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[-] Asafum@feddit.nl 29 points 1 month ago

Dumb shit clueless billionaires: "I've rented a house for a vacation once, they want $21,000 a week!?"

[-] RabbitBBQ@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago

The least we can do is give them mock trials and public executions.

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[-] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 month ago

Bill Burr has always been Based.

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[-] RaskolnikovsAxe@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Billionaires should not exist. You don't get to be a billionaire without exploiting people - for that matter once you get over about 10M you're probably stepping on people, or exploiting systems, in order to continue growing your wealth. And why, exactly? It's a sickness that gets worse the richer someone gets. It's been studied and confirmed that people who have excessive wealth convince themselves that they deserve it, they earned it individually, and that they are special and more valuable than others. So instead of riding off into the sunset, they feed their addiction by buying outsized and unearned power in order to shape the laws so that they can make more money. Just fuck off already - you won at capitalism, now get the fuck out of the way and stop screwing over everyone else and making our lives miserable.

Beyond 100M we should just take it all for the state. 100% tax rate. If you want to keep earning beyond that, then great, you will have the glory of contributing to the public good.

But since billionaires have convinced idiots to advocate against the idiots' own interest, and argue that the billionaires can't be constrained in any way, then this will never happen in the current social context. So next best thing is to do as Bill says. Put the fear of God into them.

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[-] wanderwisley@lemm.ee 20 points 1 month ago

Super Luigi time!

[-] Placebonickname@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago

To me it’s not about being “rich” or a billionaire, it’s about staying “Rich” by exploiting others OR the law. Trump is a prime example of human trash that has millions(Or billions if you believe him) but he’s just about the poorest person I have ever heard of him you measure his integrity.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

As usual, lots of people in this thread calling for other people to sacrifice on their behalf by assassinating someone.

And as I said in response to someone, I do not think assassination solves systemic problems, but if you do, expecting else to go to prison (or die) for you is ridiculous.

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[-] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

1.5 people died during hurricane Katrina.

For every billion in a billionaires hands, how many lives are lost? It can probably be quantified.

Using this paper, we can calculate a number of deaths per megawatt of energy consumed (using global averages). If the planet consumes 17,000 TWh annually, and there are 10 million deaths annually, thats about 0.0006 deaths per MWh.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33577774/

Just quick and dirty numbers but from some lazy searching the following companies used..

Samsung: Nearly 30 TWh in 2023. Google: Approximately 25 TWh in 2023. Microsoft: Around 23.5 TWh in 2023.

Samsung:

30,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=18,000 deaths

Google:

24,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=14,400 deaths

Microsoft:

24,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=14,400 deaths

Now these big tech companies don't all use fossil fuels, but we're just trying to get into a ball park... so lets continue as if they had used all fossil fuels.. Samsung:

18,000 deaths/ 17.92 billion USD≈1,004 deaths per billion USD

Google (Alphabet):

14,400 deaths/ 94.2 billion USD≈153 deaths per billion USD

Microsoft:

14,400 deaths/ 69.02 billion USD≈209 deaths per billion USD

So we can estimate some where between maybe 100 and 1000 deaths per billion dollars for these tech companies. Now of course how you make those billions matters (maybe). For example, we can do the same thing with Exxon mobile, which represents 3.7% of global emissions. 10,200,000 deaths×0.037≈377,400 deaths. 377,400/ 37 billion, Exxons 2024 profits gives us 11,200 deaths per billion.

We can of course also divide this out to get to about how much profit is generated before a single person dies. Maybe this could be considered the lower limit where profit extraction should be considered criminal

In the lower end scenario, it would be at between 6.5 million dollars and one million dollars in profit extraction would relate to at least 1 lost life. Obviously extremely rough numbers, but if we look at some one like Musk, allegedly worth 500 billion, that would relate to between 100k and 500k deaths their profit extraction is directly responsible for.

And of course this is only from particulate matter emissions from emissions. There are many, many other externalizes not quantified here. It also isn't fully representative because, yes, many companies do purchase renewables (Amazon claims to be renewable) but this probably gets us close enough to start having a more serious dialogue about the relationship between extractive capitalism and consequences to human life. Based on these back of the napkins, it would seem like every billionaire should be considered responsible for, at a minimum, at least one lost life.

And to put that into Hurricane terms, Elon Musk represents around 300 hurricane Katrinas.

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[-] Iceman@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

Hey! In a labor camp they can learn the meaning of a days hard work.

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[-] ZMoney@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

We had an economic plan for this almost a century ago. It was called the "euthenasia of the rentier class" advocated by john Maynard Keynes. I guess we didn't expect the rentier to also control the financial system.

[-] CapriciousDay@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 month ago

Bill Burr's project to turn every mansion into Luigi's Mansion

[-] normalexit@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

Love Bill. The Monday morning podcast got me through the pandemic.

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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
2008 points (100.0% liked)

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