• ResoluteCatnap@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    The problem is that we are really bad at estimating how big a billion is. It is a staggering amount of wealth that can only be obtained by exploiting others. There should be no place for that in society even if all those things are solved.

    Here’s a video that really drives the point across of how big a billion is: https://youtu.be/8YUWDrLazCg

    • atoro@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      4 months ago

      I’ve had good luck with giving people a comparison to Jesus working.

      Let’s say Jesus worked as a carpenter from the day of his birth to today, making $50 an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (he’s a hard working dude!), that’s 17,739,264 hours of labor. Surely he must have billions of dollars working that hard for that much money over the last 2,024 years.

      Not even $887 million. Still far short of a single billion. I guarantee 99.9% of people don’t make $50/hr, and absolutely nobody works 24/7/365 for thousands of years, and if that alone doesn’t tell you that billionaires shouldn’t exist, nothing will.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      4 months ago

      Exactly, the reason billionaires exist is that everyone else is paying too much for everything. Billionaires exist at the expense of everyone else, all of them, even if you think they’re offering you a good product, if they’re billionaires it means you’re paying more than that product is worth.

      The problem is that we’re so used to overpaying for everything that we’re unable to evaluate the real value of our money so we’re always buying stuff thinking we’re getting our money’s worth when we’re not! We’re getting our money’s worth only if we consider that it’s worth it to enrich people that make more in a day than we make in our life!