The Truth about Billionaires

a reply to: MrBlaq
As for changing 'us' to 'me' I didnt realise before making this post that so many of you care so little about the state of our planet and how bad people still suffer ..
And instead care more about defending the ones sat on a enormous amount of money instead of using some of it to better humanity.

a reply to: TheRedneck

I DO NOT think we should take money from them as I've stated many times in the comments, I don't pretend to know the final answer, but I do know there must be another way of running things then to either share the worlds wealth out OR the rich keep getting rich and the poor get poorer.
After reading some of these comments i do have a better understanding of how a lot of this money isnt physically there,(welcome to the age of digital money) and instead tied up in stocks / buisnesses etc.
And I do understand that capitalism is probably the lesser of two evils in SOME ways... adleast for the ones who live in capitalist countries.
However
I dont believe the only two options society ever had was communism or capitalism. I don't believe that Microsoft or Amazon was the best two inventions humanity could have came up with.
And let's not all forget that it isnt always inventors who have worked for it, like Gates, Musk, Bezos, who obtain these unthinkable amounts of wealth,
But instead families of elite bloodlines ..

originally posted by: reachingnirvana
a reply to: MrBlaq
As for changing 'us' to 'me' I didnt realise before making this post that so many of you care so little about the state of our planet and how bad people still suffer ..
And instead care more about defending the ones sat on a enormous amount of money instead of using some of it to better humanity.

Ugh. Give me a break.

Beyond attempting to assure as best possible that the wealthiest people are not getting away with cheaping out on their tax responsibility via existing loopholes, WTF do you expect? Instant rainbows, kitten kisses and parades for the idea? You've broken no new ground here, I've even made this argument (as a thought exercise mostly) more than once.

In theory, it's a nice, warm & fuzzy feeling knowing a solution could be that simple if everyone "did their part".

In reality, people are assholes and ingrates, and most have no reason to appreciate anything done without a direct firsthand person-to-person request. Activist groups hanging from the lowest branch professing to speak for others who didn't ask do not count, either. Cost on a global scale aside, how many times are you going to feed somewhere like Haiti before it dawns on you that the locals only see you as a stupid food cash cow, and maybe a hostage worth some dough, breathing or not?

Humans are not nice, altruistic creatures. Our base nature very clearly says we're naturally wired to think of ourselves, our related kin & our personal territory before all else, because what good does minding some other tribe do if it's going to kill off yours or hobble it, etc?

You cannot undo nature's scaffolding. Even wild folk in the woods with no other human contact & growing up alone with the critters, thought/think of themselves before they ever consider you even exist.


Edit: Further wrench in the plan gears: How the hell are you going to convince Sentinelese to do their part, AND like what you're peddling? They rain arrows at what isn't theirs in the air or floating offshore, and typically kill anyone not Sentinelese that comes ashore, India won't let anyone go to the island anymore.
Let's see you "make them equal". I bet they beat you to it (literally)

a reply to: Nyiah
It sounds like your speaking for yourself darling.

Thankfully, not everyone on Earth is as selfish as you describe.

originally posted by: reachingnirvana
a reply to: Nyiah
It sounds like your speaking for yourself darling.

Thankfully, not everyone on Earth is as selfish as you describe.

I see I struck a reality nerve. You broached nothing I put forth, not even a little bit of countering for any of the points I made.


That speaks for itself. Wide eyes and rosy glasses are good inspirations, but learn to restrain yourself instead of getting too giddy, and REALLY ponder the logistics. it's more than just money you're grappling with, and most of it is called "A Pipe Dream".


None of that is to say it's not a topic without any merit, it's just not where you want to see the merit. If no one counters an idea, no problems are found, and no work-arounds are to be had. When it comes to feeding the planet, money isn't going to do it. Teaching people to forage, and to even just container garden a few things, helps far more. It's the man & fish argument, plenty on here have said it (to me, too) and they are not wrong.

a reply to: Nyiah
Because I realise I wont change the opinion of people like you, who seem to have no faith in humanity and no ability of seeing our planet for what it could have been if money hadnt taken over.
Even if I was to come back with sources statistics and facts you would still class me as a nothing but a 'rainbow loving kitten kisser' as you said.

You seem to think that I'm proposing the answer to feeding the world is delivering each communities weeks shopping, out of the wealthys wallets.
Instead try to imagine mass greenhouses growing produce around the world instead. Do you really not believe that is achievable with the worlds wealth? We seem to have enough resources and money to build a space station that literally orbits around our Earth, but yeah your right, not enough to make the growth of food more sustainable and accessible to all.

a reply to: reachingnirvana

Greenhouses are nice, but what's the compensation for those tending them?
Golf handicap alert: "The food they grew" is not an answer.
Who pays them? How are they affording the shoes they wear to work? Their clothing? The stove they cook on? Who covers the transit home and back the next day? And more importantly:

What do you do, if land you think is ideal is already owned by someone, say 10 acres of old growth forest habitat and 1 or 2 cleared for living and a self-sustaining small farm for the resident family there?

