Everytime I look at small problems or big global problems, if you follow the money trail, it all leads to some billionaire who is either working towards increasing their wealth or protecting their wealth from decreasing.
Everything from politics, climate change, workers rights, democratic government, technology, land rights, human rights can all be rendered down to people fighting another group of people who defend the rights of a billionaire to keep their wealth or to expand their control.
If humanity got rid of or outlawed the notion of any one individual owning far too much money than they could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, we could free up so much wealth and energy to do other things like save ourselves from climate change.
I’m not sure that I agree. While I would support something like outlawing billionaires or at the very least, a tax bracket that claws back significant chunks of what they are draining from society, there are vast nuances to these issues beyond “the billionaires want it that way.” When you say “everything from … can all be rendered down”, I think it’s pretty important to recognize how much detail and nuance is lost in that rendering down.
Billionaires and the accumulation of wealth are just stand ins for the accumulation of power in a capitalistic society. When power is removed, it creates a vacuum. Who fills it? In the ideal, I know most of us would say “the people” but this is an insanely complex balancing beam to maintain without some group of assholes finding a new, non-capital way to extract and centralize that power.
None of this is to say that eliminating the notion of a billionaire is a bad idea. I’m with you all that the very idea of a billionaire is heinous and impossible without vast exploitation. I just do not think that issue being solved would be even close to some panacea for all of the world’s problems. There would just be twists in the existing problems and fun new ones.
Exactly. Don’t hate the players, hate the game. We are too focused on finding a scape goat to see the inherit system is the problem.
Hate both, where it’s appropriate. Some of these players perpetuate the game that we all hate. Elon Musk is a player who has become part of the structure of the game, fighting regulations and damaging democracy for the sake of his own capitalistic endeavors. Someone mentioned below that Dolly Parton could be a billionaire. Not gonna hate on Dolly Parton who I assume did not come by her wealth through being an asshole, but more just being successful and our current “game” rewarding her with more than she would have in a better society. I would tax the absolute fuck out of her though.
you know what, give each one the chance for a nice life. dolly wants a recording studio and school and whatever at her ranch? wants to run a theme park? cool, I can’t imagine her community saying no.
fuckerberg wants to run a cringe mma gym under his apartment?maybe contribute a few lines to vlc or something every year (with extra review)? sure. no more than anyone should have.
shitty Jeff wants to be an aging beach himbo, maybe help people train at an outdoor gym? be my guest.
but they won’t. not until you already have a gun in their mouths, and at that point, its less effort to just kill them.
I don’t agree with that argument.
You’re right from the point of view that removing those with immense power from their billionaire wealth will be replaced by someone or another group. It’s our natural human condition to always want to be in control and there will always be those among us that will want more power and more control than others.
Removing the ability of any one person accumulating enormous amounts of wealth just levels the playing field. If those with a higher need to want more power don’t have the ability to control an entire sector, an entire region, an entire community or even an entire nation than others will have the ability to challenge them and regulate their power and control.
As it is now, when we allow individuals to gain enormous amounts of power, no one has the ability to challenge them. When those with enormous power decide to affect governments, industries, society or finance, there is very little any one can do to challenge them. Sure we can band together and take billionaires to court … but it comes down to how much money you have … the ability to challenge power means you need money and whoever has the most money has the most power. It isn’t a justice system that treats everyone fairly, it’s a legal system that favors those with the most money.
Outlawing billionaires won’t create a utopia, it won’t remove our conflicts we have with each other. What it would do is level the playing field and distribute power among many other people who would all challenge one another as to what they can or can’t do. It would create a more democratic system where power would be spread to more people.
Once we create that distribution of power, we could then spend our energies solving the problems we have with each other and our world, rather than in spending all our time trying to defend finances.
As it is now, democratic power is impossible because power is only centered on those who have the most money.
My argument would be that by eliminating the means of wealth being an avenue to power, it will merely shift to the government that is enforcing those rules. Those same shitty people will infiltrate that government and use it to inflate themselves while oppressing others. There was no utopian society prior to capitalism and fiat currency, and there won’t be one after.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that this is an impossible problem to solve. I just do not think eliminating the notion of a billionaire is the cure for all of your listed ills. I agree with you that it would absolutely have impacts on all of them, but we would still wake up to world hunger, climate change, etc.
