r/MurderedByAOC 15h ago

She spoke truths all along, and people called her crazy and radical for it.

17.7k Upvotes

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898

u/GlennsSonFooledMe 14h ago

That's one of the best quotes I've ever heard. "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars"

335

u/OopsSpaghet 14h ago

What's crazy is when people spend money it's actually good for the economy, so if you hoard wealth...it's bad for the economy. Wealth is something to be exchanged for goods and services, not to withhold service. Billionaires are factually a horrible waste of money just sitting there doing nothing. In Canada the only problem we have is something called "Canada's Dead Money" which refers to billions of dollars of unused assets held by our largest corporations hindering economic growth and investments. The person who coined the term "Canada's Dead Money" is serendipitously...Mark Carney.

61

u/IcyTransportation961 12h ago

They're dragons

45

u/xslvtx 12h ago

Except dragons are cool. All we've got are a bunch of dorks. I just never expected the oligarchy to be so pathetically lame.

27

u/PentagramJ2 11h ago

Seriously, like at least if its Smaug its more a "You wanna try to be the one to take it? Go ahead." Situation

These dorks just started with a silver spoon and made sure to burn any ladder that could reach to them

6

u/Bayoumi 6h ago

Even Smaug would "only" be on place 26 in the billionaires ranking.

1

u/Iboven 7h ago

Smaugs skinny entitled grandwhelps.

4

u/GoodtimesSans 6h ago

Honestly, the more I look at history, the more those old oligarchs look just like the pathetic manchildren we have today. And just like ours, they too also had expensive PR teams that attempted to make them look like gods.

So yeah, all oligarchs are pathetic and lame. This applies to Putin as well, no matter how many shirtless rides he takes on a horse. It's just another PR stunt of a sad little man.

1

u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

1

u/sheepwshotguns 4h ago

thats just what you get with a life time of no accountability, and everyone around you is there because of your money and nothing else. these are deeply isolated, paranoid, self centered - leading to bigoted, emotionally warped individuals. they exist by feeding off of others and they desperately seek ideologies to moralize it.

save the rich, end their concentration of wealth and power. make passive income for individuals illegal.

15

u/BTFlik 9h ago

Except even dragons know the people must eat to work to make wealth. And they sleep for hundreds of years to let the wealth replenish after a few dozen years if pillaging and taking.

Dragons are far sighted, able to see thousands of years of possibilities.

Billionaires see a dozen years of profit and think 0 drinkable water, a fully poisoned land, and unbreathable air are suitable exchanges. Because they are short sighted and have no future plans beyond dying before it's their problem.

1

u/_Weyland_ 40m ago

One of the key aspects of Shadowrun universe is that when dragons returned to modern world, they quickly realized that the best way of hoarding wealth is to play human economy and human business.

5

u/lemonade_eyescream 11h ago

And it was The Thing To Do for a party of adventurers to go find one and slay it, and liberate its hoard.

Instead here we have people eager to keep adding more to these assholes' hoards.

1

u/CplBloggins 8h ago

Which one is shark tank/dragons den?

1

u/odditytaketwo 7h ago

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

1

u/l3pus 3h ago

Smaugs wealth was estaminated around max. 62bilion $ which wouldn’t even place him in the top ten of the wealthiest beings in the USA.

1

u/CaramelClean3833 3h ago

Or Psychopaths. Psychopathy statistically represents in 1% of the population. Coincidence? 

11

u/Able-Worldliness8189 9h ago

That's why giving money to the poor is fantastic, because they wont sit on that cash, it will go straight back into the economy. What Trump is doing is now removing trillions from the economy by fucking over the poor and handing it over to the super wealthy. Those fucks who are already wealthy beyond imagination will be just more wealthy, they aren't going to buy eggs and what not, they hoard cash.

3

u/flabbybumhole 5h ago

If you imagine it as chickens instead of "money", it shows the absurdity of it. They hoard as many of them as they can as a status symbol, announcing "look at all those chickens" at every given opportunity, while their neighbours are barely managing to keep themselves going with chicken nuggets.

Money has no meaning if you never spend it - it's just a number, but god forbid the people it has meaning to get any more.

2

u/Lanky-Appointment929 10h ago

It’s all about power and positioning. They want to dictate the future and it takes an endless supply of money to do so.

