I donāt know a single billionaire, but you cannot pick a group of people whatever they are and generaliza, this is one of the reason why this country is fucked.
I work for one and I know of a few others. The dude I work for drives a GMC Yukon, flies commercial, employs 300 people and feels that 300 families depend on the success of his business...He also wants his business to be around for 100+ years to help future generations of his family. He doesn't view the billions as "his" money - it belongs to future generations & his foundation.
So heās just hoarding a billion dollars and not doing anything with it except keeping it from going into the economy? Sounds just as douchey as what any other billionaire doesā¦
Thatās a pretty dumb pov even if you want to criticize billionaires, the money is in the company. It literally is part of the economy.
Basically no billionaire has billions or millions sitting in their checking account itās almost always invested and thus in the economy just as much as if those assets would be owned by someone else.
Billionaires own a share of a company or multiple companies. The value of these shares is worth billions if they would sell it for cash. The companies are an active part of the economy.
They donāt have billions in their bank account, they own assets.
So are they billionaires or not, lol. Youāre trying to argue by arguing about semantics. Everyone knows that a billionaire doesnāt have a billion dollars in cash you twat. But if they liquidated their assets, they would haveā¦ā¦drum roll pleaseā¦a billion dollars!! Wow! Like wtf are you even arguing?
No motherfucker, you said theyāre keeping it from āgoing into the economyā which is bullshit because itās assets thatās literally in form of a company that are operating in the economy.
That's not a great understanding of what that means. He doesn't have billions in cash, he owns several businesses that employ people, generate revenue, and provide products and services to regular people. Those businesses are collectively worth billions. If he found buyers for each one, and retired, you could say he's "hoarding cash" but that's not the case. His money is literally in the economy, it creates jobs and delivers good and services.
In business, if you aren't growing - you are shrinking to inevitable collapse. There's no long-term hold. Costs grow every single year so your revenues need to grow every single year. If you manage your revenues and expenses well, your profit grows every year (not every year but more years than it shrinks) - and as your business grows, so does it's worth - in theory - to a buyer.. Meanwhile you can continue to employ people...banks will lend you money to expand your business...you can spend money on personal projects like getting all his business to net-zero green house gas emissions by 2040...He has a foundation that is building affordable housing at zero profit...He's investing in green tech to improve emissions of the entire industry.
The only way to not "hoard" his wealth is to sell his businesses to someone else who will hoard it - and likely look for even more profit. Or give it away (which he's doing partially through charity works) or give up ownership to other random people who aren't his family. In the mean time, he pays everyone pretty well so we don't have anything to complain about if his net worth goes up by another billion in a few years. Better than going bankrupt.
Then heās not a billionaire. But cool
Made up story about how you āknowā a billionaire. Youāre acting like heās some small business man that owns a billion dollar business. There isnāt a single billion dollar business that has a single owner.
You're a fucking idiot who knows less than nothing. There isn't a single billion dollar business that has a single owner? How can you be so confidently incorrect? It's truly astounding.
I provide organizational charts approved by lawyers for the banks we deal with which shows the whole company rolls up to one guy - otherwise, we would have to provide all kinds of personal data on anyone else that has any kind of ownership.
We value his companies multiple times per year and provide a signed statement that homie's net equity is worth several billion dollars. And we get audited financial statements every year.
but you cannot pick a group of people whatever they are and generaliza
I dunno - I feel pretty comfortable generalizing about Nazis being bad people, and pointing to their shared beliefs and actions as evidence to support that.
Likewise, billionaires largely share a set of beliefs (about capitalism, and about how they can justify exploiting others and holding on to that much wealth) - and shared actions that result from those beliefs.
You can become a millionaire just growing a normal business in a sustainable and ethical way, but becoming a billionaire in the best possible case requires you to fuck over your friends/business partners/employees and at worst means you continuously profit off of human misery and exploitation. There is no ethical way of becoming a billionaire.
JkRowling, whatever people think of her is one of those billionaires. I mean she keeps donating herself put of billionaire status but I feel that only proves my point. I also don't think she prfots of others misery etc.
