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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Pure greed
Are you presenting him as an example of a good billionaire? Cause still, nah.
It was not my intention, I edited my comment to make it clearer.
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.
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!!
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%.
And lo and behold, the greatest period of prosperity in American history. In the 80s, Ronald Reagan cranks it all the way down to 25%. One two skip a few, now we live in a corpo hellstate where no one can afford anything except the nobility who live in a state of extravagant grandeur many exponents removed from the common man. The correlations are obvious.
High percentage high tax brackets are not the single cure-all silver bullet for all of America’s woes, but it gets us pretty damn close.
It’s a start for sure. Just think of the windfall of cash that could be funneled to the DoD! Think of how much money could be unaccounted for during the audits.
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.
Those billionaires are being propped by stupid people buying exorbitant ticket prices to see their idols dancing from a mile a way. I blame the populace for this. you can make them irrelevant without even spending a penny.
As someone in the entertainment business, those performers don’t like ticket master either. Or at least on the level I am at.
Basically the only way for a professional touring musician except those like her at the top to make money is to sell merchandise at this point. Either that or play small clubs which don’t use Ticketmaster and get a small take of the door. It’s ludicrous that so many very talented people can’t make a living as musicians anymore.
I guess that’s the difference between me and Taylor Swift.
TM decimates every show i am involved in
This being said on the same platform that basically every third person believes voters aren’t responsible for their votes.
We can always assume people will be stupid, so I don’t think they’re gonna all stop wasting their money. Even if half of them did TS would still be a billionaire
If every single one of Taylor Swift’s concerts were free, past, present, and future, she’d still probably be a billionaire. Artists don’t really make that much on ticket sales, the ticket vendors and venues are the ones making all the money. Swift’s net worth mostly comes from the value of the rights to her songs, not ticket sales.
I think you would be right in a lot of cases but does that apply when you routinely sell out these extremely expensive shows like are being discussed here?
Taylor Swift probably has it better than most artists, considering she’s probably the most famous music artist on the planet right now, and even if you only make a small percentage off of ticket sales, a small percentage of an astronomical number is still a big number. I’d still be willing to bet the bulk of her net worth is in the rights to her music though.
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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.
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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
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”
You could also argue there are no good millionaires by the same logic.
Heyyyy, you’re starting to get it!
Heyyyy, you’re starting to get it!
Careful, the middle-class socialists on Lemmy who dream of owning a nice house will get mad.
But more pertinently, the argument can be applied to anyone as long as there is suffering in the world and unnecessary luxuries. And while I think most of us here agree that there is a structural issue with that, I’m far less fond of the idea that Joe Schmoe working a soul-crushing minimum-wage job should never do anything other than work, sleep, and donate every spare penny to charity because keeping or using wealth while others are suffering would make him a bad person.
There’s also no good 100thousandaires because wealth accumulation is bad
Heyyyy, you’re starting to get it!
Swifties triggered.
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.
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.
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.
Billionaire: “So if they don’t exist anymore, I’m good? How many do I have to kill?”