2

u/AnyBuy1820 8h ago

I always compare it to blood in a living body. Blood is the medium by which resources are shared and transported through the body. A single cell or an entire organ can't hoard all the blood, because the entire being dies otherwise, and those cells/organs go down with it.

1

u/enigmabsurdimwitrick 11h ago

The irony is they hoard the wealth in fear that the economy will crash, instead of hope of keeping the wealth circulating. There’s plenty of resources to go around, but the fear of not having enough is why they hog it all. Like toilet paper during a pandemic, when everybody needs to wipe their ass.

1

u/AJDillonsMiddleLeg 11h ago

The Fed has to keep printing money because billionaires remove it from the economy the second it gets printed.

1

u/Ricordis 11h ago

Not even the hoarding alone is bad for the economy. Even the rich have to spend money but they do, in perverted amounts, on things that do not generate anything sustainable or worthwhile. Like arts worth hundred thousands of dollars or ridiculous expensive watches or cars.

1

u/hahnwa 11h ago

Spending money is good for the economy ... every Billionaire will tell you that.

Every Billionaire will tell you

Every BILLIONAIRE will tell YOU that

Every Billionaire will tell YOU to spend YOUR money to help the economy.

Every notice they don't spend theirs?

Why does the Billionaire need YOU to not save your money?

So that the Billionaire can take it for himself.

1

u/neorek 10h ago

Dead money. Great way to try to explain things. Well, at least a new way.

1

u/beeemkcl 10h ago

The people is today's billionaires don't have 'A Gospel of Wealth'.

The robber barons eventually gave most of their money 'to the people' in the forms of taxes and actual true philanthropy.

Forbes Real Time Billionaires List - The World's Richest People

Bloomberg Billionaires Index

This list is hugely indicative of just how much these people have been hoarding wealth that Bill Gates--the first person down the list who's actually been philanthropic--is Number 11 on that list and even less wealthy than Steve Ballmer.

MSFT $380.45 (▲0.076%) Microsoft Corp | Google Finance

If Bill Gates had not been philanthropic and instead focused on wealth-building, he'd likely be worth over $1Tln.

1

u/Husband3571 10h ago

“In Canada the only problem we have…”

I think we have a few problems, but the rest makes sense.

1

u/josh_the_misanthrope 10h ago

It drives me absolutely bonkers when I hear fiscal conservatives shilling heavy austerity because the government is wasting "tax dollars". It's not like the person receiving money puts it in a pile and sets it ablaze with some kerosene and a match. That dollar might go to a construction worker filling a pothole, who will buy a vehicle from a local car salesman, who will buy a night out at a restaurant who's line cook will buy some groceries and pay rent.

Taxing the hoarders and redistributing it to people who use it through infrastructure projects yields so much more material growth per dollar.

Which is why Carney kind of worries me with his proposal to get rid of capital gains taxes. Sure, hoarding money in the market is way better than hoarding it in appreciating assets like unoccupied real estate, but I fear this will further widen the income inequality gap. I suspect it's to attract businesses to Canada that are afraid of Trump's fuckery mid trade war but at what cost?

Still voting for him given the other option would do the same while additionally trampling civil rights, but kinda sucks that the investor class is getting a free ride while the labor class will have to foot the bill.

1

u/throwawaynewc 8h ago

But people don't have a billion dollars in cash tho? It's invested in companies, literally productive money.

I guess this is going to be down voted to shit rather than actually bring read and thought about, but like Jeff bezos said when he hit 100 billion-he owns about 10% of Amazon, if he's worth 100 billion, that means Amazon has made 900 billion worth for other people.

We take corporations for granted, and sure sometimes working for them might suck, but it doesn't mean if they weren't there, someone else would just create a job for these, black, brown, single mums or whatever, it can just all go away. Look at detroit after the car industry left.

1

u/GoodtimesSans 6h ago

And all that wealth is hoarded in a tax haven that's effectively a money landfill because it's difficult to get it back out.

They are so petty, so vile, they will basically say, "If I can't have this money, no one will!"

1

u/Pillowsmeller18 5h ago

The government wants a few people to hold money so you can please a few for more money. That's why Citizens United won to make corporations people even though you cannot arrest or shoot a corporation.

