I hate these kinds of comments, because they demonstrate a lack of understanding of a fundamental fact--if billionaires were the type of people who thought about helping others, they would never be billionaires in the first place.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
To accumulate that kind of wealth you must be a sociopath, or close enough to one. You can't do things like lay off tens of thousands of workers at Christmas in order to increase company profits and thus your payout bonus if you have empathy.
You absolutely do not "need to be a sociopath" to accumulate that much wealth. To not return a lot of it to society is sociopathic, but your armchair opinions and assumptions are duly noted, boss.
Like, I get the wish fulfillment ideal, but...yeah, the system as it's currently built doesn't allow for either an ethical accumulation of that amount of wealth or a way to distribute it back that helps effectively. Bruce Wayne is an interesting and great person, but also very goddamn fictional.
this lol. ppl who say "he could be batman" are telling on themselves: they don't understand the point of that story is to show a character dressed as supervillain (billionaire, goth) who is secretly good, a thing that is by design equally as impossible as krypton. as a shitty nerd myself 🧵
i think it is really funny how many people missed the point of one of the most famous stories ever written. personally i'd walk into moving traffic before i confessed to the entire internet that i'm too dumb for batman comics. the shame would eat me alive. how would i sleep. who would i become
The unreality of it is less bothersome than the expectation from people that the mythic idea is taken the same way by everyone. The story of Iron Man for example, is taken by most fans as "dude copes with PTSD by doing the only thing he knows how" not "Fuck you, I'm a flying tank!"
It also misses that when billionaires do "help," they do so in ways that increase their power and reflect their (elitist, chauvinist, neoliberal, usually eugenicist, often racist) worldview. One of Bezos' rivals "gave" insane money to "cure diseases," and used it to block open patents for vaccines.
If he sells off his company to get the money he puts hundreds of thousands of people out of work. Billionaires can't go into the bank and ask for cash. It's not how finance works
Nah, just leave them with like, 10m or so in total assets and nationalize their megacorporations
That’s more that enough to live quite affluently off of without doing anything ever again. There is no reason to have more money than that other than pure greed
The only thing worth more to a billionaire than another hundred dollars is a feeling they get knowing that theirs is the boot that’s stomping on a human face forever.
Mackenzie Scott has given away over 16 billion to charities. I’m not saying she can’t afford it and just saying the statement isn’t always true.
If all the 1% wealth was distributed to those below 25% line. We’d still have homelessness and unemployment
I couldn't fathom having enough money to live every possible experience imaginable a 1000 times over, still have more than I could ever spend, and not do some good with it.
Having that kind of wealth could change the world, yet they just keep taking more. #everythingisn'tenough
like, even if they stumbled into ten billion dollars, just them going out TO do this would get them below the billionaire line easily. *rant here bout how we shouldn't HAVE billionaires at all*
If you watch Inception from this point of view, it's super cool.
(Corporate spies changing how a CEO thinks, like...what if Cobb planted the idea of curing cancer?)
What pisses me off is just how little effort it takes to help people. Like it takes so little to go out of your way to do nice shit that I don't believe that billionaires are actually people cause how can you see bad shit happening and just do nothing about it?
I think most people assume they were born into a rich family, and in some cases that is true but yeah Billionaires are gonna have to play dirty to get far
Also, the people who invest in them would flee and find someone with less morals, so even if they one day turned good, it wouldn't fucking matter because they would be broke.
For a fictional example see: Netflix's Iron Fist. Rich kid comes back from burning man and wants to give free healthcare.
Ditto Musk. Nothing he’s going to do as head of DOGE needs to be done. It will be pointlessly destructive and will ruin the lives of the thousands of people he’s going to have made redundant. As a sovereign currency-issuer, the USA will save nothing. He could do good, but has chosen not to.
Gates networth has doubled and more so ever since selling his Microsoft stick and "retiring". His "non profits" make him more of a fortune than Computers ever did.
I don't get Sauron. If I was an evil demi god with dark powers I would help middle earth. Orcs cutting down trees to build my world ending army? No thank you, I like the Ents! Manipulating the minds of men to do my bidding? I actually think manipulation is bad!
this is exactly the reason billionaire must not exist, they are forcefully evil, greedy, dangerous animals. we can let one or two living in a cage, but not allow them to live and grow, fed by our chair and blood
exactly. you don’t get to “philanthropist” level wealth without exploiting someone. why steal wealth and selectively redistribute it for tax breaks when you can not steal it in the first place?
Bill Gates absolutely exploited people and an industry. He engaged in many anticompetitive practices (doesn't believe in open source) and now uses philanthropy to launder his image while still being very careful to only invest in works that benefit people he finds worthy and enriches his friends.
