• AvaMadison_27@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Imagine how different the world would be if billionaires competed to solve problems instead of competing to become richer. What a world that would be!

    • Glaedr304@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      To be honest, I think the billionaires think they are solving problems. I also think that they believe if they had the money they could do more good with it. They are obviously wrong.

    • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I had this vision of the military. Imagine a natural disaster like a tsunami is about to strike the Middle East. Here comes the carrier force and they start launching what looks like tomahawk missiles. Instead of blowing people up on the ground they open up in air and drop rafts and life preservers. The military has shown up to save countless people instead of murdering them.

        • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Yes, along those lines only the major force(Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, etc.) would be like a nation wide coast/national guard that goes around helping nations out in times of disasters. In-between disasters they could act like a worldwide corp of engineers improving areas that need it.

    • ShutUpWesley@piefed.zip
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      4 days ago

      Just because it isn’t hundred dollar bills in their mattress doesn’t mean they don’t have it. They can leverage what they own in exchange for goods and services equivalent to the value of their holdings, the exact mechanism doesn’t really matter.

      • hansolo@lemmy.today
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        4 days ago

        No, it’s that they invest their money so it makes more money. They leverage the wealth being liquid to make more. It’s the real dividing line between wealth and not.

        You can’t really invest $200 in your bank account and expect anything. First of, you need that to spend to live.

    • Potocobe@lemmy.zip
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      4 days ago

      The only actual cash billionaire I can think of is the guy that created and sold Minecraft. That dude has billions in the bank. Or at least he did for a minute or two before I’m sure he invested a ton of it. All the other billionaires just own billions worth of stuff for the most part. Banks don’t even leave money in banks. They invest or loan out all of it and keep the returns. That’s the scam, same as it ever was.

      • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        It’s not really a scam to move your cash into non liquid assets for financial security. How you got there could be a product of a scam but (going off of a previous comment I made a few days ago about how they buy assets and hold their money in those) typically, after you have a certain amount of money, one can only figure boredom kicks in and that in-turn, would most likely create a sense of frivolous spending or seeing what you can hold in forever items with absurd values.

        Paintings, Collectable Cars, Mid-Century Clothing, Collectable Foods (ikr), Historical Properties (that sometimes get sold and then they re-coup losses through making the historical property profitable…sigh, creating a historical society with the goal of recouping losses). …

        • Potocobe@lemmy.zip
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          3 days ago

          Nah, I meant the banks are the scam. They hold your money in a low interest rate savings account. Then they loan out your savings account (on paper at least) to someone at a higher interest rate and so on. Every bank for the longest time was a big old house of cards that only held up as long as no one moved too much money at once. I get what you are saying about wealthy people wealth acquisition, though.

        • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Whoever downvoted this: For example, if you purchased a… Idfk a Rolex watch and it gained value over 40 year and you kept it pristine condition and never wore it and sold it at auction, is that a scam or just market fluctuations? Is it a scam that someone would pay twice as much at auction for a watch that due to others opinions gains market value or just ridiculous?

          It’s no one’s fault or a scam that an item in the future gains value. Is it a scam that a video game system can become more valuable in 20 years or just a product of opionated market value?

          It’s not fucked up to have nice things of value. People put payment plans on nice things that they may choose to keep in pristine quality for decades before it gains value and sell it at auction, is the person who did a payment plan for the item and has an item of value that gains value over time more fucked up than the person who can buy the same item outright to do the same?

          It’s the fact that people who are stupid rich do it but if I, a person in financial poverty does the same, through a payment plan I’m a fucking idiot for not saving money.

          So when does it become okay to buy nice things at a ridiculous value to have financial security in non-liquid assets? When, in your opinion does it become okay to buy a nice piece of jewelry or a nice painting and storing those away properly until they gain more value?

          I mean shit people collect baseball cards and wait until they gain value. It’s such a normal thing, to hold value in assets.

  • TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I knew there’d be folks in here claiming it’s “fake money.” They can liquidate when they want to, it’s not “fake.”

    • Gravitywell.xYz@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Not only is it real money when its invested, typically the rich can just borrow against those shares instead of having to liquidate anything to pay for things.

      For example when they need $40b to purchase a website or media corp to use so they can have better control of the narrative, they just get a loan because everyone knows they’ll be able to make the payments, instead of selling enough shares to tank the thing that inflates their networth beyond all reason.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      They can liquidate part of it. If they liquidate all of it then most will disappear into thin air.

      If you’re Elon Musk and own a large part of Tesla and SpaceX and you sell all your shares, both companies crater HARD.

