Howard Schultz doesn’t like the “moniker” of billionaire because he “earned” all of his wealth.
Rubbish. Schultz built his fortune on the backs of workers, many of whom can barely afford to make ends meet.
The myth of the self-made billionaire is a cruel hoax.
@rbreich As Andrew Carnegie, once one of the richest men in the United States, said:
"Where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners."
I'd argue that's the term "oligarch" is more accurate.
@rbreich
That's true.
Being NOT a billionaire, I seem best characterized by a statement made by Groucho Marx.
Groucho said "I came into this world with nothing, and I still have most of it left."
5733 times harder than the average American apparently.
Wow, imagine seeing him in action!
If the average family had a head start working from when the pyramids were built, he would still beat them!
If he could fly from San Fransisco to New York in 5 hours, it would take the average family 3 years and 7 months to catch up bc they would need to crawl on their bellies at 0.09 mi/hr.
As Fran Lebowitz once said, “No one makes a billion dollars. They steal it.”
@rbreich noone can become a billionaire [in € or USD] with hard or even just honest labour.
One may become a millionaire but only barely with honest labour.
To become a billionaire, one needs to have either absurd amounts of luck [i.e. born to rich people] or be a greedy & antisocial asshole.
> One may become a millionaire but only barely with honest labour.
No, there's no ethical millionaires either. Every dollar of that is some natural resource that no one else now has and which was taken from them as "profit" in UNEQUAL transactions, either a truckload all at once like a lawyer or a pin-prick at a time like a mass producer. EVERYONE else is disadvantaged by this process. No one is spared.
Let's be okay with breaking even.
@VulcanTourist @rbreich OFC if we're detailed, we'd have to admit that under capitalism, every $ in profit requires at least $2 in debt.
But most people don't like the inconvenient truth that the system is inherently unfixable, because then they couldn't claim innocence but would have to see their own filthy hands.
Not even #XR and @AufstandLastGen accept this #InconvenientTruth in the naive believe they could change shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsA3PK8bQd8
If you sense that the future looks bleak, that there is little chance that this whole mess will end in joy and good humor, that there is a tiny chance that w...
@kkarhan @rbreich @AufstandLastGen
I have no illusion that it can be fixed for humanity; we are all born self-absorbed capitalists (and atheists) and it's the rare individual who is capable of rejecting most of their excess self-interest. Many others talk a good game but can't walk the walk, wouldn't tolerate just breaking even, can't even conceive it.
Still, we must strive for that ideal and reject all the narratives of selfishness like that of self-made millionaires.
@VulcanTourist @rbreich @AufstandLastGen *nodds in agreement*
Personally, I only see money as a tool to do something better with it as I don't derive my happyness out of possessions.
But that's just me who never faces existential poverty but was raised to accept a no and not as a spoiled brat.
@kkarhan @rbreich @AufstandLastGen
If we were living up to our own Constitutional ideals, no one would ever face poverty, no one's genuine effort would ever be devalued, no one would ever be homeless because every square foot of land is squatted upon by some rent-seeker. There would be no billionaires because they'd be paying back to society, in taxes and otherwise, the debt they incurred by disadvantaging so many in the first place.
We can all live well enough.
Do you understand the nature of selfishness, self-interest? Restrained to a minimum simmer - let's call it "enlightened self-interest" - it's not so harmful to others, but when allowed as much fuel as it wants it creates a swath of destruction. Sometime that happens when some trauma flips the knob to 11.
Money isn't evil. It's an abstract, after all. More importantly, it has no intent. People do. Excess self-interest is evil.
@rbreich Here's how important Starbucks is to me:
I'm 47. The amount of money I have spent there, in my lifetime, is somewhere in the double digits. And probably because someone asked me to meet them there.
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