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> Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money… Or until actual people take the billions of dollars sitting behind those weak
by username223 6mo ago
> Until people with billions of dollars behind them do something with that money…
Or until actual people take the billions of dollars sitting behind those weak man-children. The US has fewer than 1000 billionaires now, and more than 300,000,000 people. That seems like a solvable problem.
- bethekidyouwant 6mo agoConcrete examples please
- realo 6mo agoTo paraphrase The Donald: Just wait ... in two weeks ...
- prmoustache 6mo agoThe french invented the guillotine. Works wonder.
- speff 6mo agoI suggest you keep going with that math. I'll use the numbers from here [0]. 924 billionaires with an overall wealth of 7.5 trillion. Split among 300 million people, that's about $25k for everyone. Here are some points of consideration: 1. They don't have $7.5T in liquid. The average american won't be able to use that $25k to pay a hospital bill or eat. Also note that one-time wealth transfer won't even pay in full for one major surgery. 2. You've wiped away the incentive for getting-big mentality which drove some of the billionaires to innovate which advances society to this point. Think - discouraging a future Jobs from making another iPhone-like device. 3. After the one-time transfer, it turns out we need more money for the common folks. "Why is the line at $1B? Isn't $900m enough? The line should be $100m." And so on and so forth. [0]: https://fortune.com/2025/12/08/how-many-billionaires-does-america-world-have-ubs/ https://fortune.com/2025/12/08/how-many-billionaires-does-am...
- runarberg 6mo agoThe power and influence (and damage caused) does not scale linearly with net worth. And you don’t need to have money on hand to be able to use it to harm others, you can e.g. use it as a collateral for loans and funding to build your child crushing machine. Personally I wager society would be better if the excess wealth of billionaires was simply deleted, or burned. It would be better yet if that wealth was used in our shared funds to build common infrastructure and services. Leaving such wealth in such few hands is really the worst you could possibly do for society.
- junofan 6mo agoWhy not just force them to to build the common infrastructure and services, and in exchange they get to keep the money? e.g. Jeff Bezos has to build some subway stations in NYC or something. That way you get somebody with a proven track record of building big projects who is also motivated by money, so the common infrastructure and services is handled competently.
- salawat 6mo agoAh yes. Let's trust civic engineering to a man who ran a company that had front-line workers using piss bottles to keep up with quotas. This cannot possibly end badly.
- runarberg 6mo ago> Why not just force them to to build the common infrastructure and services, and in exchange they get to keep the money? Because it is undemocratic, ripe for corruption and abuse, will never work in practice (as the rich will inevitably find ways to game the system). What you are describing is basically just aristocracy, where the rich get to decide what is best for the rest of us.
- don_esteban 6mo agoHm, wouldn't it be better to just have proper labour laws so that people are not worked to exhaustion in Amazon warehouses, for miserable pay? Similarly properly regulate the gig economy. And actually pay servers properly so that they don't have to rely on tips? The today's life is enshittified by thousand cuts ... why not fix them? All that is required is a legislative body that is not bought by big $$$.