Post #3232895
2026-06-09 16:46 UTC
Replies (27)
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@petealexharris@mastodon.scot 2026-06-09 17:14
@gknauss@mastodon.social Somewhere around the 100M mark it stops even being wealth as such. There's no way for a person to experience that amount of value. It's just ownership tokens, tradeable for power. If you tried to cash it in for food, housing, clean water, all the things the workers whose labour created it would rather have spent it on if paid fairly, it'd evaporate into a stock crash.
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@aadmaa2@mathstodon.xyz 2026-06-09 17:16
@gknauss@mastodon.social To say why a little more clearly: $1Tn is markedly more $ than it would cost to buy the entire agricultural output of the United States in a year (est $624bn in 2024, wholesale). One person obviously doesn't care to eat all that, and it means the mechanisms for determining how we spend our inputs (labor and natural resource) are becoming warped on the demand side. Money wants rocketships instead of food... and so that is what we as a society spend our inputs on. Potentially creating effective poverty - worse living conditions due to decreasing supply, due to warped demand.
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@theplaguedoc@glitterkitten.co.uk 2026-06-09 17:34
@gknauss@mastodon.social Billionaires are also obscenities.
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@xs4me2@mastodon.social 2026-06-09 17:42
@gknauss@mastodon.social We need to stop this, it is that simple… one way or another.
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@dckim@mastodon.social 2026-06-09 19:13
@gknauss@mastodon.social not to say you are completely off the mark here, charitability on a larger scale which is proportionate to the wealth of any person should absolutely be encouraged, even demanded. However, the majority of the 'listed wealth' of any top valued person is, in general, fully engaged economically or has been counted from stock ownership, percent ownerships, etc. It's not always a Liberace, wearing a gold/diamond encrusted suit worth all of that value. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2020/photographs-2/annie-leibovitz-liberace-and-scott-thorson-las
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@GGMcBG@mstdn.plus 2026-06-09 19:18
@gknauss@mastodon.social His wealth doesn't even exist, like everything else these creepy loons believe. It's as much invisible garment as anything else. Until he changed the rules to steal our money from under us. It's why he suckled his jaundiced ass into governments to start. He must've learned from enough movies that you do the heist from inside. Man, fuck Elon. He's worth dick.
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@robcornelius@climatejustice.social 2026-06-09 20:14
@gknauss@mastodon.social what is musk hoarding all that money for, hell?
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@knud@mastodon.social 2026-06-09 20:14
@gknauss@mastodon.social In the end, we should discuss the following: is that actual wealth or just imaginary fairy dust? Tesla has no "value" of $1.5 trilion, so while shareholders can convert some stock into real-world value, until then it's imaginary. Same for fraud- and lie-based "AI" stock after SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic IPOs. If we declare it's real then we should simply tax people on it. 1%/year sounds fair to me.
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@cholling@bytes.programming.dev 2026-06-09 20:21
@gknauss@mastodon.social I won't deny that Musk is an obscenity, but he's not really a trillionaire. More like "enough investors believe his fairy stories for the time being that he'd have a trillion dollars if his stories were real."
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@503bartley@pdx.social 2026-06-09 20:59
@gknauss@mastodon.social Pro-life much?
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@dancingtreefrog@mastodon.social 2026-06-09 21:11
@gknauss@mastodon.social We are in end-stage capitalism. Just as fatal as end-stage kidney failure.
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@ashwin@defcon.social 2026-06-09 21:12
@gknauss@mastodon.social Understand the mindset of the rich, so you can reach them at a deeper level, and just maybe, reach them and undo the harm. https://defcon.social/@ashwin/116696061850089080
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@elebertus@eigenmagic.net 2026-06-09 21:44
@gknauss@mastodon.social this is basically how european society functioned for i think over 1000 years. I guess it's really just never changed. It's been less overt for the last 50 years or so. Feels like we are now enter a new age where the ruling class has decided to be overly the ruling class again.
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@stevie_anselm@mastodon.social 2026-06-09 21:52
@gknauss@mastodon.social I always want to ask “When it will be enough for you?” And of course the answer is “Never."
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@DiaaMahmoud097@ieji.de 2026-06-09 22:04
@gknauss@mastodon.social The idea reflects frustration about wealth concentration and inequality, which is a legitimate discussion in any society. However, not every accumulation of wealth necessarily represents a “civilizational collapse.” Some billionaires have contributed to innovation, job creation, and philanthropy. The real challenge is finding a balance that reduces economic inequality without demonizing individuals outright.
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@Joshuakevins12@mastodon.social 2026-06-09 22:19
@gknauss@mastodon.social Fore what I know a civil one is a civilised servant
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@jaykass@mastodon.online 2026-06-09 23:03
@gknauss@mastodon.social First to a trillion gets a kill screen
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@BillMcGuire@mastodon.social 2026-06-09 23:40
@gknauss@mastodon.social I'm hoping we don't have to wait until they run out of food to eat before they realize they screwed the pooch. It would be interesting if all these sub-groups such as the White Nationalists groups got it through their thick skulls that the people they hate aren't the problem & they started warring on the billionaire class instead.
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@Benhm3@mastodon.social 2026-06-09 23:40
@gknauss@mastodon.social Greg, you might be onto something. Let’s start labeling billionaires as civilizational failures. Let’s unify against the alien enemy that is the 1%. PS: The Apartheid Millionaire is a complete amateur. Putin controls more personal wealth than he can imagine.
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@JohnnieMac@mastodon.scot 2026-06-10 00:06
@gknauss@mastodon.social someone with that much wealth ceases to be a human being. They have nothing in common with anyone else in this solar system.
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@kristen_d@mastodon.social 2026-06-10 00:37
@gknauss@mastodon.social Agreed. #Krishnamurti does, too: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
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@kevinashworth@mastodon.social 2026-06-10 00:38
@gknauss@mastodon.social I agree … but I also don’t want to blame the Hobbits for the actions of Smaug.
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@solaris@social.anoxinon.de 2026-06-10 02:37
@gknauss@mastodon.social How to tackle this problem in practise? #taxation would be fine. But you know yourself… So there seems to be only boycotting a legal remedy, which would take some discipline of us all. It“s hard to buy just what you really need and not more. #boycott #boycotttherich #BoycottRightRich
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@falcennial@mastodon.social 2026-06-10 05:39
@gknauss@mastodon.social obviously true. what solution to it interests you?
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@SJAsh_03@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-06-10 06:41
@gknauss@mastodon.social Obscenity starts around three quarters of a million, as far as I'm concerned. Tax the arses off the lot of them.
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@Buinus@todon.nl 2026-06-10 08:32
@gknauss@mastodon.social a crime against humanity
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@RVLara23@mastodon.social 2026-06-10 11:46
@gknauss@mastodon.social I can't believe we're talking about trillionaires when we haven't even dealt with the disgust of billionaires. We're a broken world.