You wouldn't see any billionaires.
I don't think I've ever seen a billionaire IRL.
The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy.
The do this on purpose. Chelsea Fagan from The Financial Diet had a great video about this
they don't mingle with the dirty poors
Paradoxical question, if they truly helped they would never be billionaires.
Generally, everything would just be plain better as their dragon hoards are actually spent, and they dont hoard GDP from the rest of us. But you'd probably see a public service boom wherever they invested, and you'd likely see a lot less people struggling with anything from bills to food to even entertainment.
This is an interesting conundrum, actually. The big question at its core being:
Can you ever do enough good through philanthropy, so that it offsets the damage you had to do, in order to become a billionaire? Can even all the billionaires in the world do enough good with their money, to offset the damage done by a system, that allowed for them to become billionaires?
I, personally, don't think it is possible.
To give an actual answer: I think, the world would definitely be better, but unless those billionaires collectively used all the power their money provides, to do away with money and the possibility of billionaires altogether, I don't think it would amount to all that much.
I read a good post about this before, the summary was: a philanthropist billionaire helps causes specific to their discretion. While their rise to wealth has taken the toll from many victims, some dead directly because of it, their donations back may not even help the location they robbed it from.
You can picture United Health suddenly helping world hunger, it doesn't bring back all the people who died miserably from denied claims, or those who are still alive but became permanently disabled by lack of care.
Deep beneath a private island in the Pacific, in a hidden chamber lined with gold-leafed bookshelves and quantum supercomputers, the most powerful men on Earth gathered in secret.
Donald Trump adjusted his crimson tie and sighed. “It’s not working, folks. We tried giving them money, and they just keep asking for less.”
Mark Zuckerberg, seated beside him, nodded solemnly. “I even launched an algorithm that boosted posts about universal basic income. What happened? People demanded more gig work instead.”
Elon Musk leaned forward, rubbing his temples. “I offered to give away Tesla stock. Instead, they asked me to cut costs and fire more workers to ‘boost productivity.’ How do you give away wealth when they refuse to take it?”
Jeff Bezos, pacing the marble floor, gestured wildly. “I raised warehouse wages! They organized a petition to lower them, saying it would ‘teach discipline.’”
Peter Thiel adjusted his monocle. No one knew why he wore one, but it added to his aura of sinister brilliance. “We tried funneling money through offshore charities. We even funded a secret movement that encouraged people to demand better living conditions. What happened? They begged for longer hours, fewer benefits, and harsher bosses.”
Larry Ellison sipped a 200-year-old scotch and sighed. “We’re trapped. Every time we try to redistribute our wealth, the system forces it back into our hands.”
A hush fell over the chamber.
The room’s quantum supercomputer beeped. A projection lit up the wall, showing an economic simulation. Every time they injected money into the lower classes, the populace—driven by an inexplicable work ethic—found ways to give it back. They called for “hard work” over “handouts,” praised billionaires as job creators, and tirelessly pursued policies that kept wages low and corporate profits high.
Trump shook his head. “I thought people loved winning. This is the worst deal in history.”
Musk sighed. “Maybe we should leave Earth entirely. Let them sort it out.”
Bezos frowned. “Mars colonization isn’t ready yet.”
Zuckerberg scrolled through his phone, a flicker of hope in his eyes. “What if we just… stopped trying?”
The billionaires exchanged glances.
Thiel steepled his fingers. “That would mean living with the guilt.”
Ellison drained his glass. “Or we could take the nuclear option.”
The room fell silent.
“The nuclear option?” Bezos asked cautiously.
Ellison leaned in, his voice barely above a whisper. “We... give them everything.”
Gasps filled the chamber.
“No stocks. No corporations. No assets. No wealth,” Ellison continued. “We drop it all into their laps and walk away. No strings attached. No economic structures left to maintain. Just pure, uncontrolled prosperity.”
Musk paled. “That’s madness. A complete system collapse.”
Trump grumbled. “But maybe… the greatest system collapse.”
The quantum supercomputer calculated. The answer flashed on the screen:
Projected Outcome: Billionaires’ wealth depleted. Poverty instantly eradicated. Within five years, 98% of former billionaires regain their fortunes due to economic demand for ‘strong leadership’ and ‘wealth redistribution toward the competent.’