There is a reason superhero movies like Batman get made. To create an illusionary world where very rich people seem to be good but hide it. For almost all of them, there’s no hidden side.
To be fair, Bruce Wayne never had to do anything evil to get his billions. He just inherited them from a man we know very little about and is conveniently not around anymore.
That's a fairly recent thing too. (I like it, personally.) I think the first time I've seen "Thomas Wayne was a bastard, actually" was the Telltale games. Prior to that, the closest thing to mob ties that he had was refusing to watch Carmine Falcone bleed out on his front porch.
otoh, as bad as the Covid pandemic was, it would have been far worse without Amazon, & other companies offering similar services being there to help a great many people get through the lockdown.
No one bothered to do the analysis, but I'd bet many lives were saved as a result.
Whether or not intended that is the point. Billionaires shouldn't exist because everyone gives a little to each other. Hard, insightful creative work deserves reward, but a single person having so much they could develop their own space program is madness.
You're right about how they wouldn't become billionaires if they were like this person. But I don't think what this person said goes against that- they're speaking in a hypothetical explaining that his wealth hoarding is not a normal or humane behavior, bc if they magically had as much money as he -
I don't think the "i don't get people like bezos" thing is them being literal that they don't understand how a selfish person could become a billionaire under the right circumstances. I think it's more of a "i don't get how people could see human suffering and not feel empathy or a need to fix it"
The most likely point the ultra rich change from manic acquisition to giving their money away is when they decide that they need to fund an institution in their name or something else as a legacy. Some never get there, some get there sooner than others.
It's about what kind of person you fundamentally are.
A person like Bezos makes his money by exploiting other people's talent and expertise.
A person like Dolly Parton - an artist - makes her money through her own talents, and having been poor, gives to make her community and the world better.
To me, the issue is the lack of imagination these guys have. The Robber Barons of yesteryear actually used their money to build things. They were awful people, don't get me wrong, but they weren't dragons hoarding their gold like these guys are. Like all that wealth and nothing to show for it.
both wrong... if a billion dollars could "fix" that, would already be fixed. Your gov't is 40 trillion (100+ really) in debt. And people like Pelosi and other gov activists claim to have dedicated their public service careers helping those causes... and after spending billions on them, here you are.
Instead of using his billions for evil, Elon could help good politicians get elected. Ones who care. Like Josh Shapiro or Tim Walz. There are good politicians they are just not as loud as a MTG. Elon could do so much good with that money. Dolly Parton donates millions and she is still a millionaire
I love these kinds of comments because it feels good to know there are people out there who can’t fathom the levels of sociopathy required to be a billionaire.
People can’t visualise the numbers, in fact I can’t really
I read that he could give away $50, 000 an hour for ever and still increase his wealth from interest on his capital.
Yeah, that's not true at all. That's an opinion. If I were to become a multi billionaire there will be massive plans to give it all away to causes much like exactly what she mentioned. You're assuming.
I think "I don't get billionaires" doesn't imply "Why don't billionaires fix things since they have the means?" so much as "Normal, empathetic humans like myself will never be able to relate to billionaires' inhumanity and narcissistic madness"...
Right. You don't get to be a muti-millionaire without stepping over some bodies. The more money, the more bodies. Most of your wealth comes from stripping it from the workers.
We could have had fresh drinking water all over the world hundreds of years ago!
but we made gas pipes and oil pipes, now even a Star link around the world. Well at least i can call my parents while i dry out on the pavement :(
How about seizing their wealth and fixing those problems. For greater good it should be done. Red and blue magas support Al Qaeda over Assad ‘for greater good’. It isn’t that difficult
You are correct people with money should be more caring and we do have them . They support good causes
Then the people with money support bad people and politics help all to support peace in our world 🌎
People have been looking down on the Gates Foundation, yet that has done some wonderful programs in many countries. There are further billionaires in other countries we don't hear of.
I’m not surprised that they don’t help people, but I am surprised when they have more money than God and still spend all of their time trying to make the world worse. Elon could simply log out and go sit on a beach drinking cocktails with models. But he doesn’t. He tweets.
Muskrat doesn't need more money. He needs to feel like a winner. But if you don't feel like a winner with hundreds of billions of dollars and your own media platform, space rockets, and car company, I don't think anything will help. Maybe he should buy some therapy
in addition, he’s just a narcissist who thrives off of any amount of attention.
but he also wants that external validation of how “great” he is.
like i’ve never encountered someone who is so desperate for validation than that guy
instead of batman bezoid is more like rat droppings, and her comment is correct, and your comment is correct, as well.. being a greedy money hoarding clown does not bode well for being any kind of decent human, or ever being anything other than self absorbed & self important
I don't hate this kind of comment at all, because it shows me there are still good people in this world who really can't understand how other people can be so mercenary -- and cruel.
