return2ozmaFlashback - Mark Zuckerberg on billionaires: 'No one deserves to have that much money'
ImplyingImplications…except me"
FredselfishSays the guy trying to earn a trillion. Fuck him government should break up his company and hold him to his words.
“They trust me, dumb fucks,” was uttered by him years before that and his non-’answers to Congress.
I don’t know if I’d say “earn” so much as “amass”
And tar and feather him in town square
Kalkaline Before or after the French Royalty treatment?
riverYears ago Microsoft was about to be broken into separate entities and that didn’t happen - corporations went too deep into politicians pockets
He said he “doesn’t deserve it” he didn’t say he wasn’t gonna get that bag lol
Sounds like he’s been humbled by the Metaverse’s failure. Big money also means big losses one day.
Jeff Bezos recently pledged to donate about $124b for charity and fighting climate change. It really seems like these billionaires have been hit by 3 ghosts.
Still eat the rich, but I guess there’s been some good news from them.
From www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/business/…/index.html:
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to give away the majority of his $124 billion net worth during his lifetime, telling CNN in an exclusive interview he will devote the bulk of his wealth to fighting climate change and supporting people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions.
Though Bezos’ vow was light on specifics, this marks the first time he has announced that he plans to give away most of his money. Critics have chided Bezos for not signing the Giving Pledge, a promise by hundreds of the world’s richest people to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.
So he made a vague promise that he would give away “most” of his money to fighting the climate change that is exacerbated by his lifetime’s work and the social divisions that he has worked relentlessly to entrench? He could fight social divisions by treating his employees well and allowing them to unionize, but he has fought dirty against unionization at every opportunity.
Forgive me for suspecting he’s full of shit with his vague and noncommittal promise, after a lifetime of doing the opposite.
Yeah, the wealthy “giving it all away” is always a bullshit scheme in some way. If they really felt that way, they would have shared the profits with those who helped create them. This sort of wealth only happens in literally one situation: greed overcomes compassion for others.
These schemes usually fall into one of three categories:
I fucking hate my kids and don’t have anyone I think actually deserves this money, so I’m giving it to some random charities of my choosing when I die because I know damn well I can’t spend it all and I have to do something with it
I’m just putting it all into a charitable trust that I still have full control over and likely won’t spend much out of it, unless it benefits me personally
Straight up bullshit PR campaign about a future promise that is not binding
Quite often, it’s a combination of 1 and 2, locking up the money for a loooong time and only to be used for a specific purpose.
Charitable trusts have to be donated to charity. You can’t pull the money back out. It’s like giving it away that year.
Yeah, a ton of things can be a “charity”. You can donate the money to your friends at a church or a clubhouse for your friends and still have it be a “charity”.
I think we’re saying the same thing. Many ways to get personal benefit from a charitable trust. They are irrevocable trusts, but the majority money doesn’t immediately have to go anywhere.
And even when money does flow out (beyond admin/establishment costs), there are TONS of creative ways to use it for personal benefit. It’s not like they are certainly giving it to make sure society has what it needs.
See Rolex and Hershey. Or giant charity galas. Many ways to use the funds for “non-profit” entertainment. Plenty of ways to get kickbacks from “charitable” donations.
unfreeradicalThese tactics are precisely intended to placate critics.
It is not good news when Bezos commits funds to charity and fighting climate change.
Good news would be the mass of society rising to end the conditions that cause climate change and that make charity necessary.
I'm sure he's self aware enough to know he doesn't deserve it. I think there's very few people that believe that there exists a meritocratic place in this earth.
I get the impression plenty of these ultra-rich techbros come to believe that they’re there by merit. They don’t see all the luck that went into their riches, and they habitually take credit for the work done by those beneath them. People like Bezos and Musk may genuinely believe they’re better (smarter, more insightful, more capable) than others. I expect many ultra-rich CEOs get like that, not just in tech companies.