Each of your listed issues is a complex, multi-faceted problem. We cannot boil down that nuance just so we can point to our favorite enemy, deserving as they might be. Fight them too, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.
It’s an alternative that has never been attempted in human history and yet everyone is afraid of the notion of ‘Limiting Wealth’.
I am not arguing from the point of view of utopian socialism or a redistribution of wealth … rather, I’m saying that everything in our capitalistic world more or less stays the same way. The only difference is that no one person is allowed to gain a certain level of wealth. Everyone is still free to be as ruthless and capitalistic as they please but their ambitions are given an upper ceiling … for example $100 million of total wealth. All excess wealth beyond that is taxed completely.
Isn’t $100 million for one individual more than enough? What is the sense in accumulating more than that other than a pathological desire to want to gather something that you don’t need. Even worse is the thought that as one accumulates more wealth than they can possibly require means that they have to siphon it from others around them. Uncontrolled, unlimited and runaway growth at all costs is medically known as a cancer. Billionaires are literally cancerous growths on civilization that are slowly killing the entire organism.
Creating a system of ‘Limited Wealth’ wouldn’t affect the majority of everyone … it would only affect a handful of individuals … yet it would benefit all of society.
I think you two are speaking about different steps in this hypothetical transition. You are talking about the long term goal, the other person was talking about the transition from now to the long term scenario. There is very real danger that the power vacuum left by the x-billionaires could be gobbled up by a small group of people. This cannot be dismissed even if we all agree on the end goal.
Secondary critique, set the wealth cap in relation to some other moving metric. I think a multiple of minimum wage would be great, give incentive for the wealthy to increase minimum wage to achieve a higher cap.
Somethin to remember, money is very important to how our current society functions, it gives a lot of power to those that have a lot of it, but it itself isnt something anyone needs. Say, you get rid of all the billionairess and redistribute all of those funds so that everyone is well above the poverty line now. All of these folks that have a lot more money now want to use that money. They’ve been putting off medical care so they try to setup an appointment. Getting rid of all the billionaires didnt create more doctors though. They can only tend to so many people regardless of ability to pay. Say, folks want to eat out and treat themselves. Certainly more people than before will be able to, but not everyone, kitchens and staff can only output so many meals, again regardless of ability to pay. And that’s overlooking how many people no longer work there, that hated it there and only tolerated for the funds to survive.
Basically money does not actually create any resources or services, redistributing the money doesnt mean you have enough resources to cover what that money could buy. That’s the main goal here, having resources for everyone. Capitalism sucks and getting rid of billionaires is important, but dont get complacent with that underlying mission. We need to be working on providing needs to people in a way that doesnt require money. It involves a lot of volunteer work and a lot of automation.
Counterpoint - if people don’t need to take crappy jobs just to afford food and shelter, those jobs will have to provide better pay and conditions to get employees.
Also, if more people can afford to get further education, you’ll get more doctors and engineers and high skilled workers, because they’ll be able to do the training instead of getting several minimum wage jobs just to support their families.
I’ve said it before - any society that can afford billionaires can afford to feed, clothe, shelter and provide basic medical care to all is members, it’s just choosing not to.
I’d freaking love to work as a waitress. It was my dream job as a kid and when I tried it here and there I enjoyed it a lot. But the pay is shit and the social status, being looked down on, as someone stupid or lower… Man, I’d love to be a part time waitress. But until socialism hits and a part time waiting job would be sufficient to feed half a family I’ll stick with the biomedical industry and PhD program.
It always makes me so sad to think about how children talk about those “shit jobs”. You won’t find a kid who wants to become a financial advisor or a tax attorney. Most kids want to build homes, cook, wait, clean, work with animals, drive trains, drive trucks, … Jesus how many kids I see who are freaking fascinated by garbage trucks and want nothing more than to work as garbage men. And then they grow up and society indoctrinates them into thinking these are bad jobs for lower people, and reality shows you that you can’t make a living off these jobs, so better do something you cannot even pronounce.
