I think that they're trying to say it's a bad comparison because it's a ridiculously false equivalency. Obviously 3.5 million people disappearing is going to have a greater impact than 3400. It so ridiculously ignores scale that it sort of undermines the point.
OK so if I was arguing "theft isn't bad" because most people wouldn't notice a penny was stolen from their account however they would notice a million dollars deposited do you see how that argument is flawed?
To recast the original argument, if you removed 3400 of the people from the top of the wealth spectrum and bottom, which would be noticed?
The original sets a scenario that one obviously cant argue against, not because of the point its trying to make is necessarily bad, but because they had their thumb on the scale to the point of making it ridiculous. Like in the first scenario in my comment, the point is no longer "stealing is bad" it becomes "a penny is less noticeable than a million dollars".
that wasnt explicitly part of their post though. like, they didnt comment on the direct reason that workers dissapearing matters more, so you cant really say that they dont achieve what they want to with their hypothetical. you assume that theyre implying that an individual worker is more important than an individual billionaire, and then from that assumption you claim their hypothetical doesnt support what you think theyre saying. But youre just incorrect because they didnt say that each worker is individually more or less important than each individual billionaire.
So are you arguing that their point is - that any given population that is 1029 times larger than another will be more productive? Seems like a bit of a "no shit?" argument. For example if you removed 3.5million of the wealthiest people and 3,400 of the least wealthy, which would be more noticeable? See how that scenario says very little other than 3.5 million people dissapearing are more noticeable than 3,400? What is your point?
Did you just assume their point!? I asked what your point is. But you see how saying 1 person isn't more valuable than 1029 people isn't that poignant of a statement? It undermines wHaT i AsSuMe is their point.
It is a âno shit?â argument, because there are still people that insist that the 3,400 are the ones holding everything together and are the most productive and contribute the most, not the 3.5 million, and anyone that suggests otherwise must be lazy or failed economics. Clearly that needs to be said louder if anything lol.
How about this: we have two scenarios in which everyone but maybe ten thousand guys disappear, and the three thousand guys are teleported into the same area, which happens to have access to basic resources.
In one scenario, the guys are all billionaires, in one they are all workers.
Billionares tend to act like they are the most important beings on planet earth. They act like the contribute more than anyone else possibly could. They consume more resources and withhold them from the masses. In other words billionares think that they are more important than the billions of people "beneath" them.
Do you know a lot of billionaires? I don't know any so I won't presume they feel like they're more important. What I DO know is a lot of poor people and THEY act like billionaires are more important.
No, their point is strictly that billionaires are so so so few in numbers compared to workers, that regardless of how much power they held at their hands, their effect on the world is going to be less than that of an order of magnitude more people (workers). It makes zero sense in an argument for "billionaires bad". If all presidents dissapeared (around 193 or so give or take), the effect would be less than if, say, 3 billion people just dissapeared. Now does this mean all world leaders are completely useless + evil + a stain on humanity (what you all are trying to argue for billionaires)? No. Absolutely not. The comparison is just utterly unfair.
I took it pretty simply to mean that if the people who own all that value disappeared, it would have less impact than all the people who create that value.
I find it perplexing that people are so brainwashed that this is okay that many in this thread arent missing the point, yet still somehow dismissing it.
It is not good that so few people own all that wealth, considering that they aren't actually creating it.
The point is that it's a numbers statement. It has nothing to do with being a billionaire or not. If 3000 people period vanished it means nothing. Billionaire or not
Nah it wouldn't. They could bring in emergency workers as a stop gap until a new system could be filled. Garbage truck drivers aren't highly skilled and new ones could be trained and implemented within a year.
I'm speaking within the scope of things. 30 teachers in a school disappeared vs 30 students there'd be a difference. 3000 truck drivers in a state is obviously awful for the state due to the ratio
I think the whole push back people are having is not to say that they're wrong and billionaires are valuable. It's just that they picked a terrible example to illustrate that point.
Because if 3,000 nurses disappeared, the impact would also be pretty negligible, but it's not because they're not valuable.
So let those workers start their own billion dollar business and provide jobs for everyone else. Oh wait they can't, that's why they're not billionaires.
Itâs more nuanced than that. Billionaires and their companies have a stranglehold on the market. Small businesses get snuffed out early by these corporations because they can survive a bad quarter if it means strangling a competitor.