Zuckerberg groaned. “Even if we burn it all down, they’ll just build it back up around us.”
Bezos sat heavily in his chair. “Then there’s only one solution.”
The others leaned in.
“We keep trying.”
Silence.
Then, one by one, the billionaires nodded.
It was their curse. Their eternal struggle. No matter how hard they tried to give it all away, the world would always find a way to make them rich again.
And so, reluctantly, they raised their glasses.
“To ending poverty,” Musk muttered.
“To losing,” Trump added.
They drank in grim silence, knowing that, once again, they were doomed to win.
Thanks to the first sentence, I read this comment in the voice of The Narrator from George of the Jungle.
Whoa, that makes it so much better. Thank you! Here's the imdb for the narrator of the '97 movie:
Great story :')
Thank you!
See also, 📺 Gino D'Acampo.
It's a fair point but that's such a smug way to say it
No billionaires
The world would be better if there were no billionaires. That would be a huge help. Nobody should be allowed to amass that much wealth. And a financial system set up to prevent such a thing would ideally also offer more of a level playing field as far as individual wealth goes.
“Billionaires” (multi-millionaires in the late 18- early 1900’s) did help back in the day - they built libraries, schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc… but they were still absolute bastards that were anti-labor, killed people to avoid paying them more or giving them a decent work week, imported, abused, and discarded labor, among many other rich-barely-controlled-asshole things they did.
If billionaire actually helped people it would be pretty much like government spending tax money.
Could've be much more efficient by just taxing the billionaires right away.
Yes, it would look a lot more like the 50s when tax was highest on the wealthy
The Owenites and other Utopian Socialists of old would rise from their graves, vindicated at long last for, against all odds, finally succeeding.
"Billionaire" means "person who can direct large amounts of the means-of-production"
The left wants to tax those people and put the MoP back under democratic control.
So if they used their control the way the People would it'd looklike socialism. But that's a hypothetical because that's not their self-interest.
How am I supposed to enjoy that?
We don't have the supply to fill the demands to simply throw all billionaires money into solving every crisis. That is why wealth inequality is so vast. Dollars are a made up system. In its raw form it's just paper. Backed by the govt. Where as it used to be backed by the gold standard which is why we hoard so much gold. That is a real tangible asset.
Paper is just paper its artifical, it's only good once spent. You can have infinite money if they forever printed it. Instead we balance inflation and deflation and finite supply that is dwindling the more we clear cut and strip the earth.
We don’t have the supply to fill the demands
What makes you say that? Making food and housing and medical care for everyone isn't impossible
It really isn't, but as long as those resources are distributed through a market, there are problems even if you add money. Say the billionaires truly are incorruptible angels and put all their money to providing food and shelter, the not-yet-billionaires in the market suddenly have incentives to raise prices, withhold food to the market while prices are rising as a speculative gambit, stuff like that.
That's one of the mechanisms through which the system itself, that produces billionaires, makes it at least hard or - imo - even impossible to truly undo the damage it does to create such billionaires, even when you have those billions. Another example is corruption: As soon as you put a lot of money into an issue, it creates an incentive there to funnel money away in secret, to provide false solutions that don't solve anything, to scam, etc. A friend of mine worked on projects providing water infrastructure in countries in Africa from philanthropic and international aid funds, and he did get often frustrated telling how some projects simply vanish halfway through, because someone down the line had basically run off with the money (not that the projects were wholly useless, either, but they failed to fundamentally solve things by just throwing money at them). Someone like Bill Gates, as another example, has been unironically doing a lot of good as a philanthropist, but all his money still wasn't able to truly tackle the root causes of the problems in the countries where he supports healthcare and such things - and inevitably, some of the funds he provided were used on glamour projects or ineffectual, nice-sounding strategies, or ended up in outright corruption. And at the same time, the question remains, what the system that made him a billionaire caused in damages to begin with.
That's why I still think you can't really tackle all these problems without doing away with a market structure, exchange value, capital accumulation, etc. - i.e., why I remain a dirty commie, instead of just arguing for redistribution (redistribution and more social-democratic, beneficial investment is still good, but you gotta always aim for the abolition of private property and capital accumulation as an end goal, imo).
Oh, and I just realised my ramble kind of missed OP's point, which is also important: All the money caught up in the three-digit multi-billionaires net worth? It's not representative of true goods and labour, it is what Marx would have called "dead" capital. As soon as it is used for anything but as financial capital, it can drive inflation massively, which connects to part of my first point.
