Hi comrades, I’m new here, how do we feel about posting Mastodon content on Lemmy?
Not only nobody “earns” that much money, nobody should have the right to command the amount of influence that kind of money provides.
We are literally talking about FIVE people fucking with the lives of the entire planet.
Even if you add the active politicians of every country on earth, it would be a minuscule number of people controlling the lives of eight billion of us, and the most frustrating part of it is that vast majority of that eight billion thinks this is normal, or even should be encouraged.
Most of the eight billion don’t think it’s normal. Basically just the golden billion do (aka the West, Global North, Imperial Core, First World, etc.).
Most of the world thinks that the working people should control their own destinies.
The minimum wage is a complete joke. Tie it to median rental prices of the area. Tie it to inflation at the very least (after adjusting for the past decades of inflation). Tax capital and not labor. There is a lot that could be done, but we keep voting these geriatric vampires to DC and they can’t seem to give a shit about most of the country.
Or the government could just set price controls on everything necessary for life. Already happened under Nixon
Nixon also passed a windfall tax on US corporations after the hyper-inflation of the 70’s.
straight leeches man i tell u
I firmly believe individuals shouldn’t pay taxes themselves. Tax should be on the side of corporations which have the means and funds to pay well informed people to manage it. Individuals don’t have the means, the money or the time. But of course politicians are puppets for the corporations so any pro worker change in this regard is unlikely. Sad.
Most of this wealth is in stocks, though. Their worth is based on the number of shares they own of these companies. For every share they sell the value of the other shares drops a bit. So if Musk or Bezos sold all their shares, to have this money in actual cash, not only would they probably bankrupt their company and crash the stock market, but the cash they got out of it would be only a fraction of what this shows on paper now.
You do a structured sale overtime and those do take place even in the billions of dollars without destroying the value of the stock. Also, they can borrow against the value of the stock, usually for extremely low interest rates, to quickly infuse cash. This argument is nonsense. The best recent example is elon buying Twitter. Yes it hurt tesla stock in the short term but it is almost back to the presale value with little impact on his overall networth. The wealth in stocks is very real.
Edit: The elon case isn’t even a good example because he was forced to sell the stock much faster than normal.
“But billionaires’ cash isn’t liquid! They can’t access it until they need $44b to buy a social media company!”
The one good thing about Elon Musk is how he disproves the myths of capitalism like this and meritocracy.
I’m not sure how to edit comments so I’m adding this… I agree with the sentiment and how insanely low the minimum wage is. But these billionaires don’t actually have the amount of money most people believe they have. Functionally, it’s nowhere close.
They still treat that money as a real value though. Musk put up a shit ton of Tesla shares to cover the Twitter buy. I think I understand that you mean the big numbers should be slightly smaller big numbers but if they are wielded and function at those levels then that’s kinda the same thing.
This is a good point as well that gets left out. If you can take out loans against that wealth and spend that, how is that functionally different than having the money yourself in the first place?
@133arc585 @MobileSuitBagera I suppose “functionally” it about liquid assets vs fixed assets. One can borrow against their house in order to get cash in hand.
Right, their use of “functional” is wrong. It is functionally the same, because it serves the same function; it is not technically the same, but it is functionally the same.
But these billionaires don’t actually have the amount of money most people believe they have. Functionally, it’s nowhere close.
What do you mean by this?
If you have $10 billion is STOCKS (which is what ALL of these billionaires have, NOT cash)… then even if you sell your stocks you’ll end up with WAY less because of how the stock market works. Also taxes.
Let’s say you only get 10% of the value, which is a massive stretch. What’s 10% of $10 billion? $1 billion. That is still an absolutely insane amount of wealth.
The point “they don’t have as much as you think” is meaningless, because the amount they do have is still exceptional. There’s no functional difference past a certain threshold.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that the workers who built these companies shouldn’t be compensated through stock for their contributions? I’ve just heard your argument a lot and I think, OK, if they don’t really control that much wealth, why not spread it around. They wouldn’t be losing anything, or not much of value. Really need to have a tax on wealth, above a certain level, in my opinion at least.
