I don’t think you need to have the stipulation for evidence about billionaires not being shit. I don’t think you can be a billionaire without being shit. If you have that much money and aren’t giving it away, you’re a bad person. That’s ignoring how you got it in the first place, which basically requires unfairly benefiting from others work without compensation, excluding inheritance.
I posted a long rant about this on Mastodon. I put timeouts on my posts, though, so you’ll have to take the short form.
If someone came up to you and gave you a million dollars that you have to spend on yourself in a single day, almost anybody could quite easily do it. Most people (perhaps all people?) have a little list in the back of their mind of what they’d like to buy as a dream that’s out of reach. For instance I’d buy a nice plot of land in B.C. and build a house on it. Or I’d get a large apartment in Wuhan and fill one room with bookshelves positively dripping with books.
Now in this thought exercise this person comes back and gives you a million dollars the next day. And the next. And the next. And the next. Each day you have to spend a million dollars on yourself. Not donate to charity, not buy things for your friends. You have to spend the whole million on yourself.
How long would it take you to run out of things you really need or want? Would you last a week? A month? Well to reach a billion dollars you’d have to do this EVERY DAY FOR ALMOST THREE YEARS. Day after day you’d be spending money on more and more bizarre things. A car? Hell, no! You’ve got ten of them about now. A home? God, another one!? That would be number seven. You’d have every valuable collectible you’d ever desired, and likely multiple copies of each. This spending a million dollars a day for that long would, if you’re sane, drive you literally crazy. There’s a very real chance you’d have a nervous breakdown.
A billionaire is the person for whom this isn’t enough.
I don’t think you need to have the stipulation for evidence about billionaires not being shit. I don’t think you can be a billionaire without being shit. If you have that much money and aren’t giving it away, you’re a bad person. That’s ignoring how you got it in the first place, which basically requires unfairly benefiting from others work without compensation, excluding inheritance.
I posted a long rant about this on Mastodon. I put timeouts on my posts, though, so you’ll have to take the short form.
If someone came up to you and gave you a million dollars that you have to spend on yourself in a single day, almost anybody could quite easily do it. Most people (perhaps all people?) have a little list in the back of their mind of what they’d like to buy as a dream that’s out of reach. For instance I’d buy a nice plot of land in B.C. and build a house on it. Or I’d get a large apartment in Wuhan and fill one room with bookshelves positively dripping with books.
Now in this thought exercise this person comes back and gives you a million dollars the next day. And the next. And the next. And the next. Each day you have to spend a million dollars on yourself. Not donate to charity, not buy things for your friends. You have to spend the whole million on yourself.
How long would it take you to run out of things you really need or want? Would you last a week? A month? Well to reach a billion dollars you’d have to do this EVERY DAY FOR ALMOST THREE YEARS. Day after day you’d be spending money on more and more bizarre things. A car? Hell, no! You’ve got ten of them about now. A home? God, another one!? That would be number seven. You’d have every valuable collectible you’d ever desired, and likely multiple copies of each. This spending a million dollars a day for that long would, if you’re sane, drive you literally crazy. There’s a very real chance you’d have a nervous breakdown.
A billionaire is the person for whom this isn’t enough.