I know that this is the argument, and I agree in principle (no inherent worth), but people tend to forget: Money laundering, buying black market goods online, supporting illegal organisations internationally and speculating on something are technically some kind of worth. That’s why it still never crashed out to 0, imo.

As someone who was interested in Bitcoin at its very beginning (sometimes I wonder what kind of arsehole I would be now if I hadn’t lost my wallet back then long before the stuff was worth anything) - it took quite some time from its inception to cryptobros being a cultural phenomenon everywhere on the net. So the creation itself may be a bit too early.

But I think your point is still very much valid.

It really isn’t, but as long as those resources are distributed through a market, there are problems even if you add money. Say the billionaires truly are incorruptible angels and put all their money to providing food and shelter, the not-yet-billionaires in the market suddenly have incentives to raise prices, withhold food to the market while prices are rising as a speculative gambit, stuff like that.

That’s one of the mechanisms through which the system itself, that produces billionaires, makes it at least hard or - imo - even impossible to truly undo the damage it does to create such billionaires, even when you have those billions. Another example is corruption: As soon as you put a lot of money into an issue, it creates an incentive there to funnel money away in secret, to provide false solutions that don’t solve anything, to scam, etc. A friend of mine worked on projects providing water infrastructure in countries in Africa from philanthropic and international aid funds, and he did get often frustrated telling how some projects simply vanish halfway through, because someone down the line had basically run off with the money (not that the projects were wholly useless, either, but they failed to fundamentally solve things by just throwing money at them). Someone like Bill Gates, as another example, has been unironically doing a lot of good as a philanthropist, but all his money still wasn’t able to truly tackle the root causes of the problems in the countries where he supports healthcare and such things - and inevitably, some of the funds he provided were used on glamour projects or ineffectual, nice-sounding strategies, or ended up in outright corruption. And at the same time, the question remains, what the system that made him a billionaire caused in damages to begin with.

That’s why I still think you can’t really tackle all these problems without doing away with a market structure, exchange value, capital accumulation, etc. - i.e., why I remain a dirty commie, instead of just arguing for redistribution (redistribution and more social-democratic, beneficial investment is still good, but you gotta always aim for the abolition of private property and capital accumulation as an end goal, imo).

Oh, and I just realised my ramble kind of missed OP’s point, which is also important: All the money caught up in the three-digit multi-billionaires net worth? It’s not representative of true goods and labour, it is what Marx would have called “dead” capital. As soon as it is used for anything but as financial capital, it can drive inflation massively, which connects to part of my first point.

EDIT: Another example that just came to my mind for how this can impact things - Mansa Musa and the stories surrounding his lavish spending during his Hajj, basically crashing the local economies. So, even pre-capitalist systems had to deal with these dynamics.

This is an interesting conundrum, actually. The big question at its core being:

Can you ever do enough good through philanthropy, so that it offsets the damage you had to do, in order to become a billionaire? Can even all the billionaires in the world do enough good with their money, to offset the damage done by a system, that allowed for them to become billionaires?

I, personally, don’t think it is possible.

To give an actual answer: I think, the world would definitely be better, but unless those billionaires collectively used all the power their money provides, to do away with money and the possibility of billionaires altogether, I don’t think it would amount to all that much.

Oh, thanks for the info, that is great to know!

As far as I know, from when this was discussed after the first Reddit exodus, only commenting and posting makes you an active user. So the number is somewhat deceivingly small, as the vast majority on platforms like this are lurkers who maybe post/comment every once in a while at most.

Wait until you learn about the even bigger ones:

https://kardashev.fandom.com/wiki/Gigastructures

Okay, that is fair enough - although one small thing I’d add is “psychological issues not greatly exacerbated by his former employer” - where I also don’t think intentionality is important, as long as they callously don’t consider the potential of that exacerbation.

Thing is: psychological issues don’t exist in a vacuum. For example - let’s say he was robbed of all perspectives to ever work again in a field he was passionate about by his former employer de facto “blacklisting” him - they surely did not explicitly have this outcome in mind, but they accepted it as a possibility. Similar situation with the high suicide rates in countries like South Korea - they don’t exist the way they are because of independently existing, isolated mental illness, but because of a material system that interacts with, and sets the conditions of, psychological development.

So, you are right, it’s true that it could be, that it ends up as the result of a completely unrelated mental illness. But I’d be wary to take reports like “he actually had a diagnosis of depressive disorder” as simply washing OpenAI clean of all responsibility.

This just as a reminder: Even if this is to turn out to really 100% be a suicide, that just means they were able to silence him by driving him into suicide - basically by all important metrics the same as a corporate assassination with extra steps.

If you are German-speaking, your main instance of interest for communities will probably be feddit.org with the main community being !dach@feddit.org (and inofficially !ich_iel@feddit.org) - check it out if you haven’t yet

EDIT: Hello there, person in the future - I completely forgot about !main@feddit.org - the “landing page” community.

Seems like it is actually their stomachs turned inside-out

Mayo + Ketchup combined, the classic “Rot-Weis”-combo in Germany.

That or, preferrably, mayo + a good chilli sauce

Let’s do an EU4 Dithmarschen world conquest run from here on out.

Some more summarised info without journalism sensationalism issues

To everyone who might not have heard about that before: It was an attempt to introduce it as a bill in Indiana:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indiana_pi_bill

Could it be that you encountered a bug in Jerboa? I had images load cropped on top and bottom a few times now.

Life itself, the propagation and continuation of it, the creation of conscious structures capable of experience, reflection and influence over their nature - and ultimately defiance against a cold and dead, seemingly endless universe.

Or, for people that like the cold universe, there’s a quote I forgot who it came from: “The purpose of life is to waste the energy of the sun”

Fun fact: The designer almost chose “Cool Centrist Clicker” as a name, they have a devlog about it.

Spring. Not too hot, sun is out, things are green, lovely time of the year. Autumn is also nice, similar stuff to like, but overall, I don’t like the muddy ground and weather as much. Winter is nice temperature-wise, but the lack of sun messes with me. Summer is… unavoidable, unfortunately :/