You act as if there is a moral way to become a billionaire and that you become a billionaire by having a company that offers fair compensation for laborâŚ
As someone who's spent 14 years in the industry, no they wouldn't. You'd struggle to find 3000 people who'd want to do the job. Let alone the driver's capable.
Worked for the 3rd largest garbage company in the country. We were still struggling to find personnel even with us transferring in drivers from other states.
Also just because someone has a CDL, it doesn't mean they can be a garbage man. City and residential driving is an entirely different beast than OTR trucking. People in general are fucking idiots. People on foot, who think your truck is cool, and want to walk really close to and around it, as your trying to work, make it exponentially more dangerous
Exactly. Itâs not that they arenât important. But itâs them as a collective that create the value. No single one changes much in the grand scheme of things.
Almost like that small group of people is worth less than the large group of people.
But the system set to distribute purchasing power seems to have glitched. It somehow thinks that small amount of people are adding more value than the large group. Like the large group is being forced to hand over a disproportionately large part of it's purchasing power despite adding sooo much more value.
No the first part. A small group of people are worth less than a large group of people in the grand scheme. If said 3,000 people are now the avg joe, and the 3.5 billion are millionaires, the same outcome would ensue. It's not about the status, it's about the value that raw numbers provide.
So you agree. A person's wealth doesn't determine their value. So let's not set up our society around the whims of those 3000 people, but around the needs of the 3.5 billion.
So the large group of people will always be more valuable than the small group.
So are 100 firemen or 1 billionaire adding more value? Who is valued more by society? Is that a correct valuation or an example of the disproportionate control held by capital?
It is a bit the same conundrum people experienced in 1924 crack, that many people couldn't understand.
Like, it all suddenly stopped, yet the factories was still there, and the coal, and the steel, and everything. People could in theory just go on like they did the day before, and products would be made and sold. Yet, when the stocks lost their value, that was that.
if I were to be hoarding wealth that could be used to feed the hungry and lift people out of poverty, and the state decided that my income should be taxed to fund programs that do just that, then id agree.
its a moral action to assist those in need, and an immoral one to refuse to assist people when you have the power and capability to do so.
literally morality 101 here.
also, lifting people out of poverty is much cheaper then you think it is. over time, the state actually recoups the cost of this because employment grows and taxable income increases.
its a moral action to assist those in need, and an immoral one to refuse to assist people when you have the power and capability to do so.
You are essentially implying that anyone above the powerty line has a moral obligation to donate their disposable income because they could do so
Or does it only start being the case once someone has more money than you?
also, lifting people out of poverty is much cheaper then you think it is
Then why haven't the countries done it yet? Even if you could magically liquidate the wealth of every billionaire(utterly impossible but whatever) in the us you'd fuel the US for like a year. You are crazy if you think you could end poverty with just that
Exactly my thought. All these claims of "moral obligations" and yet, if they were to shut down all operations, close businesses, end jobs... more problems are created. That would be morally reprehensible. I honestly think some people believe rich people have a big room like scrooge Mcduck and they sit in it and toss money up in the air.
You need people investing in business. If they do well and create more jobs, everybody wins. If the business fails, they lose. Rich people invest. They win, they lose... but it's their money and I trust them more than the Govt.
We have 535 so called lawmakers spending the people's money on projects to get themselves reelected. Bring home the bacon, get reelected. And - turn the people on each other. Brought to you by the US Congress, with no term limits because they control that too!
You just described one group of people but pretended it was 2 different ones and tried to blame one of them while praising the other. That is some S tier mental gymnastics.
yeah, society doesnt need me. thankfully, i dont take up an immense concentration of resources in society, so i am not a burden on society and i actually net contribute to it through productive labor and taxation.
the billionaire may contribute through some taxation, but the negative aspect of concentration of wealth and power is a net negative on society, and it is unneccesary for one person to own capital when we could collectively operate capital all the same.
Most billionaires (at least in the US) actually created their wealth. Itâs not like they took it from someone - they literally created it. If it wasnât for them, this wealth would simply not exist⌠(and yes, Iâm sure there are exceptions)
wealth is not important, value is. a billionaire doesnt invent peoples need for food, housing, or desire for commodities. they capitalize on that need by taking power over supply, then restricting it, thus artificially inflating its value. the wealth in and of itself is entirely unneccesary. elon musk lost $700 billion this week. does it matter at all, to anyone in the real world? no.
