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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[–] antidote101 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Almost every billionaire in the world would immediately target any country that tried this for absolute and total destruction.

Sanctions on day one, exposure of phoney corruption scandal on day two, false flag invasion of another country on day three, deposed leader on day four, and splitting up of territorial sovereignty on day five.

Okay, perhaps not that quickly, but you get my drift. I mean, people like Peter Thiel have used people like Jordan Peterson, along with his own connections to white supremacists, and million dollar contributions to Donald Trump to ruin America in the span of a decade... And that's just one billionaire applying some loose change because he's a weird self-hating gay racist monarchist. Imagine what a bunch of billionaires really trying to destroy a country could do.

[–] sudo42 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There’s the “joke” about the king/billionaire being asked, “Aren’t you worried about people rising up against you?” He replied, “No, I’ll just pay other people to kill them.”

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

That worked in ancient Rome for a long while ... until there was no one significant left to kill or fight against ... then the hired hands started looking at their king/billionaire and realized that they could just kill their leader and take all his wealth.

[–] raspberriesareyummy 5 points 7 months ago

As a German, I sincerely apologize for allowing our next mini-Hitler to emigrate to Silicon Valley.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There's two answers to that ....

This is a primary reason to get rid of billionaires because they are capable of becoming the next Hitler or at the very least, funding and supporting the next Hitler

The second answer to that is ..... by your own words, it is an admission that billionaires exert way too much control and influence in our world. If one individual has that much control and power where they are capable of influencing or even changing a government, then that is not a democracy ... that's an oligarchy ... or at least a plutocracy (a system run by money). Allowing any one individual to have so much money and influence defeats the purpose of wanting to organize or even conduct a democracy.

It reminds me of the ancient Greek idea of 'Ostracism' .... where we get our modern word ostracize

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism

A system where citizens identified a possible tyrant or upcoming tyrant in their government and then everyone just voted them out of everything for ten years. It wasn't a perfect system but even back then, everyone knew that if you allowed someone to gain too much power over everyone, then eventually you end up with a tyrannical leader who would want to take control of everything and everyone.

[–] antidote101 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

They already donate to both sides in order to insure their influence. So Ostracism of one or two politicians isn't really going to be an effective preventative measure.