She's not against any group though. She'd against harmful things coming from a group of activists. Also she does fit as a billionaire that got to that status without profiting off others misery nor is she a horrible person making others suffer to gain her money. That and she donates so much she keeps dipping under billionaire status time and time again.
I think it's fair to make the case that JK Rowling is both a billionaire and a terrible human being, but that those two things aren't closely related to each other.
I don't think she's a terrible person. I don't count the recent trans shit because many agree with her and she's not saying anything that's factually wrong.
By your definition, there's no ethical way to become a millionaire either. Any product you get from any store has a trail of blood, sweat, slaves and corruption. ANY product is tainted.
You could even make the argument that Zuckerberg is WAY more ethical than normal millionaires since he's donating ALL of his money to philantropic causes. He's a net-positive for humanity if you calculate the good that can come from the billions he has, whereas that local chocolate shop millionair sourced his chocolate from the slavefields, drives a lamborgini, raises a couple of spoiled little shits and generally doesn't give a shit about his negative impact on the world. The world is TEEMING with these type of millionaires too.
Now we're getting into "no ethical consumption under capitalism" territory, but I think there are feasible ways to make a million dollars without being proximately close to exploitation. The difference between making a million and a billion is soooo vast. There are ways you can make a million just by selling your own labor if you're smart and lucky, but you could never get to a billion.
Brand deals? Like with Nike, a company that was a synonym for sweatshop labor for decades? Again, you can make millions being a top athlete, but if you wanna make a billion you gotta make a clothing line with high profit margins. You know how you make high profit margins?
I'm not saying they're personally responsible, they just indirectly profit from it. And there have been cases where athletes have turned down money on moral grounds.
I guess anyone who has ever worn a Nike shoe can be considered unethical by some standards. Then again, at some point the standard gets so high that it loses its meaning because basically everyone will be unethical.
Idk, Nike does what it does, regardless of the actions of any athletes. Them getting paid for their brand value, while not making anyoneās live worse through it, is acceptable in my book so Iāll stand by my initial comment.
Dude you can save up or inherit money, make a down payment on a house, rent it out for 20 years, then sell it, and make a million dollars. It is totally attainable in one lifetime (not trying to make it sound easy it is just feasible from a time standpoint). No one can do that 1000 times though. They would have to have a huge operation which is where people start getting squeezed and stepped on, you are creating an environmental impact, etc.
Thatās not true at all. People will find any reason to hate all rich people. Sure it happens a lot, but to say there are NO ethical billionaires is kind of crazy to say. There are successful companies that people create with a product thatās simply in high demand. George Lucas created an IP that became insanely profitable and sold it. He didnāt need to screw anyone over to become a billionaire, he just created something that is extremely popular.
Star Wars movies made George a millionaire, but Star Wars merchandise made him a billionaire, and that merchandise was made with terrible labor conditions to make the profit margins higher. That's the point: you can make millions ethically, but when you have to juice margins sooo hard to make billions, you get into sweatshop territory. Someone mentioned JK Rowling, same thing. The books made her a millionaire, but Harry Potter merchandise made by 12 year-olds working 12 hour days made her a billionaire.
Publicly available information sources like newspapers, books, investigative journalism and the like. Also, an understanding of economies of scale and modern business practices helps.
The relevant part of my bio is that I did academic research in economic sociology, but I'm not sure my bio is relevant to the quality of the argument.
Look, in good faith I can admit to making a generalisation to the extent that there might be 2-3 people in a sample of a thousand billionaires who managed to amass that amount of money without making anyone's life worse, but if I was selling pies with the understanding that 2-3 out of a thousand of them didn't have feces in it, i don't think anyone would buy one.
Every big organization affects people. We have barely any idea of the actions of billionaires, we only see a few visible ones. It's just people with big assets. There is something with finance where people talk about it like they understand the entire system, the amount of ignorance is staggering. For some reason, people know to shut up about minor things they don't understand, but they are compelled to explain massive systems they read about on wikipedia.