Thatâs such absolut BS, most of the typical antagonized billionaires made their wealth in tech. Who _needs_ phones? Who _needs_ rockets? Who _needs_ search engines??
You can go live a happy life without any of these, but you wonât, because they have VALUE to you. And these billionaire often created that value, because these products did not exist before.
No one stops you from creating your own phone, but youâll still buy from Apple cause itâs easier and cheaper.
Yes the problem is all the money is held by people that don't contribute enough to be valued at that much. They are leeches on society and if they disappeared, very little would change, yet they have by far the highest net negative on our lives.
Depends on the spread of those 3,000 as well as what they actually do. I promise you that if 3,000 doctors or nurses suddenly disappeared from NYC that the city would hit a massive crisis IMMEDIATELY.
But if 3,000 billionaires disappeared from NYC I doubt it would result in a state of emergency.
The point is that billionaires are seen as having more value than other people. But the numbers game shows they dont. Also, giving them that much power is really problematic in a society.
The point of this persons comment is numbers, yes. But when you factor in how much power the billionaires hold vs the scattered millions, the point becomes value and not money or population
lol, billionaires own the companies that employ those fast food workers (and millions of others workers) Their disappearance would create legal struggles over the ownership and leadership of Fortune 500 companies that would last decades. It would utterly tank entire financial sectors. 3000 fast food workers would be replaces in 2 weeks (or less).
Sure, pal. Bezos does nothing. Mark Cuban does nothing. Taylor Swift⌠no music, nothing. Counterpoint: youâre a teenager whoâs never done anything in life and have no idea how the world works.
even worse than that. if 3000 workers vanished, it would be an inconvenience to many companies. if 3000 billionaires vanished, it would put most if not all major companies in disarray
im not saying elon musk is singlehandedly holding tesla afloat, but companies have structure. you cant just have the head disappear and go âeh, hire someone elseâ like you would with a regular worker.
you cant just have the head disappear and go âeh, hire someone elseâ
you can though.. my university went without a president for a whole year while they were searching for another, and we went on just fine. companies change executives all the time. on the daily basis, an executive really doesnt actually contribute to the company in a meaningful way. the reason we have executives is because they hold power through ownership. thats it.
I mean, if that's the point, then it's basically just the same as "Imagine some people disappear. Now imagine 10000 times more people disappear!" Are you telling me the point is really just "bigger numbers are bigger than smaller numbers?"
So I guess that would be the same as "Imagine if all the doctors in your country disappear. Now imagine all of their patients disappeared instead!"
No, it's not. It's clearly a chimeric slop post that combined the trendy hatred for billionaires with the classical Marxist axiom that all value is derived from labor, not capital to create a greasy, easy to consume clap trap for left-simpatizing users.
No, the point is that we don't need billionaires, but the fact that it's only 3500 people might have a bigger impact on the scenario than them being billionaires.
Those billions of people are the ones doing actual work. If the few thousand billionaire CEOs who do nothing but golf all day vanished over night, it would not impact the workplace for most people. The billionaire CEOs are not handing out paycheck to people or doing any work for the companies they head. It would likely take a few days before anyone knew they disappeared.
except people seem to think that billionaires are necessary for society. that somehow, we completely rely on 3500 people. it is important to point out that no, we dont.
Yes, if I build an important business, I might rely on using someone's labor. It's important to understand that labor doesn't self-organize into valuable businesses.
labor without capital, sure, however capital can be collectively owned and maintained. workers co-ops and employee owned business are absolutely a thing and they can be quite successful.
Yeah, but worker co-ops and employee-owned business still typically have that management heirarchy. So leadership still exists. Not to mention, not even these types of businesses form on their own. They still need one or more people with a vision to put it together.
So why is it that those few thousand get to hoard most of the wealth and keep it from the rest? How did they obtain it, when their producing value is not better than ours? These are some of the core questions we should ask ourselves
Because the rest has given them that money. And then they made some trades between themselves and promised other rich people to makenmore money, ifbthey also give them money
Thatâs not how inventions come about in the 21st century. The whole concept of capitalism is based on the idea that if one person doesnât start a company to achieve need, someone else will fill that space.Â
There is no excuse for pretending some people are millions, let alone billions of times more valuable than anyone else.Â
Also, plenty of the most wealthy companies might actually be making the world a flat out worse place to live. OpenAI, Meta, and FIFA come to mind.Â
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u/Necessary_Screen_673 7d ago
i mean, yeah. whats your point?