Here’s how I like to think about it: conspiracy theories are just another possible truth; it doesn’t mean I automatically agree with them. Its just that i have no idea what could be true or false unless I experience it and so I like to know all possibilities. Maybe elite rich are pedo reptilian demons or maybe not, but because I can’t automatically rule either one out (either from personal experience or meeting them or just anyway it can be confirmed), I don’t believe in either but they are possible based on evidence. Who am i to say something is fact or fiction? I don’t live for everyone or perceive for everyone

credit: IG:_courtney_luv

rich in stars

pretty shitty how baseline human activities like singing, dancing and making art got turned into skills  instead of being seen as behaviors

so now it’s like ‘the point of doing them is to get good at them’ and not ‘this is a thing humans do, the way birds sing and bees make hives’.

The Human Race Must Abolish Billionaires

Hello, let’s have a talk. A talky talk. A talky talk about how and why Billionaires should not be allowed to exist, why we can, must, and should seize all of their combined wealth, and what we can do with it when we have it.

And maybe some cheeky ideas about what to do with that sorry lot once we’ve plundered all their shinies and wealth, mhm! Oh yes.

Let’s start here:

Oh my oh my oh my! What is this!

It seems that 2,754 human beings on this planet we share have over $1,000,000,000 in wealth! This simply will not do, that’s far too many. But what I’d really like to do is draw your attention to the eye-gouging sum of their total wealth.

$9,200,000,000,000.

Truly a staggering sum. In fact, it’s so staggering, it’s achieved what really big numbers can do where they no longer really contain any conceivable value. It is truly difficult for the human mind to conceive of this kind of largeness, and it can even trick you into thinking, hey, this isn’t that much bigger than 9.2 million! Which isn’t all that much, really.

I’m so sorry but that’s wrong.

So how much is 9.2 Trillion?

A useful way to look at numbers is to use a scale we encounter every day: the second. I refer to this excerpt from a helpful letter to the New York Times written in 1986: 

“I found that 1,000 seconds ago was equal to almost 17 minutes. It would take almost 12 days for a million seconds to elapse and 31.7 years for a billion seconds. Therefore, a trillion seconds would amount to no less than 31,709.8 years.

A trillion seconds ago, there was no written history. The pyramids had not yet been built. It would be 10,000 years before the cave paintings in France were begun, and saber-toothed tigers were still prowling the planet.”

That’s just 1 Trillion seconds. 9.2 Trillion seconds is 291,730.16 years ago! Recorded history doesn’t even go back that far. The lost island in the North Sea Doggerland was still around back then. The land bridge between Russia and Alaska was still around. Starting to get how much money $9.2 Trillion is?

For the sake of argument, let’s say that these 2,754 people are one person (and for the sake of humanity’s scale, they might as well be), and decide to spend their cash. What can they do with $9.2 Trillion dollars?

What about a castle? Castles are cool! I’d like a castle. They gotta be expensive right?

The Devizes Castle, built in the 12th century, was sold for $3.2 million. On our time scale, that’s just about 39 days out of 291,730.16 years. But that’s not even close to the most expensive castle. That’s probably the Asheford Castle, in Ireland, also from the 12th century, valued around $68m. That’s a bit bigger of a chunk, coming around to about 3.2 years out of our budget of 291,730.

Okay, we have a swanky place to live. How about a plane to fly there? Or a boat? Let’s buy the best ones of each.

Luxury jets are easy: you want a Gulfstream IV - clocking in at $38m. There are other, much more expensive planes, but they are more straight up commercial airliners or tactical bombers. For a single person, a Gulfstream is really where it’s at.

Yachts? The choices here are way more varied. Technically, the world’s most expensive yacht is the History Supremee at $4.5 Billion, but this is just a mere 100-foot vessel coated in pure gold and platinum. Let’s go bigger, but slightly cheaper, and get the Eclipse, a 536 foot long, $1.5 Billion dollar vessel that is sure to make all the less rich people envious.

Why not a car? The most expensive car is the Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita, coming in at a mere $4.8 Million.

If we add this all up, it’s $1,042,500,000. This is 33 years.

You can buy the world’s most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car, and only use 35 years out of the budget of 291,730.

In FACT: if every single one of the 2,754 billionaires could buy one of the most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car each, there would still be $6.3 TRILLION left over between them.

Starting to get the picture?

There is no logical, moral, ethical, or even comedic argument to be made for even 10,000 people to have access to $9.2 Trillion in wealth, much less 2,754. They simply cannot spend this wealth on a meaningful, individual level. It can only be hoarded, and used to create more wealth.

Now, let’s say we forcefully take their money, and liquidate all their assets, and we, the people, now have $9.2Trillion in fungible cash. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the $200 billion that we need to drop to make this an even 9 gets lost in depreciation. That’s almost 2%, so, I feel that’s not a difficult or even unfair argument to make.