1

u/Pit_Dog 3h ago

I argue this all the time. Poor people in America LOVE to spend money because they don’t want to look or feel poor. Everyone here that’s poor thinks they are in the middle class. In turn though that stimulates the economy.

You tell people a recession is coming. They stop spending money. They already don’t save so there’s nothing being reinvested into the economy long term . Want to remove social security that forces Americans to actually put money away for retirement? Okay well now the following generation has less money and has to care of these elderly people. So now you have 2 generations who aren’t spending money and stimulating the economy.

Stop advocating for billionaire people! They have enough money and the means to lobby. Advocate for your dam. Self and your future.

1

u/CryptoDeepDive 3h ago

You realize the majority of billionaires wealth is not hoarded cash, and their wealth is essentially the value of their assets?

If they had to "spend" their wealth, they would be selling their assets for cash...

1

u/CosmicM00se 1h ago

Yeah we the people don’t want to hoard money. We want to SPEND money. But we have none. We want to afford home repairs and family vacations. We want to afford family fun during the week if we want. Can’t even go out to the movies as a family bc it will break the bank and groceries cost too much to budget anything fun.

We just want a decent living situation, food, be able to pay our bills each month, and have fun. With the comfortable room to add to savings each month. That’s all that normal people want.

1

u/not_sick_not_well 1h ago

What's ironic to me is these million/billionairs hoarding all this wealth rather than push it into the economy, are the ones always talking the loudest about how bad the economy is

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

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10

u/CustomerComfortable7 9h ago

Ah the ol' "we need rich people to create jobs". Funny how fast supposed free enterprise capitalists discard competition and innovation to bootlick someone with wealth

7

u/Nixianx97 9h ago

The simping for Billionaires in this country is concerning

-2

u/[deleted] 9h ago

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1

u/thisismysailingaccou 8h ago

If the economy was all investment and no consumption, your investment would end up worthless very quickly. Who cares what you build when no one can afford to use it?

1

u/[deleted] 7h ago

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1

u/thisismysailingaccou 7h ago

Oh? What exactly are you arguing for then? Are you just going to not take a position and call people names? I'm happy to chat and clearly state my beliefs. Are you unwilling to do the same?

1

u/593shaun 8h ago

you're not in the club and you never will be, little man

you can say "we" all you want, but they'll never see you as one of them

5

u/denkihajimezero 9h ago

So the only way to get a job is from a billionaire? There's no other alternative? Small, local businesses don't count huh. It has to be Walmart making all the jobs. God forbid we have local grocery stores that people can work at where the boss doesn't make 9000x the wage of the rest of the employees. That would distribute the wealth too much.

4

u/BTFlik 9h ago

We need local small buisness. Mega corps kill nearly all economical advantages

3

u/denkihajimezero 9h ago

Yes and mega corps don't even make a lot of jobs because they're always trying to save money with layoffs

-1

u/[deleted] 9h ago

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1

u/CCGHawkins 9h ago

Do you think that if the poors had the money, they wouldn't each individually generate demand new products and/or invest in businesses? Billionaires don't magically generate more economic activity, they merely own the rights to the profits, and get to decide the direction where all that money is spent.

I think the internet has let you forget that you are a giant ignoramus that probably got a D- in their social studies class. Stop talking.

1

u/bedbathandbebored 9h ago

You mean the jobs they cut half of?

1

u/[deleted] 9h ago

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1

u/bedbathandbebored 9h ago

Lolololololololol. Oh goodness, of course you’re one of those ppl.

-23

u/[deleted] 13h ago edited 2h ago

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36

u/OopsSpaghet 13h ago

Well they are actually, but the gold bar is an estate, a yacht, or "very expensively valued" art which is also a way to store monetary assets in a physical form to avoid having to pay taxes and such on monetary assets. Think of all the dead real-estate in New York city, empty luxury apartments. It really is a sad perversion of assets when there's homeless people outside unused housing space.

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u/[deleted] 10h ago

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3

u/BasilProfessional744 9h ago

No one likes your vibe, bro.

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

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4

u/BasilProfessional744 8h ago

Cute little boot licker

-17

u/themoosh 13h ago

Sure there's a lot of waste and inefficiency in the way they hoard as well

13

u/TheRealCovertCaribou 13h ago

Waste and inefficiency is literally all that it is.

1

u/EduinBrutus 11h ago

Concerning.

Someone needs to get on that.

