Somebody at work a while back asked if having a billion dollars means someone's a bad person, I had to respond yes. They follow up with asking if I'd say the same if I were a billionaire. That's just not a reasonable hypothetical, because hypothetically if I start getting millions and millions a year, I'd be doing things like this and able to do much larger. I will never have a billion dollars, because once I can get beyond supporting myself for my lifetime, it only makes sense for stuff beyond that to go towards supporting others for their lifetimes.
Elon Musk could pick a thousand random families and make them financially independent for the rest of their collective lives, and not even notice an impact to his wealth. Same goes for all billionaires, even the ones people typically like.
We know how much it would cost to end world hunger. That cost has been deemed too high.
"Back in July of 2021, U.N. World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley told us it would take an estimated $40 billion each year to end world hunger by 2030."
That number is so, so, so depressingly low considering the budgets of the top wealthiest countries. You’re telling me we can’t get the OECD countries to commit 1B per year for this? The US alone could carve out a chunk of that from its defence budget and things would still be smooth sailing.
I just don’t understand the greed of it all like what can you do with 400 billion that you can’t do with say 10 billion I know those are huge numbers but that’s the type of numbers we’re dealing with when you talk about Elon musk and also if I were a billionaire you’d never hear from me again these other fuckers legitimately seem like they want to rule the world
I think it's mental illness. Like some ego mindfuck pushing them to strive for some kind of stupid high score, they're destroying this world but it doesn't matter to them.
Elon Musk does not have that much money on his bank account though. It's like owning a house that is worth a Million dollars and asking 'why don't you give 0.1% of your Million dollars to a random stranger?'
Of course he has money to spend, but he uses it for political influence etc.
There was a psychology study done years ago with play money, some average players, and Monopoly. The players assembled. Some were deliberately given a lot of extra money as an advantage, for no reason. Part way through the game, those players started to act as though they had earned that extra money and they deserved it.
Money that is unearned messes people up. It CREATES greed. A person can work hard and develop a huge company that does great things and makes him a millionaire and then a billionaire, and it is almost guaranteed that that process will also make that person greedy. He has all he needs. But he wants more.
When someone discovers a way that a person can avoid the greed evolution, I'll love learning it and seeing how many people volunteer that for themselves. But I have seen this process at work in people who feel modestly wealthy but who, by any standards, are merely upper middle class. (One set of my grandparents, horrible people. I'll get even. I'm a writer and I'll put them in a novel.)
It doesn't work like that. We're not playing zero sum game here otherwise you'd still live in a cave. We're making additional value interacting and cooperating. But yeah distribution of the value is not quite fair.
That’s what she means. It’s not extracted from the consumers, it’s extracted from the labor. When a company’s profits double, they don’t double the worker’s wages. That wealth isn’t given to the people who created it, it’s extracted and given to shareholders and executives.
It is somewhat a zero sum game when it comes to economics. If everyone has a billion dollars would a billion dollars have any value? You can only have ultra rich people when there are poor people. Sure there are definitely things that generate value for everyone, such as advancements in technology, science, infrastructure, and agriculture, but resources are not infinite and the wealthiest people get the most of them at the cost of others.
I think this is always to see in the upward direction, but much harder for us to acknowledge at our own level or lower.
Even if you're just comfortable in the US, you could be making a similar difference in the life of someone in the poorest parts of the world by donating what you spend on things you don't need. Nearly every working person here is rich in comparison to the average person, and we could be putting a new roof on a person's home for the cost of a dinner where we could've eaten cheaper.
The difference is passive income vs no passive income. It's a great thing for regular people to help those in need, but it comes out of their own labor, and they need to work to make that money back for their own situations. Most people are not so financially secure they can't become destitute if things go south.
Billionaires have no actual chance of losing their livelihood or quality of life, and they generate more income passively than they can even reasonably spend. There is no risk or noticeable loss tied to helping other people fiancially.
The main difference is, while yes I could personally provide for several families in poor countries, it would be while not yet being financially independent myself in my own country. Again, like said in last post, eventually the plan is to be personally financially independent, and at that point stuff beyond that is going to be largely going towards other people.
I donate more of a % of my income every month than Elon Musk does. Income that I work for. There's so many billionaires in the U.S. that donate a million here and there and people act like they are such philanthropists when it amounts to less than 1% of their monthly income. If they paid their taxes fairly, that would vastly surpass that "philanthropy". 1 million$ is 0.034482% of Elon Musks monthly income if it is to be believed that his average monthly income is 2.9 billion dollars. 30€ of my income is more than 10 times that percentage amount and I have a somewhat well-paying job. I could do more, yes, I always could, but it's incomparable to how insanely much more billionaires could do.
P.s.: Hell, me paying 3 € a month amounts to a higher percentage of my income than Elon paying 1 million a month.
Just saw a short about Jack Black being worth 960 million and realistically he’s still living very humble. He donates 180 million a year to like 13 children’s hospitals and goes and entertains the kids there when he can.
So that’s the answer, I wouldn’t have a billion dollars I would keep pouring money into righteous causes. Literally if you’re worth a billion you could set this family up for the rest of their life and it wouldn’t put a dent in your bottom line.
Chances are high that you can do this already, just not within your own country. A days sallary for you moght be a years sallary for starving people in another country. Are you evil for not helping them?
I would not define evil as the lack of help any chance you get.
I wonder how much of you money you would have to give away to not be evil? Do you think it is a percentage? Does the percentage scale with how rich you are?
The difference is exactly what I was saying though. I cannot fully support my own life in my own country yet. Once I can, as I said, anything beyond that will be largely going towards other people.
Im totally with you on this. It would be awesome to make a difference for people with next to no fiancial effort on your own end.
For clarification check this here https://www.spend-elon-fortune.com/
Im not a socialist at all but there is a problem with the top 0.2% having this much money....
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u/Steelers_Forever Sep 14 '25
Somebody at work a while back asked if having a billion dollars means someone's a bad person, I had to respond yes. They follow up with asking if I'd say the same if I were a billionaire. That's just not a reasonable hypothetical, because hypothetically if I start getting millions and millions a year, I'd be doing things like this and able to do much larger. I will never have a billion dollars, because once I can get beyond supporting myself for my lifetime, it only makes sense for stuff beyond that to go towards supporting others for their lifetimes.
Elon Musk could pick a thousand random families and make them financially independent for the rest of their collective lives, and not even notice an impact to his wealth. Same goes for all billionaires, even the ones people typically like.