So, let’s say after seizing these bastard’s wealth and liquidating it we have $9Trillion left over. What can we do with all of that?

It would only cost about $55 Million to fix Flint. Let’s do that.

The most bloated estimates say it would cost $265 Billion to end world hunger and malnutrition. Let’s do that.

What about education? What if we forgave all the American student loans? That’s a hefty $1.4 Trillion, but, we have it to spare.

Reducing Greenhouse Gasses is a tricky one. Planting trees to offset carbon emissions is a good idea, so, let’s fund some projects to do that.

“The cost to plant a tree varies depending on the location of the project and the type of tree being planted, and ranges between approximately one dollar to three dollars per tree.” - Plant a Billion Trees

So, $3Billion for a billion trees. Nice. That’ll regreen the landscape quite a bit, and this is just one example of a single effort to reforest multiple lost jungles. Let’s fund five such projects, bringing the total to 5 billion trees and $15 Billion dollars.

What about Solar? What if we made a Solar Farm in the Sahara to cover the energy use of the entire planet? The cost of the project will be about five trillion dollars assuming we could figure out the infrastructure to support it.

What’s that got us, totaled up? We’ve spent $6.68 Trillion. We’ve got about $2.3 Trillion left over. We’ve ended world hunger, forgiven all American student loan debt, replanted billions of trees, and the world, in theory, is on 100% solar power now. Seems like a pretty rosy state of existence. And we still have 72,932 years of our time/money left over. That’s almost enough left over to buy every billionaire the most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car.

FUCK. THAT.

So, clearly, it is an illogical, immoral act for a billionaire to hoard all this wealth, when we’ve seen what we can do with it. What should we do with them?

moira rose laughing without moving her face should’ve earned catherine o’hara an emmy two years ago

I’ll never stop being obsessed with this moment

#ICONIC

Thought: I do NOT think that 50% of the world’s billionaires should be women. I think there shouldn’t be any billionaires at all.

So you are saying 0% of the world should be billionaires?

Yes.

Why shouldn’t their be billionaires? That makes no sense.

Because the existence of billionaires is predicated on the exploitation of human labor and unsustainable environmental harm.  That level of wealth hoarding is harmful to economies, as it reduces the amount of money in circulation. No one person, no family, could ever conceivably even SPEND a billion dollars anyway, and  it is inherently immoral to accumulate wealth so narrowly while so much of the world lives in abject poverty.  

Better then to create a wealth ceiling, a point at which all wealth over a certain point  is taxed at or very near 100% to incentivize people to actually spend their money rather than hoard it, stimulating the economy and bettering the lives of far more people. Better even still to create and regulate economic systems that protect workers and the environment in a way that such extreme levels of wealth accumulation aren’t even feasible. 

The problem with this is that it reduces the incentive to actually do fiscally well. What’s the point of starting a business if you can’t become wealthy?

There is a very real difference between “reasonably wealthy” and A BILLIONAIRE

No one is saying you shouldn’t have a nice house, we are saying that having multiple really, really ridiculously nice houses while your employees are either homeless or at serious risk of becoming homeless is immoral.

I’ll never understand why this concept is hard for people. I think it’s because they can’t actually fathom how much $1 Billion is.

Seriously.

Let’s say you have a badass job. A great job. You make $100 AN HOUR. You work 10 hours a day ($1000 A DAY), 5 days a week ($5000 a week!!!), every week ($20,000 A MONTH), thats $240,000 Every Year.

It would take you 4,167 years to make a billion dollars.

Keep in mind then, that if you got paid $1000 an hour, 10 hours a day, five days a week, every week, all year, it would still take over 400 years to make a billion.

You want to make one billion in a human lifetime? If you made $10,000 an HOUR, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, every week, all year, it would take you 41 years to hit a billion.

(And that’s not counting, ya know, money you spend to stay alive on food or rent or anything. )

Jeff Bezos currently has 140 billion dollars.

$10,000 an HOUR while most of us barely making $12. Can y’all conceptualize now?

Will always reblog

Because this is still a difficult set of numbers for some folks to comprehend (legitimately–our brains have a hard time conceptualizing big numbers) a really good example I like to use is the difference between a million and a billion in time.

1 million seconds is approximately 11 days. 

1 billion seconds is just shy of 32 years. 

Now is this American currency or something else? Because keep in mind that all currency is different depending on which country you originated from. Japanese currency is yen, and 1,086.77 yen sounds like a lot but adds up to like, 10 American dollars, and 0. 13 Australian dollars, which is essentially, nothing.

So when you speak of billions, which currency are you using?

I use the word “dollars” repeatedly, using dollar signs next to all amounts, and am using a well known American billionaire as an example. Would you believe that I’m not talking about Japanese Yen?

mood: i want to read a story exactly like one of my favorite stories i’ve read a thousand times but not THAT story because i’ve read it a thousand times and i want to read a new one but it should be exactly like this one.