• rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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    22 hours ago

    At the “guillotine billionaires” stage, I wouldn’t assume that billionaire heirs would get their inheritance as usual.

    • finitebanjo@piefed.world
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      11 hours ago

      If you’re going to go to the courts and the banks in order to overturn inheritance, why even guillotine billionaires in the first place?

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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        11 hours ago

        Because billionaires who aren’t dead or in danger won’t just let it happen. Also, they aren’t exactly innocent for the state of things - most if not all of them engaged in vast amounts of unethical and often outright illegal behavior to attain their wealth. They have been actively working to make life shittier and deadlier for everyone else, and they deserve some justice for that, if only to discourage the next people who consider imitating them.

    • sharkteethsandwich@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      22 hours ago

      Even still, that wealth is not liquid cash you can just redistribute. Most of that wealth is in properties, assets, stocks, etc. Even if their heirs get nothing, you can’t feed people with yachts and overpriced paintings.

      • Feyd@programming.dev
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        21 hours ago

        It’s fun how people make this stupid “they’re not actually rich” argument while they buy politicians to fuck everyone over.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        14 hours ago

        You can of course just force them against their will to liquidate 99% of their assets, and then oversee redistribution collectively, maybe by some previously agreed upon framework for that, or maybe pledge it toward some government coffer, nationalize it, many different options.

        And that would be a whole hell of a lot more kind than what Lenin or Mao did.

        What is most important is the reformation of the workplaces, the business’s structure and ownership itself into democratic entities in and of themselves, as opposed to little business dictatorships/oligarchies, this way, going forward, proceeds of a productive enterprise are at least not as easily siphoned into new giant private collections of wealth, held by some other person or group or class.

        Outlaw private corporations beyond some small headcount size, mandate they are instead worker run co-ops that adhere to some bare minimum standard of representation for all employees.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        21 hours ago

        Most of that wealth is in properties, assets, stocks, etc

        All of those can be sold in exchange for currency.

        • wewbull@feddit.uk
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          21 hours ago

          Only to other billionaires. The yacht moves between owners. It doesn’t turn into healthcare.

          The problem with a yacht is that it exists

          • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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            17 hours ago

            I like how are talking about yachts like that’s some significant portion of their wealth and not all the land these people own. Not to mention their investments into residential housing.

            You picked the frivolous thing instead of the very tangible useful things they horde

          • Zombie@feddit.uk
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            20 hours ago

            A yacht could transfer from a single owner’s luxury item to a public owned means of production though.

            Instead of a billionaire taking it out a handful of times a year for intimidation parties (because of the implication) it could instead be used to generate wealth for the public purse by being used daily for cruises or a multitude of other things.

            Doctors Without Borders use large boats as mobile hospitals to go to places most in need, if you’re really determined it must be used for healthcare I’m sure some renovation to an existing super yacht is cheaper and easier than building a boat from scratch.

            • Damage@feddit.it
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              20 hours ago

              Yeah you can rent it for recreational use, no, it can’t be repurposed into anything else, they kinda suck as boats

            • wewbull@feddit.uk
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              20 hours ago

              You’re still making the best of a bad situation though. You’d rather the original resources were available. Seizing “wealth” won’t get you the full book value.

              • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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                19 hours ago

                Who the fuck cares if we don’t get ‘full book value’ or ‘making the best of a bad situation’ when the implied alternative is not doing anything.

                How about we do something? Given how badly the situation has gone, taking that wealth back and making the best use we can with what they’ve wasted money on is one of the best paths forward

              • voldage@lemmy.world
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                19 hours ago

                That’s not an argument against removing billionaires though, right? You’d rather want to stop the spread of cancer instead of bemoaning the fact that we got sick at all. The best we can do is reposes their frivolously purchased assets and recycle them as much as it’s reasonable, and cast away what remains. It’s not all yachts, some of that wealth is locked in empty flats/houses, and giving those back to community would be very beneficial without needing to transform those assets further.

                • wewbull@feddit.uk
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                  19 hours ago

                  No. I wasn’t really arguing against anything. Just that “this guy’s worth $30B. Let’s take it and get $30B” is simplistic thinking.

                  • voldage@lemmy.world
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                    16 hours ago

                    Yes, but not necessarily the way you put it. You may recall some of the lawsuits against Trump, where he massively (and illegally) elevated value of some of his properties (I think he elevated Mar-a-Lago by an order of a magnitude? might be wrong on that) while devaluing others, it depended on whenever he was supposed to pay taxes on something or leverage something to get better loan. Those billions they “have” are based in valuation that they often had opportunity to tamper with. For example, there are vast expanses of privately owned land that are undervalued - if you were to give that land back to the community and build housing there, its monetary value (and more importantly utility) would dramatically raise, thus leading to getting more out of the guillotine mileage than the original estimation might suggest. Alternatively, billionaire could have their assets valued as such due to having a gallery of modern AI art used to launder drug money, which would be otherwise completely worthless. And that, I think, is even more important point than the repossession of their wealth - we, as society, would benefit tremendously from making sure the rich can not manipulate prices of anything. If a guy with a “art” gallery is able to leverage it to get a massive loan, and then use it to buy a ton of housing, then you need to compete with their unearned billions with nothing else than the results of your honest work and whatever meager loan banks are willing to give you. It’s less important how much stuff is “actually” worth, and more what is the relationship between the purchase power of the rich versus the purchase power of regular folk. If they can outcompete all of us at once and we’re left without healthcare, food, water, housing etc. then they can more easily extort us for greater share of our paycheque (which again, is not exactly related to our actual work because very similar dynamics take place in job market), which makes us more dependent on them and more willing to be exploited in other ways.

                    tl;dr I agree it’s simplistic, but I think that getting a 1$ out of 1$ of removed billionaire is pessimistic estimation, and we would actually get far more, even if only long term.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        20 hours ago

        Bullshit.

        “Stocks” are “ownership of the means of production”.

        You absolutely can feed yourself on your share of “the means of production”.

      • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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        21 hours ago

        You can run companies without billionaires. Nationalize them, or turn them into worker-owned cooperatives. Or even just sell them to investor groups, if we aren’t going full marxist.