3000 billionaires because you can't convince everybody to ditch school. You can't change people. Pharaoh, Hammurabi. Those are thousands of years of genetic obedience.
8 billion temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
What are we measuring. Like just a braw? A unanimouse revolution?
Ok, let’s look at this…
IF billionaires were removed from the picture, what would be the result?
There would be investment assets in various holding entities that would then be what, up for grabs? Sold off? Put in probate? Trillions in stock alone would suddenly be ownerless. How would that affect the market and the regular person’s investments?
Multiple BoD positions and CEO positions opening up. How would those be compensated? Just make more people rich?
Material possessions originally worth absurd sums now up for grabs to nobody who could realistically afford to use or maintain them (yachts, palatial homes, etc). Manufacturers of luxury goods would vanish (stupidly expensive watches, clothes, cars).
How would you prevent some other greedy, power-hungry f_cks from taking up the reins and putting us right back where we started? There is no point in civilization’s history where greedy f_cks haven’t existed, so how do you prevent their grubby fingers from tipping the scales right back in favor of piling all the money and power in their corner?
What are the unintended consequences?
(This is NOT an argument implying we should keep billionaires, just asking realistically and pragmatically what the result would be should they no longer exist)
The same removal mechanism will need to keep new rich people from getting too rich. In general everything could stay the same in terms of assets if they are divided more equally. Even a billion dollar yacht could be divided and rented out. Who's paying for a billion dollar yacht vacation when there is no ultra rich? Divide that shit again into 500 admissions for a boat party until it doesn't make sense to upkeep.
The same issues arise whenever billionaires pass from old age or sickness. The world will be fine.
I have no doubt the world will be fine, but the hypothetical we're discussing isn't just one or two rich bastards knocking off a year with their legal estate already taken care of in a will...we're suggesting more direct action assisting their departure en masse - which isn't going to happen without a lot of other upheaval causing all kinds of economic turmoil that we're ignoring for the sake of this argument.
Nationalize the assets
Pretty simple and effective.
The billionaires. There are many reasons, but my favorite is the Matthew effect.
Unfortunately that is not how the figures really are. Way too many of those 8 billions will willingly simp and fight the rest of us in the name of those billionaires.
What kind of battle are we taking about? Violence? Then 8 billion people would win because the combined force of knowledge.
This question also really depend on strategy. You know a billion worth doesn't need to be all in cash. Before cash was a thing, we traded items.. but it's rare to trade items that are exactly worth the same, so money is a nice way to compensate that.
The billion worth can all be spent on defense, it can all be spent on pleasing the 8 billion people. It can be spent to create harmony instead of hatred.
Billionaires, because we are too dumb to not fall for their tricks
We're already seeing the results of the fight, so no need to elaborate on who would win and how
It's not the billionaires but the antisocial, amoral whores who will sell their souls for money and do their bidding that are the problem (police, army, etc.), and those who would quietly acquiesce. And of those there are way too many in some societies for change to be easy/possible.
The billionaires are already winning, with no signs of that changing.
That’s because—for many reasons—there are way too many non-billionaires on team billionaire.
I worked with a guy that proudly proclaimed that he voted for the right because they looked after the rich.
He was not rich, but he purchased lottery tickets weekly and stated he'd rather get screwed while poor than pay more tax if he, some day, became rich.
And that was the day I realised that we're fucked.
What an absolute moron.
Ah, see, what you should have done was.....stabbed him in the eye.
Just remember, when we go vote, his is worth just as much as yours.
Hey, don't look at me. I'm on team "unexpected astroid hitting the earth to end it all".
I was devastated when my candidate never showed up again and again...
They will just cook the planet killing us all
With pessimism like that, we won't get far.
All evidence points to a regime change (in the physics sense, not the political) being the necessary condition for things to go from our current state to something new.
We currently have people paying poorer people a very small amount of their own net worth to protect the wealthy person's status and position. This is similar to how kings and queens paid the army and policing forces to control the peasants.
Before the French Revolution I am sure it seemed impossible that the peasants would revolt, but the years leading up to the revolution things were getting worse and worse for the average peasant. There is a tipping point where the average person does not think the current system is delivering on the promise that of you do what you are told you can have a good life. I think we are approaching that point now.
If the rich try to hire someone and underpay them for security, stiff contractors for services, flaunt laws and generally behave obnoxiously at some point people will have had enough. Whether that ends with guillotine action or people just divesting from those systems depends on how much freedom people think they have.
