/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

You couldn't sell off all that stock literally overnight but you could systematically liquidate those assets to donate them. There is a real life example of this, MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos) who got billions of dollars by divorcing Jeff Bezos and has been trying to give it away since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacKenzie_Scott#Philanthropy

>>1809766
I wonder if I send her a letter asking really nice if she'll give me a check for like 10k

>>1809778
if you won't in turn give part of that away, you lust for greed

>>1809778
The amazon union should hit her up.

>>1809780
what do you think I'm gonna do with it dummy, put it under my mattress?

>>1809783
not a bad idea

When i was a kid, my father gave me his whole colletion of comics of Scrooge McDuck of the times where he was a kid/growing up. I readed hundreds of those, and they always involved some sci/fi adventure, mysteries, and themes of world inequality, greed and hypocrisy. Heck, charaters at that time actually had guns and could potencialy die/kill each other. Ironic though, later in life, instead of becoming a ancap, i am here. I don't regret anything

>>1809787
Wow he's just like me fr

>>1809787
Scrooge McDuck is supposed to be a parody of rich people so idk why anybody would think those comics would make you a bourg sympathizer.

>>1809799
Because of the whole "I made it square on my own", neoliberal ancap talk that you hear everyday. Sometimes he gets punished by causing more harm than good because he is greedy boy, other times he wins against his competitors by being ""smarter"", more ""competitive"" bulshitery of principles etc, etc.
Most times though, as long as i remember, he just ask Donald and his familly to do all the hard work, without getting payed or recognized in the end, so at least they can acknowledge reality.

>>1809787
>3rd and 4th pic
Scrooge's shenanigans during his literal gold mine era is so kino. Incredibly sad i've never seen zoomers making a three hour video essay about it

>>1809759
>>1809766
Billionaires are indeed capable of spending billions of dollars, and sometimes they do give away large amounts of money to charity, with often very good results. Dustin Moskovitz, one of the co-founders of facebook, is giving away his 11 billion dollars over the course of his life to various grants and charities, and a lot of this money has gone to very good things, like givedirectly and the against malaria foundation. A lot of it goes to political donations and a SHITTON of it goes to AI alignment stuff because Moskovitz is a paranoid lesswronger who thinks the AI apocalypse is near, but the point is that he is indeed a billionaire who is capable of spending billions of dollars to improve the world.

And of course this also means that you could tax or otherwise expropriate the same money in the same way to help the poor through social programs and stuff. So I think it's pretty conclusive that the billionaire denialists are wrong. Wealth inequality is real.

> idea: COULD elon musk, if he so wanted, indeed put his 200+ billion dollars on a hunger-relief program?
There isn't $200 billion worth of food lying around to be redistributed. The food industry won't crank out $200 billion worth just for Musk.

So if he tries doing this, it will push up food prices and barely any extra food will be redistributed. Billionaires are not powerful on their own, they're still at the whims of billionaires in other industries.

>>1809921
>here isn't $200 billion worth of food lying around to be redistributed

I don't want to discuss this, though, i wanted to ask you this, is a marxist question that has been bothering me this whole week:

I need data about the "Tendency of the rate of profit to fall", is there any scientific indication for this phenomenon?

>>1809787
are you finnish by any chance? i know donald duck is (was?) super popular over there, i dunno if scrooge mcduck is too

>>1809759
This reminds me of when lolbertarians would point out a few years back that "Jeff Bezos isn't really a billionaire because it's not liquid cash that he can spend all at once, he basically has to consult a ton of people before he does anything."

n people say “it’s not liquid cash” in response to complaints about extremely rich people like Bezos/Musk/Gates etc, what they’re saying is, “jeff bezos doesn’t actully have 200 billion dollars because most of that is tied up in stocks.” What they mean is, “Jeff Bezos can’t use that money to go to the store and buy groceries, therefore it isn’t real money, because he would need to sell off all his amazon stocks, causing them to go down in value in order to get that money back” This is wrong for several reasons

It assumes that there aren’t other ways he can get that money back (like using his stocks as collateral for a low interest loan from an investment bank, the main method rich people use, and a method that can be used to generate even more money for themselves if they use that loan as investment capital)

it assumes that liquid cash (i.e. actual money) is more useful than a line of credit, or a financial asset, or a piece of property. This often isn’t the case.

it assumes that wealth which accumulates passively through investment isn’t real wealth, that it’s all somehow fake, and that therefore the richest people on Earth aren’t really as rich as they seem. This is also nonsense, though I am slightly more sympathetic to this point in the sense that their wealth isn’t tied to any real labor.

>>1809930
>n people say “it’s not liquid cash”
*When people say

>>1809929
>>1809787

Nah, not finnish. Idk why my father and me had this weird obssession with donald duck/disney comics. Maybe because of "Zé carioca". I am from South America to get you a hint

>>1809923
Here you go
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.4.3.0323
There's plenty more out there

>>1810015
Thanks man!

if you want a very brief foray into this subject
>>1809923
watch this video then check the sources (in hakim's pinned comment):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGGvVinUao
then watch 45:25 onwards of this video (or the whole thing if you want):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5zNyRu_9Is

>>1809778
Take her as a hostage and ask her nicely if she likes to be decapitated.

>>1809766
>Scott announced that she had donated $1.7 billion to 116 non-profit organizations, with a focus on racial equality, LGBTQ+ equality, democracy, and climate change
so basically entities that further porky's interests? she isn't giving away money just investing in securing further exploitation, racial equality = impossible under capitalism, LGBT = severing of family ties and further reification but also an impossibility under capitalism women will always end up oppressed, bourgeois "democracy" and climate change the last one is probably the only good cause but as many other problems cannot be solved under capitalism due to the rigid competition laws

Would it be possible to PSYCHICALLY donate a billion dollars? Like, personally handing out rolls of 100 dollar bills to soup kitchens, beggars, street children, food banks etc
Would it even be humanly possible time-wise or are there enough beggars so that, even giving 10K to each one, you can burn off a billion?

>>1809778
I've thought about this before. Like what's the most money you could reasonably get for free from a billionaire? Like if you asked a billionaire for $50 they'd get all snarky and start lecturing you. But I think if you asked for $5, they'd be so amused by the small request that they might give it to you as a joke.

>>1809854
There is not a single proven case of a billionaire donating money to charity. They simply move money into "donor-advised funds" which are tax exempt yet not required to actually payout a single cent to charity. Essentially they just make a 'charity' for themselves and donate money to themselves to avoid taxes. Every dollar "donated" by a billionaire increases the tax burden of all non-billionaires. Just using common sense, does someone who steals billions of dollars sound like someone who would actually donate to charity? I don't really buy it.