Oh, and on the web version of Lemmy, there should be an
editbutton at the bottom of your post.Ah thank you, I’m testing out an app and it must not be built in yet.
And these folks should totally share their share of the company value with employees! I think that’s excellent compensation because it helps everyone it’s given to. Those that need money now can sell and have cash, those that don’t can save it for a rainy day/retirement. These billionaires should NOT have this level of value to their name. They deserve more money than anyone else in the company gets, because they’ve worked their way to the top, but like… not a fraction of what they actually receive.
They deserve more money than anyone else in the company gets, because they’ve worked their way to the top
This is fallacious. Their status is not generally a product of their hard work and dedication. It’s often the product of a mix of luck, nepotism, screwing people over on your way up, lying, and other ethically questionable activities. I’m not saying that they have done literally zero work to get to where they are, but not only do I not consider what they did productive or beneficial to anyone in any way, but if they left their morals at the door in order to make that climb, there’s nothing about them or the situation to be respected.
Then you have to consider the ethics of allocating money: the marginal benefit of $1 to a billionaire is figuratively infinitely less than the marginal benefit of $1 to someone in poverty. If the purpose of wealth is to better one’s life, and not solely to be amassed, then there is no need for the billionaire to get anything more.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. (Karl Marx, 1875, Critique of the Gotha Programme)
I don’t think warren buffet belongs in this group, he has made almost all his money only via his investments in other companies. He hasn’t actively done anything to screw over others. And there are definitely a few other cases where someone has a high net worth and hasn’t really done anything wrong. Gabe Newell owns Valve and forbes estimate his net worth to be around $3-4bn but Valve is a private company that makes games and has a marketplace for other game makers. You could argue that Valve promotes gambling via cases in games but thats really the extent of the bad things Valve has done.
Simply having that amount of money is unethical. I even consider Gabe Newell unethical in this sense. There is absolutely zero reason to hoard that amount of wealth, even if you aren’t using it directly in nefarious ways.
When you look at the number of people in poverty, and the median wages of laborers, and then you look at the wealth these people have, it’s completely unacceptable. The only ethical way to use that absurd amount of wealth is by directly helping those without.
And even someone like Bill Gates who is ostensibly known for “philanthropy”, is not excused here in any way. The amount he keeps for himself versus the amount he gives back is not an acceptable ratio.
Moreover, you claim that investing is ethical when compared to being a CEO and directly overseeing exploitation of workers. I disagree wholeheartedly. All investing is is acknowledging that, due to someone else taking advantage of workers, you have an opportunity to make money. That is, you’re just one step removed, but your profit opportunities are due to the same exact exploitation as if you were zero steps removed. The fact that people can remove themselves one step and seemingly absolve themselves of guilt should not be a thing.
True, but also net worth isn’t somebody having money equivalent. I don’t really consider any net worth statistics to be reliable especially considering people who own private companies. There really is no way for them to gauge how much a privately owned company is worth and any attempts should be looked at with a very, very large grain of salt.
Obviously, the ideal situation for a platform like Steam (like pretty much everything else on the internet) is to be a big open source decentralised platform. But what we have now is really the second best thing you could ask for.
If Gabe Newell truly wanted to hoard wealth he could easily turn Valve into a publicly traded company and likely 10x his net worth in a matter of months and cash out. But he hasn’t (and this is speculation obviously) but I imagine it’s because he would rather keep his company and do what he loves than sell it and have even more money than someone could ever need across a thousand life times.
Any time someone mentions the net worth of someone who still actively runs a company like Mark Zuckerberg, it really quite annoys me because it is very very true that Billionaires have more money than is needed but it’s not like The Zuck just has $100bn in cash locked away in a safe, and it’s not like stock is completely useless pieces of paper that entitle people to have money. Taxation of wealth is a very difficult issue to solve and when you see sensationalist posts like this one it makes it look like a much simpler issue than it actually is.