DreamButtAs someone who works in tech any co-founder who gets anywhere abso-fucking-lutely believes their shit smells different. They wrap it up in all of this colorful language about making a difference and helping people and “impact,” but at the end of the day they’re there to exploit you and your coworkers to make millions
I tend to agree, but then again this is the guy that intentionally has a shit haircut so he can look like some Roman dude
I mean, hate on him if you want, but this isn’t really hypocritical. He doesn’t take a salary, his entire fortune is from Facebook stock he owns, and he has a sort of Bill Gates thing going on where he plans to donate the majority of his Meta stock wealth through his own foundation. From what I’ve heard they’ve funded some serious medical advancements.
killeronthecornerIs there a single impressive philanthropic feat that has been achieved by any of these billionaires?
If I had access to hundreds of billions and I wasn’t able to solve a single meaningful welfare issue for even a single country in the world in my own lifetime, I would consider that abject failure.
Bill Gates has done significant good fighting disease. Still something that should’ve been decided by society, not a single person, but credit where credit is due.
Unfortunately anti vaxxers have destroyed a lot of that legacy anyway.
RozaŭtunoBill Gates has done significant good fighting disease.
No, he got in the way of progress for the sake of his own profit. The scientists that made the covid vaccine wanted it to be open source so any country could make their own, but he forced the company to patent it instead.
He’s also been funding anti-scientific propaganda to convince people that his anti-solutions will solve the climate crisis. His foundation also regularly invests in ventures that pollute the Global South.
Kurzgesagt: billionaire propaganda, trusting science, and effective altruism
Oh shirt, here we go again 📜Subscribe: https://bit.ly/3tapuza | 💖Support us: https://bit.ly/3PWNHmc 🧉Tip us a yerba mate: https://ko-fi.com/t3essays 💖Support on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC57gLBfdhN1zWMLmiW2Ya6Q/join 📣Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/t3essays 🦣and on Mastodon: https://kolektiva.social/@t3essays 🇵🇱Kanał po polsku: https://www.youtube.com/MyslecGlebiej ✉Get in touch: [email protected] The drama (chronological): 🎬Our original video: https://youtu.be/uCuy1DaQzWI 🎬The Hated One's video: https://youtu.be/HjHMoNGqQTI 📜Kurzgesagt founder's text response: https://www.reddit.com/r/kurzgesagt/comments/10jlyyk/kurzgesagt_statement_to_the_conflict_of_interest/ 📜THO's text response to the response: https://www.reddit.com/r/thehatedone/comments/10pb1q9/my_response_to_kurzgesagt/ 🎬Kurzgesagt's video response: https://youtu.be/1x-i9z617z4 Kurzgesagt additional Videos: 🎬Is Civilization on the Brink of Collapse? https://youtu.be/W93XyXHI8Nw 🎬The Last Human – A Glimpse Into The Far Future https://youtu.be/LEENEFaVUzU Our explainers: 🎬 Capitalocene: how capitalism caused the climate crisis https://youtu.be/gGyDyfYWQ_M ⬆If you want just one video, watch this one!⬆ 🎬 Degrowth in 7 minutes: Fighting for climate by living better https://youtu.be/ikJVTrrRnLs 🎬 Solarpunk in 7 minutes: The case for utopia https://youtu.be/qc9lfrsnhvQ Gates Foundation grant: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants/2015/11/opp1139276 Open Philanthropy grants: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/kurzgesagt-video-creation-and-translation/ https://www.openphilanthropy.org/grants/kurzgesagt-short-form-video-content/ Paltering https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=832634 Full contents 00:00 Introduction 02:18 I Kurzgesagt responds to Kurzgesagt 02:22 How far can a 3% go? 04:40 The non-response part of the response 07:52 Grants for translations 09:35 Does a sponsorship really not affect a video 13:12 II Their story: on shaping facts into stories 14:20 Our story: where they left off 17:43 Fact-checking and science: not as clear-cut kind of deal 21:00 Paltering: less-than-lying 22:50 Using sources as a rhetorical device 23:52 Is-ought problem: can science lead to politics? 24:40 III Mission: the most effective way of changing nothing 27:14 Effective altruism problem 1: Testability 30:02 Effective altruism problem 2: Maintaining the status quo 32:15 Effective altruism problem 3: Longtermism fails the most where it succeeds the most 37:15 A very human contrast to the longtermism ad 39:56 A personal note from pan s 42:27 Dark take on effective altruism: pragmatic inhumanity 45:31 IV Conclusion: the battle for long-term outlooks 49:16 TL;DR in 3 lenses 51:09 Final words
He’s not perfect, and your examples show why these sorts of decisions on spending and priority shouldn’t be in the hands of a single person who isn’t even an expert in diseases.
