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submitted 1 week ago by yoz@aussie.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[-] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 162 points 1 week ago

Nobody becomes billionaire by working. You become a billionaire by exploiting others work.

[-] TheBigBrother@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Exactly..

Edit: I'm not saying they didn't work but there is a limit of money someone can make working by themself, so at some point they start to delegate stuff to make more money, so yeah at the end start exploiting someone else to make more money.

[-] testfactor@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

Notch is a billionaire. He made Minecraft as a solo project, it became what it was, then he sold it to Microsoft.

Not saying that most billionaires didn't get there via exploitation, but I don't think it's a strict prerequisite.

[-] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 21 points 1 week ago

Notch initially developed Minecraft by himself when he started the project in May 2009. However, as the game gained popularity, he founded the company Mojang in 2010 and brought on additional developers to help improve and expand the game. By the time he sold Mojang and Minecraft to Microsoft in 2014, it was a collaborative effort with a team of developers.

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[-] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

The argument is usually there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. As in every part of the system is exploitative. The computer he used to program exploited workers and natural resources. The clothing he wore made in sweatshops. All the food made by exploiting animals, etc.

Therefore those with the most money must’ve cumulatively exploited more than others regardless of how they made the money because the exploitation is unavoidable.

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[-] TheBigBrother@lemmy.world -2 points 1 week ago

Ok but how much more money have made Microsoft with Minecraft exploiting other people?, I'm not saying they isn't a billionaire I'm just saying at some point people start delegating work or like in this case selling it to someone who can delegate the work to make even more money.

[-] testfactor@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

You're moving the goalposts though, you realize that right?

Your initial position was that you have to have exploited people to be worth a billion dollars (with an implicit "directly exploited," since if you can't make any money without indirectly exploiting people, which would make your point even more pedantic than I'm being.)

Other people later exploiting others to profit off your product is irrelevant. Hell, it'd be irrelevant if you made your billion dollars and then started exploiting people yourself. You still would have, in fact, become a billionaire without exploiting people to do so.

[-] TheBigBrother@lemmy.world -3 points 1 week ago

What about the billions Microsoft paid which are made off exploiting other people? Dirty money..

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[-] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 76 points 1 week ago

Definitely not 9-5, M-F. Most billionaires inherited substantial wealth to begin with. But executives, in general, don’t have “hours” in the same way as rank and file workers. It’s more about knowledge and meetings — well, hopefully knowledge — so you might have an 11am meeting, a 2pm call, and then a 7pm dinner with a potential investor or whatever. You don’t really “work” in between those obligations unless it’s a small company (where you probably aren’t a billionaire anyway). At most, you need to make a board report or PowerPoint for a presentation or something like that.

Billionaires who just own things and aren’t in the C-suite don’t work much at all. Even if you’re on some boards, it’s not much in terms of actual obligations. There’s definitely tasks to do but it’s also definitely not a job. So, a bit like being a landlord.

[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Just to add, they pay someone to make the board report or PowerPoint presentation for them.

[-] zcd@lemmy.ca 61 points 1 week ago

No they do not. But they do emit about 1 million times more CO2 than the average person

[-] yoz@aussie.zone 4 points 1 week ago
[-] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 48 points 1 week ago

I feel people still don't understand how much a billion is. One Million dollars would still be life changing for most people here, but consider that 1 million seconds ago was 11 days ago, 1 Billion seconds ago was 31 years ago.

To put it in another perspective, a very bad investment would yield you 0.1% monthly. This means that if a billionaire was to invest money the worst way possible, he would have to spend over 1 Million dollars per month to ever decrease his fortune.

If you had an infinite money machine, that as long as you don't spend more than a million per month it just keeps on growing, would you ever work? Yeah, thought so, billionaires are the same, they might have hobbies, and those hobbies might be something others consider work, but they're not working.

I personally believe that if a person ever gets 1 Billion dollars he should receive a letter congratulating them for winning capitalism, and informing them that any cent above 1 Billion will be taxed at 99.9999% (including investments).

[-] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

I've always liked the saying "The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars" to really drive it home.

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[-] treefrog@lemm.ee 35 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's not work it's more like a hobby. Work is what people do to survive. See working class vs owner class.

Wealth hoarders can either obsess or not obsess about hoarding more wealth, like any person with a hobby.

So, how much time they spend on their hobby and what hours they spend on their hobby really depends on their temperament.

[-] yoz@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago
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[-] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago

There isn't one type. There are the ones like Bezos and Dell, who got rich by growing one or more businesses, and are still at it. They likely don't work normal hours, but they likely work more than 40. Some of those, like Gates, get older and move on to other things like foundation work, but not an actual job. Hard to say what kind of hours they work. Then there are the ones like Christy Walton, who inherited their wealth and don't really ever work.

[-] OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago

Best/most honest answer here.

[-] RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

It's ridiculous to assume they don't work. They don't have to but I bet most if not all of the billionaires that didn't just inherit their fortune are total workaholics.

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[-] hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 week ago

Bold of you to assume they work.

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

They don't really have to work at all.

[-] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago
[-] masquenox@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Nope. A lot of them pretend to work, though.

[-] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Typically there's an entourage that includes the people who actually run things and/or communicate the decisions made by the oligarch. They will own the company but rarely make direct decisions for the company. They may make business decisions in the beginning of the company history but by a certain size they are detached from most operations and hand down proactive choices about what the company should be doing with its resources.

The primary vehicle for their money is the control of the company they own, the actual stocks that they borrow against for spending money.

Since they have access to any amount of money they want, there is no need to do any actual work. Any interaction with the company is just personal preference and the owner is more useful as a mouthpiece and investment magnet for the company. With few obligations each week, days start to not matter and sleep schedules are fucked. Sobriety becomes a burden since there is nothing to live for - it has all been accomplished. The only thing left to do is get drunk/high and spend money.

Owning a successful company, even a successful local business, is usually enough to detach a person from the average experience of daily work and set schedules. Millionaire business owners are just as warped as a billionaire so it becomes a question of where the shit happened. Billionaires go overseas to do fucked shit.

Anecdotally, most millionaires don't work. Some have hobbies that make a few thousand here and there but they don't worry about schedules. They are on rich time.

Edit: the ones who are in business leadership and making millions each pay period are literally sociopaths. They run shit to exercise power. They don't actually need to be there either except for some decision making meetings and coordinating with other organizations.

[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

At some point they venture off to hobbies and try to pat themselves on the back with a bit of philanthropy.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 1 week ago

Some will, some won't. Not a hivemind.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

You become a billionaire with stocks. Which requires others to work 9 to 5s.

[-] bender223@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

No, they just scroll thru Twitter all day

[-] TheBigBrother@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago
[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Found Al from Home Improvement.

"I don't think so, Tim."

[-] over_clox@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Richard Karn is a pretty kickass dude..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Karn

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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
68 points (89.5% liked)

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