Plus. A few billion actually isn't that much in terms of fixing many of these problems long-term. Playing devil's advocate for a moment, if I was said billionaire I would question whether giving all my money to these causes would just be like bailing water out of a leaky boat.
My Lottery fantasy is a hotel converted into a self-sustaining Victorian Adventurer's club. A place with salles, libraries and so-on. There's a certain point where money is meaningless especially compared to the successes of friends and artists you admire.
If the baldy gimp paid his fair share of taxes, rewarded workers with a reasonable wage and reinvested some of his profits in long term projects
He wouldn’t be a billionaire
He wouldn’t feel the need to crawl up Trump’s shitey arse
He wouldn’t look so fucking miserable all the time
Plus, they always go to Batman.
Bruce Wayne is an ultra wealthy fella in a city overrun with poverty and crime.
Most of the people he beats the crap out of are desperate.
Totally, I keep trying to make this point over and over but you've made it very succinctly. There can be no ethical millionaires or billionaires because if they had any ethics they wouldn't be that wealthy.
They built institutions and libraries and parks so they could say mine mine mine about those institutions, libraries, and parks.
It's not New York plaza, it's Rockefeller center. It's not New York concert hall it's Carnegie Hall. It's not the California research college, it's Stanford University
It’s such an illness, that they have a compulsion to “win at money” once they’ve made so much they could never spend it all before they die of old age.
True. But every now and then some uber rich celeb ISN'T a world class prick and shares with others. Dolly Parton is a great example of someone who has earned her millions, but donates tons to money to pass out free books to children every year. Good ones are out there.
Ted Turner is another good guy. But if we had a decent tax structure, we wouldn’t need to rely on their good graces. As a country we need to take care of those in need.
Case in point - Dolly Parton. She would be a billionaire, but she gives so much away every year she basically refuses to get to the billionaire status.
I agree with your assessment of Bezos but I appreciate her comment pointing out that billionaires are different. She does the same thing you are but comes at it from a different angle.
What you're seeing with these billionares is extreme greed. They've stopped caring about others. But, that doesn't have to do with success as much as greed.
Zack, that is a huge fallacy. So, you're saying that success only comes from those willing to take from others regardless of how they affect those people??!!
I take extreme exception with that. It's totally possible to help others and experience success. If you balance i, all boats rise in the tide
As I've posted before -- mathematically, Elon could give away a $million EVERY SINGLE DAY, and with no additional income, wouldn't run out for about 1000 years. Math based on his having about $450 billion now. Has he given away ANYTHING (except for Trump votes)?
I'm not sure of Oprah's net worth but it turns my stomach to think of her Maui hillside mansion glowering over the burnt husk of Lahaina & not lifting one finger to help. She could rebuild the whole city with the change that falls out of her couch.
$5Billion invested would grow a minimum of $250Million a year. A billionaire with that much invested could remain a billionaire many times over but donate hundreds of millions every year. To grow that kind of wealth and not use it for charity is despicably selfish.
i respectfully disagree. mark cuban https://mcuban.bsky.social is a billionaire and he's doing a lot for us. https://costplusdrugs.com is a great example. he didn't make his billions off the backs of others, either. he started with nothing, worked smart, and invested wisely. and now he gives back generously.
That certainly is a great thing he's done. Drugs are massively overpriced, seemingly to force people to have health insurance for "discounts." I am skeptical on how much Cuban loses on this, probably not as much as it looks, but this is certainly good.
i don't think he loses anything with this venture. he's too smart for that. what he did is see a problem, and build a solution from scratch. it wasn't cheap, but he's also not doing it for profit. he's trying to help. scratch that, he's using his resources to ACTUALLY help. @mcuban.bsky.social
i completely understand her thinking. i'm surprised this post has so many likes. dogpiling of someone who's name wasn't blurred out (which you should do if you're attacking the words not the person). it's just the most mundane take. yet 5k people were like "yEAAAh!! get her ass!!!" like huh??
They think of it as though it’s the lottery. The prompt in their heads is suddenly having ludicrous amounts of money, rather than slowly building it and having to perform the ethical compromises required to be that rich. They also don’t understand the mindset of someone born into substantial ->
Exactly. And you are right. Maybe their not natural born sociopaths but they get that way incrementally. The goal is to destroy other people's business, put millions out of work, all in order to continue to take a larger and larger share for yourself. Good people don't make it.
Demonizing sociopathy as a necessary component of evil is ableist and I believe you are intelligent enough to do better. This is not intended as an insult, I just feel deprogramming this type of thinking is important, particularly as a neurodivergent person
What's worse is that it ignores the fact that Billionaires don't have that kind of cash laying around. Most of it is tied up in business they own. They can't just sell a business that easy to fix other people's problems.
