I hope the tech billionaires who are always grousing about how everyone hates them are watching the reaction to Dolly Parton’s passing.

[uwehalfhand@norcal.social]

@wordshaper @jalefkowit There might be one or two billionaires for whom that comparison would not be instantly and utterly damning; I am sure though that there are none who would be peers. A fractional Dolly would be the best one could hope for.

[wordshaper@weatherishappening.network]

@UweHalfHand @jalefkowit I think possibly Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, and maybe one of the Walton kids, though given the source of Walton money I’d have to work hard for it to balance.

[uwehalfhand@norcal.social]

@wordshaper @jalefkowit Yeah, Ms Scott would be one of the ones I would count too; don’t know enough about the Waltons to say

[level98@mastodon.social]

@jalefkowit And/or what they've done to get rich?

[deepmud@mas.to]

@wordshaper melinda gates, and Mackenzie scott come to mind.

But yeah, not many decent folk amongst the billionaires

[flyingsaceur@ioc.exchange]

@jalefkowit not just tech billionaires. Taylor Swift sure looks like she’s doing a Dolly Parton dark side playthrough

[valerie2364@mastodon.social]

@jalefkowit That's definitely true.

[alsy@theforkiverse.com]

@wordshaper @jalefkowit She didn’t die a billionaire even though she certainly could have. That alone is a nice benchmark.

[gimulnautti@mastodon.green]

@jalefkowit I hope too. But then I remember Nietzche, and the hope fades. Not entitely, but fades a great deal. Because the incentives in the society they live in are set up to favour the will to power instead of kindness.

Maybe this can be one small beacon of hope, and maybe it even stands. But the stone cold & sober realisation is to also see the massive tsunami of fascism enveloping and carrying all those other billionaires right now.

[davdd@mastodon.social]

@jalefkowit I can't rly fault them for thinking that. If I were a billionaire and then someone said they hate billionaires, I would think they are talking about me.

[luc0x61@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@jalefkowit Any kind of billionaire isn't really caring for any mass of people that doesn't *directly* affect their business or status.
It's a matter of scale, where we don't care for bacteria unless they cause an infection.
They have significant staff filtering data for them, since their business is so complex, and their resources so large, that don't feel the need to listen to opinions. They move social media to reflect their own opinions.
Here's why they find strange any different thinking.

[muratk5n@mastodontech.de]

@jalefkowit I dont think we should cut uber-rich any slack, whether they are Dolly Parton or not. "Elite volunteerism" is a vail on inequality, we should not put a nice face to that. Parton was a nice, inspiring person, that is another matter.

[kittenkoder@mastodon.social]

@jalefkowit They like to ban people from social media, they're influencers with too much power. They have even been influencing the elections and trying to fucking engineer our speech.

[ambiguous_yelp@veganism.social]

@jalefkowit Being rich is a moral failing, the more wealthy you are the more opportunities you have passed up to significantly improve others lives at marginal detriment to your own

[iclast@sfba.social]

@jalefkowit
Yes, Dolly Parton was a wonderful person.
BUT, 'though not quite sure, Taylor Swift might be another flowing in the same vein.

[mwt@mastodon.nz]

@wordshaper @jalefkowit
According to Wikipedia, she was worth $500 million in 2017. That seems like a reasonable upper bound to wealth, beyond which you risk losing your humanity.

The argument for unlimited capitalism has always been that if you put limits on profit, it destroys motivation for anyone to innovate. Having now observed a bunch of amuck billionaires, I would say that loss of humanity far outweighs loss of motivation, in terms of danger to the rest of society.

Therefore... if I were dictator of the world, there would be a tax rate of 100% to anyone whose net worth goes past $500 million. For at least five years, thereby forcing them to use up wealth they already have before they're allowed to accrue more.

[mudlark@bark.lgbt]

@jalefkowit no, I hate them because they’re rich, as well as the other stuff. You don’t become a billionaire without exploiting the labour of thousands of workers. If somebody is good, they don’t get to the stage of being a billionaire.

A billion dollars is more than 20,000 times the average wage. You don’t hoard 20,000 years of wages if you’re a good person.

[lialikeslicks@todon.eu]

@jalefkowit I hate them because they are rich though. They just have a really long list of other things I despise them for, too.