• Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      9 days ago

      Yeah exactly. Normal inheritance means their kids or spouse inherit, and the number of billionaires remains the same.

      • Don Escobar@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Fun fact, if I were to inherit the wealth of a billionaire family member who was shot in public I’d get philanthropic real fast!

        • RQG@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          Many people say this. However of those who talk the talk, barely any ever walk the walk.

          However I think if you are born an heir to a billionaire, you’d lack the perspective which might foster selfless philanthropy.

          I’d like to think that if someone from the working class would randomly get such money they would. But it still seems unlikely.

        • Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
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          9 days ago

          I was thinking about this the other day. If I had half a trillion dollars (like the guy who just bought the presidency) I would spend it building a city from scratch. A walkable/bikeable city with free public transportation. I don’t have enough expertise to speak about affordable housing ideas, but with that amount of money I can pay someone to come up with some good regulations. Don’t know why but that’d be my passion project.

          • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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            8 days ago

            Better use of the money is to strong arm cities into adjusting into better land uses. Building a city from scratch you’re probably taking farm land from making food to instead be a new city, and if you can attract enough businesses to attract enough residents you’ve only helped by creating walkability for a few hundred or thousand people while the rest of the country remains car dependant.

            Honestly I was on a walk recently and had the thought cross my mind of “what if this road were ripped up, the newly reclaimed land was sold for housing and small quiet businesses and the sidewalks widened into first class bike/walking paths just wide enough for an emergency/utility vehicle to drive down?” and I got a little sad that such a utopian vision just isn’t politically palatable.

            • Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
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              7 days ago

              I agree with you, that would be a much more effective use of resources. It’s a fantasy though, and it’s way more fun for me to daydream about design than manipulating public policy.

              All that said it’s not a fruitless endeavor to think about how you would build something from scratch even if you can’t. It is a good way to hash out ideas without getting bogged down by the resistance to change.

    • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 days ago

      but if not, and they have two or more children ic tje amount gets split between them. Then you handlo those, and their children etc. It’s financial homeopathy

    • Septimaeus@infosec.pub
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      8 days ago

      Right, and in truth whacking the wealthiest shareholders employing the CEOs would be smarter. Far fewer targets. Far more direct symbolism.

      It would underscores greed itself as the true target, so the more wealth they have accumulated, the larger the target on their back.

      Killing the most blood-soaked CEOs certainly sends a message that actions have consequences, but they’re already hired to take blame and this just extends the hazards into the existential dimension, because the vast majority CEOs are just goons of the true mobsters, who can always add hazard pay if CEOs are more hesitant to operate their orphan crushing machines due to a rise in vigilante justice.

      The wealthiest shareholders, on the other hand, profit the most on the suffering inflicted by their companies, and will continue to do so after they hire the evil CEO’s replacement. So it makes more sense to target these mob bosses.

      Edit: …hypothetically

    • zout@fedia.io
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      8 days ago

      In some cases, the wealth might simple be gone because the stock crashes of which the bulk of the wealth is built.

    • akilou@sh.itjust.works
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      8 days ago

      By this algorithm, it would have to. Otherwise it’d just create a new billionaire who’d go to the back of the line