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[–] 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

If they were half as smart as they think they are, they would enjoy their lives in luxury and leave the rest of us alone.

The smart ones are the ones we have never heard of.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 days ago

    Life continues despite their best efforts.

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  • [–] 49 points 4 days ago (21 children)

    Would we though? Actual intelligent people tend to consider the greater good.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 days ago

    There is a probematic split, probably due to capitalism favoring stem education, between what we consider intelligent and wisdom. The latter is cultivated from engaging with "idle" topics such as philosophy, art, history and cultures, all that stuff that doesnt make any money and takes time spent not working.

    So naturally these arent things the oligarchy engages with in any way that is conducive to the development of actual ethical beliefs, morals, or feelings of social responsibility. This is reinforced by the fact that those ethics would conflict with their entire existence and role in society, and self interest wins out.

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    [+] 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 7 points 3 days ago* (6 children)

    billionaires arnt actually smart, they had a silver spoon since thier birth, so they have expensive education. even soros merely took advantage of favorable conditions at his disposal.

    plus they come out of school enititled and elitist from private schools, which is not indicative intelligence.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 days ago* (5 children)

    Inheritance is only one way the ultra-wealthy gained their status. There's also exploitation, luck, predatory business practices, corruption, ....

    Some gained wealth legitimately, but they usually fall under the luck category and should have been taxed at a higher rate for decades.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    Some gained wealth legitimately

    Nobody gets truly rich by playing within the rules. Show me a billionaire and I'll show you a list of crimes.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (2 children)

    So a lottery winner is guilty of crimes? There are ways to "win the lottery" inside capitalism without breaking any rules. Sure, the amassing of wealth is in itself unethical in a country where many kids can't eat nutritious meals, but you don't necessarily have to be a backstabbing thief to become rich. You can just luck out and have an idea like online banking take off at the same time the technology becomes mature enough for something like online banking to be feasible.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    So a lottery winner is guilty of crimes?

    They're routinely the victims of them. Lottery winners are a scam target rich environment. North of 5% of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years, far above the national average.

    You can just luck out and have an idea like online banking take off

    Utterly clueless if you believe the advent of online banking was Peter Thiel's idea. I seriously doubt you understand how banks form or function.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago

    I wasn't using Thiel as an example--at least not on purpose. Take any obvious idea and marry it to a technological revolution, and you'll have a bunch of rich people who got rich mostly by pure luck. Musk is a piece of shit, but the case for Tesla taking off was actually proven by GM's EV1 ~3 years prior. The main reason it didn't take off? Well it was twofold: first, GM was reluctant to commit to EVs because marketing them would make their conventional fuel vehicles look environmentally destructive, and second, the battery technology the EV1 used was nickle metal hydride. Tesla succeeded because it coincided with the proliferation of lithium ion batteries, and in that particular case, I don't think anything unethical happened. If Musk had stopped here we probably wouldn't think of him as an evil piece of shit.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago (9 children)

    I think it's ironic that since buying power dropped by, what? 50%? Then does that mean a person with a billion is just a millionaire?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (8 children)

    The old billionaires must be fuming because so many new billionaires keep popping up. Theirs wealth just doesn't matter anymore

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (2 children)

    eh, not really how it works. at certain point your wealth is just distributed across the market enough that it goes up with inflation.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    But inflation doesn't make money worth more.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    ...sure, but if your money pile (in the form of various core-sector investments/broad market ETF's, which always eventually track inflation), automatically goes up with inflation your not losing anything either.

    when your rich, you have to actively go out of your way to lose money. because your $ can make more $ for you than you could ever make actually working.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (2 children)

    They must be fuming with all the desperate pushing of AI and data centers. Tech in general looks like the titanic except everyone is turning a blind eye to the sinking part.

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  • Thank God they're mostly just broken, weak, hedonistic and distracted men with daddy issues without remarkable intellects and not a group of Henry Kissingers. 🥲

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  • [–] 11 points 4 days ago*

    Problem is they pay people to be smart for them. Most of them are just selfish dumbasses.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    I'm confused. They think they are smart, let's say an IQ of 150. If they were half as smart, they would have an IQ of 75, but it's the IQ they already have, there would be no difference.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago

    Billionaire: "We paid some college kids to build a robot that doesn't immediately tip over when it tries to move."

    Internet Slacktivist: "Black Mirror! Terminator! The Matrix! It's game over, man! We're all gonna die!"

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