Hey I’m no big supporter of billionaires but “that behavior in any other species we would classify it as some kind of divergent behavior” is extremely wrong. Altruism is extremely rare outside humans. Most animals would absolutely love to get every single piece of food in the forest all to themselves. They steal food from each other constantly. Whole species are based on the very concept of stealing as their main or sole life strategy. There are fish out there whose main food is the juveniles of the exact same fish species. Literal baby-eating as their main strategy.
We humans are supposed to be better than animals. Comparing someone to an animal is comparing them to something bad.
If you saw a single bear successfully hoarding 98% of the food supply of an entire forest, you’d have to be a fucking moron to fail to classify them as a detrimental anomaly.
They don’t do that because they physically can’t. If they could they would. If you have two starving bears and throw them one carcass. Only one will eat because they will fight and scream away the weaker one.
The original point is that billionaires, as I interpret it, is that billionaires are worse than animals. Or at least that if we look at billionaires as if they were animals we would still diagnose them as ill. My point is that that’s not true. Animals can be just as psychotic. Most have absolutely no morals and a subset of them regularly do things that are way worse than what the billionaires are doing, hence my examples.
However animals are not humans. Billionaires are humans. If we say billionaires are like animals that’s already a really bad grade. We humans are supposed to be much better than that. I’m not defending billionaires at all. I’m saying one should compare them to something else. There are much better and more effective ways to criticize them than this.
When they are full they move on with their lives. Hoarding behavior, like with squirrels and nuts is rare and even when present is usually because they aren’t smart enough to remember their hiding spots.
That all being said, we are human the whole idea is that we can moderate behaviors and not only act on instinct.
It’s one thing for a working person to spend whatever income they don’t need to live at a baseline on others, it’s another for someone to hoard so much money they couldn’t necessarily physically spend it all if they tried, let alone spend it on things that would actually measurably increase their happiness.
You can argue regular people should donate more, and many actually do donate more than billionaires (as a % of assets/income) depending on which source you trust to give a good enough picture, (given a lot of donations are hard to track, both from large billionaire foundations and DAFs, to smaller donors with hard to classify spending) but there is a massive gap in how much a regular person can donate relative to a rich person, even just as a % of their income.
If you live paycheck to paycheck, but have, say, $20 left over at the end of the month in actual money to your name that hasn’t already gone to groceries, rent, etc, (and we assume you have no other assets), your net worth is $20.
If a billionaire donates $999,000,000 to charity, that would be the equivalent of that person donating $19.98.
Unlike that person though, the billionaire would have a million dollars in net worth, enough money to buy a house, while the regular person would have $0.02.
Even if these conditions aren’t perfect, and you assume maybe the person has some more net worth than $20, the point still stands. A billionaire can give up almost all of their net worth and still have enough money to comfortably live, or at least meet basic living standards for the average person. For most Americans, if they lose their job, have any surprise bill, or don’t make as much money as they expected to, they will instantly become homeless the next month rent is due, even if they give up none of their existing assets and just stop adding more money on top.
This is why “billionairism” (not a real term ofc) is such a damaging condition. It not only causes you to become obsessed with hoarding wealth that you don’t necessarily need, but it causes you to do so at the expense of others you could readily help without experiencing any material downside in your everyday life. There is no reason to hoard so much wealth.
Money is just a means to get or do things. If you are not spending that money, and you have more money than you’ll ever need to spend, that excess dollar value past your realistic spending for the rest of your life is just a valueless number to you. It’s a number that will never impact your life, but it can impact others. Hoarding it is stupid and immoral.
Because most people are working class and need the money they earn to keep themselves and their loved ones alive, if they can even afford that under capital’s starvation wages.
Mental disorder is very, very tricky to define, as something maladaptive in one context may work in another. One example is how in individualistic cultures, people hearing voices more often experience them as intrusive and malevolant, and we call it schizophrenia, while people on collectivist cultures may experience the voices as friendly and comforting. Is that a disease, then, if it benefits a person? Psychologists tend to go with a working definition based on how adaptive a condition is for the person and their society.
But in what context does it benefit a person to be unable to ever have “enough” of anything, never able to be satiated, compulsively adding to an enormous pile of wealth far, far beyond anything that they could ever use? Further, when the condition drives them to use the power attendant to that wealth to actively harm their society in myriad ways, how is that adaptive? It seems that they harbor a deep anxiety about the possibility that their accumulated wealth might be reduced, in a way completely imperceptible to them, and even being consciously aware that this is so, still suffer from a mania that compels them to hurt other people to keep that from happening.
Hardly sounds like what most of us would define as “successful in life.”
An amassing of money is only one definition of success. Depending on how you define it, I am either the most or least successful person you have ever met. I am poor, but I do precisely what I want to do, and usually when I want to. It mostly relies on the help of others, but let’s be honest who doesn’t rely on others in some way or another to do their thing?
There’s only one, maybe two things that I want to do that are probably going to be forever outside of my reach. One is going to space (my body is too broken). The other is pooping on specific graves without getting arrested and I don’t think I can outrun security with my drawers down anymore.
Why? How? What did I even read?
Why would being successful in life be a mental disease?
Hoarding a resource (money) when other people are starving, homeless and dying of preventable diseases.
If we see that behavior in any other species we would classify it as some kind of divergent behavior.
Hey I’m no big supporter of billionaires but “that behavior in any other species we would classify it as some kind of divergent behavior” is extremely wrong. Altruism is extremely rare outside humans. Most animals would absolutely love to get every single piece of food in the forest all to themselves. They steal food from each other constantly. Whole species are based on the very concept of stealing as their main or sole life strategy. There are fish out there whose main food is the juveniles of the exact same fish species. Literal baby-eating as their main strategy.
