We have failed not just as a society but as a species by allowing him and all like him to survive this long.
Capitalism is amongst the worst things humanity has ever designed. We’ve not just allowed, but encouraged the rise of the likes of Musk and Thiel, celebrating their success even! Too many people believe the lie; it cannot be modified or replaced. They believe this lie, while idolizing Musk thinking that could be me one day.
The celebration part and the “white knights” defending these cunts using oversimplified logic is what made me lose faith in humanity.
We are really asking so hard to go extinct is not even funny anymore.
Honestly believe extinction or at least some kind of end of life as we know it isn’t that far off.
We will eventually lose our purpose to the elites. What will they do with us then?
havnt heard that in a while, they switched to “why you making fun of conservatives or nazis, inclusivity”. i usually call them white defenders(defending anything that a white person would do that is terrible, or think it is good"
This
I saw someone excusing this with “but they are creating wealth” in the anti consumption subreddit today. We’re beyond fucked.
UNFORTUNATELY we CANT Tax this TRILLION DOLLARS because it’s not REAL money but Also Elon Musk can BUY Countries because it’s Real Money!
-Republicans!
Time for some kinetic wealth redistribution.
If we do it now everyone gets $125 and if we exclude everyone who has over $1M we get way more than $125
I don’t care if it’s $3.50, just as long as Elon Musk is made the example he deserves to be. A single room apartment, with a crappy landlord who never fixes anything, and a job that never allows his head to be above water. He can become the exploited worker he’s always dreamed of.
stopicanonlygetsoerect.gif
Sure, but the mechanisms that collected $125 per person could be disassembled and stop leeching on society. The gains would continue!
i think it might be more useful, just maybe, if instead of giving everyone an individually meaningless amount of money, we take his money and use it to buy stuff that we all need. maybe we could set it aside to pay for medical expenses for everyone, or maybe to update schools, or buy homes for everyone who needs one.
Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
Some would say deep kinetic wealth distribution
Ah, British insults 🤗
There is a trillionaire now, and people are letting this happen. We should all be in the streets up in arms together and not leave until Elmo musk is brought down to destination
No more billionaires, no more super millionaires, I want wealth caps! Nobody should be worth more than 10 million dollars, any income over that must go straight to taxes, world wide
What we need to do is ban using securities as loan collateral. That’ll end this bullshit in its tracks.
Amen to that. I think about 10 million is the proper amount of max wealth. I always say its the ideal size lottery winnings. Enough to retire on the spot, and live out the next 40-50 years well, but not enough to become a psychopath.
i hope his dick falls off in the toilet tonight.
just falls right off. no trauma, no event, but just plop there it goes.
fuck elon. fuck xai.
build the fuckin water treatment plant you promised in memphis.
From your lips to God’s ears my friend.
Or end world hunger as he promised
Isn’t all excessive wealth built on suffering?
It doesn’t have to be, but those are the incentives we have set up
really curious how you think someone could obtain a trillion dollars without exploiting others
I can only think of one: massive inflation à la 2008 Zimbabwe. They printed a 100 trillion dollar bill by the end of that one, so nearly everyone was a trillionaire.
Now they’re in an entirely new hyperinflation crisis, but it’s nowhere near the 89.7 sextillion percent year-on-year inflation rate they saw at the first’s peak.
Edit: fucking hell, they’re releasing yet another currency: the Zimbabwean ZiG. IYKYK
That does causes suffering tho, and it’s not a massive wealth anymore.
You’re absolutely right. It would have to be intentional, planned inflation, where the populace decided to scale down the value of all existing currency while providing everyone enough additional currency to exactly maintain their original financial worth.
So only viable in micronations where the populace of five got really high one night and had a profound idea they thought would be totally fucking hilarious.
I think I know what you might be suggesting.
Instead of an extravagant lifestyle only for a small few as a result of their intercepting and concentrating the majority of the labor output, all people could live a similarly extravagant lifestyle if the system were to change entirely.
It would require a massive shift, including off-world resource acquisition and hugely increased energy generation as the amount of both required for every person alive to live in luxury vastly exceeds that which is available on earth, but it’s not impossible to complete without causing others to suffer. That’s just the easy route for the planet’s wealthy sociopaths.
Correction: All capitalist wealth is built on suffering
But of course there has never been any suffering in any socialist system!
Perhaps we should read a history book and find out when the peak of human prosperity was achieved and figure out how that happened.
The difference is that:
Socialism is built on the concept of the planned reduction of suffering for the majority of people. It can and has been used by tyrants to make themselves wealthy at the expense of the country and its people.
