Ask Lemmy

The billionaires are already winning, with no signs of that changing.

If we decide money no longer matters it'd be petty easy to eliminate them all. If we continue to let money run our lives then it'll continue to be pretty easy for the people with money to keep all their power.

Why you think they're tossing so much money to develope ai and humanoid robots?

When shit will hit the fan they want their own private army to watch their ass, but at the same time they don't want highly trained human mercenary inside their golden castel getting strange ideas.

It’s funny cause no one seems to realize that the billionaires are human beings. They have a house, they shit, they piss, they bleed, etc. And yet, everyone is somehow convinced that becoming a billionaire makes you somehow invulnerable.

This is happening right now and the billionaires are winning.

If the people were all invested in taking out the billionaires, then the people would win, hands down.

But if, as in the current situation, the people have higher priorities, in which 50% do not find billionaires to be an existential threat, and at least 300 million think they are simply temporarily embarrassed billionaires themselves, then the billionaires win, that is, until the Earth inevitably cannot support them any longer.

Billionaires, because we are too dumb to not fall for their tricks

The billionaires spend a small fraction to some idiots to betray their fellow non-billionaires. It's probably about a million people versus the masses.

It's not the billionaires but the antisocial, amoral whores who will sell their souls for money and do their bidding that are the problem (police, army, etc.), and those who would quietly acquiesce. And of those there are way too many in some societies for change to be easy/possible.

I belive the billionaires is currently winning

All evidence points to a regime change (in the physics sense, not the political) being the necessary condition for things to go from our current state to something new.

We currently have people paying poorer people a very small amount of their own net worth to protect the wealthy person's status and position. This is similar to how kings and queens paid the army and policing forces to control the peasants.

Before the French Revolution I am sure it seemed impossible that the peasants would revolt, but the years leading up to the revolution things were getting worse and worse for the average peasant. There is a tipping point where the average person does not think the current system is delivering on the promise that of you do what you are told you can have a good life. I think we are approaching that point now.

If the rich try to hire someone and underpay them for security, stiff contractors for services, flaunt laws and generally behave obnoxiously at some point people will have had enough. Whether that ends with guillotine action or people just divesting from those systems depends on how much freedom people think they have.

If people thought they could go and homestead, live off the land, and get by without the massive companies these billionaires own then they would have that outlet and choose that peaceful option. The fact that we have taxation creates a pressure to pay in currency which demands earning in that currency. Same with paying rent, you have to earn money simply to live. No amount of growing all of your food gets rid of your financial obligations, so there is no out from the system. If that system is unreasonable it begins to feel less like participation and more like coercive control. Wage slavery is not the same as slavery, but both involve coercion and require the legal system to support them. Both lead to revolutions. Both lead to violence.

I guess the billionaires have to decide if they really want to paint that big a target on their backs by flaunting their wealth. At this point I think they feel untouchable.

Unfortunately that is not how the figures really are. Way too many of those 8 billions will willingly simp and fight the rest of us in the name of those billionaires.

Seems like the billionaires are winning 🤷🏼‍♀️ ?!

I mean... Look around? Maybe billionaire is a new thing, but it is just modern royalty. We still have kings, they just got better PR.

The billionaires. People dumb AF. Billionaires have money to manipulate people to think they are doing good while they are fucking humanity.

If organized, the billionaires lose. It's really that simple and that difficult.

8 billion temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

3000 billionaires because you can't convince everybody to ditch school. You can't change people. Pharaoh, Hammurabi. Those are thousands of years of genetic obedience.

While arriving for the competition, all 8 billion got wedged into the doors of the arena Three Stooges style and were unable to compete.

Tje billionaires are winning now and the reasons are obvious.

The 8 billion are unable to think clearly, identify problems and organize. The billionaires are focused on their goals and super influential. They're able to buy loyality of the key less fortunate people and enforce loyality of others. They can also buy media to influence thinking of the masses.

If it was just about numbers, the billionaires would lose. But it's not.

Assuming the 8b were all of the same mind, they would win. But we all know there are quite a few that the billionaires could buy to fight for them

Their divide and conquer strategy is busting our asses.

Ok, let’s look at this…

IF billionaires were removed from the picture, what would be the result?

There would be investment assets in various holding entities that would then be what, up for grabs? Sold off? Put in probate? Trillions in stock alone would suddenly be ownerless. How would that affect the market and the regular person’s investments?

Multiple BoD positions and CEO positions opening up. How would those be compensated? Just make more people rich?

Material possessions originally worth absurd sums now up for grabs to nobody who could realistically afford to use or maintain them (yachts, palatial homes, etc). Manufacturers of luxury goods would vanish (stupidly expensive watches, clothes, cars).

How would you prevent some other greedy, power-hungry f_cks from taking up the reins and putting us right back where we started? There is no point in civilization’s history where greedy f_cks haven’t existed, so how do you prevent their grubby fingers from tipping the scales right back in favor of piling all the money and power in their corner?

What are the unintended consequences?

(This is NOT an argument implying we should keep billionaires, just asking realistically and pragmatically what the result would be should they no longer exist)

Just stop believing that those 3000 are billionaires. If 8 billion people say "No, you are not rich" those fuckers become poor. Money is a religion.

Over 1 million Russians killed and how many tens of thousands in Gaza. 3000 would be quite easy compared to the innocent.

Yes markets would be in shit but so what, take their wealth and distribute it. The entire financial system is made out of thin air now, everyone will be all worried to justify why not to do it but we need to do it for our civilization to grow beyond having the Poor's do all the work for the greedy pigs.

The entire system needs to change and they won't go easy, it will be tough and bloody.

Huh, it's up to 3000 now.

If it's actually clearly and openly defined as a fight with two sides, 8 billion people. IRL billionaires are just kind of the visible tip of a giant inequality iceberg, so it's not so simple.