We humans are supposed to be better than animals. Comparing someone to an animal is comparing them to something bad.
If you saw a single bear successfully hoarding 98% of the food supply of an entire forest, you’d have to be a fucking moron to fail to classify them as a detrimental anomaly.
They don’t do that because they physically can’t. If they could they would. If you have two starving bears and throw them one carcass. Only one will eat because they will fight and scream away the weaker one.
Yet billionaires can. Interesting how you are willing to work so hard to completely miss the point. How stupid do you choose to be?
The original point is that billionaires, as I interpret it, is that billionaires are worse than animals. Or at least that if we look at billionaires as if they were animals we would still diagnose them as ill. My point is that that’s not true. Animals can be just as psychotic. Most have absolutely no morals and a subset of them regularly do things that are way worse than what the billionaires are doing, hence my examples.
However animals are not humans. Billionaires are humans. If we say billionaires are like animals that’s already a really bad grade. We humans are supposed to be much better than that. I’m not defending billionaires at all. I’m saying one should compare them to something else. There are much better and more effective ways to criticize them than this.
Well there’s always this more “humane” take:
Yes because they don’t have enough food.
When they are full they move on with their lives. Hoarding behavior, like with squirrels and nuts is rare and even when present is usually because they aren’t smart enough to remember their hiding spots.
That all being said, we are human the whole idea is that we can moderate behaviors and not only act on instinct.
Hermit crabs
Why aren’t you spending all your money and time on helping others then?
The money you earn would find around zilion uses in helping others.
It’s one thing for a working person to spend whatever income they don’t need to live at a baseline on others, it’s another for someone to hoard so much money they couldn’t necessarily physically spend it all if they tried, let alone spend it on things that would actually measurably increase their happiness.
You can argue regular people should donate more, and many actually do donate more than billionaires (as a % of assets/income) depending on which source you trust to give a good enough picture, (given a lot of donations are hard to track, both from large billionaire foundations and DAFs, to smaller donors with hard to classify spending) but there is a massive gap in how much a regular person can donate relative to a rich person, even just as a % of their income.
If you live paycheck to paycheck, but have, say, $20 left over at the end of the month in actual money to your name that hasn’t already gone to groceries, rent, etc, (and we assume you have no other assets), your net worth is $20.
If a billionaire donates $999,000,000 to charity, that would be the equivalent of that person donating $19.98.
Unlike that person though, the billionaire would have a million dollars in net worth, enough money to buy a house, while the regular person would have $0.02.
Even if these conditions aren’t perfect, and you assume maybe the person has some more net worth than $20, the point still stands. A billionaire can give up almost all of their net worth and still have enough money to comfortably live, or at least meet basic living standards for the average person. For most Americans, if they lose their job, have any surprise bill, or don’t make as much money as they expected to, they will instantly become homeless the next month rent is due, even if they give up none of their existing assets and just stop adding more money on top.
This is why “billionairism” (not a real term ofc) is such a damaging condition. It not only causes you to become obsessed with hoarding wealth that you don’t necessarily need, but it causes you to do so at the expense of others you could readily help without experiencing any material downside in your everyday life. There is no reason to hoard so much wealth.
Money is just a means to get or do things. If you are not spending that money, and you have more money than you’ll ever need to spend, that excess dollar value past your realistic spending for the rest of your life is just a valueless number to you. It’s a number that will never impact your life, but it can impact others. Hoarding it is stupid and immoral.
deleted by creator
Because most people are working class and need the money they earn to keep themselves and their loved ones alive, if they can even afford that under capital’s starvation wages.
Do you spend all your money on survival?
No
Never thought I’d see the day someone actually propose Voodoo Economics seriously, ie. Thatcher’s and Reagan’s policies. Fuck that shit
Once my needs are met, I am. And I’m disabled. Why aren’t you?
Because I’m selfish.
If I had any, I wouldnt. Me and the type I keep in my company, would go broke giving it away. Thats why were not billionaires. Money isnt a god.
Redefining a psychopathic trait as “being successful” is truly a boot to lick
We have billionaire shills on lemmy now? Are we finally mainstream?
You’re either disingenuous, or stupid
There are no ethical billionaires. They get there by shitting on people and exploitation of the vulnerable
Mental disorder is very, very tricky to define, as something maladaptive in one context may work in another. One example is how in individualistic cultures, people hearing voices more often experience them as intrusive and malevolant, and we call it schizophrenia, while people on collectivist cultures may experience the voices as friendly and comforting. Is that a disease, then, if it benefits a person? Psychologists tend to go with a working definition based on how adaptive a condition is for the person and their society.
But in what context does it benefit a person to be unable to ever have “enough” of anything, never able to be satiated, compulsively adding to an enormous pile of wealth far, far beyond anything that they could ever use? Further, when the condition drives them to use the power attendant to that wealth to actively harm their society in myriad ways, how is that adaptive? It seems that they harbor a deep anxiety about the possibility that their accumulated wealth might be reduced, in a way completely imperceptible to them, and even being consciously aware that this is so, still suffer from a mania that compels them to hurt other people to keep that from happening.
Hardly sounds like what most of us would define as “successful in life.”
moneu does not equate to success.
Money does equate to value provided to the society, which in my opinion equates to success.
An amassing of money is only one definition of success. Depending on how you define it, I am either the most or least successful person you have ever met. I am poor, but I do precisely what I want to do, and usually when I want to. It mostly relies on the help of others, but let’s be honest who doesn’t rely on others in some way or another to do their thing?
There’s only one, maybe two things that I want to do that are probably going to be forever outside of my reach. One is going to space (my body is too broken). The other is pooping on specific graves without getting arrested and I don’t think I can outrun security with my drawers down anymore.