image transcription:
big collage of people captioned, “the only people I wouldn’t have minded being billionaires”
names(and a bit of info, which is not included in the collage) of people in collage(from top left, row-wise):
- Alexandra Elbakyan, creator of Sci-Hub. perhaps the single-most important person in the scientific community regarding access to research papers.
- Linus Torvalds, creator of linux kernel and git, courtesy of which we have GNU/Linux.
- David Revoy, french artist famous for his pepper&carrot, a libre webcomic. inspiration for artists who are into free software movement
- Richard Stallman, arch-hacker who started it all. founded the GNU project, free software movement, Emacs, GCC, GPL, concept of copyleft, among many other things. champions for free software to this day(is undergoing treatment for cancer at the moment).
- Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VLC media player for 2 decades now
- Ian Murdock, founder of Debian GNU/Linux and Debian manifesto. died too soon.
- Alexis Kauffmann, creator of framasoft, a French nonprofit organisation that champions free software. known for providing alternatives to centralised services, notable one being framapad and peertube.
- Aaron Swartz, a brilliant programmer who created RSS, markdown, creative commons, and is known for his involvement in creation of reddit. he also died too soon.
- Bram Moolenaar, creator of vim, a charityware.
on the bottom right is the text reading, “plus the thousands of free software enthusiasts working tirelessly.”
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None of them. I don’t care who they are, nobody should be a billionaire.
The point is, I think, if they were to become billionaires (say Bll Gtes leaves it to them in his will), then they wouldn’t be billionaires for long – their moral compasses (given they’ve spent their lives on non-profit causes) dictate that they’d likely put the money into other non-profit ventures.
Thats a fair point, but money changes people. That kind of money is obscene because it effectively puts you above most laws. I, too, would like to believe that the folks on this list would do only good with the money; but the longer the list, the more likely you witness the “Bad Change!” At the end of the day, most folks have families and other concerns outside of their public pursuits. That kind of money, while bringing its own problems, can get rid of just about any “normal people” worries (obviously not something like inoperable cancer)!
I would use [it] from a desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine
- Gandalf, to Frodo, saying why he should not be given the one ring.
I thought the same exact thing lol
It’s nice to appreciate people who do good things, but keep in mind that the only way people become billionaires is by exploiting people. So I would not want any of these people to be billionaires because it would mean they got that wealth not by doing good things, but by owning ridiculous amounts of capital and exploiting people.
Rant over, sorry.
it’s alright mate. your rant helped me see things in a different light. so thank you.
I choose to see this question as “If you could magically just make someone a billionaire, who deserves it,” or more specifically “who would actually do good things with the money if they had a billion dollars.”
As you said, the reason these people aren’t billionaires already is because they haven’t been exploiting others. That being said, there are likely a few people that would use the money to better support a lot of great causes, like the Free Software Foundation, medical research, or climate change action
Well said. Thinking billionaires are assholes because they’re naturally shitty is like thinking they got rich by being naturally hard working.
Take landlords for example. You can be the nicest person in the world. The kind of person who makes friends with the tenant. What do you think happens to you after you’ve evicted a few of your friends?
Systems are a bitch.
Landlords are parasites in any case
I could see someone making something useful and selling it to billions of people at a fair price not being exploitative and also being a billionaire.
I think it’s rare to the point of maybe happening once ever, but I’m not super upset about the behavior of the guy currently bankrolling the signal foundation.
The problem is if you aren’t exploitative then you aren’t being as “efficient” (in a capitalist sense) so you’ll be out-competed. The system is designed to incentivize exploitation. It’s mis-aligned to do anything else.
Oh, the system is totally pushing everyone to try to be the worst person possible.
However, they might not actually be out competed if they’re not being as exploitative as possible. If they’re not charging as much as the market will tolerate they’re being inefficient but in the way costs profit but attracts consumers.
I literally only have one billionaire who might not be a problem, but that’s what they did. $1 for a year of access sold to a few billion people, with something like 50 employees.It’s why the billionaires who shaft consumers and their workers are so gross. Reducing profit margins doesn’t impact efficiency, it only impacts money in their already overstuffed pockets.
Paul McCartney is a billionaire. What people did he exploit?
I think Taylor Swift is now worth a billion dollars, despite being the exploited
Simply by having a billion dollars means they have decided to hoard that wealth. They could give away 90% of it, leaving them with $100 million, it wouldn’t impact their quality of life in any way, and still leave them with more wealth than 99.9% of the planet. Imagine the good that $900 million could do if it was put to good use rather than sitting in a bank account as a status symbol - having the capability to do that good with no impact on yourself or your family and choosing not to makes you an immoral person.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist. At all.
How much money should a person be allowed to have?
A lot less than a billion. The exact amount is negotiable.
I don’t know, but there probably should be a line somewhere. More wealth than 99.9% of the rest of the planet sounds like a good place to start
I doubt any billionaires have that much money “sitting in a bank”.
Most wealth is non-liquid. For example, if you found a company that becomes massive, and you maintain a controlling share, then you could be a billionaire on paper while having no real money to spend – the only way to turn that into “real” money would be to sell shares in the company, and thus lose control of it. If the company is doing good work, it could be better to retain control and act through the company, by ensuring that it pays employees good wages to do good work for the benefit of society. This is not completely incompatible with profit in theory, though in practice…yeah. I’m not sure if there are any such billionaires in the world today.