Are you just going to take it from them? Imminent domain is a pretty slimy route to obtain stuff. If you don't take their property from them (for the betterment of others) what are you going to do, make them grow more? (caveat to burst your bubble: most small farmers have another job(s) that is the money-maker, BTW, I'm a farm kid, ours did not pay the bills without side work)

Again, you're still too giddy. Slow down, and think this stuff through. Pipe. Dream.

i think we need to start thinking in terms of our species survival and not the individual

if I was a billionaire id be setting up some sort of "foundation" like system
where we preserve knowledge and try to create another egg basket for humanity

we are only on earth and could be prone to species extinction easily by space events
so id take my billions and invest it into fixing the earth and start our journey into creating another colony

also create some sort of space system that can detect asteroids/meteors
and also some sort of enhancement to earths magnetic field
like they had on Endor

originally posted by: TheRedneck
The problem is simple: there are not enough resources for everyone to have everything they want.

A little off topic, maybe, but my question is: are there enough resources for everyone to have everything they need?

a reply to: ArMaP

yeh Id say so , if our primary goal of humanity was to ensure we had enough to eat to survive and a shelter and energy
then yes we do have enough.

but it wont be enough if we keep going the way we are going , expanding population will need more resources and the earth can only support so many billions.

I dont think it could handle a trillion souls
we need another world to support us , we need to expand into space
sooner rather than later.

originally posted by: sapien82
a reply to: ArMaP

yeh Id say so , if our primary goal of humanity was to ensure we had enough to eat to survive and a shelter and energy
then yes we do have enough.

but it wont be enough if we keep going the way we are going , expanding population will need more resources and the earth can only support so many billions.

I dont think it could handle a trillion souls
we need another world to support us , we need to expand into space
sooner rather than later.

Yeah, this is the forest for the trees thing folks keep missing when they holler about saving the planet before we spread our Vacuum Wings -- it won't solve anything, it'll just piss people off being restricted like that, and create an underground space movement. You think the penny-pinching and tax evasion is bad now, wait until the government tells all of us what we can or cannot do with ourselves. Including where to move on or off planet.

It's a twisted mindset that needs a firm grandmother's backhand across the cheek. I'm not doing squat just because someone has a cow & forced a change that requires seizing money and property. The only thing that begets is a bloodbath.

The best route is a personal DIY route (personal commitment, put one's own unimportant bartering currency where the piehole is instead of waiting for someone else to jump first) I'll simply leave them to it, and continue to follow/support my interests in the interim, as many other already do. It's kinda how progress actually happens, doing #. Not sitting around with a thumb up a butt waiting for a miracle to happen when you know damn well it won't no matter how you try to ply people -- the wealthy's money won't be the end of it, because it'll dry up soon enough -- electricity, water, structures, manpower, nutrients, that's all more overhead than anyone thinks is there. Then what's left once it's all spent and allocated to the supply sources? Goods bartering is about all we'd have left. And I have no doubt that even the OP would suggest crippling that right of exchange "for others", too.

originally posted by: reachingnirvana
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Do you really think I've tried to work that equation out myself when the original point of my post is how difficult it is for a normal person to wrap their head around the enormity of these numbers lol
I simply googled what it would cost to end world hunger as an EXAMPLE. 3.30 was a typo, it says it would cost 330 billion to end world hunger by 2030.

Well I do my own math.

I'm very interested in ending world hunger, and I've found that getting rid of the billionaires wouldn't change anything about it.

The changes need to be coordinated by someone, and personal fortunes make it a lot easier for change to happen rapidly.

Besides that, no matter how greedy a billionaire is, their kids frequently end up becoming philantropists. Something about knowing you didn't earn it.

There is a well known and documented tendency sometimes called the "third generation curse", where few fortunes in history have ever survived more than three generations.

business.smu.edu.sg...

So you're right to envy those trust fund kids running around without a care in the world, but you might want to reserve a bit of pity for their grand kids. Because they will most likely end up having to be working stiffs just like you.

originally posted by: TomCollin
a reply to: reachingnirvana

Don't know about Metallicus, but for me it's never having to live on the streets again, never being hungry,

This is the public's own fault for voting to move manufacturing to China.

The jobs that went there are the jobs the poor would have worked. The rapid concentration of wealth was entirely due to that choice and to no other factors. At all. None.

