Danielle ForéI know I’ll never be rich person because as soon as I have anything at all, I’m treating and helping my friends. Can you imagine having a billion dollars and not giving it all away? I can’t
If I had a billion dollars, everybody is getting houses with solar. I’d buy that closed down grocery store in my neighborhood and reopen it. I’d be lobbying for public transportation and paying for the construction costs and then I’d be poor again 😂
🌸 lily 🏳️⚧️ 
θΔ ⋐ & ∞@danirabbit in fact i'd actually like to be a billionaire so that i could do a speedrun of how fast i can lose the money
Andrew Wooldridge 🐲@danirabbit but rich in spirt
DianeMost of the billionaires don't actually have a billion dollars.
They have N shares of some stock that when multiplied by the current share price is some number of billions of dollars.
The reason they don't give it away is what they care about is the power those shares give them over their company,
As an aside this implies one way to get rid of billionaires is to stop investing in their giant companies and work to drive their share prices down.
(Breaking them up into smaller companies would be great too)
OutsideCasey@alienghic @danirabbit and those assets can be used as collateral to do all kinds of projects. Just because it’s not liquid, doesn’t mean it can’t be used for good. They certainly use it for their own good.
@alienghic @danirabbit and it’s kind of absurd to think, oh no, their money is all locked up in assets/stocks. Look at Bezos wedding, or Zuckerberg’s trip to Svalbard, they don’t have any trouble accessing funds to pay for what they want.
Yes there's a tax scam called buy/borrow/die that lets them use loans instead of getting paid to avoid paying taxes.
Diane (@alienghic@timeloop.cafe)
@jacobdewitz@mstdn.social @danirabbit@mastodon.online Their power over their companies stems from the stock they own. They're not going to willingly give up that power. Zuckerberg got away with a giant scam with Facebook's IPO where he released two tiers of stock. One for him that was worth 10 votes per share , and one for everyone else where it was one vote for share. https://www.businessinsider.com/why-mark-zuckerberg-cant-be-fired-as-meta-facebook-ceo-2022-11?op=1 And for reasons unknown to humanity, people invested in the powerless stock.
Banks probably are more willing to make loans for super expensive "assets" instead of the common good.
The rich use the buy/borrow/die plan to avoid paying taxes.
Taking out loans avoids having to pay capital gains taxes on selling your assets, and there's a tax loophole that when someone inherits stock it's taxable value resets to its current share price. So the inheritors don't have to pay the capital gains tax.
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/03/tax-loophole-buy-borrow-die/682031/
@alienghic @danirabbit i have read about that, and I understand the scheme. But that’s kind of the point. They are hoarding.
Jake 🇵🇸@alienghic @danirabbit that’s not exactly true because they have tons of liquidity from low interest loans given to them against the value of the stocks. I think the point stands even if a billionaire on paper has *only* 100M cash for example. Plus the fact that they can technically just sell all the stock, which is almost as liquid as cash honestly
Their power over their companies stems from the stock they own. They're not going to willingly give up that power.
Zuckerberg got away with a giant scam with Facebook's IPO where he released two tiers of stock.
One for him that was worth 10 votes per share , and one for everyone else where it was one vote for share.
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-mark-zuckerberg-cant-be-fired-as-meta-facebook-ceo-2022-11?op=1
And for reasons unknown to humanity, people invested in the powerless stock.
@alienghic @danirabbit yes 100% I get why they don’t sell it, but it’s disingenuous to say they “don’t really have” that money. They do, because close to probably a trillion dollars of infrastructure is dedicated to facilitating hundreds of billions of dollars in sales of publicly traded stocks every day
The point I'm trying to make is they don't have cash in the bank, they own something that has a large calculated value.
The value is calculated as number of shares * last sale price.
Even when things are going well for the company the more shares are sold, the lower the share price.
However things don't always go well for a company, and sometimes a company does go *poof*, the share price goes to zero, and then the difference between hidden piles of cash and ownership of shares becomes very important.
A thing I'm interested in is, are there things I can do to help cause a company stock price to collapse?
AlexanderVI@alienghic
Also it's important to keep in mind that selling a large quantity of stock would flood the exchange and send the price into a tailspin, which means that unless they unload everything at once at its current price (this requires secrecy so no one knows they want to sell so much), the theoretical value of their stock is basically impossible to convert into cash.
The real value is in the power the ownership confers, as well as the ability to use it as collateral
@jacobdewitz @danirabbit
cognitively accessible math@alienghic @danirabbit Yes. One of my peeps defends the "richness" as "oh, htey're not really rich!!!" because they are just *invested* in things.
They're still to rich, even if theres no way they could liquidate the stock into a pile of cash the same size as whats on the net worth charts.
I was trying to make two points they wouldn't want to sell the stock because power is more important, and their net worth is based on the share price, so if the companies price goes down they can rapidly become poorer.