The real problem is more fundamental to the economy, in that it fairly consistently rewards bad behavior.
Larry Page basically became a billionaire overnight when Google went public. I don’t recall Page or Google doing anything especially evil or exploitative before that, though their success was certainly built in an unsustainable economic bubble.
If Amazon didn’t treat its employees like shit and poison the entire economy, then Bezos could probably still be a billionaire and I wouldn’t necessarily hold that against him.
This is bullshit
Ok, so who did Taylor Swift exploit? She literally is just a singer and the whole thing is odd, but it’s more she’s a billionaire because the currency is worthless.
her little private jet already put out more CO^2 this year alone than everyone on lemmy combined
billionaires are shitty people, period.
Her ex-boyfriends.
no one should be billionaires.
None of these people could ever be billionaires. Only a sociopathic, narcissistic mind could ever do what it takes to hoard a billion dollars. Capitalism rewards having a lack of empathy for other people.
on the bottom right is the text reading, “plus the thousands of free software enthusiasts working tirelessly.”
We don’t work tirelessly. We get tired all the time, but keep at it as well as we can.
yeah, no
Rip Swartz man, the idea of all human knowledge from how to change your tire to how to put out a fire being monetised is legitimately scary
RIP Aaron Swartz.
If they were billionaires, they likely wouldn’t be the people they are today.
I meant billionaires for their actions and creations, and not by birth like most techbros are.
That’s worse. You see how that is worse right?
yeah, now I do see that.
That seems worse because it means they went out of the way to get so rich, rather than just having it handed to them.
I was thinking more along the lines of “if they had that much money, their projects could’ve received more impact.”
like if free software would become mainstream.though now I realise that’s an idealistic view and with money, people will become corrupt.
Can we throw Steve Irwin in here. I bet that dude could have saved the Great Barrier Reef and a whole lot of wildlife if he had more means.
As funny as the thought of Stallman becoming a billionaire is, ultimately, like all celebrities, these people are strangers to the overwhelming majority of you. Parasocial relationships are never healthy, and the result of being put on a pedastal is that they became idols and symbols and ceases being people.
And I don’t think that’s what they would have wanted.
After all, the only good billionaire is a Barbi-onaire.
Would these people actually be billionaires though? Seems to me many of them would put that money to good use instead.
I have a standing theory that once a person is no longer concerned about their welfare or the welfare of their descendants, they go crazy.
Like, once you reach a point where survival is no longer a problem, that part of your brain goes nuts. It’s not a flawless theory, since philanthropy is a thing and people like Dean Kamen exist, but it’s a thing that seems to happen an awful lot.
I think it’s more that billionaires have very few people to surround themselves with except for sycophants and other billionaires.
Nobody says no to them, everything they’ve ever done was the right thing according to everyone around them, so why should the next thing they do or say be wrong?
Covid really really accelerated the craziness among them.
I’ve worked for several very, very rich men. The pattern I notice is that they always get surrounded by people who make sure that they never, ever hear “no”.
Imagine living in a world where every inane thing that comes out of your mouth, somebody immediately makes it their mission to try and make it happen. You no longer get any kind of useful feedback from the world and your opportunities to learn from feedback are greatly reduced.
I agree, I think in the end, it does make them crazy.
Survival no longer is a problem to literally everyone in north america. yeah people die, but, when was the last time you have heard of anyone who is not anorexic starving to death? People still talk like survival is an issue, but that’s because they actually mean not being comfortable.
This is simply not true. Starvation isn’t the only thing that kills people - they die of easily treatable medical issues all the time because of lack of health insurance. Unhoused people die of exposure every summer and winter.
I mean i tried to make it painfully obvious I wasn’t talking about medical conditions, car accidents, or crackheads being stupid, but i guess i had to come back and spell it out.
You’re missing the point. The risk might not be very high on average, but if they don’t want to end up on the streets, regular people still have to kind of function inside the system somehow and continuously work for regular income. The will to survive is part of what drives them to do so.
Billionaires on the other hand, wouldn’t even have to lift a finger to be able to live comfortably for the rest of their lives. On the contrary, they’d have to try really hard to get rid of all that wealth. Major fuck-ps and intentional money burning excluded, the chance that they end up having trouble getting their basic needs fulfilled is miniscule. THAT is the difference.
and there it is. I feel so sorry for you.
You know, you’re a real piece of work.
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple.
I don’t think he was ever a billionaire, though he’s certainly done quite well for himself. Since leaving Apple, he has founded several new companies and projects, focusing a lot on education and philanthropy. He was also involved in founding the EFF.
He’s an engineer first and foremost, and several of his projects never achieved mainstream success, partly for being, IMHO, ahead of their time – for example, a programmable universal remote in the 80s, and a GPS-based item tracker in the early 2000s.
As far as I know, he has never been involved in any notable scandals.
Fundamentally speaking, none of these people would’ve ended up as billionaires for long. Most FOSS heavyweights already gave up their chance at being much more wealthy for their current roles. That being said, I’m pretty sure Linus and a few others here aren’t exactly short on cash