One choice, and America's poor doomed themselves. Because they were too greedy and wanted someone still poorer to make cheap toys for them.

being able to afford insurance and not suffer with certian disorders cuase of the cheap insurance i could afford wouldn't pay for it,

That's politics too. We keep increasing the care standards until it's too expensive to get any care at all.

being able to give my kids the things that i never had,lossing everything due to no fault of my own, having to pay for it and not being able to own anything cuase some bastard wants to take it. i cold name a few more, but i'm sure you get my drift.

Money it's self is not evil or greedy, it's the way some a@@holes try to get it and use it that is.

That is all well and good, but take a moment to look in the mirror first.

We ended up here because ordinary Americans thought exploiting China (and other similar countries') desperation would be a free lunch.

Nothing in an economy is ever free.

Sometimes the costs don't hit you right away. But they do eventually.

a reply to: reachingnirvana

I do know there must be another way of running things then to either share the worlds wealth out OR the rich keep getting rich and the poor get poorer.

The answer is education. Plain, simple, obvious-to-the-educated education.

The one metric that shows up when one compares poverty rates versus lifestyle is education. Those who have a good education tend to be more affluent, less easily taken advantage of, and more capable of making good life choices. No other metric has such correlation across the board.

And I'm not talking about the crap that passes for education today, either. I mean real education: mathematics, language, history (as it happened, not "feel-good" history), science... I have noticed two things you mentioned in this thread: Global Warming and solar energy. Global Warming is a crock, nothing more than a way to get the poor to stay poor so the rich can get richer. Carbon dioxide is nowhere near destroying the planet. Solar energy is simply too inefficient and expensive, and would actually create global cooling by taking heat from the planet and turning it into electricity. Global cooling would be devastating! It would lead to a shorter growing season, which means less food available. It would lead to higher energy costs in most places, since people would still need to stay warm; the South might benefit from that, but everywhere else would suffer. And finally, it would lead to more deaths from exposure; the human body has less defenses against cold than it does against heat.

That's not education that taught you that Global Warming was real and solar energy was viable. That's propaganda, and our schools are full of it.

That same issue also goes back to parents. I held my kids' schools' feet to the fire when they were young, and supplemented their education the best I could. But many parents can't do that; I was just lucky that I had a good education. I'm also not talking about just classroom stuff; there's nothing anti-education about learning trades and skills with one's hands. My daughter chose the college route; my son chose the trades route. I supported both. Both are now living well.

If you want to help fix the wealth gap problem (and I will admit we have a problem), stop looking crossways at capitalism. The answer is not there; it is in the schools, which are now pushing social education (aka propaganda) at a rate never before seen in our history.

TheRedneck

a reply to: ArMaP

are there enough resources for everyone to have everything they need?

Define "need."

I am sitting here watching reruns on a 65" color TV. My house has central heat and cooling, so I didn't wake up to a cold house this morning and have to stoke the fire and bring in firewood. I am conversing with you on a laptop computer connected to the Internet via a 50mbps fiver-optic link. I have two more computers here that would have made NASA scientists back in the 70s green with envy. My cell phone is lying next to me. The kitchen is well-stocked with foods from all over the world. There is a microwave sitting in sight of me which will cook food in a matter of minutes instead of hours. My car has heated seats and steering wheel, and will probably stay running for 300,000 miles. My yard is well-trimmed thanks to a riding lawn mower.

Do I "need" all that? We got along just fine without it in my youth.

Needs can be subjective.

TheRedneck

Food and fresh water are the two greatest needs.

Both have limited abundances, and you can only do so much to increase them.

You can trade away electricity in order to increase either of those first two, but then you'll run into the problem that energy resources are limited.

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: reachingnirvana

I do know there must be another way of running things then to either share the worlds wealth out OR the rich keep getting rich and the poor get poorer.

The answer is education. Plain, simple, obvious-to-the-educated education.

The one metric that shows up when one compares poverty rates versus lifestyle is education. Those who have a good education tend to be more affluent, less easily taken advantage of, and more capable of making good life choices. No other metric has such correlation across the board.

And I'm not talking about the crap that passes for education today, either. I mean real education: mathematics, language, history (as it happened, not "feel-good" history), science... I have noticed two things you mentioned in this thread: Global Warming and solar energy. Global Warming is a crock, nothing more than a way to get the poor to stay poor so the rich can get richer. Carbon dioxide is nowhere near destroying the planet.

I can't say for sure whether CO2 driven climate change is real, however even in the worst case, it wouldn't destroy the world. Just raise it a few degrees.

But the ice age was only about 6 degrees cooler than today's weather.

