The Off Topic Topic

[Valmy]

I think it should be possible to both acknowledge that billionaires often did a lot of useful things on the way to getting their billions, and that sustainability of democracy requires keeping their power in check.  The bashing of them as a class in our political dialogue is unseemly, and sets a lot of bad precedents.

I am happy to acknowledge that. But when I look too closely at these guys I don't any particularly useful things. I see some guys who got lucky trend chasing and it worked out for them and some of them have let their good fortune go to their heads and they really think they are goddamn geniuses who should tell us all what to do.

Several of these guys, who are more self aware, have directly said if they didn't do it somebody else would have.

So I am not going to kiss their asses out of some ideological obligation, like I am supposed to agree they did useful things for some vague principle that doing so is a positive good for society. I would like to be convinced and demonstrated that they, in fact, have done useful things that without them being there would not otherwise have been done.

This is totally separate from those seem like straight up corrupt malignant actors like Elon Musk who has stuffed boards with cronies, lied and misled the public over and over again, and bought off politicians.

[Valmy]

Valmy, stop repeating the lie.  Either you are too young to remember ordering from a catalog, or you're too old and your memory has faded.

It took a couple of weeks tops.  But more importantly, everybody's buying into the cultural norm of instant gratification.  Why is it a social good to be able to receive something the same day you order it?

I remember as a little kid in the 80s saving up my money and my Tech Points and ordering my mail order Transformers and it taking 6-8 weeks for delivery. But that was waaaay back then. By the 1990s rolled around it was, as you say, just taking a short time. The idea it was Amazon specifically that changed anything is ridiculous. Amazon won by being able to operate at a loss for decades and being the last man standing after the dot com collapse.

[garbon]

I think it should be possible to both acknowledge that billionaires often did a lot of useful things on the way to getting their billions, and that sustainability of democracy requires keeping their power in check.  The bashing of them as a class in our political dialogue is unseemly, and sets a lot of bad precedents.

I would love to set the precedent that it is unseemly to be worth a billion dollars.

[The Brain]

Sweden has much more USD billionaires per capita than the US. Sweden also has universal healthcare and tuition-free education etc etc. Maybe the most pressing problem in the US is not the fact that billionaires exist.

[garbon]

Sweden has much more USD billionaires per capita than the US. Sweden also has universal healthcare and tuition-free education etc etc. Maybe the most pressing problem in the US is not the fact that billionaires exist.

Counterpoint is that it might be hard to draw easy parallels between the US and a monoculture state with a population the size of a large city.

[Valmy]

Sweden has much more USD billionaires per capita than the US. Sweden also has universal healthcare and tuition-free education etc etc. Maybe the most pressing problem in the US is not the fact that billionaires exist.

Well there are billionaires and there are billionaires. When just a few guys control all major media outlets and have paid off both parties, it makes it hard to operate. Each of these guys are also supposedly worth more than the GDP of Pakistan.

But I would like to point out Sweden has high taxes and all their billionaires have not been shot in gulags or fled the country as we keep being told will happen the second we start taxing to cover our public costs.

[Sheilbh]

Sweden has much more USD billionaires per capita than the US. Sweden also has universal healthcare and tuition-free education etc etc. Maybe the most pressing problem in the US is not the fact that billionaires exist.

Yeah I agree. I don't think billionaires matter that much one way or the other. I think the country with the highest concentration of wealth is France (because of families like the Arnaults).

If anything I think it's a bit of a distraction from what European social democracies have which is not necessarily fewer billionaires, but broader more universal tax bases paying higher taxes for universal services.

[Valmy]

Sweden has much more USD billionaires per capita than the US. Sweden also has universal healthcare and tuition-free education etc etc. Maybe the most pressing problem in the US is not the fact that billionaires exist.

Yeah I agree. I don't think billionaires matter that much one way or the other. I think the country with the highest concentration of wealth is France (because of families like the Arnaults).

If anything I think it's a bit of a distraction from what European social democracies have which is not necessarily fewer billionaires, but broader more universal tax bases paying higher taxes for universal services.

The power the billionaires wield is the problem. I could see an America where they exist but they are just enjoying their super yachts and snorting coke off strippers assholes are basically harmless. And I suspect most billionaires in the US are just that, relatively harmless people whose wealth only reflects the corruption in the system, not the cause of it. People who, if we raised their taxes to balance budgets and pay for needed social programs and infrastructure would shrug and pay it.