A great example is Tesla. Their stock price is absurdly overvalued because Musk got a bunch of people to believe his fantasies about the future, but realistically theres no way Tesla should be more valuable than Toyota or Ford.
Queen of Chaos (Anarschism)If I won a billion tax-free dollars today, tomorrow I'd be distributing guns to every queer, bipoc, and homeless person in the country.
Rylie 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈✊@danirabbit this is the way
Lyle Solla-Yates@danirabbit Still good goals though
Jeremy Buffer Jones 
Might I suggest, if you did all that you would have riches beyond your imagination.
Michael Gemar@danirabbit @ikonha But everyone, including you, would be better off.
Christopher 
This feels like the Barenaked Ladies song "If I had a million dollars"; now adjusted for inflation and updated for our times. 
Irina@danirabbit Yes, that.
CaveDave@danirabbit pretty much. Like what is power even worth ... and even if what I wanted was power, I'd just use it to improve the world, because I'm one of those idiots who believes that whatever goes on in the world will eventually affect them ... crazy, I know
prozak@danirabbit with a $1B I would change my day to day work to Own, Operate and source all kind of things for a Hacker Space. That is my life dream. Enabling Kids/teens doing awesome stuff for free
Martin Giger@danirabbit I think I read this on mastodon a while ago. But it's very simple: "Good people don't get rich".
Sine-Nomine🇵🇸FREE🇵🇸PALESTINE@danirabbit i'd fund environmental & green power projects! I'd start my own utility company & give it away for free! I'd buy every tenants lease & gift them their homes, I buy homes for the homeless, rehab progams for addicts, free training for anyone. I'd buy gambling companies turn them into anti-gambling charities, i fully fund charities like @wateraiduk @sightsavers
But most of all, i'd buy my own Armed Forces & pound the #idfterrorists to dust & return #Palestine back to the #palestinians
But most of all, i'd buy my own Armed Forces & pound the #idfterrorists to dust & return #Palestine back to the #palestinians
Sable Shade🇦🇺🍉🗝🇵🇸🇺🇦@danirabbit exactly! Or all the vile, immoral, corrupt, anti-social behavior you’d have to perform to steal a billion dollars from workers in the first place
taxet@danirabbit I’ve had a dream that if I won the lottery, I would be just opening up a night club and just signing up whatever acts I find interesting and letting people in for free, basically throwing parties every day without as long as the money holds.
powerLuser@danirabbit literally was just telling someone this today
PhilRedbeard@danirabbit goals.
Hannah@danirabbit so much this. If I had a billion dollars everyone I know would be getting full healthcare
ZenHeathen@danirabbit One of the best sayings I've ever heard:
"When you have more than you need, you don't build a bigger wall, you build a bigger table."
I wish I could find reliable attribution, that deserves proper credit.
Moritz Poldrack 
@danirabbit oh I can. Because that sum is so large that i might genuinely struggle to find where to best donate it to without it replenishing through interest.
Jay@danirabbit #IfIHadABillionDollars I would hire all of the scummiest, most vicious lawyers I could find and have them take cases pro bono against each and every corporation or governmental body that was abusing people and getting away with settlements.
No settlements, and any and all discovery is getting published in print, audio, and digital format.
Good luck countersuing: I own all the schmucks.
Jessie@danirabbit The only point of having more money than you need is to do good with it.
Stargeezer Smith@danirabbit
I'm old now, but growing up and working and going to school all of those decades, I had my aspirations and dreams like we all do.
But I never thought of myself as becoming rich. Nor did I have any aspirations to do so.
So I guess like you, I can't imagine having billions and not giving most of it away.
Wouter@danirabbit me neither
Rachel E. S. Lösche@danirabbit
Exactly. Having surplus when others are in need is inhumane.
Exactly. Having surplus when others are in need is inhumane.
The Lichtenbergian@danirabbit So many plans, so many organizations, so many artists, so many people — I would feel like Scrooge McDuck luxuriating in that huge pile of gold as I gave it all away.
Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦He's certainly not perfect (who is?) but Bill Gates reckons it'll take until 2045(? 'citation reqd') for his Foundation to give all their fundage away. At least he didn't use it all to buy a government position like the illegal South African immigrant.
I don't think there's such a thing as an altruistic billionaire, but it's difficult to argue that Gates hasn't done some good.
Oh, and if I'm being stupidly naive here, be gentle please!
@bytebro oh no I don’t disagree. As far as billionaires go, I do appreciate that the Gates Foundation decided to cure malaria. I mean that really shows you the true scale of that kind of wealth. Their website says they’ve given away 8 billion so far. Maybe it’s just great PR, but it does make me wonder what could be accomplished if every billionaire was at least that amount of altruistic
LovesTha🥧@danirabbit I could be rich. But rich is *way* less than a billion. Hey, just being $500k better off than I am now would put me into what I'd call rich.