If people thought they could go and homestead, live off the land, and get by without the massive companies these billionaires own then they would have that outlet and choose that peaceful option. The fact that we have taxation creates a pressure to pay in currency which demands earning in that currency. Same with paying rent, you have to earn money simply to live. No amount of growing all of your food gets rid of your financial obligations, so there is no out from the system. If that system is unreasonable it begins to feel less like participation and more like coercive control. Wage slavery is not the same as slavery, but both involve coercion and require the legal system to support them. Both lead to revolutions. Both lead to violence.
I guess the billionaires have to decide if they really want to paint that big a target on their backs by flaunting their wealth. At this point I think they feel untouchable.
The biggest ruse in American history is the modern billionaire convincing the working class Americans that the immigrants, homeless, people of color, and LGBT+ people are the real enemy and the reason you're unhappy. Capitalism is the only functioning system of government, don't pay attention to the fact that almost every other developed country has universal healthcare.
It’s funny cause no one seems to realize that the billionaires are human beings. They have a house, they shit, they piss, they bleed, etc. And yet, everyone is somehow convinced that becoming a billionaire makes you somehow invulnerable.
Its not that. Its the fact that these people hsve entire services dedicated to protecting their lifestyle and security.
And the public security is also geared to disproportionately protect them as well.
Short answer. The elite have private security of their own. And they are allied with rich politicians who control the police and military. They've got a shitload of guns at their disposal.
Yet they can still be taken out by a 3D printed gun on a nice morning walk to the office.
You're not wrong, but if Luigi taught us anything its that they're not as impermeable as they like to appear. It just might take a few martyrs on our end.
An individual with a net worth of “just” $1b can afford to spend upwards of $50m per year on privacy and security, all while continuing to live a lavish lifestyle of excess and see their net worth continue to grow.
That’s more than the annual US household income being spent on a daily basis.
Now consider that the top 10 billionaires have more than 140x that amount.
Yes, they are made of flesh & blood, and are susceptible to all of the same maladies as you or I — but especially post Luigi, they are shoring up their defences to the point that even a motivated individual would have just as much chance of becoming a billionaire as they are to getting to one.
I would hope to be proven wrong, and to see a true working class uprising against them in my lifetime - but alas, I think they are too effective at keeping us arguing against ourselves to ever pose a serious risk to their hegemony.
Hear me out:
zombie movie, but it's the poors storming down the megarich bunkers.
And poor people are theoretically smarter than zombies. Even conservatards occasionally. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1518107286215389
they win because they throw money at enough ppl to build a wall of ppl to protect them
This is happening right now and the billionaires are winning.
Is it, though? Because if the billionaires had all that money but only themselves and their billionaire friends on team billionaire, how powerful would they actually be (in comparison to, say, now) if they didn't have any non billionaires on their side?
I think they're this powerful right now because there are a lot of non-billionaires who are dumb enough to do whatever they're told by them even if it's not in their own best interest (or the rest of the world's) at all.
If we decide money no longer matters it'd be petty easy to eliminate them all. If we continue to let money run our lives then it'll continue to be pretty easy for the people with money to keep all their power.
If we decide money no longer matters it’d be petty easy to eliminate them all
Okay, but then where will I get my passive income? I worked 40 years in the shit and rusty needles mine to build up a big enough nest egg to get passive income. Now I'm too full of staff infections and lacerated limbs and shit lung to work anymore.
I can't afford not to make the next guy work himself to death in the shit rust needle mine.
*Staph.
His people are infected. I think he might be a billionaire in disguise.
Why you think they're tossing so much money to develope ai and humanoid robots?
When shit will hit the fan they want their own private army to watch their ass, but at the same time they don't want highly trained human mercenary inside their golden castel getting strange ideas.
The billionaires spend a small fraction to some idiots to betray their fellow non-billionaires. It's probably about a million people versus the masses.
The billionaires. People dumb AF. Billionaires have money to manipulate people to think they are doing good while they are fucking humanity.
If the people were all invested in taking out the billionaires, then the people would win, hands down.
But if, as in the current situation, the people have higher priorities, in which 50% do not find billionaires to be an existential threat, and at least 300 million think they are simply temporarily embarrassed billionaires themselves, then the billionaires win, that is, until the Earth inevitably cannot support them any longer.
If organized, the billionaires lose. It's really that simple and that difficult.
Okay, then go start organizing?
Huh, it's up to 3000 now.
If it's actually clearly and openly defined as a fight with two sides, 8 billion people. IRL billionaires are just kind of the visible tip of a giant inequality iceberg, so it's not so simple.
Their divide and conquer strategy is busting our asses.
While arriving for the competition, all 8 billion got wedged into the doors of the arena Three Stooges style and were unable to compete.
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