In our system, wealth is power and the wealthier you are, the more power you have. This is a Very Bad thing because it bypasses our societal controls meant to prevent that exact thing. The citizenry should decide who gets the power, not the happenstance of wealth.
Also, I would argue, the sort of person who attains great wealth is the sort of person who prioritizes gaining wealth over almost everything else. That's exactly not the person who should have more influence over society.
How is your over-simplification, misrepresentation of the opposition, etc, any better? You hand-wave the opposition away by simply declaring them to be socialists, and then one extra sentence saying "checkmate libs". Honestly this reads like a psyop. It skips over all the real reasons people are against billionaires and instead presents a bunch of childish nonsense versions of everything. And then you act like the only conceivable alternative is for the government to control everything. How convenient they always skip over the options that don't include some kind of subjugation.
But what do I really expect? It's obviously coming from inside the democrat/republican box thingy, don't really know what to call it. You know, the deep dark pit of ignorance that has people convinced dem/rep are "opposites", or that democrats are "leftists" and "socialists", even though they've never once talked about worker ownership of the means of production. It's the "socialism is when the government does stuff" kind of ignorance.
How do you even bridge a gap this wide, where the opposition has completely different definitions for almost every political word? Democrats and Republicans are basically impossible to convince of anything at this point because they simply can't understand what we're saying to them.
Let me put it in a way you brainwashed people can understand... Imagine we're all hungry. I suggest to Bob that he should pick some apples from the apple tree. Soon, other people join Bob, and lots of Apples get picked. Since it was my idea to pick apples, those are actually MY apples, but I'll let each person keep 2 apples each so they can live just enough longer to do some bullshit for me again tomorrow..... Tomorrow, everyone will have to use what little they have to buy back the apples they picked for me. In order to buy it back they'll have to do some other work for me, which I'll also take the bulk of. Eventually everyone will owe literally everything to me and they'll be like slaves, muahahahahahahahahaha!!!!.... Explain to me why anyone should allow me to do this inherently evil thing, I'll wait.
> Elon Musk nearly lost both Tesla and SpaceX in 2008
Elon Musk is a little poopy-pants baby who takes credit for other people's work and throws his little tantrums when he doesn't get his way, just like every other billionaire. Show me literally anything that Musk has done his whole-damn-self...
Juliate•7mo ago
What about the negative externalities? Are those all factored in the wealth?
Oil/coal have been opportunities to create whole wealth empires. Have they been worth it for everyone, not only billionaires, but societies, given their dire consequences over our own species (and others) survival in the next century? Has this part of risk been accounted in?
> They were earned through high-risk bets and long-term value creation.
And luck; really, luck is really under appreciated everywhere (both for good and bad fortunes). And cooperation from many other people and factors.
Not saying we shouldn't have billionaires. But we shouldn't have them so exempt from taxes, neither have them so powerful over state policies.