Capitalism is built on the concept of the planned increase in suffering for the majority of people for the exclusivity of the few. The negative aspects described in socialism above is the core goal under capitalism.
The two biggest famines in human history weren’t caused by droughts or natural disasters. They were caused by socialism.
Socialism was a failure. The economic policies of 1930s capitalism was also a failure.
Fortunately those aren’t the only two options. We don’t have to follow the failed systems of the past. There were successful economic policies used after WWII up until Ronald Reagan which were very successful.
Trust-busting, taxing the wealthy, and Keynesian economic policies were what led to the peak of human prosperity.
Socialism from the perspective of the working class was starvation followed by building lots of shitty tanks, followed by economic collapse. You should read history from that perspective a little more instead just reading the writings by the elites in those societies.
Are you talking about communism or socialism? You shouldn’t conflate the two. Both are different from each other and you.
The peak of human prosperity
You’re looking at this purely economically - prosperity isn’t only financial and this is where you’re failing to understand what wealth actually means. It’s more than what’s in your bank account.
But you’re correct that actually taxing the wealthy correctly would alleviate some of the problems using that to fund social programs would be a good start. That is what many European countries do - many are classed as Social Democracies for that reason.
Unfortunately I have read a lot of history so am not blissfully ignorant. But please don’t gatekeep thoughts or pontificate on “how smart you are”. It’s rather crass. Talking down to people only makes you seem gauche. There’s enough of that in the world.
It always weirds me out to see conservatives on Lemmy.
Not sure how stalinists can plausibly claim to be socialists.
You can’t have worker control without democracy, and the USSR certainly did not have democracy.
It had a new ruling class, based on party position rather than money.
That’s not socialism - socialism requires democracy by definition.
Stalinists and Maoists who claim otherwise are idiots.
Also billions in welfare from the US government.
In 2020, Elon Musk was worth around $25 billion dollars.
Eat the rich.
I was hoping he’d fail to get that valuation but you know what, it’s fitting. Capitalism is bullshit, neoliberalism is a scam, a king of obvious, ridiculous frauds having the hugh score in the game is perfectly fitting.
Don’t forget a Nazi also.
I doubt the second and third trillionaires won’t also be killers
Well I’m sure the second trillionaire will be nice and down-to-earth
His companies have been valued at $X billion/million each. That doesn’t mean he (or any of the “richest people”) actually has that much wealth. It means that he has gamed the system of company valuation. He needs that for his fragile ego.
Of course they’re all still wayyyyy too rich, but -
Fuck that “trillionaire” shit. Every time this is mentioned, Musk’s ego is stroked. And I feel dirty just writing that last sentence. Eww.
No and yes. Actual wealth is stupid complicated and difficult to see, but when you have stocks priced that high, you can trade shares or take bank loans against them. So in some sense, it’s partially real money.
That Schrodinger’s wealth is super useful for gaming the tax system, and since it’s not in cash or gold or whatever, you can’t really guillotine the owners and distribute it because without the backing of banking and stock market, those stocks are indeed worthless.
As you can see, the neoliberal "free market x combines worst parts of every system and serves only evil, corrupt ones. There can never anything good come out of such an economic system.
You can take loans against the “worth” of your company, which has been overvalued in a corrupt way. It can grow into a pyramid scheme; Musk certainly did this.
Not only can you take loans against your shares, but you can pay the interest on those loans with dividends from the shares, and because they’re a loans, the cash-in-hand is not taxable, so you pay NO TAX on it. You have no “income” on paper, but you can pay people and companies with shares instead of money, shares that you can literally conjure into existence by typing numbers into a spreadsheet. Those money and shares are really useful for greasing the palms of politicians, government officials, and hangers-on so that you can get your way. You can even use this money and influence to cause riots and stoke division in society.
His net worth is inflated even by American standards where net worth is already insanely inflated.
A lot of times, company evaluation is calculated by being roughly 10x it’s yearly revenue. Alphabet, meta, all fit this. Space X is literally valued close to 100x
company evaluation is calculated
I listened to a podcast about this and according to that it’s more insidious; valuation companies are owned by the people who own the business to be valued, and similar types of corruption.
I mean, isn’t a company’s valuation decided by the company themselves? Rest, when market forces are controlled by private hedge funds, asset management companies, and retirement funds, I feel normal Market rationality cannot be assumed. Market ownership right now is highly concentrated in these entities, and they have all the incentives to keep these valuation up for the reasons you stated.
It’s interesting that the more you learn about the market the more it looks like a ponzi scheme😂
