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> I hope the lawnmower goes bankrupt with this and the hostile WB take over. Unfortunately there is no chance of that happening. At his level of personal weal

> I hope the lawnmower goes bankrupt with this and the hostile WB take over. Unfortunately there is no chance of that happening. At his level of personal wealth there is no realistic scenario that leads to personal bankruptcy. In our current capitalist society once you're into the billions you're "too big to fail" and you have unlocked the infinite money glitch. The only consolation is the lawnmower is 81 and thus is going to be dead soon (even the mega-wealthy can't plastic surgery themselves out of this outcome, at least not yet) and he can't take any of it with him. But all indications point to his progeny having aspirations to be even more damaging to society than he has been.

gruez 8mo ago
> In our current capitalist society once you're into the billions you're "too big to fail" and you have unlocked the infinite money glitch. That's not how any of this works. "Too big to fail" can be applied to companies, but I don't know of any examples of it being applied to people.
- bayarearefugee 8mo ago
  Please provide a list of all multi-billionaires who have somehow managed to lose any significant portion of their wealth outside of a divorce combined with bad marriage planning. And even in those rare cases, they don't approach bankruptcy. It isn't that they get bailed out by the government (like the banks in 2008), it is that at the scale of their wealth there is no realistic way to lose it fast enough to make any significant negative difference when the neutral state of wealth at that scale is to snowball ever larger (mostly because we refuse to tax it appropriately).
  - ojbyrne 8mo ago
    In the ballpark ($2-4 billion in the 1970s): https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-silver-market/ https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-...
  - gruez 8mo ago
    Your original comment involved claims of "infinite money glitch". Now you're walking it back to "rich people are rich"?
  - linkregister 8mo ago
    Ten Billionaires Who Went Broke https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-billionaires-went-broke-154453290.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-billionaires-went-broke-15...
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- perfmode 8mo ago
  Thomas Piketty would love to have a word. Piketty’s central argument is that when the rate of return on capital (r) exceeds the rate of economic growth (g), wealth concentrates over time into fewer and fewer hands. This is his now-famous r > g inequality. The implication is that capitalism, left to its own devices, doesn’t naturally spread wealth around. It does the opposite. The relatively egalitarian period of the mid-20th century (roughly 1930s-1970s) was the historical exception, driven by two world wars, the Great Depression, and deliberate policy choices like progressive taxation. The longer historical pattern, which Piketty traces with extensive data going back to the 18th century, is one of increasing concentration. His practical prescription is a global progressive tax on wealth (not just income) to counteract this tendency. He acknowledges this is politically difficult but argues it’s the most straightforward mechanism to prevent a return to the kind of patrimonial capitalism that defined the Gilded Age and the Belle Époque, where inherited wealth dominated and social mobility was minimal. The book’s real contribution was less the theoretical claim (which economists had gestured at before) and more the empirical work. Piketty and his collaborators assembled an unprecedented dataset on wealth and income distribution across multiple countries and centuries, which gave the argument a weight that prior discussions lacked.
  - gruez 8mo ago
    >The book’s real contribution was less the theoretical claim (which economists had gestured at before) and more the empirical work. Empirical work... like conveniently ignoring the fact that there's far less old money billionaires than we'd expect? >For these lucky people, the experience of the Vanderbilts and their contemporaries offers a cautionary tale. At the turn of the 20th century, America’s census recorded about 4,000 millionaires, note Victor Haghani and James White, two wealth managers, in their book, “The Missing Billionaires”. Suppose a quarter of them had at least $5m (the richest had hundreds) and had invested it in America’s stockmarket. Had they then procreated at the average rate, paid their taxes and spent 2% of their capital each year, their descendants today would include nearly 16,000 old-money billionaires. In reality, it is a struggle to find a single one who traces their fortune back to the first Gilded Age. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/how-to-invest-your-enormous-inheritance https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/h...