When i was a kid my neighbour was a waiter and he raised 3 kids with his wife. Not an easy Life but they did it. Now a waiter has to choose between a place to live or food to eat
Counterpoint - if people don’t need to take crappy jobs just to afford food and shelter, those jobs will have to provide better pay and conditions to get employees.
Most of those jobs will just no longer exist. Why would they? If i can afford what i need without having to deal with another dumb customer, i aint goin back into food service.
Also, if more people can afford to get further education, you’ll get more doctors and engineers and high skilled workers
Schools have limited resources too. One teacher can only reasonably teach so many students. Youre also contending with people not needing to get an education anymore. They can afford what they need already, if their goal before was to get a good paying job then that motivation is gone.
any society that can afford billionaires can afford to feed, clothe, shelter and provide basic medical care to all is members, it’s just choosing not to.
Zimbabwe had 100 trillion dollar bills, they sure couldnt afford all those things with it.
I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew, so I’ll just address the ‘jobs no longer existing’ thing—you seem wholly unaware that people enjoy being chefs, waiters, pizza dough tossers, all sorts of food service roles. Helping feed people is much more directly meaningful than most jobs in the developed world. Unlikely that this is the job sector that disappears, and not say the world of finance
This is the circular argument I often have with my friends about wealth and it all boils down to just power.
When billionaires lay claim to enormous amounts of money, it gives them an equal amount of enormous power.
Have that wealth redistributed to millions of people and that wealth no longer matters and no one person has any great level of power.
It’s our own belief that we need or see that it is necessary to have individuals with enormous wealth that is the problem. The belief that our world can only exist if there is infinite wealth.
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won’t happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won’t work that way, ever.
I envision a gradual change … where billionaires are just steadily taxed into non existence, where their wealth is just slowly absorbed into public services everywhere and at the same time any individual that accumulates enormous wealth is discouraged. It would be a process that would last decades or lifetimes and eventually to a point where individual excessive wealth is eliminated.
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won’t happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won’t work that way, ever.
Why not? “We” designed, built, and used such a switch before. It’s #7 in this diagram:
where their wealth is just slowly absorbed into public services
yeah this is in line with the plan of not needing money, providing resources and services without need to pay. Things like public housing, free public transit, etc.
That’s the frustrating thing I see about this debate about billionaires. There is more than enough wealth and resources around the world to have enough food, water and shelter for every living human being on the planet. If we wanted to we could also provide each one of those individuals with an education for the first 20 years of their lives.
Instead we would rather bottle up all the wealth and resources in the world and keep them under the control of a few hundred people who do nothing but keep that wealth away from everyone else and allow the world to stagnant in place for no reason other than to maintain their positions of power.
If we freed up all the available wealth and energy we have for one another towards creating highly educated, highly mobile productive people … we would have engineers, doctors, scientists, inventors, technologists and mathematicians everywhere working on every known problem we have.
Instead, we use the majority of all our energy and capabilities in fighting one another for the right to eat, to find a home or just to live another day.
The other side of the argument is that the change of eliminating billionaires won’t happen overnight. I wish I could pull a switch right now that could drain the bank accounts of billionaires and instantly transfer that wealth to millions of people but it won’t work that way, ever.
I believe switching away from the currency they hold would achieve your desired result. As for the means of production that generates that wealth, just Eminent domain it and give it to a worker co-op as a loam. Probably could be revenue positive given interest and increased taxation from rising working class salaries
While that’s correct in the short term we know it’s possible in terms of resources to feed everyone as we produce more food than we need. Likewise plenty of states have socialised medicine and aren’t running out of doctors. All of these problems can be solved in time, especially after eliminating useless jobs created by capitalism.
it’s definitely possible, but dont accept it as a given, like I said dont get complacent. You eliminate wealth inequality, you have to think about how that food is getting grown or prepared now and how it’s getting distributed. No one has to handle those tasks in order to make enough money to survive anymore. People will have to volunteer to do it, or you’ll have to automate it in some way.
You’re talking (partly) about two different things.
The simple truth is that our planet only has a certain amount of replenishable resources which leads to only a certain standard of living being possible for a certain amount of people.
