Elaborate and explain
I belive the billionaires is currently winning
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.
With modern drones and AI tech?
I was just yesterday talking to someone about how AI drones, specifically exactly AI drones, will be a pivotal piece of technology in a way I think even beyond nukes in some sense. With a decent AI drone swarm, it’s not hard to imagine a SINGLE person dominating an entire population. The dictator’s purest dream - none of those pesky military generals getting uppity.
Cash me outside
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.
I don’t know if I like assuming that obedience is a genetically heritable trait. I’ve heard racists use this assumption to argue that racially Chinese people are more likely to be sneaky servile backstabbers because that’s what their genetics are selected for due to their political past.
Controversial statement incoming: I also don’t want to preemptively rule out the possibility of obedience, or anything else, being genetically heritable - even if it could lead to these uncomfortable conclusions. I think scientific studies should be done about such things to answer the questions of whether these personality traits are heritable, come what may of that knowledge. But to my relief, from the studies I’ve seen, personality traits heritability is on very shaky ground in most cases.
Don’t worry, the entire system is collapsing from mismanagement.
8 billion temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Billionaires, because we are too dumb to not fall for their tricks
But AI isn’t. They’re creating their own downfall as we speak
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)
The correct answer is to redistribute their wealth.
The implication that they would all be killed or completely stripped of assets is the problem you’re trying to solve, however, that doesn’t have to be the action taken. Perhaps instead, the 8 billion people of the world decide to enact a society that insists that such accumulation of wealth is obscene and should be curtailed. Perhaps systems could be introduced to make the wealthy more accurately contribute to the society they profit off.
Billionaires become billionaires through exploitation. Exploitation of workers, financial systems, and political power for personal gain. Make them pay for all these things.
Pay for education of the people they use to build their companies. Pay for the healthcare of the entire population, which they degrade with their business practices. Pay for the infrastructure that enables them to do business. The roads, the safety nets, the national parks, the air quality, the water supply, the land they use. Make them pay to replace and repair, fully, any damage their business causes. Polute the stream, pay to fix it. Dig the ground for ore, repair the ground so it can be used again. Make them replace what they take from society for little or no cost because their goods are only affordable because they do not reflect the true cost of production. Make their businesses pay for all these things, and the cost of production will rise to include the true cost of production. At the moment, the shortfall is paid for by we, the people, which enables them to become billionaires. Exploitation.
We don’t have to kill anyone, or strip anyone of all their assets in some revolutionary action. We just have to make them pay the true cost of their exploitation.
Tax the rich. Use those taxes to repay their exploitation. Increase the cost of doing business to include the cost of repairing the impact.
People can still become very wealthy. But society will also become much stronger through the use of the extra revenue to benefit all.
To make this happen will take a revolution, but it doesn’t need to include guillotines, it just needs people to become aware. Sadly, the politicians and media are also owned by the billionaires, making the final step of collective uprising extremely difficult. But humans have done it many times before in the face of adversity, perhaps it can happen again.
Trillions in stock alone would suddenly be ownerless
The same removal mechanism will need to keep new rich people from getting too rich. In general everything could stay the same in terms of assets if they are divided more equally. Even a billion dollar yacht could be divided and rented out. Who’s paying for a billion dollar yacht vacation when there is no ultra rich? Divide that shit again into 500 admissions for a boat party until it doesn’t make sense to upkeep.
Nationalize the assets
Pretty simple and effective.
The same issues arise whenever billionaires pass from old age or sickness. The world will be fine.
I have no doubt the world will be fine, but the hypothetical we’re discussing isn’t just one or two rich bastards knocking off a year with their legal estate already taken care of in a will…we’re suggesting more direct action assisting their departure en masse - which isn’t going to happen without a lot of other upheaval causing all kinds of economic turmoil that we’re ignoring for the sake of this argument.
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.
What are we measuring. Like just a braw? A unanimouse revolution?
The billionaires. There are many reasons, but my favorite is the Matthew effect.
Matthew effect.
For anyone wondering, the effect describes the uncanny ability for rich people to put on red outfits and act like blind devils whilst bending the law in their favor as they bask in their own self-proclaimed peity
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.
The billionaires are already winning, with no signs of that changing.
That’s because—for many reasons—there are way too many non-billionaires on team billionaire.
I worked with a guy that proudly proclaimed that he voted for the right because they looked after the rich.
He was not rich, but he purchased lottery tickets weekly and stated he’d rather get screwed while poor than pay more tax if he, some day, became rich.
And that was the day I realised that we’re fucked.
What an absolute moron.
I don’t, I feel like moron / stupid just doesn’t cut it for idiots like this. I honestly don’t know of an adjective the fully encapsulates the stupidty, childishness, and naivite of a regular person aligning with the super rich.
Corporate brainwashed, delusional, desperate, uneducated, lazy, close-minded, coping human?
The media is pushing “answer a few questions, or spin a wheel, and get rich”, and “sing in your car, then get famous on Idol” and getting huge ratings. Same way we got this fucking President. Corporate brainwashing.
Ah, see, what you should have done was…stabbed him in the eye.
Just remember, when we go vote, his is worth just as much as yours.
Hey, don’t look at me. I’m on team “unexpected astroid hitting the earth to end it all”.
I was devastated when my candidate never showed up again and again…
They think they’re on team billionaire but are willful idiots.
They will just cook the planet killing us all
With pessimism like that, we won’t get far.
What kind of battle are we taking about? Violence? Then 8 billion people would win because the combined force of knowledge.
This question also really depend on strategy. You know a billion worth doesn’t need to be all in cash. Before cash was a thing, we traded items… but it’s rare to trade items that are exactly worth the same, so money is a nice way to compensate that.
The billion worth can all be spent on defense, it can all be spent on pleasing the 8 billion people. It can be spent to create harmony instead of hatred.
