coolcat
Lesley Carhart 
This is so damn good.
A lot of weird nerds defending billionaires in this thread
That Anonymous CowardYou have a better understanding of my disdain for humans now...
Nomi@hacks4pancakes
To become a billionaire you have to decline 999,999,999 opportunities to choose anything other than greed
To become a billionaire you have to decline 999,999,999 opportunities to choose anything other than greed
EddiKat@hacks4pancakes as is tradition I suppose.
Viss@hacks4pancakes lots of folks will try and cozy up to rich folks because they think proximity will also make them rich
NosirrahSec 🏴☠️ guillotine enthusiast@NosirrahSec @hacks4pancakes heh. i mean folks who stan asshat billionares because they feel like they may get noticed and get showered with fortune or something. delisional asshats gonna delusion
@Viss @hacks4pancakes I agree 100% and my statement wasn't serious as I'm sure you gleaned from my personality lol
@NosirrahSec @hacks4pancakes i get it :D
Cassandrich@hacks4pancakes They love to talk about stupid scifi existential threats, but capitalism is the real Roko's Basilisk they're performing.
Dewey Ritten 
@hacks4pancakes it's like they got lost on their way to Twitter...
Mike McBride@hacks4pancakes This is not a surprise, talk to many GOP voters about why they are against raising taxes and it becomes clear most think they will be billionaires one day.
badsynthesis@mikemac29 @hacks4pancakes there's a nice quote I read years ago somewhere. It was along the lines of:
"All think they're just temporarily inconvenienced millionaires, so they vote against anything that'd limit them once they get back to their rightful place".
Chloe Fletcher@hacks4pancakes it's the foundation of the RW mindset - there must be people better than me to aspire to and people worse than me to look down upon and mistreat. If you look into basically any conservative/fascist/RW argument - this is a key component.
cpgorski
AdeptVeritatisIf it would be a pile of rubies and gold, but money is actually not more than accumulated lifetime.
So billionaires are hoarding the lifetime of millions of people. Taken away in underpaid jobs.
phorbin@AdeptVeritatis @hacks4pancakes
That's what I was thinking, altho I was thinking billions of people.
@fractiousvoice @hacks4pancakes
But there are around 2640 billionaires versus 8 billion humans in total. Lots of other people "extract" lifetime, too.
Billionaires are not some kind of (super-human) kings but more like a bunch of dukes.
Their influence is grossly overexaggerated by the media they bought and control now.
not a martian, honest@hacks4pancakes except most of them don't have the decency to use it to sleep on
rootfake@kyonshi @hacks4pancakes right? it's why I have zero respect for the whole "warren buffett lives frugally" thing. If you're gonna horde money, the least you could do is be outrageous and weird with it, otherwise why the hell do you have it?
PhDog 🇮🇪@rootfake @kyonshi @hacks4pancakes From the only good podcast (Eat the Rich):
Shane: Why even DO the child slavery, then?? If you're not going to drive the Batmobile to work everyday?!?
@dogfox @kyonshi @hacks4pancakes Musk may be a complete human dumpster fire, but at least he leaned fully into the "bond villain who wants to conquer mars with his legion of brain-chipped lackys" persona.
@rootfake @kyonshi @hacks4pancakes
We're really fighting for scraps here, aren't we?
@dogfox @kyonshi @hacks4pancakes Yep, come to the US, we've got Henry Ford 2:electric boogaloo, now with even more Nazis! Lex Luthor, but even more cartoonishly evil and unrealistic, the brothers climate change denial, and a used day-glo orange condom that managed to become president!
lp0 on fire 
The rich can afford to live frugally. They can afford to buy in bulk, to spend lots on the expensive items which last much longer…
https://wiki.lspace.org/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Injustice
Raven Luni@That_AC @hacks4pancakes Fairly tales normalise monsters as the bad guys where humans are the real monsters (even in stories)
Tathar makes stuff@RavenLuni @That_AC @hacks4pancakes
Real life normalizes monsters as the good guys, where humans are the bad guys [and the ones at the top are the worst guys]
Darrel PlantExcept dragons are cool, unlike billionaires.
@darrelplant I mean they’ll eat you, but yea…
Tigers will eat you, but also cool. For all I know, billionaires will probably eat you, but still not cool.
https://gizmodo.com/someone-is-trying-to-discredit-the-story-of-peter-thiel-1796135794
Someone Is Trying to Discredit the Story of Peter Thiel’s Interest in Young Blood
When Inc. magazine’s Jeff Bercovici reported last August that billionaire Trump-supporter Peter Thiel had repeatedly expressed interest in the idea of harvesting the blood of young people to maintain his own youth, it left an indelible mark on Thiel’s public persona, as captured by headlines like “Peter Thiel Wants to…
Valen 
@darrelplant I'd rather be eaten by a dragon than a billionaire.