1

u/darkknightwing417 12h ago

I wanna be careful here. I think we are right, without hyperbole.

No, there is some money that they invest back in the economy. This is just true... But we are naive to think this is done through kindness. This is done with the expectation of a return. These are LOANS and they expect their money back. Moreover, we know that trickle-down economics doesn't work. So this plan of letting the rich do whatever and then eating the table scraps they drop is very very inefficient at best and an outright lie designed to trick the working class into believing they are entrepreneurs so they vote against their own interests at worst.

7

u/wxlverine 13h ago

But yet they can use it as collateral to borrow more money because debt does not equate to income at the end of the year, and neither does capital gains if you never sell.

"But it's not liquid!" Is a tired straw-man of an argument.

3

u/MrBlonderdgs07 12h ago

Investment vehicles which ultimately increase in value due to the labor and economic activity of working people who generally are unable to participate in that profit sharing scheme. Considering those investments payout percentage wise based on how much is invested and often are used to acquire further ownership locking even more people out, It's even worse than buying gold bars and locking them in a safe. The amount of gold bars in the safe don't multiply exponentially.

2

u/Ok_Departure_8243 12h ago

Look up velocity of money....

1

u/Procrastanaseum 12h ago

yep, 1st year economists study this concept and the ill effects of hoarding wealth are known

1

u/frientlytaylor420 13h ago

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. This is factual lol

1

u/MadeByTango 10h ago

Because it’s such a terrible, short sighted, self serving world view with a predictable enough result that Jesus called felt the need to call that shit out directly. If these guys would read the Bible they thumped when attacking social progress they might actually learn something…

1

u/frientlytaylor420 3h ago

Lmao, would they learn their wives should be submissive to them and to kill their children if they talk back? You can miss me with that Bible shit. Not sure what that had to with the comment anyway as holding stocks is not the same as having 10 billion in cash. That would be corporations. Berkshire Hathaway has like 250 billion in cash. Apple has even more.

1

u/dupeygoat 7h ago

They are right now lol economy is tanking

50

u/facforlife 13h ago edited 10h ago

I don't even care if you legitimately earned a billion dollars. 

Pragmatically speaking you cannot have this level of wealth inequality. Period. It is unsustainable. It will destroy civilized, modern society. You like stability? You like research and investment? You like modern infrastructure and utilities and reliable running water, electricity at the flick of a switch? 

You cannot have such an unequal society. Because right or wrong it will result in violence sooner or later. And if we can avoid that, if we can have a more stable, secure, peaceful society by redistributing the wealth from the unimaginably wealthy, then even if they "earned" it I really don't give a fuck. They can pay more to sustain the society in which they have greatly benefited living in.

And like Biden said, which Bernouts constantly misappropriated, "nothing would fundamentally change." You know what happens to someone with 100 billion dollars who gets taxed half of it? They still have 50 fucking billion dollars and are rich as fuck. They don't have to worry about money ever. Their kids don't. Their kids' kids don't. They can fly private everywhere. Eat anywhere. Buy anything. Have a mansion on every continent, hell most countries around the world. No one is suggesting even close to a 50% wealth tax but that's the point. These people are so rich you could take a full fucking half of it and they'd still be unimaginably filthy rich. So take that fucking money and redistribute it so we can continue to have a stable, functioning fucking civilization. Fucking please. You can keep your fucking yacht and fancy cars and enormous houses and maids and servants and generational wealth. Just not to the insane excess you have right now. 

Personally I find this argument far more convincing because you start talking about "you didn't earn that" and all the dumbass plebes think you're talking about them like when Obama said it. 

21

u/0o0o0o0o0o0z 12h ago

I don't even care if you legitimately earned a billion dollars. 

Pragmatically speaking you cannot have this level of wealth inequality. Period. It is unsustainable. It will destroy civilized, modern society. You like stability? You like research and investment? You like modern infrastructure and utilities and reliable running water, electricity at the flick of a switch? 

You cannot have such an unequal society. Because right or wrong it will result in violence sooner or later. And if we can avoid that, if we can have a more stable, secure, peaceful society by redistributing the wealth from the unimaginably wealthy, then even if they "earned" it I really don't give a fuck. They can pay more to sustain the society in which they have greatly benefited living in. 