It’s still worth acknowledging that he did plenty to help with polio and malaria, even if it could’ve been done better by another method.
Daniel QuinnThat “antisolitions” read was fascinating! Thanks for sharing.
The real obstacle wasn’t patents, it was manufacturing capability. India early on didn’t even let US vaccines in when offered them because they insisted they had to go through their own regulatory and testing process first.
Most people say Bill Gates but it reminds me of the classic joke:
The woman you know as your grandmother is not my mother. That’s an elderly woman now trying to get into heaven
Bill Gates acted identically to Zuckerberg and Musk and every other hated billionare back in the 90s. There was a time Micro$oft was always written with the dollar sign. There was a time a young smug grinning Gates was posted everywhere as the poster child for rich assholes. The Microsoft board of directors did the smart move and removed Gates from management and then he quietly retired. He’s had an Ebenezer Scrooge moment and has spent the last decade trying to buy his way into people’s good graces.
It’s great that Gates is helping people, but I don’t think we should all have to suffer under a power hungry cut throat CEO and hope one day they have a change of heart.
Fortunately greater numbers are coming to realize that the Gates Foundation’s function was never much more than reputation laundering.
Plus, is it really charity when you give your money to an organization you control?
It is only charity when you control how resources are used.
Justice and solidarity depend on the beneficiary deciding how to use the resources it receives, but charity is not justice and solidarity.
Same as any robber baron.
He forced the covid vaccine to go private with Moderna. Micro$oft was cute and all but these pharmaceutical companies have killed and are killing hundreds of thousands simply by charging so much for the cure.
Mackenzie Scott seems to be making it her mission to no longer be a billionaire by giving money to charity.
Last reports indicate that she can’t give it away fast enough, but I’m not sure she’s really trying
Capitalists actually keep the developing world from fully developing. On purpose. And NGO Aid has been proven to stagnage rather than assist countries that are constantly receiving it, such as Haiti. Yeah I would consider that failure, too. But they certainly wouldn’t. And perhaps, with that many eyes in you, it might actually be harder to get things done that go against the interests of other rich and powerful people.
What are you solving with money alone? We need intent before money. Globally we lack intent, even if some rich guy spends some money, we need to locate human resources. That doesn’t mean I can disregard philanthropy. That alone doesn’t solve things
Well there have been some…
Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Vanderbilt University and Duke University. John D. Rockefeller funded the University of Chicago
Denny Sanford, of Sanford Health, has donated about $1.5 billion to healthcare.
Mark Zuckerberg now: must… get… more… money!
Just for context, if you made 100k a year, an extremely enviable salary, and saved every penny somehow, you’d be a billionaire in exactly TEN THOUSAND YEARS.
No one can earn a billion dollars through honest labor the sweat of their brow. It must be exploited out of others. It must be stolen.
Prethoryn Overmind“stolen”
Buddy it ain’t stealing if we keep using the product and indirectly (directly) supporting the billionaires exploiting others.
I think you underestimate the propaganda influence they have. I don’t consider it voluntary by most, any more than I blame a North Korean citizen for hating the west as they’ve been indoctrinated to do.
Problem is that it’s not against the interest of the peasants.
Everybody knows how poor life can be in the rest of the world. Once you go human decency you want to share with everybody. You may even care about animals.
The slippery slope of compassion.
ComradeChairmanKGBany more than I blame a North Korean citizen for hating the west as they’ve been indoctrinated to do
I assure you that North Koreans don’t need to be indoctrinated in order to hate the west. The genocide committed upon them by America was enough to do the job. But don’t take my word for it, read what USAF General Curtis LeMay, who was also head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, had to say on the matter.