Thus, the problem you’re talking about only gets solved by reducing the amount of people or the standard of living, globally.
The problem OP is talking about is inequality in the standard of living between people.
Outlawing billionaires alleviates both problems, but the general resources problem only temporarily until the people with lower standard of living now raise theirs by having more resources available, which is what you talk about.
Inequality gets improved permanently by this, so it’s a good change for that problem.
The limited resource problem you’re talking about, though, doesn’t get solved by this at all, there might be a short dip in less resources used while resources are being reallocated, but then it’ll likely go back to before, because most people use as much resources as they can to make their lives as nice as they can.
To solve our problems, both population as well as standard of living need to be limited. Because if either one is allowed to grow infinitely, resources will never suffice long-term.
Outlawing billionaires alleviates both problems, but the general resources problem only temporarily until the people with lower standard of living now raise theirs by having more resources available, which is what you talk about.
no that’s the thing, eliminating wealth inequality doesnt make more resources available for anyone, money doesnt create resources. Millions more people suddenly being able to buy a new car or something doesnt mean millions more cars are going to appear.
That’s why I said temporarily. If there’s demand for millions of more cars, capitalists will find a way to provide the supply very quickly. There’ll be less demand for idk, private jets or sth billionaires buy, and the resources previously used for the fulfillment of billionaire demand will start going to fulfilling the demand of the new things desired by lower classes that now have more money. Obviously it’ll not happen instantly because stuff needs to be repurposed, new supply paths created, but eventually, the resource usage will be equal again.
Getting rid of all the billionaires didnt create more doctors though
Wrong, more people can afford to go to college. The extra tax base also allows for the creation of new schools.
I agree we should switch away from currency. Look at the stuff people do for fake internet points. We don’t need money to create.
We certainly have the tech and the numbers to ensure the starving artist meme is finally laid to rest. Imagine what creations or inventions we are missing out on because it’s not profitable right now.
more people can afford college, and we can afford to build more schools. But that doesnt mean we have the resources to. You don’t throw money on the ground and a school pops out. You pay contractors to build it. Contractors are already pretty busy folks, doing very hard work that’s difficult to attract a large workforce. And it takes a lot of time to build large projects. Construction is a huge bottleneck. We can get around this a bit with online education instead, but that’s still not limitless, especially if you’re teaching such a complex and demanding career as medicine. you need people who are already experts to train doctors, there’s only so many and they can only teach so many.
I think a world without money is a fantasy.
Money is just a means of trading time, time that I put in, for time that you put in.
Some things like being a doctor are harder than being a fast food worker, it takes years of training, and hard work. It makes sense that their time is worth more.
There is a ceiling though where you’re not actively contributing “time” you’ve previously committed time that’s just appreciating because it’s “invested” in paying people for their time. That’s where the problems come in because you have effectively a years work of thousands of people in your pocket, which is a concentration of unchecked power.
Taxing billionaires out of existence ensures that money is invested (in a democracy) by the voters (through their representatives) and keeps the concentration of power from distorting the politics.
This issue isn’t billionaires, it isn’t capitalism, it’s and always has been throughout history, concentration of power. It’s past time we fixed this unforeseen loophole created by the modern world where a handful of individuals become as powerful as a country.
When you have bosses that aren’t “gods among men”, that can’t just buy up their competition to squash it, it’s much easier to negotiate with them to pay you a fair salary. You’re not just a number. Similarly, you can get more done in politics because nobody’s got so much money that they can significantly grease palms/run a campaign by themselves/etc.
The “loophole” is how capitalism works. Here’s my super simple definition of capitalism. Capitalism just distributes resources based on capital. The problem is that capital is a resource that needs to get distributed. Sure a doctor and fast food worker are both being paid for their time. But not the hospital owner, not the restaurant owner. They’re being paid for their capital, they had the capital to own this business, so they own the capital it generates.
I dont think Im really disagreeing with you though, taxing the owner class on a much more aggressive sliding scale of wealth definitely needs to happen, but we need more public sector workers for all that taxed income to be put to use for. The system is flawed and needs changing, just remember that the work still needs to be done regardless of the solution.
