Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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Almost every problem in the world would be dealt with meaningfully if we outlawed billionaires. (lemmy.ca)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/showerthoughts

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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.

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[+] [email protected] -8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

As it turns you to can't blame billionaires for everything. Also what would that even mean? Are just going to take away there money as soon as the hit the billion dollar mark? What does that mean for millionaires?

Also the billionaires would just make it look like they have 990 million dollars.

[–] Ultragigagigantic 2 points 7 months ago

Are just going to take away there money as soon as the hit the billion dollar mark?

You want us to take something else from them?

[–] antidote101 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wealth disparity and concentration of power into a corrupt ruling class of plutocrats gets pretty toxic to human rights and democracy pretty quickly.

Listen to some behind the bastards episodes, look into people like the koch brothers, or Amazon's union busting, or any of the large political scandals in the past 100 years (eg. Like the business plot) - and you'll usually hear of some wealthy ahole involved funding some shitty attack on where ever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

And even deeper dive into that world is to look up the Dulles brothers and what they did for big business throughout most of the early 1900s on their own, with American government and with the CIA .... they basically transformed the world and world government for the sake of big business (not for America as most people would like to believe)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Taxation .... after a certain level of wealth, all excess wealth is either taxed completely or near completely and it would discourage anyone from wanting to gain too much excessive wealth.

It wouldn't turn our world into a utopia ... there will always be aholes that will want to run and control the world. The difference would be that they would have less power and less ability to actually be able to control the world.

And yes billionaires are not the only problem to our world's problems but they are a big part of it ... they are also actively the ones who make it harder for everyone else to solve the world's problems. So getting rid of them may not solve the world's problems ... but it would make it a whole lot easier to deal with the problems we already have.