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.

Landlords are parasites in any case

McCartney and Swift ‘exploit’ tons of people as well. They might flagship their music artist operation themselves and kind of ‘be’ the product (or rather the brand), but there are lots and lots of people involved to make tours and shows possible, recording, production and especially distribution of music and merch involves labour as well.

In addition to that: I don’t think they store all that money on a nice little heap in their backyard. It usually gets invested into some sorts of corporations, be it through the stock market, where it will accrue revenue, that comes as the result of more exploitation.

That being said: the term ‘exploitation’ carries a much more negative connotation than would be beneficial for the conversation. It’s concept of marxist economics, and the term ‘Ausbeutung’ = exploitation was used by Marx himself to describe how capitalists benefit from the surplus that workers produce. I like the term ‘reaping the surplus’ better because it doesn’t carry as much of a negative connotation. The criticism of capitalism shouldn’t barely rely on the fact that surplus is being taken away from the workers, but from the consequences to society and the political system that inevitably follow when that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a minority.

Let’s reformulate. No single individual gets to a billion dollars of net worth without someone getting fucked over in the process. The very concept of any one individual having a net worth of hundreds of times the one of the next 99.9% is fucking absurd, regardless of what they did. Nobody “deserves” multiple lifetimes worth of wealth while half of the world’s population is living with dollars a day. It would take collectively for this world’s billlionaires, the equivalent of us foregoing buying a gaming PC (in relative terms) to get rid of world hunger, yet they choose not to. So, yes, they are actively fucking people over by having so much wealth in the first place.

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.

Her ex-boyfriends.

her little private jet already put out more CO^2 this year alone than everyone on lemmy combined

billionaires are shitty people, period.

She didn’t (maybe). Record labels did.

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 heard of a shorter way of saying that: There is no ethical billion dollars.

I love how so many of them demand love and acclaim for claiming they will give their money away… when they die.

You want me to sing your praises because you won’t use the money you made exploiting countless laborers and lobbying government to benefit yourself above society to anoint a handful of nepo babies to wield that power after you? Gee thanks?

Its like a serial killer promising not to train his children in the family business. Its not doing good, just doing slightly less bad. Except billionaires cause damage on a far greater scale.

Hoooo boy people here get angry when you remind them of Stallman being outspokenly pro-paedophilia.

If he’s willing to trample all over people, exploit them, and have them die for his sake, then absolutely.

Billionaires don’t care about people. They don’t view others as human. To them workers are robots, a statistical means to an end. Who cares if someone dies in some factory/warehouse somewhere? There’ll be another to replace them before the end of the day.

A billionaire gladly takes the effort of others and claims it as their own. They go out of their way to do it.

That’s not to say that every evil person acting like this will automatically become a billionaire, but you need to be OK with doing these things in order to get there. A billion USD is such an insane sum you cannot legitimately accumulate that without hurting people in the process. Like there’s no logical way of actually earning that amount of money. That’s money you take.

As if a good person would’ve married him in the first place.

That’s worse. You see how that is worse right?

That seems worse because it means they went out of the way to get so rich, rather than just having it handed to them.

People should indeed be seen in their entirety, the failure of this is why so many people get upset about Stallman.

The guy is routinely portrayed as a bastion of righteous good will, championing the little guy against the evil corporations. The hero worship is real.

Some of us see Stallman as a misogynistic asshole who routinely belittles people on mailing lists when they don’t agree with him and publicly defends people who sexually abuse children.

For some of us, it feels like we need to go out of our way to point this out because we don’t want a guy like that as the public face of something we care about.

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you can read everything in great detail and with citations here if you have the bandwidth.

but I’m not sure if the commenter is mixing two unrelated accusations towards him.

stallman is known for his fixation on certain choice of words, which is the reason most people get him wrong. that’s why I shared the link to read his exact words and make up your mind by yourself.

Richard Stallman on paedophilia:

“The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, ‘prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia’ also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.”

RMS on June 28th, 2003

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. "

RMS on June 5th, 2006

"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.

Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That’s not willing participation, it’s imposed participation, a different issue. "

RMS on Jan 4th, 2013

Why don’t you link his exact words, then?

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.

pfft … you just haven’t discovered our lord and saviour, NixOS