EDIT: Another example that just came to my mind for how this can impact things - Mansa Musa and the stories surrounding his lavish spending during his Hajj, basically crashing the local economies. So, even pre-capitalist systems had to deal with these dynamics.
We certainly have the housing and buildings, I am doubtful we have the medical supplies and medical machines like MRI and others. Look at 2020 during covid where the medical workers did not have PPE and how the supply chain was/is still stressed. We also lack the natural resources where we can just throw money aka paper at problems and their gone forever.
The govt. Balances our money system based on supply and demand well they try like all govts. The earths resources are finite and we have consumed them at such an accelerated rate that even now we have supply chain issues on certain rare earth metals and all other natural resources. The war in Ukraine aside from Nato and russia being so close is actually over trillions of dollars worth of rare earth metals and natural resouces. Which Russia needs to revitalize their economy. Also why Trump wants to settle a deal beneficial to the US, trump doesn't care about the war he wants access to the mineral deposits.
I also think that we likely have the food supply currently, in the future not so much due to climate change. We all see the impacts daily which will continue to worsen, and eventually water will be scarce causing migration of people as the globe shifts it's weather events to different locations. We won't lack water it'll just be too uneconomical to transport it to where it's needed due to weight and our archaic fuel sources.
The food isn't the hard part right now. It's transportation of goods to locales like deep into Africa as an example so we would have to consolidate people to reach everyone most effeciently. Then we can solve the issues you speak of.
There are near 800 billionaires in the USA. Assuming all only have $1 billion dollars and it is all invested, applying the "4% rule" gives a sustainable $40 million each per year. With $10 million to personally spend, that gives $24 billion a year for charity and public works.
I failed to find a list of the costs to solve various issues. Homelessness could be solved in a couple years.
The numbers provided are just a starting place. Many problems are extremely expensive. Actually working to solve them would help.
But if you go by net worth Elon alone has like 350-400 billion. Zuckerberg, Buffet, Gates all have many billions. I see where you're coming from but they could really help society, like curing hunger levels of help and the worst part is... They'd still be filthy rich. So as far as quality of life, it wouldn't even cost them anything.
problems arent solved by making up more paper. problems are solved by doing and properly allocating the resources we already have ie not on the whims of billionaires or on the restrictions their money imposes. money is supposed to represent these assets but not when we think in a financialized (?) way like this.
we could certainly tackle the worlds problems without printing a single extra penny, if only we eliminated the parasites stopping us and propping up the fake paper system where they control all of our resources in the first place.
If only they could be more like Chuck Feeney.
In February 2011, Feeney became a signatory to The Giving Pledge. In his letter to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the founders of The Giving Pledge, Feeney wrote, "I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living—to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition. More importantly, today's needs are so great and varied that intelligent philanthropic support and positive interventions can have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed when the needs are greater." He gave away a final $7 million in late 2016, to the same recipient of his first charitable donations, Cornell University. Over the course of his life, he gave away more than $8 billion.
"Hahaha what a nerd. "
-- Gates & Buffet, from Epstein Island, probably
They can't. Its not a matter of personal greed, its just how capitalism works, it creates immense wealth for a few on one end and mass immiseration for the masses on the other. Billionaires exist because of the system that creates them.
We'd have the flying cars we were fucking promised by the movies we grew up with.
Bloomberg and others are funding the Paris agreement for the US, where the government pulled out: https://www.bloomberg.org/press/un-special-envoy-michael-r-bloomberg-announces-effort-to-ensure-u-s-honors-paris-agreement-commitments/
Like Elon Musk cutting government services to save the US taxpayer money.
...is what some weirdos I know seem to genuinely believe
More like China?
War. Literally war. And not about the money, but about who has the most power.
I can't even imagine what color the sky would be in that world...
Contradiction in terms
@return2ozma Let's say I'm a billionaire and I want to help the world.
Firstly declare that I have hoarded too much, and that it is about time to change from leadership to collective guidership.
The surplus values should not be hoarded with me, but shared among the workers.
There would be several focus forward, such as how to move towards moneyless and needs based economy.
I would use the framework of the oakframe to guide forward, and the machineframe to avoid pitfalls.
