent if they themselves grew up in a more decent society)
Rebuild all the schools in my local district? Set up a permanent endowment for the Freedom from Religion Foundation? Turn as much land into nature preserves as I can possibly afford?
Maybe these aren’t “things” you “buy” but it doesn’t take much creativity to blow a billion. I think I just blew a whole bunch of them.
You’d never make it to a billion with that kind of attitude
At my last count there were about 30 schools in my county. That puts them at less than 34 million each. A quick google search places the cost of building a new middle school at between 30 and 125 million dollars. So…yeah. Rebuilding a school district would be a straightforward way to spend a billion dollars.
Easy, 1000x more LEGOs.
Woah op said billions, not trillions
You could step on a LEGO for every step the rest of your life.
If, given the option, I would want the larger sum of money, too.
But I could also feed and educate a fuckton of people while still living it up on roughly 4%.
I’d buy a few of your countries, a space company/rocket ships. A few nukes or the facility to make them…
Oh wait that’s exactly what they did with that money.
It’s what you would do, too.
Which is why no one should be allowed to have that much. Not even nation states as we’ve seen.
It’s what you would do, too.
The fuck it is. Speak for yourself.
GardenGeek@europe.pub 3 weeks ago
Super-yachts.
One of the main reasons these are booming is that a billionaire can spend a sum on them he might actually see on his account. Fine food, cars, even mainsons are so cheap that they earn more through passive income while they’re buying these things than they’re actually spending. At the same time people, even in tje ver same society, go hungry to bed or are incapable of getting their health condition improved… it’s just crazy.
20cello@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Evil rather than crazy
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Sounds like super yachts need to be sunk.
MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
@orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts