Now is a good time to flood Wikipedia with donations. For the first time in my life, i have just donated to them and will do so again. You can do it too for a minimum of €2, no requirement for recurring donations or any nonsense.
I’d argue that you have to be horrible already to have loads of money. Any reasonably good person would be using their excess wealth for a good cause rather than building ego rockets.
Money = power, and power corrupts. I’m sure there are some people who are horrible before they become wealthy, but I think money (and power) has a way of blunting peoples’ empathy.
Normal people stop exploiting others before they reach having unfathomable amounts of money. So somebody with different values and morals will never have so much money since it is impossible to make such money without being corrupt and a piece of shit
No. Assholes are assholes, and Elon is just an asshole with money.
Compare this man child to a billionaire like Yvon Chouinard, founder of the company Patagonia, and you’ll understand that money doesn’t change good people.
Thanks for the video. That guy seems to go off on a lot of tangents, sets up too many strawman and red herring fallacies. He also doesn’t actually prove that Yvon is somehow evil in a way that’s comparable to Elon, or that he lied about anything.
The only real criticism he had was to say that Yvon is purposely evading taxes and assigns that motive with absolute certainty (red herring).
It sounds to me like Adam has a problem with the system. Hell, he even said that it doesn’t matter if good work is actually being done, because he doesn’t like the idea of billionaires using their money for good. Then he goes on to give an example using Walmart (not an ethical company) and Bill Gate’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein… bizarre how he even went there as a way to disprove what Yvon has done with the company.
I’m not saying that Yvon or Patagonia are perfect. Heck, I don’t give a damn about the CEO of any company, and I think I only own one of their products, so I have no loyalties at all.
But they are a for-profit business (they are very clear about that) who operates under some of the most ethical guidelines available, and they have a multi-decade proven track record of environmental stewardship and human labor practices.
We need more companies like them, even if Adam doesn’t.
He doesn’t need to pay. Twitter is already worth less than the debt, if he continues to break that company apart there’ll he no reason to even consider paying the debt off.
The way I understood it is that he didn’t get a loan to buy the company, but had a bank itself buy Twitter as a loan, so Twitter itself is the collateral. That’s what I did when I bought my apartment: a bank bought it from the constructor and let me live in it while slowly buying it from them over hundreds of installments. If I stopped paying the bank would kick me out and sell the apartment to someone else.
That isn’t quite right. If you stopped paying the bank would kick you out and sell the apartment to someone else, but if they get less than you owe them for it, they will also send you a bill for the remainder.
And then sue you to get that money.
Interestingly, if they get more than you owe them for it, they will cut you a check for the difference.
But you are actually wrong about how and what the order of operations is.
You are buying the house, the lender (bank) writes the check directly to the seller, and you sign a mortgage agreement for that much with the bank and they put a lien on your house. The bank does not own the house, you do. The bank owns a promissory note from you, backed by your personal wealth and credit and the value of the house (that they have a lien on).
In the case of Twitter, yes, Twitter itself is part of the collateral, but so was Elon musks personal wealth and Tesla shares.
I checked their reported expenses and couldn’t really find anything they “blow” money on. Their revenue is smaller than a midsize EU football team, and considering the value comparison between the two, that makes me think either we disagree completely, you have extra info that you did not share, or I don’t understand you.
I mean, I’m not sure what they use all that money to develop, but they definitely don’t need all this money to just develop and sustain. Despite activity having hit its peak in the 2000s, spending continues to increase, and extensive feature request and enhancement backlog still stands while developers focus on whatever the foundation’s whim is. Not to mention there’s some controversy over the Tides Foundation.
There’s not one single person in the world who should own a thousand million dollars, never mind hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars.
The pure existence of billionaires is unethical and immoral - doesn’t matter whether they’re being stupid and fascist in public, or quietly pulling strings and bending society to their will in the background.
Tangential, but I’ve always wondered why in English 10^9 is one billion. 10^6 is one million. Twice as many zeroes should be one billion. Three times as many, one trillion, etc.
From memory, when I was a kid, it used to be that a billion was 10^12, but I think most of the world changed at some point to adopt the American billion of 10^9.
Once you had X amount of X, then it became the next one. 10 ten = 100, 100 hundred = 1000 1000 thousand = 1 million, 1 million million = billion. And so on.
Only in English is this weird naming system used and originally only in American English. You can put it in the pile over there with the miles and pounds and other oddities.
Other languages have milliard between million and billion, billiard after billion etc.
Long vs short counting system. Americans use the short system. As a European, long system makes so much more sense! Here’s an interesting video about it: youtu.be/C-52AI_ojyQ?si=-TS4BYg-FT0SAeSo
Short form is used in English only and was reluctantly adopted outside of the US since the 'mericans weren’t going to budge. Any science done in other languages uses the more logical form. I’ve done it myself in 3 of them. And it’s weird how I fluently translate between American billion and international milliard or American trillion and international billion. But I’m sure there is going to be a rocket blown up over this at some point.
Why more logical? Billion, prefix bi for 2 is million squared. Trillion, prefix tri for 3 is million cubed. Septillion, prefix sep for 7 is? Honestly, though, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter that much. It’s just grating that were being yanked backwards. However slightly. And yes, that pun was intentional.
Sure, the US didn’t come up with the imperial measuring system but everyone else has moved on. Miles were used by the Romans but were they the same miles? Everyone had their own foot… the story about Napoleon being short was simply that he was measured in French feet and they were longer than English feet so he amounted to fewer of them. I guess it’s slightly better now that there is only one set* of archaic pre-enlightenment units in play :shrug:
*having said all that, some of the US measurements don’t quite coincide with the UK ones but I can’t remember any if those details. But it’ll probably kill a other rocket too.
But I want to quietly pull the strings of society so everyone can have food and housing security, get rid of food deserts, and end Elon Musk personally. Like, with my hands. Give me a billion dollars
I don’t think you’d be a billionaire for long. I’d have that problem too. How can you just sit on a huge pile of money when you could do so much good with it? They are all like stinky dragons hoarding their gold.
Are they really tho it just seems to me like you just really don’t like anyone with a differing opinion after a quick glance through your comments I could be wrong dare I say but after looking through your comments it looks like you think anyone remotely right wing is a big nazis facist boogeyman sure there are some people out there with those beliefs but there generally quite small in numbers
I don’t believe this to be the case. this is my opinion. but I know. that there are honest. good hardworking people. on both sides. of the political spectrum. Not everything is black and white as well some issues are more complicated than others
There is no contribution and work that someone can do to earn that much in a meritocracy. They literally have to have fucked their societies laws and values so much that folks believe that while people are homeless, hungry, fleeing wars, unable to afford healthcare and schooling, etc, that the 2700+ billionaires in the world should be able to have so much that they literally couldn’t spend it all if they tried.
If you believe in a meritocracy, then billionaires should be repugnant. No individual contribution is a billion dollars.
Define nazi for me tell me what does the word nazi mean and do this without searching it up I also want you to read my comment again as nothing I’ve said makes me a nazi tankie or any other political extremist
Isn’t obama apart of the democrats? I dunno I’m not mercian m8 so I’m not too used to mercian politics all I know is there are two main political parties republicans which it’s main ideology is Conservatism and democrats which it’s main ideology is social liberalism obama is left wing I’m fairly certain as he runs with the democrats
Add comment