- cogman10 8mo ago
  There's 100+ people the FBI had tabs on for sex trafficking related to Epstein. So far the only individual that has been meaningfully punished has been Ghislaine Maxwell. This seems like a prime example of being too big to fail. The FBI puts on kid gloves whenever a rich person is accused of wrong doing.
  - gruez 8mo ago
    >There's 100+ people the FBI had tabs on for sex trafficking related to Epstein. >So far the only individual that has been meaningfully punished has been Ghislaine Maxwell. That factoid is meaningless without the rate of prosecutions/convictions for people that FBI "had tabs on".
    - cogman10 8mo ago
      What rate are you looking for? With J6, in the matter of 2 or so years the FBI has secured over 1000 convictions. When it wants to, the FBI can move very quickly.
      - ternaryoperator 8mo ago
        J6 is not a strong counterexample, IMHO. Part of the problem with Epstein is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," for which evidence is needed--and, it appears, hard to come by. Whereas with J6, there were thousands of hours of footage showing the crimes being committed (and in many cases bragged about), which made prosecutions much easier.
      - gruez 8mo ago
        >With J6, in the matter of 2 or so years the FBI has secured over 1000 convictions. Again, large numbers, but no context. How many people did you think were at the riots? 10k? 50k? Moreover, Jan 6th was an event that definitely happened. The same can't be said for whatever happened at Epstein's island. The island exists, Epstein's a convicted sex offender, and people flew there, but associating with sex offenders isn't a crime, no matter how despicable it might seem.
      - 8mo ago
- blitzar 8mo ago
  The "all in podcast"
Aurornis 8mo ago
> At his level of personal wealth there is no realistic scenario that leads to personal bankruptcy. In our current capitalist society once you're into the billions you're "too big to fail" and you have unlocked the infinite money glitch. This is plainly false. There are plenty of example, even recently, of billionaires losing their fortunes or going bankrupt. Often they come with criminal prosecution because they get desperate and try illegal ways to hang on to their wealth. Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, and several other examples come to mind. There are a lot of stories of billionaires getting too risky with their investments or too concentrated in businesses and losing the majority of their wealth. The Barclay story, Jim Justice, the old Peloton CEO. It’s not a common outcome because you have to try hard to screw up that badly when you have over a billion dollars in wealth. Parking it anywhere in common investments would leave you and your ancestors set forever.
- bayarearefugee 8mo ago
  > Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, and several other examples come to mind. Billionaires that were dumb enough to attempt to screw even bigger billionaires. Sure you can find exceptions to the rules, but Ellison isn't going to be one of those.
- dragonwriter 8mo ago
  > There are plenty of example, even recently, of billionaires losing their fortunes Billionaires aren't on the same level of wealth as hectobillionaires, just like decamillionaires aren't on the same level of wealth as billionaires.
yunnpp 8mo ago
> The only consolation is the lawnmower is 81 and thus is going to be dead soon Reminder to lay up your treasures in heaven.
fragmede 8mo ago
> The only consolation is the lawnmower is 81 and thus is going to be dead soon (even the mega-wealthy can't plastic surgery themselves out of this outcome, at least not yet) Haven't been following Bryan Johnson, eh?
- bayarearefugee 8mo ago
  > Haven't been following Bryan Johnson, eh? he's gonna die just like the rest of us, just with a slightly odder uncanny valley look for himself when he goes.
- mi_lk 8mo ago
  Willing to bet good money he won’t outlive someone’s grandpa who smokes two times a day
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  Not only will he die, he is obsessed with his mortality and thinks about death every day. That's no way to spend your life. He's a massive fool.