There are lots of very, very smart people all across the world trying to find away to fairly tax billionaires and it is all well and good for us to comment about how something should be done. But, in my opinion, it’s like stating “look how many people die of heart disease every year! Why hasn’t someone stopped heart disease yet?”. Obviously it’s a bit of an exaggeration but taxation of wealth isn’t a trivial issue like many internet users would have you believe.
If I am wrong or you disagree with anything I have said here please please correct me, this is just my current knowledge and I am no expert and would very much like to learn if I have made any mistakes. Thank you :)
Obviously, the ideal situation for a platform like Steam (like pretty much everything else on the internet) is to be a big open source decentralized platform. But what we have now is really the second best thing you could ask for.
That doesn’t even have to be the case. It could continue operating to make profit, it’s just that Gabe shouldn’t be made a billionaire on its back, it should be distributed more fairly to workers of Valve.
If Gabe Newell truly wanted to hoard wealth he could easily turn Valve into a publicly traded company and likely 10x his net worth in a matter of months and cash out. But he hasn’t (and this is speculation obviously) but I imagine it’s because he would rather keep his company and do what he loves than sell it and have even more money than someone could ever need across a thousand life times.
“He could always be worse” is in no way an excuse for being bad. He could stop being a billionaire (or not become one in the first place), and still “do what he loves”. If he is doing it for the love of it, then the money shouldn’t matter, anyway.
Any time someone mentions the net worth of someone who still actively runs a company like Mark Zuckerberg, it really quite annoys me because it is very very true that Billionaires have more money than is needed but it’s not like The Zuck just has $100bn in cash locked away in a safe, and it’s not like stock is completely useless pieces of paper that entitle people to have money.
This is beating a dead horse and talking in circles. We know it’s not USD paper currency sitting in a safe, and yet nothing changes when you talk about what it actually is. As far as the point about “more money than is needed”, how can you possibly not think that billions of dollars is “more money than is needed”? I’m not even going to speculate how you think someone “needs” that amount of money.
Taxation of wealth is a very difficult issue to solve and when you see sensationalist posts like this one it makes it look like a much simpler issue than it actually is.
It’s not the simplest thing we’ve ever had to deal with, but it’s also not nearly as complex as you’re implying. It’s certainly not so complex that we shouldn’t make attempts. Somehow taxing already impoverished people is braindead-simple, yet taxing people with absurd amounts of wealth becomes some very complex issue. If we get it wrong by going “too hard” initially, they aren’t going to be destroyed; the amount of wealth they have is enough to not be crippled by that, and we can course-correct however we see fit. Waiting until there’s some perfect solution laid out on the table before making any attempt to address the issue only does a disservice to the needy, and greatly benefits the wealthy. Standing by idly works in their favor, not ours.
In general, your entire comment reads as flaky defense of the ultra-wealthy. You aren’t hardline defending their right to be disgustingly wealthy, but you are parroting their lies that would have you believe that attempting to change the status quo would be a bad thing for the average person.
I didn’t say that billionaires don’t have enough money, in fact I said the opposite if you reread however it was poorly worded from me. Gabe Newell is a billionaire off the back of Valve in the sense that he owns Valve which is a billion dollar company. Our views will differ and that’s obviously ok, but really Valve is the best example for my POV because it’s a company with lots of profit and a very small staff which means it can much more easily pay its staff a more than reasonable salary for their work. You can obviously argue that valve’s profits should be distributed more among the employees but this really comes down to the fundamental difference between Socialism and Capitalism and is something more than I am capable of arguing against since I do not have a postgraduate degree in Economics.
I personally prefer the Capitalistic view of whoever puts up the most risk gets the most reward if they succeed. How well this is done in practise is a very different matter, the government should definitely let business fail more often than they do [with the exception of the G-SIBs].
But I definitely believe that we should be looking to an increasingly socialist system as technology advances and jobs become less available.
I really appreciate your response to my comment and whole heartedly thank you for sharing your views on the matter :)
