this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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Showerthoughts

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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] -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Do agree we should increase competition