gruez 8mo ago

> In our current capitalist society once you're into the billions you're "too big to fail" and you have unlocked the infinite money glitch. That's not how any of this works. "Too big to fail" can be applied to companies, but I don't know of any examples of it being applied to people.

bayarearefugee 8mo ago
Please provide a list of all multi-billionaires who have somehow managed to lose any significant portion of their wealth outside of a divorce combined with bad marriage planning. And even in those rare cases, they don't approach bankruptcy. It isn't that they get bailed out by the government (like the banks in 2008), it is that at the scale of their wealth there is no realistic way to lose it fast enough to make any significant negative difference when the neutral state of wealth at that scale is to snowball ever larger (mostly because we refuse to tax it appropriately).
- ojbyrne 8mo ago
  In the ballpark ($2-4 billion in the 1970s): https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-silver-market/ https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-...
- gruez 8mo ago
  Your original comment involved claims of "infinite money glitch". Now you're walking it back to "rich people are rich"?
- linkregister 8mo ago
  Ten Billionaires Who Went Broke https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-billionaires-went-broke-154453290.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-billionaires-went-broke-15...
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
perfmode 8mo ago
Thomas Piketty would love to have a word. Piketty’s central argument is that when the rate of return on capital (r) exceeds the rate of economic growth (g), wealth concentrates over time into fewer and fewer hands. This is his now-famous r > g inequality. The implication is that capitalism, left to its own devices, doesn’t naturally spread wealth around. It does the opposite. The relatively egalitarian period of the mid-20th century (roughly 1930s-1970s) was the historical exception, driven by two world wars, the Great Depression, and deliberate policy choices like progressive taxation. The longer historical pattern, which Piketty traces with extensive data going back to the 18th century, is one of increasing concentration. His practical prescription is a global progressive tax on wealth (not just income) to counteract this tendency. He acknowledges this is politically difficult but argues it’s the most straightforward mechanism to prevent a return to the kind of patrimonial capitalism that defined the Gilded Age and the Belle Époque, where inherited wealth dominated and social mobility was minimal. The book’s real contribution was less the theoretical claim (which economists had gestured at before) and more the empirical work. Piketty and his collaborators assembled an unprecedented dataset on wealth and income distribution across multiple countries and centuries, which gave the argument a weight that prior discussions lacked.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >The book’s real contribution was less the theoretical claim (which economists had gestured at before) and more the empirical work. Empirical work... like conveniently ignoring the fact that there's far less old money billionaires than we'd expect? >For these lucky people, the experience of the Vanderbilts and their contemporaries offers a cautionary tale. At the turn of the 20th century, America’s census recorded about 4,000 millionaires, note Victor Haghani and James White, two wealth managers, in their book, “The Missing Billionaires”. Suppose a quarter of them had at least $5m (the richest had hundreds) and had invested it in America’s stockmarket. Had they then procreated at the average rate, paid their taxes and spent 2% of their capital each year, their descendants today would include nearly 16,000 old-money billionaires. In reality, it is a struggle to find a single one who traces their fortune back to the first Gilded Age. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/how-to-invest-your-enormous-inheritance https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/12/h...
cogman10 8mo ago
There's 100+ people the FBI had tabs on for sex trafficking related to Epstein. So far the only individual that has been meaningfully punished has been Ghislaine Maxwell. This seems like a prime example of being too big to fail. The FBI puts on kid gloves whenever a rich person is accused of wrong doing.
- gruez 8mo ago
  >There's 100+ people the FBI had tabs on for sex trafficking related to Epstein. >So far the only individual that has been meaningfully punished has been Ghislaine Maxwell. That factoid is meaningless without the rate of prosecutions/convictions for people that FBI "had tabs on".
  - cogman10 8mo ago
    What rate are you looking for? With J6, in the matter of 2 or so years the FBI has secured over 1000 convictions. When it wants to, the FBI can move very quickly.
    - ternaryoperator 8mo ago
      J6 is not a strong counterexample, IMHO. Part of the problem with Epstein is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," for which evidence is needed--and, it appears, hard to come by. Whereas with J6, there were thousands of hours of footage showing the crimes being committed (and in many cases bragged about), which made prosecutions much easier.
    - gruez 8mo ago
      >With J6, in the matter of 2 or so years the FBI has secured over 1000 convictions. Again, large numbers, but no context. How many people did you think were at the riots? 10k? 50k? Moreover, Jan 6th was an event that definitely happened. The same can't be said for whatever happened at Epstein's island. The island exists, Epstein's a convicted sex offender, and people flew there, but associating with sex offenders isn't a crime, no matter how despicable it might seem.
    - 8mo ago
blitzar 8mo ago
The "all in podcast"

Aurornis 8mo ago

> At his level of personal wealth there is no realistic scenario that leads to personal bankruptcy. In our current capitalist society once you're into the billions you're "too big to fail" and you have unlocked the infinite money glitch. This is plainly false. There are plenty of example, even recently, of billionaires losing their fortunes or going bankrupt. Often they come with criminal prosecution because they get desperate and try illegal ways to hang on to their wealth. Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, and several other examples come to mind. There are a lot of stories of billionaires getting too risky with their investments or too concentrated in businesses and losing the majority of their wealth. The Barclay story, Jim Justice, the old Peloton CEO. It’s not a common outcome because you have to try hard to screw up that badly when you have over a billion dollars in wealth. Parking it anywhere in common investments would leave you and your ancestors set forever.

bayarearefugee 8mo ago
> Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, and several other examples come to mind. Billionaires that were dumb enough to attempt to screw even bigger billionaires. Sure you can find exceptions to the rules, but Ellison isn't going to be one of those.
dragonwriter 8mo ago
> There are plenty of example, even recently, of billionaires losing their fortunes Billionaires aren't on the same level of wealth as hectobillionaires, just like decamillionaires aren't on the same level of wealth as billionaires.

yunnpp 8mo ago

> The only consolation is the lawnmower is 81 and thus is going to be dead soon Reminder to lay up your treasures in heaven.

fragmede 8mo ago

> The only consolation is the lawnmower is 81 and thus is going to be dead soon (even the mega-wealthy can't plastic surgery themselves out of this outcome, at least not yet) Haven't been following Bryan Johnson, eh?

bayarearefugee 8mo ago
> Haven't been following Bryan Johnson, eh? he's gonna die just like the rest of us, just with a slightly odder uncanny valley look for himself when he goes.
mi_lk 8mo ago
Willing to bet good money he won’t outlive someone’s grandpa who smokes two times a day
mikkupikku 8mo ago
Not only will he die, he is obsessed with his mortality and thinks about death every day. That's no way to spend your life. He's a massive fool.