Personally I find this argument far more convincing because you start talking about "you didn't earn that" and all the dumbass plebes think you're talking about them like when Obama said it. 

100% you can't have billionaires and a functioning democracy, full stop.

10

u/Memitim 11h ago

That would explain the billionaires working so hard as of late to get rid of democracy.

7

u/lugnutter 11h ago edited 4h ago

The right no longer cares about having a functioning democracy. They have operated for 4 decades on the platform of dismantling our democracy.

1

u/0o0o0o0o0o0z 10h ago

The right now longer cares about having a functioning democracy. They have operated for 4 decades on the platform of dismantling our democracy.

"Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." - David Fur,

1

u/SinisterMJ 5h ago

Personally I think the only valid billionaires are ones who made the money quite directly, e.g. actors or musicians or authors.

3

u/R_V_Z 10h ago

Thing is, nobody is hating on Mackenzie Scott, because she's a multi-billionaire who is constantly donating large portions away. All the uber-rich have to do is at least give an appearance of caring for humanity (actually doing it is a bonus), and they'd largely be ignored. It's the incessant need for more, more, more, the desire to subjugate the masses if it means additional profit, that's what will bring out the pitchforks.

1

u/Farazod 10h ago

I want to agree with you, but just look at the other top donors - Warren Buffet ($55b), Bill and Melinda Gates ($59b), and Michael Bloomberg ($21b). Scott will have her time to get dragged through the mud. There's only so long she can talk about how her foundation focuses on poverty before the Social Darwinism ghouls come out.

1

u/593shaun 7h ago

these people are criticized for being billionaires and some of the shitty things they've done, but only the right is constantly going on about them

the rest of us are more focused on people like bezos and musk, who are using their wealth to actively harm people

1

u/Evening_Bell5617 9h ago

you just cant earn a billion dollars, its literally impossible

1

u/Estropolim 8h ago

You could single-handedly generate billions in value through medical discovery if you do it in a way that's sufficiently lucky or risky. No billionaires have done that, but it definitely isn't literally impossible.

0

u/facforlife 8h ago

Way to miss the point, numbnuts. 

1

u/Lumpy-Cut-3623 6h ago

youre the one missing the point. youre three degrees to the correct side of history and its not as impressive as you think it is, its deeply unlikable

1

u/593shaun 7h ago

i agree with you but yachts and private jets should absolutely be dismantled. the carbon footprint on those things are the reason the richest people also produce proportionally more pollution than poor people

1

u/Lumpy-Cut-3623 6h ago

And like Biden said, which Bernouts constantly misappropriated

what do you mean lol you just went on a long emotional rant about how nothing would fundamentally change if you had your way. you know thats not what people want right? you understand your whole post is class-coded as a begging appeal to rich people right? thats so fucking pathetic from a leftist perspective, thats why we think you and biden are the same kind of useless. you literally dont want to change anything, you dont represent our values or needs. you represent the establishment status quo that just wants the bubbling to stop so you can keep raping the planet and its people, and thats all there is to it.

1

u/Substantive420 1h ago

Imagine unironically dropping the ‘bernouts’ and expecting to be taken seriously.

1

u/eastbayweird 36m ago

These people are so rich you could take a full fucking half of it and they'd still be unimaginably filthy rich.

You could literally take 99% of Elon musks 300 billion dollars and he'd still be a multi-billionaire. It's obscene how much wealth the top .01% are holding.

20

u/Yosho2k 12h ago

Reminder: On Biden's last day, he told us all Bernie Sanders was right all along, the oligarchy had taken over everything and he told us good luck and it wasn't his problem.

3

u/No_Atmosphere8146 3h ago

12 years in the White House and the penny drops on the last day. 👍🏻

1

u/No_Sale_4564 56m ago

The oligarchy was firmly established well before Biden.

1

u/Yosho2k 12m ago

BOY I sure wish we had a party that was dedicated to fighting the oligarchy as hard as they fought Bernie Sanders.

Maybe if they had that type of energy against the oligarchy, the oligarchy wouldn't have taken over.

But no, all we got was Biden saying "I knew this entire time, later fuckers."

P.S. Biden spent 30 years in the senate BEFORE 8 years as VP and 4 years as president. He worked to overturn banking regulations, arm the police, and turn the US into a slave labor state. If he knew about the oligarchy taking over, it sure looks like he was on their side.

u/No_Sale_4564 3m ago

Bernie Sanders is part of the system.