This is bc capitalism is a class system that depends on exploiting the poor. Unfettered capitalism depends on exploiting everyone else until they're poor, too. Capitalism does not like low unemployment, bc workers have more bargaining power. This is why Republicans vote against a $15 min wage.
Yes, there are contradictions in play.
Pointing them out does not necessarily indicate misunderstanding, tho.
There is value in piercing the 'heroic billionaire' trope, especially when they proclaim themselves to be job creators and philanthropists but make their fortunes exploitatively
TRUTH🔥🔥🔥. MOST BILLIONAIRES ARE PSYCHOPATHS. THEY ARE NOTHING BUT 🩸💰 MONEY HOARDERS. THEY COLLECT CASH PILES THEY CAN NEVER SPEND TO SEE HAS THE BIGGEST... LACKING ALL MANHOOD. THEY STEP ON THE BONES OF DEAD CHILDREN TO THEIR 🩸💰 BANKS. IF THEY ARE NOT EVIL WHAT IS?
People change though. Bill Gates for example was ruthless in his 20s and 30s, but by his 40s he mellowed and and started trying to solve global poverty and wipe out polio / malaria. He was trying to be the person in the linked tweet, but conspiracy theories caused him to be vilified instead.
He argued against lifting intellectual property protections for the covid vaccine, preventing other nations and manufacturers from being able to make the vaccine and more quickly distributed worldwide. He uses his money and charities to shape the world the way he wants not the way the people want.
Comments
Stop looking at billionaires to save you.
and also your last comment sort of set me on edge cus I don't do that and am not doing that.
It's stronger just in itself without that last lil fart
We have regulation to stop monopolies. Maybe psychopathic billionaires need to be reined in a little too.
That’s more that enough to live quite affluently off of without doing anything ever again. There is no reason to have more money than that other than pure greed
So sad 😞
If all the 1% wealth was distributed to those below 25% line. We’d still have homelessness and unemployment
"Oh yeah, if I were a politician I'd be as crooked as the rest of 'em."
Sweet lady that didn't take shit. May she rest in peace.
Having that kind of wealth could change the world, yet they just keep taking more. #everythingisn'tenough
(Corporate spies changing how a CEO thinks, like...what if Cobb planted the idea of curing cancer?)
For a fictional example see: Netflix's Iron Fist. Rich kid comes back from burning man and wants to give free healthcare.
No one bothered to do the analysis, but I'd bet many lives were saved as a result.
A person like Bezos makes his money by exploiting other people's talent and expertise.
A person like Dolly Parton - an artist - makes her money through her own talents, and having been poor, gives to make her community and the world better.
People can’t visualise the numbers, in fact I can’t really
I read that he could give away $50, 000 an hour for ever and still increase his wealth from interest on his capital.
everybody knows billionaires are shitty people
Second. I had lunch with an old friend, told me about how my jokes helped get him through depression.
I did not know. I'm poor but so very rich. I've helped some people in life. Money is nothing.
Conflict of Interest in Tithing I’d Say 😏
but we made gas pipes and oil pipes, now even a Star link around the world. Well at least i can call my parents while i dry out on the pavement :(
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/do-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share/
Then the people with money support bad people and politics help all to support peace in our world 🌎
but he also wants that external validation of how “great” he is.
like i’ve never encountered someone who is so desperate for validation than that guy
Like with the curtain pulled back In Oz - we can see what he is now. A narcissistic billing fraud.
They won’t be satisfied.
He wouldn’t be a billionaire
He wouldn’t feel the need to crawl up Trump’s shitey arse
He wouldn’t look so fucking miserable all the time
Bruce Wayne is an ultra wealthy fella in a city overrun with poverty and crime.
Most of the people he beats the crap out of are desperate.
It's not New York plaza, it's Rockefeller center. It's not New York concert hall it's Carnegie Hall. It's not the California research college, it's Stanford University
https://youtu.be/Dem7ALd7lOs
#CompostTheRich
I take extreme exception with that. It's totally possible to help others and experience success. If you balance i, all boats rise in the tide
but she still spent $197 MILLION in bonuses for her entire crew on the Eras Tour.
and people hate her anyways 😭
If you don’t know what an encyclopaedia is. Get a dictionary and work forwards… I hear Dolly was great at ensuring people could read them…
Pointing them out does not necessarily indicate misunderstanding, tho.
There is value in piercing the 'heroic billionaire' trope, especially when they proclaim themselves to be job creators and philanthropists but make their fortunes exploitatively
So, to multi millionaires, when is tons of $ not enough? Their answer: never. Let them eat cake - or in health ins terms: let them die.
There are No Superheroes to Save Us... From Our Selves!