The definition of capitalism:
an economic system based on private ownership of capital
I think where I disagree is that capitalism is an untamable beast or that private ownership is bad. Private ownership at the small scale breeds competition and interoperability. At the large scale it becomes a monoculture just like a truly socialist government would be (in both cases the average person’s individual buying power and individual vote aren’t going to move the needle much).
Putting limits on capitalism so that small and medium businesses dominate and the middle class has enough money to reasonably take chances on creating new businesses without gambling their life savings is what I want to see.
You make more money that harder you are to replace. In the case of the billionaires, they are theoretically hard to replace so they make a ton.
Of course you don’t need to be a billionaire to to be wealthy. You can just be good at business and managing money.
“Taxing them out of existence” is the craziest and dumbest idea I’ve heard in a while. You can’t just do that as it is there money that they rightfully earned. There also would be the issue of the people who have 990 million dollars. Do you want to tax them to oblivion to?
Billionaires are not the problem
There is nobody that’s worth a billion dollars, that’s wealth hoarding. There is no reason our government should endorse that level of wealth hoarding. It hurts infrastructure, it hurts innovation, it hurts national security, it hurts the press, and it hurts our democracies.
It’s the same rational for why we shouldn’t have monopolies and why we have laws against them. Concentration of wealth/power is a very bad thing.
I genuinely do not believe you can be a good person and make a billion dollars. You have either scammed your customers, scammed your employees, or both. There should be a limit on individual wealth.
The problem is you can’t just get rid of billionaires. They are just people who made a lot of money by getting really lucky.
It is also important to note that they do give back there money in many cases as a billion dollars is a huge amount of money. Honestly 10 million dollars is a lot. You can’t just make the wealthy successful people go away because you are jealous.
At the end of they day the richer you are the more unhappy you are. If you basic needs are met you can’t become more happy with more money.
It’s not luck, it’s how money works. Money buys you ownership. And there are many things that generate money for the owner. Businesses, stocks, real estate. It’s a feedback loop that concentrates wealth like we see today.
It is also important to note that they do give back there money in many cases
no they dont
In the US we used to have a very high tax rate for those who were extremely wealthy, Distributing the excess back to the government/citizenry. We need the return back to that.
The citizenry need to ask for that, as well as for ranked-choice voting.
As far as voting is concerned everyone who is eligible to vote should get one vote. It is a terrible idea to do anything other than that.
As far as taxes go, we should simply encourage people who are wealthy to fund charities. Also the tax rate is already pretty high. Maybe we just need to increase the number of rungs on the scale. I don’t think millionaires or billionaires have anything against taxes or at least nothing compared to the rest of us.
You should look into ranked voting. You still only get one vote, just if your preferred candidate is eliminated you can propose your second/third choice as well. This allows you to vote with your morals but also strategically.
This isn’t correct
You get 1 vote but you’re giving points to the 1st/2nd/3rd option
Most people differ on first option so someone politically between the two usually gets to win
The hopeful outcome is that you get candidates further left or right than what is presently available even though they wouldn’t win
That just sounds like a over complicated solution to a problem that doesn’t exist
One party system?
“Oh wow so undemocratic holy shit you psycho how dare you even suggest a thing?”
Two party system?
“Oh woooow so much democracy everyone gets to choose between two options. Perfection achieved. Aliens cross the galaxy to study our high advanced flaeless two party system in a desperate hope to emulate it”
More then two parties?
“No way there should be more options, that’s just crazy you psycho how dare you suggest this to me just shut the fuck up and vote for the blue conservatives.”
I hope some day you think outside the box. More like a prison then a box really…
The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive. Those people always come up with unending lists of reasons why we just can’t survive without people of unimaginable wealth and power.
It’s not the billionaires. It’s the enablers.
The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive.
I call this set the “idiot army”, the activated dunces. It’s propaganda, this 40% is not inherently bad people, it’s guillible, low-education, low-information people that have been activated by malicious propaganda to promote the interests of the billionaire class.
The solution lies not in eliminating or dominating this group, it lies in de-activating them. The typical person in this group, if not being actively directed is too busy in their own world to destroy society.
