• Sparky@lemmy.today
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    4 hours ago

    billions sitting in billionaire bank accounts? You mean investment portfolios? You obviously don’t know wealth management :D

  • Tenderizer@aussie.zone
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    6 hours ago

    Also, the idea that accelerating AI development should be the goal is I think silly.

    If anything we should be slowing down the RAM factories. We have too much RAM. We need less RAM.

  • hamsamrich@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I have 624 GB of DDR5 6000 MHz RAM just sitting around. Sam Altman, you can lick my butt and suck on my balls

  • AvaMadison_27@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Imagine how different the world would be if billionaires competed to solve problems instead of competing to become richer. What a world that would be!

    • Glaedr304@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      To be honest, I think the billionaires think they are solving problems. I also think that they believe if they had the money they could do more good with it. They are obviously wrong.

    • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I had this vision of the military. Imagine a natural disaster like a tsunami is about to strike the Middle East. Here comes the carrier force and they start launching what looks like tomahawk missiles. Instead of blowing people up on the ground they open up in air and drop rafts and life preservers. The military has shown up to save countless people instead of murdering them.

        • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Yes, along those lines only the major force(Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, etc.) would be like a nation wide coast/national guard that goes around helping nations out in times of disasters. In-between disasters they could act like a worldwide corp of engineers improving areas that need it.

  • TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    I knew there’d be folks in here claiming it’s “fake money.” They can liquidate when they want to, it’s not “fake.”

    • Gravitywell.xYz@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      Not only is it real money when its invested, typically the rich can just borrow against those shares instead of having to liquidate anything to pay for things.

      For example when they need $40b to purchase a website or media corp to use so they can have better control of the narrative, they just get a loan because everyone knows they’ll be able to make the payments, instead of selling enough shares to tank the thing that inflates their networth beyond all reason.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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      18 hours ago

      They can liquidate part of it. If they liquidate all of it then most will disappear into thin air.

      If you’re Elon Musk and own a large part of Tesla and SpaceX and you sell all your shares, both companies crater HARD.

      Just remove stock from anyone who owns over 1% of any publicly traded company and nationalize all index funds’ assets (yes, that includes retirement funds). Problem solved.

      Or just cap total wealth at ~5 mill, indexed to the median income so there’s no need for legislation like with minimum wage.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      They don’t even need to liquidate. They can just take a loan against it like they already do.

  • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    20 hours ago

    Correct (when it comes to billionaires; Sam Altman and his ilk intentionally caused the RAM shortage by buying RAM their companies are not using and should be held accountable).

    Billionaires would be impossible in a properly civilised society, which would implement progressive taxes so that anyone with a wealth above, say, ten times the median wealth of the population or 25 times the wealth of the poorest person (citizen or not) in the nation (whichever’s lowest at the time) are taxed to the point that their wealth can increase no further, with the resulting income being invested on public services so that personal wealth is irrelevant except for luxury items.

    • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      Quit making perfect sense. You’re making the capitalists nervous and ruining the hopes and dreams of all the Questrader’s out there. /s

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    That’s the thing; the billions don’t sit in a bank account but in the stock betting market. They would be heavily taxed otherwise.

    • JC1@lemmy.ca
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      16 hours ago

      Just tax unrealised capital gain then. A progressive tax too so small investors wouldn’t really be penalized much.

  • 87Six@lemmy.zip
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    20 hours ago

    I think we should extract the water from Sam Altman’s body and use it to cool a datacenter

    • Napster153@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      They don’t see money as we do. It’s the control in the price of items and buying power where the real value is at.

      These sort of control freak cultists have existed in human societies since time immemorial. They have, can and will always find ways to exploit everyone.

      Last year was religion, yesterday ideology and today it’s finance. None of these things in a vacuum were meant to debilitate humans until these same people rigged the system.

      Future humans will be condemning our capitalist ways like we do feudal societies. They won’t see the difference.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Because they think they know better than us hoi polloi. Seriously. There’s a psych term that escapes me, but once a person gains wealth and power, they think they know better than the rest of us and the rules don’t apply to them.

      One of the most horrifying things I know about humans is that almost all of us are susceptible to this and it’s not simply a matter of people kissing their ass, though that certainly “helps”.

      • Hal@piefed.nz
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        11 hours ago

        One of the most horrifying things I know about humans is that almost all of us are susceptible to this and it’s not simply a matter of people kissing their ass, though that certainly “helps”.

        This doesn’t have to be true. I have explained to one of my kids when asked why I don’t think the rich are good people.

        Me: Well, what would you do with a billion dollars?

        Them: buy lots of toys

        Me: ok, after you have bought all the toys in the store, what would you do?

        Them: Buy toys for all my friends… Well maybe they could have the ones I’m not using. Buy a house? Buy you a new car?

        Me: What would you do after you had bought all that and still have almost all of the billion dollars left over, since a billion is so huge?

        Them: um, buy houses for the people that don’t have houses? And food for the people that don’t have enough food?

        Ultimately I believe that to have a billion dollars for any decent length of time you are probably a bad person, because even a kid’s instinct is to use that money to help others’, even people they don’t know.

        While wealth might make people bad as you imply, I think an equally valid option is that good people don’t stay wealthy because they use the money to help others.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      22 hours ago

      they like to hoard it, and use other peoples money thats why. thier net worth is actually in thier stocks/investments for the most part.

        • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          That’s not really how it works though. The money you pay for stock goes to the person you bought the stock from not into the company to pay the employees

        • JC1@lemmy.ca
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          16 hours ago

          No, unless a company releases new stock options that are diluting the value of the current shareholders, the money doesn’t go to the company, it goes to the shareholders that sell the shares. Their money doesn’t create employment, it realises the capital gain of other investors. And companies don’t want to dilute the shares as their sole purpose is to increase shareholder value. And even though they sometimes do, it’s pale in comparison to stock buybacks which are exactly the opposites, removing money that could be used for R&D or for workers and raising the imaginary value of their company by inflating investors shares.

        • homosapien@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          16 hours ago

          A man cannot develop and maintain a product that made a billion. He has to employ people. And if he does not exploit them for their surplus labor value, he CANNOT become a millionaire

        • mrpxilo@lemmy.zip
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          17 hours ago

          It’s not their money. These people have 5 aces in their hand. They cheat and then instead of golden rocket cars, they buy the media, our politicians, and secret compounds where they brainstorm how to dismantle democracy and start cults.

          It’s just that the cheaters that top the leaderboard also know how to play the game, so they overlap legitimate investors and business owners. Musk and friends don’t need to cheat every hand because the deck is already stacked in their favor.

    • Guy Dudeman@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Because they don’t actually have the money. The value of their holdings are used as collateral on loans. They use the loans to pay for their expenses and are just constantly in debt. This avoids all tax consequences for them. And it is fucking stupid.

    • Zephorah@discuss.online
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      22 hours ago

      Dealing with investments and the stock market is like going to a casino. Unless they inherited legacy accounts, they made their money gambling.

      Cuban is probably the most obvious example. The man placed a risky bet on shorts and won. Gallway, for all his faults, discusses the luck factor that he stumbled into based on someone else’s gambling failures.