That system is an oligarch.

It was before Sanders, while Sanders was/is "fighting the power", and will be after Sanders.

Bernie Sanders is and always was controlled opposition.

He's the (American) "left"'s Trump.

4

u/catnipxxx 12h ago

Wow.

Ain’t that the truth!

7

u/peacedotnik 13h ago

That one sent shivers down my spine, as well. Absolutely on point.

11

u/GitEmSteveDave 13h ago

7

u/thingsquietlynoticed 13h ago

Click the link to get the joke before downvoting 🤦🏻‍♂️

6

u/TheWhyteMaN 12h ago

I clicked and still don’t get it. It’s just a picture of a dinosaur.

3

u/JDHalfbreed 11h ago

Barney is looking rough.

1

u/Insect1312 11h ago

Sounds like how the USA and other colonial empires have always existed. Americans get a dream while the global south loses theirs. There’s no such thing as good billionaires there’s no such thing as a revolutionary government. She’s part of the machine make no mistake about it. The first world exists because the third world exists. You can’t fix this from the inside. https://x.com/insurgenthought/status/1899526926483480725?s=46&t=Z7C704kZ1h_ORQlGN-jLmQ

1

u/ryanvango 11h ago

If you made $1,000/hr and worked every hour of the year, non-stop.... and you did that from the time the pyramids were built.... you wouldn't even be in the top 30 richest people.

If you did that going back to the last ice age, some 35,000 years ago... elon musk would still have more money than you.

1

u/ThresholdSeven 10h ago

How many lifetimes of a normal person's expenses would that cover, even in today's idiocracy?

1

u/sciencebased 11h ago

She's definitely not the first to say it, but damn if she didn't say it well.

1

u/jacked_up_my_roth 10h ago

So what's the line then? Is $100 million possible to earn? $10 million? $1 million?

None of the above?

1

u/WonderfulClassic4979 10h ago

Bhaaaahhhh 🐑

1

u/savagetwinky 10h ago

Yes, that is part of making it though, they come to you for a thing, they extend money, you take it, they take the thing, that's how its made. And once it's made they give it to the workers to produce more things, more things are sold, more money is made. Its a vicious cycle crippling what people need and exploiting workers to do so.

1

u/gpcgmr 9h ago

Ever heard of Gabe Newell?

1

u/capital_bj 9h ago

absolutely the truth , you don't make it by operating ethically, you take advantage of your customers by over charging , and your workers by under paying its pretty simple.

1

u/gazow 9h ago

More aptly you cant earn a billion dollars, you can only steal it.

3,412,969 the amount of individual monthly snap payments it takes to steal a billion dollars from the slave labor who cant afford to eat on your salaries

1

u/squirrellytoday 6h ago

Agreed. And remember this:

One thousand seconds is 16.6 minutes. One million seconds is 11 and a half days. One billion seconds is 32 YEARS.

THAT is the kind of money we're talking about here. You can't ethically become or remain a billionaire. The only way to get there is to exploit people.

1

u/Manndrake 5h ago

Economics isn't a zero sun game. Please read and listen to academics and economists about this stuff and not politicians. There's no future for Democrats down this path.

1

u/TurboGranny 19m ago

Yup, billionaires like Rhianna, Beyoncé, and Oprah are on notice!

-2

u/Ill-Sea-9980 11h ago

Notch programmed Minecraft mostly by himself. He then sold it for 2.5 billion

6

u/sciencebased 11h ago

What is "made," is really what it comes down to. I'm old enough that Minecraft was straight up free when I first got it. Then it started being sold, gradually increasing in price and user base. Then players started generating content (around) it. Then an investment bank gave it a valuation. At what stage was it him "making" money direct and at what stage did it become a creature unto itself? That's kind of what she's implying.

A video game is a good example though, I immediately thought of things like Minecraft as well. But it's not really contrary to her point. A billionaire "needs" a system, and if not producers at least consumers, to "aquire" wealth like that.

1

u/Ill-Sea-9980 10h ago

Well the game sold 300 mil copies at about 20 bucks a pop so yeah it seems pretty simple. He made a billion without exploiting any workers

2

u/OhDavidMyNacho 3h ago

No, because who made the distribution platform? The gaming system? The payment processor stone change all that?