Nikkileah 🎮🚄🏳️⚧️🇬🇧@hacks4pancakes but at least the dragon isn't creating large carbon emissions when it flies, ergo dragons > billionaires
aardvark@Nikkileah theories suggest Smaug burns methane to breathe fire, so CO2 aplenty
Psycodepath@hacks4pancakes so you say penis rockets are no healthy contribution? Fair Point actually
NoctisEqui 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇪🇹🏳️🌈Ha! We are in ‘The Hobbit’ now do we know what to do?
Eric LawtonThen we should call them Smaugs.
"a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm" – Thorin.
EmmettGroganLives
Colin@hacks4pancakes *1000 lifetimes
@ NovaNaturalist HAS ALSO MOVED@hacks4pancakes Not only do they hoard more real wealth than they could use in a 100+ lifetimes, a lot of their supposed wealth is merely speculation by others on the size of their hoard.
One World One People@hacks4pancakes TWW:
Humility and generosity. Shield and spear.
I ask you not to seek wealth and prestige, instead always strive for humility and generosity, shield others from danger and be as a spear to their oppressors. *Would that the shoe was on the other foot. This gross disparity dose not exist without your approval and desires for wealth. When you give power to greed by your own choices it is in darkness that you will find yourself on a corrupt path. OWOP
William Hamilton
Roysterini@hacks4pancakes and their only goal is to amass even more wealth.
@hacks4pancakes
The person who wrote this doesn't have any imagination. I guess I could spend this money. If you don't believe me, try me! Send the money!
The person who wrote this doesn't have any imagination. I guess I could spend this money. If you don't believe me, try me! Send the money!
Better Call saul@hacks4pancakes Time for dragon rules.
You know, the ones that Bilbo & co applied to Smaug.
chribonn@hacks4pancakes ... And replacing billionaires with "less efficient" persons will ensure that employees are paid fairly and treated better and taxes are paid to the community rather than focus exclusively on figuring out ways maximise their wealth at the expense of employees and society.
Ursidinoj/The Bjornsdottirs@hacks4pancakes Dragons would probably share more than these.
Incident Creator ❎@hacks4pancakes Very emotive but not accurate at all. While they may be worth billions, they're not just shoving it in a big pile and wallowing in it. The money is still cycling around the economy doing things.
@vik ah yes, trickle down economics. Working so well.
@hacks4pancakes No, doesn't work well at all. Investment just keeps the moneygoround rotating. The point being it is not the same as passive hoarding.
Bushido Squirrel
Jens Bannmann ⁂@bushidosquirrel, please edit your post to add the alt text below (part 1 of 3):
Text box with a picture of a dragon in front of a pile of gold:
This is Smaug, the dragon from "The Hobbit". Smaug famously stole a mountain full of gold. So full that he sleeps buried under gold. We're talking literal tons and
tons of gold by weight.
(Alt text, part 2 of 3)
Forbes ranks Smaug as the second wealthiest fictional character. He had been first, but the price of gold took a tumble and now his vast, overwhelming fortune is only worth an estimated or $51,400,000,000.00, or $51.4 billion.
That means that EVEN THOUGH he has an ENTIRE MOUNTAIN full of almost nothing but solid gold, Smaug would rank as the FIFTEENTH wealthiest American.
(Alt text, part 3 of 3)
Fourteen Americans have more money than a gold-hoarding dragon.
Please consider that next time you say deca-billionaires deserve their wealth and shouldn't pay their employees living wages.
-critfailmemes
@hacks4pancakes, please edit your post to add this alt text to the image:
"Billionaire" isn't a qualification. It's the description of a person who is hoarding more resources than they could use in 100 lifetimes while other people are starving. It's the name for a human dragon sleeping on its pile of rubies and gold.
- United Humanists
ErosBlog Bacchus has moved!@hacks4pancakes Linda Nagata (@LindaNagata) has a science fiction series "The Red" in which the villains are billionaires who are, collectively, called "Dragons" for (presumably) this precise reason. #LindaNagata #TheRed #Dragons #Billionaires
azninsect@hacks4pancakes Dragons are at least, a little more interesting than any billionaire. But yes, all of this.