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[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 5 points 15 hours ago

Life continues despite their best efforts.

[-] Xerxos@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 day ago

If they were half as smart as they think they are, they would enjoy their lives in luxury and leave the rest of us alone.

The smart ones are the ones we have never heard of.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

That's been the Jeff Bezos gambit for nearly a decade. He's still an absolute POS and we all know it.

The smart ones are the ones we have never heard of.

Behind every great fortune is a great crime.

[-] myyass@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago

I think it's ironic that since buying power dropped by, what? 50%? Then does that mean a person with a billion is just a millionaire?

[-] ieightpi@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago

The old billionaires must be fuming because so many new billionaires keep popping up. Theirs wealth just doesn't matter anymore

[-] IronBird@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

eh, not really how it works. at certain point your wealth is just distributed across the market enough that it goes up with inflation.

[-] myyass@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

They must be fuming with all the desperate pushing of AI and data centers. Tech in general looks like the titanic except everyone is turning a blind eye to the sinking part.

[-] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

So exactly like the Titanic until it was too late to ignore.

[-] myyass@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago
[-] chewypoops@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

The latest South ~~Park~~ America episode is about this exactly.

[-] ieightpi@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Seriously the timing of this conversation cannot be a coincidence

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago

Billionaire: "We paid some college kids to build a robot that doesn't immediately tip over when it tries to move."

Internet Slacktivist: "Black Mirror! Terminator! The Matrix! It's game over, man! We're all gonna die!"

[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

billionaires arnt actually smart, they had a silver spoon since thier birth, so they have expensive education. even soros merely took advantage of favorable conditions at his disposal.

plus they come out of school enititled and elitist from private schools, which is not indicative intelligence.

[-] adjectivenoun@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Inheritance is only one way the ultra-wealthy gained their status. There's also exploitation, luck, predatory business practices, corruption, ....

Some gained wealth legitimately, but they usually fall under the luck category and should have been taxed at a higher rate for decades.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago

Some gained wealth legitimately

Nobody gets truly rich by playing within the rules. Show me a billionaire and I'll show you a list of crimes.

[-] adjectivenoun@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

So a lottery winner is guilty of crimes? There are ways to "win the lottery" inside capitalism without breaking any rules. Sure, the amassing of wealth is in itself unethical in a country where many kids can't eat nutritious meals, but you don't necessarily have to be a backstabbing thief to become rich. You can just luck out and have an idea like online banking take off at the same time the technology becomes mature enough for something like online banking to be feasible.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

So a lottery winner is guilty of crimes?

They're routinely the victims of them. Lottery winners are a scam target rich environment. North of 5% of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years, far above the national average.

You can just luck out and have an idea like online banking take off

Utterly clueless if you believe the advent of online banking was Peter Thiel's idea. I seriously doubt you understand how banks form or function.

[-] adjectivenoun@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

I wasn't using Thiel as an example--at least not on purpose. Take any obvious idea and marry it to a technological revolution, and you'll have a bunch of rich people who got rich mostly by pure luck. Musk is a piece of shit, but the case for Tesla taking off was actually proven by GM's EV1 ~3 years prior. The main reason it didn't take off? Well it was twofold: first, GM was reluctant to commit to EVs because marketing them would make their conventional fuel vehicles look environmentally destructive, and second, the battery technology the EV1 used was nickle metal hydride. Tesla succeeded because it coincided with the proliferation of lithium ion batteries, and in that particular case, I don't think anything unethical happened. If Musk had stopped here we probably wouldn't think of him as an evil piece of shit.

[-] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 2 points 20 hours ago

Gonna throw a ball and just see where it lands… Azim Premji.

[-] JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip 47 points 1 day ago

Would we though? Actual intelligent people tend to consider the greater good.

[-] realitista@lemmus.org 61 points 1 day ago

If they considered the greater good, they wouldn't be billionaires, catch 22.

[-] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 day ago

There is a probematic split, probably due to capitalism favoring stem education, between what we consider intelligent and wisdom. The latter is cultivated from engaging with "idle" topics such as philosophy, art, history and cultures, all that stuff that doesnt make any money and takes time spent not working.

So naturally these arent things the oligarchy engages with in any way that is conducive to the development of actual ethical beliefs, morals, or feelings of social responsibility. This is reinforced by the fact that those ethics would conflict with their entire existence and role in society, and self interest wins out.

Actually wise people*, you can be intelligent and remain a selfish, sociopathic waste of skin.

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[-] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If they were half as smart as they think they are, they would have understood empathy and sought help to understand themselves. Instead, they have fallen to capitalist propaganda and believe the delusion that they are the smartest, biggest dickest boys because they have a hoarding problem that is rewarded when they lack empathy and exploit others.

If they were half as smart as they think they are, they wouldn't be billionaires.

We would be better off with more educated, empathetic people. Exactly why capitalism does its best to fight against that and prefers mindless slaves to serve a wealthy upper class. By not being educated we're doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Welcome back fascism and feudalism, now with fresha, new technological spin.

[-] Tattorack@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Dude, they ARE the capitalist propaganda. I don't believe for a second they don't know what they're doing. Dilusional, yes, but still understanding.

[-] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

They know what they're doing while surrounding themselves with yes men to reinforce their delusions, never challenging their thoughts and ideology. Billionaires managed to socialize sycophancy psycohosis with AI.

They're absolutely capitalist propaganda exactly because they're too underdevoloped and immature to recognize empathy. Instead, in their selfish beliefs, they want to escape to mars, or bunkers, or inside machines (even though the current consciousness would still end the dumbfucks.)

They know what they're doing, absolutely. You don't need to be a genius intellect to steal from others, especially when you have the funding to pay others to find ways to scam and steal for you.

They're literally devolved humans in that they are unlearning empathy, that which we evolved and gave rise to our current age through community building, teaching, learning, and understanding. Just like racism must be learned, loss of empathy is learned, and the capitalist system they've built, knowingly or unknowingly, reinforces that to the nth degree.

The smartest.and most radical action against them is to embrace empathy and build community and separate systems to the capitalist monstrosity, taking their power from them.

So yes. They're deluded idiots. They know what they're doing, but it doesn't take much intelligence to do what they're doing, it just takes capital and being willing to exploit others.

Thank God they're mostly just broken, weak, hedonistic and distracted men with daddy issues without remarkable intellects and not a group of Henry Kissingers. 🥲

[-] Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Problem is they pay people to be smart for them. Most of them are just selfish dumbasses.

[-] one_old_coder@piefed.social 9 points 1 day ago

I'm confused. They think they are smart, let's say an IQ of 150. If they were half as smart, they would have an IQ of 75, but it's the IQ they already have, there would be no difference.

[-] aphonefriend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago

The implication is their IQ is currently well below 75.

[-] remon@ani.social 5 points 1 day ago

They think they are smart, let’s say an IQ of 150

I think the point is that they are a bunch of narcissists that think they are way smarter than that.

[-] TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Billionaires think they have an IQ of 1000.

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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
376 points (96.8% liked)

Showerthoughts

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