billy joe bowers 🗽Billionaires out there proposing teenage boy scifi projects and everyone taking them seriously.
The biggest con has been convincing people that rich people are smart.
mark@billyjoebowers when meta started talking about beaming power down from satellites, all I could think was that I had played Sim city too
Eggs now in different baskets.@ATLeagle @billyjoebowers The concept is much older than that.
Alan Campbell@billyjoebowers how many of them failed upwards in spite of their acumen or intelligence rather than because of it, who’s only real skills are flexible ethics and being tenth Dan in bullshitsu.
Neal Stidham@billyjoebowers America has always been in love with the idea that anyone who's rich got that way by literally any method other than entitlement or inheritance. Whether it's the "rags to riches" myth, or the prosperity gospel or this new secular iteration thereof, Americans just won't even entertain the notion that someone has money but didn't earn it. Having money is tautological proof of worthiness in the US.
Flaming Cheeto@billyjoebowers I come back to Warren Buffet years ago saying to his kid that he hopes he finds something he's as good at as he is at making money. Kinda acknowledging, that's his skill. You might make tables or culture cells or design bridges.
Bob Blaskiewicz 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇬🇱I suspect it's a misguided remnant of the Calvinist idea that someone's good fortune reflects whether or not they are saved/good/worthy.
ocdtrekkie@billyjoebowers I assume this is because they never had to actually grow up because they had so much money.
John Carlsen 🇺🇸🇳🇱🇪🇺@billyjoebowers billionaires become billionaires more because they are greedy than because they are smart.
For example Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were arguably smarter, and certainly less greedy than today's billionaire bozos. They largely shared their wealth with those who helped them earn it. That ethos seems to have disappeared.
LivingCode@billyjoebowers
That!
I don't know how anyone could ever think that someone Elon Musk was/is smart. it's just something the press claimed without any evidence at all.
If you go through every speech he ever held in in public there is not a single smart thing he ever said or did. Just crap and bullshit.
There is way to much benefit of a doubt we give to rich people, without them holding their side of the bargain, ever.
Still we think rich people are smart, because the have money.
@billyjoebowers but thats the thing. If you are rich and are not totally dumb, it is not easy to make more money out of what you already have.
Just think about all the work you can delegate, which normal people can't do.
@billyjoebowers and you can always claim the work of others to be yours instead. One of Workers had a good Idea? well it's yours now and it always was.
The only real purpose rich people have is that they are a sign that a system is broken.
Roadskater, Ph.D.@billyjoebowers Further sign that no one should have fuck-you money until they've hit forty or have at least two kids. And even then… I'm not sure,
Roger Ap GwillianThey start to think that they're Bruce Wayne, when if they're lucky they might be Bruce Banner.
But my guess is they are in reality Bruce Bogtrotter, from Matilda. The kid eating too much chocolate cake.
realcaseyrollins ✝️@billyjoebowers @billyjoebowers What's a "teenage boy scifi project"?