The first step towards any sort of revolution (violent or not) or real change our world needs has to start by destroying all for-profit news. As long as for-profit news controlled by the billionaires exists, the idiot army cannot be deactivated, and any acts of heroism will be called acts of terrorism.
Edit: But how to destroy the news? Law, as long as we exist in a state, use the available tools. Focus on ranked choice voting, increasing voter turnout, and running for office to collaborate with others to make laws that prevent the news from being so toxic and so profitable. What kinds of laws? Just throwing out ideas
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Change the First amendment (bill of rights) so that it applies only to individuals. A news business or organization does not have the right to free speech or press.
- Make the news unprofitable and risky for a business
- This would probably have a ton of other beneficial effects as businesses could then lose the right to lie
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Any company that produces news content may not operate in another other industries, and may have no executives or board members currently in any other company or married or have children in other companies.
- Make it difficult for the bad people to be in charge of the news
Agreed. A good first step was taking Fox to court. While we work to change the Constitution, we need private citizens suing enough that it stops being profitable to lie.
It’s propaganda, this 40% is not inherently bad people, it’s guillible, low-education, low-information people
There are plenty of highly educated people who are gullible and easily manipulated. Hell man, every fanatical Trumper I know has at least a bachelor’s degree.
There are definitely smarter and more educated Trump supporters, but I don’t count them in this group, I feel like those people more consciously and intentionally feel like Trump will help them exploit and oppress others (e.g business types, police, etc).
Great point and one I often circle back eventually when I have these discussions with my friends.
I’m starting to think that it is another one of ingrained human traits … we always want a world with protectors, leaders, figure heads … it’s like being children and wanting to be comforted by a parent, a mother or father.
Except it’s a twisted kind of need that we outgrew a long time ago because we are all becoming very capable, knowledgable and intelligent enough to exist on our own. Modern technology, the internet and mass communication is making us more aware of the world and each other and we are realizing that we don’t need figureheads any more.
We’re all made to think that we don’t, won’t or can’t possibly think like this. We’re made to believe that the world and humanity is one big dumb mob that would crumble without a leader.
I believe the opposite is true … it’s our supposed leaders, figureheads, strong men and billionaires that have all the incentive to keep the world as it is because it would mean they would lose most of their power and wealth … and with it their positions as leaders and figureheads.
The Emperors are strutting about the world completely naked … and we have to keep up the pretense that they are wearing the most beautiful fashions imaginable.
I’m starting to think that it is another one of ingrained human traits … we always want a world with protectors, leaders, figure heads … it’s like being children and wanting to be comforted by a parent, a mother or father.
A subset of humanity does, check out https://theauthoritarians.org/
If the billionaires can activate this subset in their interests, they can protect their positions.
That is one of many aspects, absolutely. The most liberal person I know has said and done many things to show me the way. But when asked about putting Trump on trial (He despises Trump) he says we should not because (basically) it would “look bad to children when they read about a US president being tried for crimes” in the history books.
I’m like, dude, if we don’t punish this MoFo, the next one is going to be writing the history books for us.
I’m pretty sure @unreasonabro@lemmy.world was being sarcastic.
It’s like every group of people in the world regardless if they are American or not … this only applies to the billionaires who are only a very small minority of the global population.
Just look around you and anyone you have remotely interacted with in your life … are they a billionaire? If yes then they are affected … if not, nothing changes.
All this talk about billionaires would only affect a few hundred people across the eight billion people on the planet.
Either we shift our thinking to getting rid of billionaires … or we continue to stand aside and let them rule the world to our collective detriment.
Wealth is just one means of power. Destroying all billionaires, while a good step, would not even come close to solving almost every problem in the world.
Right now billionaires are a huge bottleneck to global development and those people who actually want to do something about our worlds problems. Getting rid of them won’t solve our world’s problems … it will just make our problems easier to solve. Leaving them alone means our problems persist while they actively block everyone else from dealing with the world’s problems.
Throughout history power has been used to obtain wealth and comfort. So if you remove the ability to leverage power for wealth, you remove the primary motivator for obtaining power for most people. There are certainly people who want power for the sake of power, but most people want power to obtain comfort.
