I'm glad you linked the Snopes article - important context is that Buffett said this was a problem. The image and quote make it sound like he's gloating.
this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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hes one of the few who understands whats going on is ultimately bad even for his class. that he and other of the super rich would be better off with less wealth they can't spend in a better functioning society.
Things are only so good for the ruling class because all of the progress made for the regular man.
There is a reason why Russian oligarchs have/want things all over the world, cause Russia isn't so great by itself.
I think many of them would rather be perceived as powerful in a dystopian shithole world than nondescript in an ideological utopian world though.
you see if with the us too were wealthy people rather spend a lot of time in more funtional european cities.
Yeah Bill Gates says shit. And his wealth now is greater than when he pledged to give it all away. And even when he "gives it away" he just creates foundations that he controls.
Bill Gates fought to keep intellectual property laws around vaccines during COVID-19. He's no better than any other billionaire, and deserves not to have 62% of his wealth taken away but 99.9% or even 99.999%.
important context is that Buffett said this was a problem
Yet he still insists on remaining a hectobillionaire, profiting obscenely off of the very system that incentivizes the war.
Until that changes, he deserves as much credit as Shell does for pretending to want to decrease emissions.
Exactly. "It's a shame the poors aren't winning the fight to take my wealth. Oh well..."
Sweet words are free, he's choosing to stay rich.
Dunno, that's like saying every gun owner is a sandy hook shooter. There's plenty of problems that need solving, you take them in order of prioritization. Equating them all is stupid. If I've got enough hammer and nails to fix one thing, I'm going to fix the biggest problem I can.
To act without prioritization is akin to using your one hose to water the plants instead of put out your house fire.
You solve enough high priority problems and you'll be surprised how many smaller issues resolve themselves as a matter of course.
Dunno, that's like saying every gun owner is a sandy hook shooter
No. That's ridiculous. He's the 5th or so richest person in the entire world. He's also most likely the richest person in the world whose fortune is based almost exclusively on the stock market.
To pretend that he's only a small part of the problem is profoundly ignorant at best, and deliberate disinformation at worst.
There's plenty of problems that need solving, you take them in order of prioritization
And HE'S one of the biggest one. Yes, him personally!
Equating them all is stupid.
As is pretending that a member of a minority of 5 people is equivalent to a plurality of perhaps a hundred million people or more.
If I've got enough hammer and nails to fix one thing, I'm going to fix the biggest problem I can.
You need to get more nails and get to him perhaps not first, but EARLY.
To act without prioritization
Again with the absurd insistence that there's nothing special about his unfathomably vast dragon's hoard and how he achieves and maintains it.
You seem to have ABSOLUTELY no clue how rich he is or how much he contributes to the financial system being deliberately skewed in favor of himself, people like him, and hedge funds like his.
You solve enough high priority problems
Such as Warren fucking Buffet!
So you are saying Warren Buffet is of the same threat level as Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg? If so, substantiate the claim. You said I have no clue, so tell me, what DIRECT actions and/or consequences has Buffet precipitated that puts him on their level? Don't speak in vague generalities. I can point to specific things like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon where those guys are very actively using with extreme, direct, and negative impacts on society. Buffet basically sits at a desk reading news and buys and sells stocks based on what he thinks. The other three are looking for active policy level control and manipulation of public discourse.
Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn't use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. "How can this be fair?" he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. "How can this be right?"
Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.
"There's class warfare, all right," Mr. Buffett said, "but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
The image and quote make it sound like he's gloating.
Kinda, but only if you aren't thinking critically. Otherwise, you'd realize that nobody who didn't understand it to be a problem would phrase it like that, even to gloat.
Yes. This is not the phrasing of someone who's proud of it
Buffet would definitely be waaaaaay down on the list of evil billionaires. In fact you might be able to dig up enough to make an argument that he isn't evil. Maybe.
He wants us to think that. He disowned one of his granddaughters for having the temerity to appear in a documentary called "The 1%" that one of the Johnson & Johnson kids made a few years back. He was gloating, and then realized he might need to protect himself from the many people he is screwing over.
yeah imagine trying to snopes us without even reading the snopes
If he is not cold, hungry, tired, alone, homeless, or dying of a curable disease then he is fucking gloating.
Just need a billionaire to.join our side.
May I introduce you to Jeff Bezos' ex wife, Mackenzie Scott? One can make a difference, but it's not nearly enough.
Luigi was a good start. He's one of us now.
No we do not
Imagine turning down allies
nah, just we don't need a billionaire ally. Not needing doesn't mean you have to turn all of them down though.
Liz Cheney fan spotted
"On our side" means distributing ownership to the workers who operate his businesses.
As in co-ops? Or share distribution?
Co-ops failed miserably, after a fabulous period of success, from within. All cases that I have knowledge of failed from a terrible mix of internal suspition, scisms and excessive bureaucracy, with simple decisions requiring long meetings between members, to no success.
Share distribution often fails because people want just cash out.
Actually - co-ops work wonderfully. Largest grocery chain in Finland (S-chain). Everywhere Scandinavia (COOP). UK. Rural America. Israel. Decades of success.
And many if not most software startups deal out shares. Great way to bind the blue collar workers.
It's the venture capital and just sometimes the grabby founders that cash out...
Good to know. Not the case in my country. Co-op failed miserably for the reasons I exposed. And share based companies are very rare here.
Here's the 100 largest coops in the US: https://impact.ncb.coop/hubfs/Co-op%20100%202023%20Report%20-%20ADA.pdf
Combined more than 300 billion USD revenue. Not peanuts.
Here's a few networked coops with each more than 2 million members, from the nordics:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coop_amba
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kooperativa_F%C3%B6rbundet
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coop_Norge
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_Group
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OP_Financial_Group
Cooperatives do work wonders, unless they are purposefully destroyed with adversive regulation.
Also, employee stock options rock.
The thing about it is that making war brings you into that class.
All I hear is blah blah