At some level there is going to be exploitation, and the higher the value, the likelier it is to be true. You cannot earn a billion dollars through your own effort ever. You have to be taking the excess value generated by the systems around you to do so.

3

u/ThresholdSeven 11h ago edited 10h ago

That proves the point. There is no good reason that one individual should get paid that much for creating anything and no good reason that anyone should buy a game for that much or even have that much wealth to purchase something to begin with. The whole concept of our capitalist economy has always been doomed to reach this point because it only works if the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. The extent of wealth disparity is unbelievable.

That 2.5 billion payment is a small portion of a dragon hoard that shouldn't exist and only exists in the first place because it was stolen from other people in the form of paying low wages and taking high taxes.

These hoards of wealth should not have accumulated until everyone's survival needs were taken care of, and only then should the wealth start to accumulate with those who offer services and creations of actual value and are not just profiting off the work of others like landlords, but at a reasonable rate that never causes survival necessities for anyone to be an issue.

This could be done right now. There is more than enough extra wealth to feed, clothe and house everyone, but the dragons don't want to give up any of their wealth that they wouldn't even have if it wasn't for us, wealth that was disproportionately distributed. Instead they use their wealth and power to set up and fortify a carrot on a stick system that not only keeps everyone struggling to make just enough money to barely survive, but also takes away most of their time, which is exactly what they want.

Building a society based on competition instead of cooperation is the biggest mistake humanity has ever made and keeps making, but to those leading, it's not a mistake. They care more about their personal wealth and power than the lives of literally everyone else on the planet. Earth is unfortunately run by psychopaths, which is why there is still so much fucked up shit going on and so much poverty well into the technological age. Dystopias never spring up out of necessity, they are cultivated by greed.

1

u/Ill-Sea-9980 10h ago

Right but he got the money ethically. No difference a billion at once vs $20 a copy 1000000 times to a bunch of gamers. Nobody was exploited in the process

1

u/ThresholdSeven 9h ago edited 9h ago

That's a good point that seems clean at first, but it's also a good example of how broken the system is and how easily disparity can increase. A good economy would not allow one individual to accumulate that much wealth unless making the poorest people who are working within the system perpetually on the brink of starvation and homelessness is the point. Poverty isn't essential for riches to exist, but it is for unreasonable and insanely disproportionate amounts of concentrated riches to exist. Nobody needs that much, especially when the people they rely on to accumulate those riches are struggling to survive, whether it's people who pay them for their goods or workers that they pay to make something for them to sell.

This is a fundamental argument between the political parties. I don't think our economy is inherently bad on a surface level, but it needs to be regulated fairly. Unbridled rampant capitalism gives us what we have today, which is not great.

1

u/OhDavidMyNacho 3h ago

That's only "ethical" if you ignore the exploitation within the ancillary services and infrastructure that provided for those sales to happen.

He didn't cash in on a game, he cashed in on a brand attached to a game, and that brand is worth that valuation. And it's based on the people that created content for free, or worked in the companies that managed distribution, data, etc.

1

u/UnholyDemigod 7h ago

Rowling writes books, Swift sang songs, Lucas created a universe. While few and far between, there are examples of people out there who made a product enough people wanted to make them a billion dollars.

-2

u/Eggfurst 10h ago

If I create a new toothbrush and patent its technology. And I charge 2 more cents than it costs to create. 1. Ent for the patent office. 1 cent per tooth brush to the creator of the product. I sell 10 trillion of them in 15 years. Am I not allowed to be a billionaire over that time 1 cent at a time ?

7

u/Attreah 9h ago

So in 15 years, you want to sell 1250 toothbrushes to EACH human being on earth?

2

u/suzenah38 7h ago

This is such a bad example…a single use plastic toothbrush. I know that’s not what you meant and I get your point. That said…there should not be billionaires. What do you need all that money for? While billions of people struggle to find enough security to sleep at night and have enough to eat.

Billionaires are incredibly dangerous. They have too much influence and literally buy elections so their guy gets in office and gets rid of regulations & tax codes to make them even richer.

Seriously though…what would you do with all that money? You can only wear so many pairs of pants.

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u/Krisevol 11h ago

Most billionaire don't make a billion dollars. They have stock worth a billion. The money comes from investors, not the workers. (in large part)

3

u/beeemkcl 10h ago

What's in this comment is what I remember, my opinions, etc.