The world climate would change quite a bit. Farmers would need to relocate their farms to wherever the new rain patterns move to.

It would be a huge pain in the arse.

Solar energy is simply too inefficient and expensive,
and would actually create global cooling by taking heat from the planet and turning it into electricity. Global cooling would be devastating!

Solar energy won't create global cooling. That's not how the physics work out.

Almost all of the electricity that enters the power grid eventually becomes heat.

Mirrors that reflect light back into space can create cooling, though.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Food and fresh water are the two greatest needs.

Both have limited abundances, and you can only do so much to increase them.

Water is already fresh until we pollute it. Nature cleans the water for us; we have simply overloaded nature and now have to do it ourselves.

There is plenty of food, and plenty of land to grow more food. The problem is in distribution and a lack of recycling waste. In addition, if the planet warms it will increase the growing season, making more land available for growing food.

I can't say for sure whether CO2 driven climate change is real, however even in the worst case, it wouldn't destroy the world. Just raise it a few degrees.

I can. I've run the calcs. Carbon dioxide cannot cause the kind of catastrophic climate change that keeps getting predicted until it reaches a level that would directly affect us, many times the level we have now. Should the levels ever get that high, there are extraction methods available that will scrub carbon dioxide form the air and convert it directly into hydrocarbon fuels. It's just not cost effective at the minimal levels we have in the air now.

Solar energy won't create global cooling. That's not how the physics work out.

I was speaking hypothetically, assuming that we used solar energy to power most of the world's energy demand. In that case, yes, it would literally transform the planet into a cold desert over time. The percentage of the land that would have to be covered in solar cells is quite high. And remember, plant life cannot flourish covered by solar cells.

All of the energy created would not wind up as atmospheric heat. We use electricity for magnetic interactions and light production, both of which generate energy types which can escape the planet.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Food and fresh water are the two greatest needs.

Both have limited abundances, and you can only do so much to increase them.

Water is already fresh until we pollute it. Nature cleans the water for us; we have simply overloaded nature and now have to do it ourselves.

Yeah. There are simply too many of us. And more children on the way in third world countries that want to populate their way into being world powers.

It's interesting to note, though, that most of the first world is already population stable.

There's no point preaching the choir. And nobody is quite willing yet to start telling the third world "oppressed" countries that they are wrong to wreck the world economic system in a way that will inevitably make the whole planet uninhabitable.

There is plenty of food, and plenty of land to grow more food. The problem is in distribution and a lack of recycling waste. In addition, if the planet warms it will increase the growing season, making more land available for growing food.

Maybe enough for today's population, if everything were set up completely perfectly.

But that land is useless if you can't get fresh water to it.

I can't say for sure whether CO2 driven climate change is real, however even in the worst case, it wouldn't destroy the world. Just raise it a few degrees.

I can. I've run the calcs. Carbon dioxide cannot cause the kind of catastrophic climate change that keeps getting predicted until it reaches a level that would directly affect us, many times the level we have now. Should the levels ever get that high, there are extraction methods available that will scrub carbon dioxide form the air and convert it directly into hydrocarbon fuels. It's just not cost effective at the minimal levels we have in the air now.

If we extracted it and made hydrocarbons out of it, we would effectively have to put all the energy we ever got from fossil fuels back in.

(Plus since the conversion process isn't 100% efficient, we'd actually have to put more energy back than we got from burning the original fuels.)

I think that would be pretty expensive.

All of the energy created would not wind up as atmospheric heat. We use electricity for magnetic interactions and light production, both of which generate energy types which can escape the planet.

TheRedneck

I hadn't thought of that. Yeah that's a good point!

If we use the energy to create electromagnetic radiation, then the solar cells and power grid system becomes effectively a very elaborate mirror. Absorbing light, making electricity, and then reemitting it as light.

originally posted by: TheRedneck
In addition, if the planet warms it will increase the growing season, making more land available for growing food.

Unless that increase in temperature results in the increase of the deserts, which is already happening.

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous
And more children on the way in third world countries that want to populate their way into being world powers.

I doubt the people having 8 or 10 kids so 2 or 3 reach adulthood and may help support them when they get old (old meaning around 40, in may cases) even know what is a third world country or a world power, and I think that even those that do know it are thinking about making their country a world power.

a reply to: TheRedneck

I’ll interject MS-DOS versus Win 3.1, but your point remains.

But would like to that Billionaires, especially Multi-Billionaires, are an illusion. There is at best guess $1.2 Trillion in US dollars in circulation which means a hard maximum of $1200 Billion could be cashed out, which is less than the combined wealth of the US’s top ten by at least $85 Billion. Trump at $2.5 Billion isn’t even a blip on that radar.