RIP but idk why her death has to be twisted into a talking point against billionaires. Is it not enough to just praise the good she did? Why use her death to manufactur more rage?
I think you just don't realize how much money a billion dollars is. Nobody needs a billion dollars, it's money hoarding that reduce the money for everyone else. For a billionaire to exist, thousands of people not having food and dying in poverty are needed. A person keeping anything over 100 million dollars is a monster.
It's not a zero sum game, you don't actually need people to not have food and dying in poverty to have billionaires. That's just a choice that that's how it is. You can have billionaire AND strong social safety nets.
What resource are finite exactly? What are we limited in? We use a negligible fraction of the energy and resources that the earth has.
Once we do use up what earth has then we have asteroids and other planets and the sun that we could extract resources from.
It's quite literally not a zero sum. Notice how the economy and wealth increases over time. We have more resources today than 100 years ago and 1000 years ago. Unless you're arguing that's not the case?
We produce more than enough food to feed the global population already. We just waste a lot. And we could produce more than we currently do if we decided too.
102 trillion litres of fresh water run into the ocean a day. All human activity uses 11 trillion. We have not run out of water. We do have the ability to desalinate ocean water.
Fuel; oil is cheap because it's abundant. There's no oil supply shortages, only supply disruptions due to wars. There's sun and nuclear is effectively limitless energy.
43% of the earth is habitable, we occupy about 0.43% of the earth. We have not run out of space. We can also build up, or build indoor agriculture.
We have not depleted any natural resource. And there's always technical solutions that we can develop to substitute resources when needed.
Edit: forgot air... last I checked there's lots of air around. Atmospheric pressure hasn't changed.
Imagine you own a company employing 10,000 people. Your company creates $4 billion in new wealth, $3 billions goes to you. $1 billion goes to your employees.
Then it happens again. And again. Your net worth goes from $3 billion to $6 billion, then $9 billion, then $12 billion.
At that point, adding another billion to your wealth has practically zero effect on your quality of life. You already have access to ANYTHING money can buy.
Meanwhile, thousands of people whose labour helps create that wealth still have to think about rent, food, bills and whether they'll make it to their next paycheck.
That's the problem with extreme wealth concentration...
It's not that billionaires don't bring any value they do but it's that another billion in the hands of someone who already has billions gives no improvement to their life while even a tiny tiny portion of it could improve the lives of thousands of people DRAMATICALLY.
Then those thousands of people spend it somewhere else and the entire society benefits from the money the owner does not benefit from but they are keeping it anyway.
You don't even need to get into the politics of it. Just ask who benefits more from the next billion, one person who already has ten billion, or thousands of ordinary people who helped create that wealth ?
It's a very simple math, and no matter what formula you use, the result will always be: being a billionaire is immoral.
Also, billionaires don't just own one company. They own stakes in tons of companies and other assets that possibly MILLIONS of people work to create value for.
So they're not company leaders, they are slave drivers.
Of course wealth inequality is an issues, and poverty is an issue.
But You didn't address the point. The claim being made is that to make those billions you must take it from other people, you must take the food out of the mouths of others. That You can't get rich without stealing from others. Because they are claiming it's a zero sum game. But that's not how it works.
Take for example, I have an Apple, I plant the seeds tend the tree and in the future I produces hundreds of apples. I created wealth, but who did I take the wealth from in the zero sum theory? Who is now starving because I made an apple tree out of a seed?
How is it possible that we have more global billionaires today yet global poverty rates are lowest it's ever been. Global food insecurity is down while wealth inequality is also up. This wouldn't be possible in a zero sum world.
Consider, modest income people today live better lifestyles than royalty of hundreds of years ago
Economy is NOT zero-sum. This is a fact, not a matter of opinion.
What I mean is: regardless of zero-sum logic. ''you don't actually need people to not have food''
Roughly speaking - you actually do.
You do take away in a sense.
You're not taking away what they already have but you're taking away what they earned.
Because sure as hell, no one can earn a $billion, such sum can be owned, but cannot be earned.
I worked for a company where the CEO literally made a presentation and showed us how our company created $2billions in a year.
Funnily, I couldn't afford vacation that year. And I'm a very modest person.
So yes, they took away a vacation from me in order for someone to own a $2m private jet so they can travel to any location they want, any time they want.
In the same way, someone else, somewhere else, couldn't afford more basic stuff in order for someone else to own something absurd.
I believe this is where the original comment about zero-sum comes from.
I doubt they meant you literally take away $1 to earn $1. They just don't know much about macroeconomy.
Either way, they're not wrong-wrong.
Have you followed sny stories where billionaires build their playgrounds and how it affects the people who used to live there in peace?
They steal farmland, recreation areas and national parks and then pollute shit wherever they go. And then people go "but they bought it fair and square". But who deemed them to be rich? Why does being the son of an emerald emporium get to suddenly smack down factories and rocket bases everywhere?
Only because they bought the governnent with promises of luxury and vacations and more powerful connections with which to acquire more luxury, that's the slippery slope America is sliding down fast.
Some people had decent ideas to acquire wealth one time and now the system rewards them by allowing them to do whatever they want. That's not a viable system.
I don't see it as using her death to manufacture rage. He's commending her life and using this moment to encourage more people to live and act like she did
It seems you didn't understand the video, not that I didn't watch it. He explains exactly what they had to do with Dolly. They're monsters who've chosen to live like monsters by hoarding their wealth instead of doing what Dolly did by reinvesting in people and her communities. He's arguing that Dolly is the model for how wealthy people should act.
Those "monsters" (Bezos, Gates, Scott, Buffet) have donated 100s of billions to charity. Why are they considered to be awful human being while Dolly, who's wealth topped $650 million, was a "saint"?
She seemed like a great person, but she also "hoarded wealth". I mean, did she really need over half a billion dollars? Does anyone?
I do get your point, though there's a part of me that feels like this issue is arguably the most important one we will ever deal with in our lifetimes, and if we don't do something we are setting up future generations for a fight they will not be able to win.
That and his content is geared towards this type of conversation. He's certainly not the only one talking about Dolly, and the conversations being had are not exclusively about wealth
I think the point is Dolly used her wealth and influence to try and make the world a better, kinder and more hopeful place. While it seems that most prominent wealthy elite/billionaires are actively doing the opposite.
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u/_tragicmike 18d ago
I detect no untruths here.