We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure?
I was off Facebook for years, and was never a heavy user, but I had to get back on because the school my daughter goes to sends out so many notifications that way.
Facebook is very ingrained in how business and groups interact these days, what’s an individual to do? Disconnect from the world and miss important school notifications, among other things?
Plus the “stealing” isn’t just from people using the platform, it’s also in wages and benefits for employees. Why aren’t they getting a bigger share of those profits they worked to produce?
I work 7 days a week and my wife works full time to get that $100k/year and it took us years to get where we are in our careers. $1million in assets is still so far away. It’s such an incredible amount of money and Zuckerberg and friends have thousands of times that much money. It’s just so crazy to think about.
100k isn’t that much in many regions these days. Its enough to get by but hardly enough to save to buy a house in the Seattle region.
They’ve been getting away with it for centuries. Would you like to know more?
🤔 I don’t necessarily believe that. An independent creator of a blockbuster franchise could in principle become a billionaire ethically. Like J.K. Rowling; she’s estimated to have upwards of a $1.2 billion net worth.
You’re forgetting that it’s not like we go to Rowling’s house to get her books, or even download the manuscript P2P from her personal server.
Someone’s exploited labor printed the folio, bound it, packed it, shipped it, stocked it, advertised it, sold it to you and put it into a bag…
And more, cut down the trees to make the paper, mixed the ink, delivered the reams and the vats to the factory…
And here’s the problem I have with that: not all labor is exploitative. No matter what economy we have, there would still be laborers printing the book, binding it, cutting down the trees and making the paper, etc.
That doesn’t change simply because we switch from capitalism to some other system.
The only fair way for that book to be made from the implications given is if all of the labor is automated, but at the end of the day a human being would have to do some work somewhere no matter how many levels of automation redundancy you have, so how is he not implying being expected to do anything is the problem, and using the blatant shitty behavior of the rich as a smokescreen for that?
We could live in a Jetsonian paradise where all he’d have to do is push a few buttons once a day and he’d still complain.
I have done things that are hard work for less compensation than it deserves and been happy to give it freely (ie charity, volunteering), but that doesn’t mean we can’t examine the power structure, even if the plurality of people are happy inside it.
I know. That’s what I’m doing, critically examining these claims people keep making. I really don’t have a stake in the game either way.
CoderKatBut it’s not the author exploiting publishing companies. It’s the execs of those companies exploiting their own workers. The publishing companies make excellent money (and same for paper creators, etc). Just if disproportionately goes to execs and possibly shareholders, not workers.
of course you can slice it any way you like. I’m not saying no one should be an author, but I am saying billionaires aren’t made without exploitation somewhere
You forget the impact of compound interest. If you invested 1 dollar at 1% interest, you would have a billion dollars in just over 2000 years. So these comparisons based on income are not useful.
If you invested money at 1% interest, you would lose money due to inflation.
Real interest, after inflation.
Love how people are confusing salaries or yearly income to net worth.
Net worth is the total accumulated value of all the stuff you own (value of assets minus the liabilities) - houses, cars, investments, etc. That is massively different than what you are getting paid each year which is what a lot of people here are using as a metric.
It isn’t out of the question for someone to make “only” $100 or 200k/year and be considered a “millionaire” by most people’s definition. They might be older and have paid off their house. That house might be worth $500k and all the other stuff they own is a few hundred thousand more. Plus maybe $100k in some investment portfolio. Thus making them technically a millionaire. There are a lot more millionaires out there than people realize, including some people here or their parents or maybe grand parents.
That’s not to take away from the argument that billionaires have too much money, but at least phrase the movement correctly. Stop equating someone making $50k/year with someone’s who’s assets are worth $1B. That’s comparing apples to oranges and not just by the sheer difference in the numbers either.
Okay, but Zuck doesn’t make 50K a year. He makes billions a year. AND he has a net worth of over $100B.
silly goose meekahMeta makes billions a year. Zuck “just” makes millions.
He’s definitely filthy rich, but it’s not like he makes billions for his personal spending.
Well depends on the accountant. How to make an expense, a “business expense”.