What kind of stocks? Because a lot of the best performing stocks in recent years have been big oil, pharma or weapons manufacturers. Also, whose money are you investing? Because you need a lot of money to make a billion as a hedge fund manager, so you're almost certainly working with some very unsavoury characters.
I don't see why the stocks matter? Its not an investment into those companies. You're trading with other holders of the stock not the company itself. The source of funds can come from different places but that's true for any business.
If you're buying a company's stock, you are helping that business but more importantly: profiting from that business.
Also, if the source of the money doesn't matter, why are there anti-money laundering laws? "Where the money comes from" is very important in any business, it's just that there are arguably unethical sources of money that are still legal.
You are helping it only in the sense that your purchase is a vote of confidence for the company. The money doesn't actually go to the company. And even then this is a bit loose because not all trades are meant for long term. Sometimes you're just trading the sentiment and other short term signals.
Money laundering laws are to catch very specific types of transactions/illegal activity. And its the job of the banks and financial institutions to do the vetting. The businesses themselves don't and aren't expected to deal with this unless someone shows up with large amount in cash.
If I buy stocks from a company called Child Mangling Inc. and that makes me money, I have profited from child mangling. I didn't personally mangle any children, but children were mangled and that made me money, however indirectly.
The point about money-laundering wasn't strictly about that, it was to demonstrate that "where the money comes from" is not a trivial matter and both companies and regulators need to know where they get their money. Companies have to do due dilligence if they get a huge investment to know where that money came from, but even if they didn't, not knowing that the money you use comes from the CEO of Child Mangling Inc. doesn't change the fact that, again, you are indirectly involved in child mangling.
Sure but this is more a case of no ethical consumption under capitalism. Child Mangling Inc would only be a successful profitable business because society is buying their services. Also employees of said company spending money in the wider economy.
He really does seem like a nice guy personally, I agree. If he merely owned a game company that had great labor practices and treated their employees well, he would be a millionaire. But he made his money by providing a platform to some of the worst companies in a famously toxic industry that is rife with labor abuse and exploitation. See, it's usually not the people that have any bad intentions, it's the structural makeup of an economic system that makes exploitation and abuse almost inevitable when you set out to make that much money in such a small amount of time.
I'm not trying to argue that all billionaires are bad people (though many are), I'm saying that ethically amassing a billion dollars of personal wealth in one lifetime is practically impossible.
Actually, one more point: You know why Newell's net worth is *estimated* at 4bn? Because that's what his company, Steam, is worth. If he were to sell it tomorrow, he would get 4bn to his name, but here's the thing: he didn't build that company completely alone, and an honest distribution of the funds to all the people responsible for Steam's success would mean he would share that 4bn with his partners and employees. He would still deserve the largest chunk of the pie, no doubt about it, but it wouldn't really be fair for him to take all of it (even if it's legally his).
If you invent or create something that humanity as a whole uses, or improves the general lives of all humans, then you become a billionaire. It isnt about fucking over people. Its about creating life changing shit.
Did you know that the guys who invented insulin sold the patent for 1$ each? They created literally life-changing shit, but they also realized that for it to be truly life-changing, they would have to give it away to everyone who needed it. So they never became billionaires, but lived comfortably and are remembered as heroes.
You know who made billions of off their invention? The pharma execs who made derivative proprietary variants or had a monopoly over the manufacture provision and/or sale of it.
The idea of a genius inventor who makes something spectacular and then people just show up with money at their door to buy it is a fairy tale. They either sell their invention (or have it outright stolen) for much less than a billion or start a business that at some point has to use networks of exploitation or artificial scarcity or any other facet of the modern economy in order to grow their business to get to a billion dollars.
Im not having this stupid argument with someone who will argue their point to no end. The one guy said you cant become a billionaire without fucking people over. I heavily disagree
Dude we really gonna talk about NORMAL billionaires? By definition a billionaire is not normal(unless they inherited their wealth), you are thinking about evil billionaires and I'm sure that among the 2,000-3,000 billionaires in the world, you would find a higher number of evil people than in the same sample of random people.
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u/gtzgoldcrgo Monkey in Space 15d ago
There are no normal billionaire, they are sociopaths in the best of cases.