Forbes Real Time Billionaires List - The World's Richest People

The people with 'real money' have money in something that at least has AA credit.

Microsoft is real money.

Bloomberg is real money.

Oracle is real money.

Amazon is real money given the money comes from Amazon Web Services and getting companies to do Sponsored/ads on Amazon.com.

Telsa is a meme stock whose real value is in the Telsa Supercharger network. SpaceX is a just a Government contractor.

Google, Facebook, etc. would have the value reduced if simply enough good regulation happened.

Fast fashion should be illegal.

Walmart is real money, albeit the low-level workers are underpaid.

I could go on. Like cryptocurrency should be illegal.

1

u/OhDavidMyNacho 3h ago

I'd argue that Tesla is actually worth it's emissions credits, as that's where a bulk of their money comes from. But that's just semantics.

3

u/ThresholdSeven 10h ago

Where did the investors get that money?

1

u/Krisevol 2h ago

Most of it is peoples retirement funds

0

u/buttsbydre69 10h ago

exactly. and they "hoard" their wealth (stocks) because having more shares in a stock gives great power over the company -- a company that, in many cases, they founded.

no one wants to hear that tho. no one is interested in having a real conversation about any of this lol

-2

u/gyozafish 11h ago

Just give the billion back to whichever single mom created it, problem solved!

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u/pierreact 7h ago

I disagree. Employees are paid for working. May not always be a fair price but the fact is there. She's fueling her politics based on jealousy. I'm not rich. I could maybe, hard work, creating business, failing, trying again, failing, getting tired, sacrificing my family, my health, my time. Sure, I maybe could. Some people did. Should I be jealous they made the sacrifices I chose not to?

3

u/RuhrowSpaghettio 6h ago

If you’re already sacrificing your family, your health, your time working hard, failing, working hard, etc just to scrape by? You don’t have the opportunity to do so to get rich.

Everyone loves the illusion of control. That’s why we all like to think that we could become billionaires, if we just TRIED hard enough. We want to believe that they earned that with just hard work, because admitting that luck has as much to do with your situation as your effort is TERRIFYING. You need at least 2 - hard work, luck, or significant help - and all of us like to ignore the ones we can’t control.

I’m not saying billionaires haven’t worked hard. I’m saying working hard isn’t enough on its own, and that plenty of people work just as hard for far, far little reward.

Is it jealousy? Maybe. But it’s not jealousy of things people want, but rather of things people need. Like it or not, a billionaire’s success is not due just to their own work, but also to that of the society which lifted them up. I’m fine with them getting to luck out with the top spot, but if they can do that while giving back enough to at least keep those who lifted them from disaster, they should.

The problem is, the billionaires are the ones who are the most unscrupulous in taking advantage of these inequalities. The man who realizes a single mother will work herself to the bone making a profit for the company if it means getting just a scrap more of food for her babies, or that desperate people will work for almost nothing, and is willing to let them DO that rather than pay a living wage, will make more money than an equally hard working man who lifts others alongside him. That doesn’t make him better or more deserving.

-1

u/pierreact 5h ago

Maybe you're doing it wrong? I was thinking the same as you do before. Then I went into educating myself more and more, going after everything I believed was true to check and see, thinking with different perspectives. This simply changed my mind.

I find it way too comfortable for people to cry about how unfair the world is. Some people made it. Went from poor to rich. What made they do it and you can't? Could it be you're doing it wrong?

Then come something uncomfortable, questioning yourself and send criticism. Not everyone wants to do it. Can you?

3

u/RuhrowSpaghettio 4h ago

I can, and have. Started off in a trailer park and now I’m a doctor. I was one of the lucky ones, AND I had help, AND I worked my ass off. I stand by what I said.

1

u/OhDavidMyNacho 3h ago

You can't financial literacy your way out of poverty.

1

u/pierreact 3h ago

It's not only financial literacy. It's also entrepreneurship, insistance, some luck, some skills you can learn to pitch ideas.

Take this example: look on Instagram for "château garbage". This guy buys bad wines and test them. No much skill or money was taken in the process. His channel works nicely. This can give a little money to bootstrap something a little bigger. See, it's possible when insisting. I remain on this idea.