      Just remove stock from anyone who owns over 1% of any publicly traded company and nationalize all index funds’ assets (yes, that includes retirement funds). Problem solved.

      Or just cap total wealth at ~5 mill, indexed to the median income so there’s no need for legislation like with minimum wage.

  • 87Six@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    I think we should extract the water from Sam Altman’s body and use it to cool a datacenter

  • Xanthobilly@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    He bankrolled a longevity company called Retro Bio to the tune of $150M. It’s lunacy and the money would be way better spent by the NIH as tax dollars.

    • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      Yeah, most of it is all smoke and mirrors but they all own media companies which make it seem more than it actually is.

  • Sparky@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    billions sitting in billionaire bank accounts? You mean investment portfolios? You obviously don’t know wealth management :D

  • DekSomBoon@lemmy.today
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    4 days ago

    The billionaires think they are already doing “good for the society” by having their money invested in companies and stuff

    • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Well you can do good and have a lot of money, I mean I think the biggest problem is that they’re unable to do it without having more income in the process. Maybe there aren’t as many as we’d like to think but I hold the naive and simplistic hope, that humanity over profits will exist in a future billionaire.

      The rich person dilemma of: If I help everyone, I won’t have any money left. Doesn’t apply to people like musk

      The 2,000$ stimulus checks we got before covid… That shit went to groceries, appliances, new cookware and clothing…

      I didn’t pick the most fashionable clothing, the most expensive cookware, the most expensive grocery store or the best of the best with appliances but I used that money on what I needed and you know what it made me realize:

      $2,000 goes fucking quick. I’m not defending the superduper rich but I am saying I can partially understand how if you just give and give and give to every cause in society, if you were worth like 10mil and your assets were already declining with no substantial gains to recoup the major net losses. eventually you hit the point of: If I help everyone who needs it, I won’t have any money left to survive and as bullshit as it is that it would likely be that way for someone who has that much money, there’s a weird understanding there and maybe it’s the growing up in capitalism that the thought of, “If I keep giving I won’t have anything left for myself,” mindset is even alive in me but I think it’s survival and I do fully understand and appreciate the difference between survival and greed.

      I hate to even say it like this but the people making the least don’t give to the people who have hardly anything every single time. Like someone who’s working a minimum wage job isn’t going to give to the person begging on the street with a cup asking for spare change or even saying what it’s for, every single time. That’s because if you did that every single time, you most likely would start running out of money.

      We can all agree though, once you have enough money to where you’re building your own space exploration company… give the dude begging 500$ and walk away. Like if you have so much money you can open a suitcase, throw the money up in the air let it fall and make snow angels with money… fuckin’ redo some hospitals and schools. Do something other than keep looking at the dollar signs.

  • hansolo@lemmy.today
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    4 days ago

    This is patently untrue.

    Billionaires have myriad investments because, unlike us non-wealthy plebs, they have a critical mass of wealth that can easily make greater wealth by flinging it around. They rarely keep all that much in cash because cash is static and stupid to them. It’s the only money that isn’t working for them to make more.

    Which is why they look down on us for chasing money needed to live and survive. Because we have to use silly pleb levels of money that we can’t even invest.

    • macniel@feddit.org
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      4 days ago

      Billionaires have myriad investments because,

      no they do it for the tax deductibles.

      • hansolo@lemmy.today
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        4 days ago

        Both. It’s tax free and earns then more tax-free money.

        All the incentives are there.

    • 卩卄卂丂乇@lemmy.8th.world
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      4 days ago

      I disagree. No person needs so much surface to leave, people to care for their need, exceptions to the basic rules of leaving together. They can keep the money but leave in 100m2 max, buy your food, take the f…king bus.

      • hansolo@lemmy.today
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        4 days ago

        You’re saying you disagree with what billionaires do, and not the factual statement of what they do and how they talk about us being foolish non-billionaires, right?

        • 卩卄卂丂乇@lemmy.8th.world
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          4 days ago

          They are human beings. No human is an enterprise nir need so much. I’m not against who they are, I am against what they think they are.

  • Venator@lemmy.nz
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    4 days ago

    It’s not underused if they’re running windows with a few tabs open in chrome with sites that have similar ram usage to chatgpt… 😅

    Wasted in terms of bloat maybe in some cases, but it is being “used” 😅

  • hamsamrich@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I have 624 GB of DDR5 6000 MHz RAM just sitting around. Sam Altman, you can lick my butt and suck on my balls