Now is a good time to flood Wikipedia with donations. For the first time in my life, i have just donated to them and will do so again. You can do it too for a minimum of €2, no requirement for recurring donations or any nonsense.

        • The Giant Korean@lemmy.world
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          1 年前

          Why? They’re either born with the money or make the money, but either way the money has turned them into terrible people.

          • Maven (famous)@lemmy.world
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            1 年前

            I’d argue that you have to be horrible already to have loads of money. Any reasonably good person would be using their excess wealth for a good cause rather than building ego rockets.

            • The Giant Korean@lemmy.world
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              1 年前

              Money = power, and power corrupts. I’m sure there are some people who are horrible before they become wealthy, but I think money (and power) has a way of blunting peoples’ empathy.

              • decisivelyhoodnoises@sh.itjust.works
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                1 年前

                Normal people stop exploiting others before they reach having unfathomable amounts of money. So somebody with different values and morals will never have so much money since it is impossible to make such money without being corrupt and a piece of shit

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          11 个月前

          I mean, Musk was born fairly rich, but not like that. Most tech billionaires come from a sort of upper-middle-class to low-upper-class background, probably just because there’s not a lot of super rich families to start with. There are a few lower-class exceptions that prove the rule, although they can be hard to pin down because they all like to claim they grew up rough (and therefore earned their place by being better the peasants), and of course the heirs of other billionaires.

          As far as I can tell, they act about the way a random person would given their situation. You get power-drunk dicks like Elon Musk, but also philanthropists like Chuck Feeney (who gave it all away) and Bill Gates, while most just stay quiet and enjoy having unfathomable wealth (Bezos, Zuckerberg).

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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        1 年前

        No. Assholes are assholes, and Elon is just an asshole with money.

        Compare this man child to a billionaire like Yvon Chouinard, founder of the company Patagonia, and you’ll understand that money doesn’t change good people.

          • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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            1 年前

            Thanks for the video. That guy seems to go off on a lot of tangents, sets up too many strawman and red herring fallacies. He also doesn’t actually prove that Yvon is somehow evil in a way that’s comparable to Elon, or that he lied about anything.

            The only real criticism he had was to say that Yvon is purposely evading taxes and assigns that motive with absolute certainty (red herring).

            It sounds to me like Adam has a problem with the system. Hell, he even said that it doesn’t matter if good work is actually being done, because he doesn’t like the idea of billionaires using their money for good. Then he goes on to give an example using Walmart (not an ethical company) and Bill Gate’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein… bizarre how he even went there as a way to disprove what Yvon has done with the company.

            I’m not saying that Yvon or Patagonia are perfect. Heck, I don’t give a damn about the CEO of any company, and I think I only own one of their products, so I have no loyalties at all.

            But they are a for-profit business (they are very clear about that) who operates under some of the most ethical guidelines available, and they have a multi-decade proven track record of environmental stewardship and human labor practices.

            We need more companies like them, even if Adam doesn’t.

  • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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    1 年前

    Wikipedia should counter by offering Elon $4 to go towards paying off his massive hole from buying Twitter. 😂

    • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
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      1 年前

      He doesn’t need to pay. Twitter is already worth less than the debt, if he continues to break that company apart there’ll he no reason to even consider paying the debt off.

      • Kbin_space_program@kbin.social
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        1 年前

        The debt is a tax writeoff. The entire company is a tax writeoff for him and his clique.

        This will allow them to gain billions more without spending a cent in taxes.

      • stevehobbes@lemm.ee
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        1 年前

        That’s not how debt works, he almost certainly pledged assets and a personal guarantee against it. This is known as collateral.

        The banks take the collateral when you stop paying.

        • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
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          1 年前

          The way I understood it is that he didn’t get a loan to buy the company, but had a bank itself buy Twitter as a loan, so Twitter itself is the collateral. That’s what I did when I bought my apartment: a bank bought it from the constructor and let me live in it while slowly buying it from them over hundreds of installments. If I stopped paying the bank would kick me out and sell the apartment to someone else.

          • stevehobbes@lemm.ee
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            1 年前

            That isn’t quite right. If you stopped paying the bank would kick you out and sell the apartment to someone else, but if they get less than you owe them for it, they will also send you a bill for the remainder.

            And then sue you to get that money.

            Interestingly, if they get more than you owe them for it, they will cut you a check for the difference.

            But you are actually wrong about how and what the order of operations is.

            You are buying the house, the lender (bank) writes the check directly to the seller, and you sign a mortgage agreement for that much with the bank and they put a lien on your house. The bank does not own the house, you do. The bank owns a promissory note from you, backed by your personal wealth and credit and the value of the house (that they have a lien on).

            In the case of Twitter, yes, Twitter itself is part of the collateral, but so was Elon musks personal wealth and Tesla shares.

            • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
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              1 年前

              I forgot to mention I’m not American so some things might be different in my case, but you’re right in general.

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
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    1 年前

    Downvote Musk spam.

    The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle. Don’t be a useful idiot.

    • nadram@lemmy.worldOP
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      Sorry i wasn’t in the loop when we decided to stop talking about the town clown. I guess I’ll stop being an idiot now. Thanks for the advice.

  • Teon@kbin.social
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    1 年前

    We already have Dickopedia elon, it’s called twitter and YOU paid $44 billion for it.
    ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

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    1 年前

    wikipedia foundation’s financials are solid, stable, and healthy.

    how’s twitter doing lately, elon?

    • Gigan@lemmy.world
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      wikipedia foundation’s financials are solid, stable, and healthy.

      Are they though? They’re asking for money constantly

      • 21Cabbage@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 年前

        I mean, donations are their only income so they have to ask but that doesn’t mean they don’t get enough.

        • Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
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          I checked their reported expenses and couldn’t really find anything they “blow” money on. Their revenue is smaller than a midsize EU football team, and considering the value comparison between the two, that makes me think either we disagree completely, you have extra info that you did not share, or I don’t understand you.

          • Aatube@kbin.social
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            I mean, I’m not sure what they use all that money to develop, but they definitely don’t need all this money to just develop and sustain. Despite activity having hit its peak in the 2000s, spending continues to increase, and extensive feature request and enhancement backlog still stands while developers focus on whatever the foundation’s whim is. Not to mention there’s some controversy over the Tides Foundation.

    • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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      1 年前

      There’s not one single person in the world who should own a thousand million dollars, never mind hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars.

      The pure existence of billionaires is unethical and immoral - doesn’t matter whether they’re being stupid and fascist in public, or quietly pulling strings and bending society to their will in the background.

      • OrnatePotato@lemmy.world
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        1 年前

        Tangential, but I’ve always wondered why in English 10^9 is one billion. 10^6 is one million. Twice as many zeroes should be one billion. Three times as many, one trillion, etc.

        • Logi@lemmy.world
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          1 年前

          Only in English is this weird naming system used and originally only in American English. You can put it in the pile over there with the miles and pounds and other oddities.

          Other languages have milliard between million and billion, billiard after billion etc.

          • macrocephalic@lemmy.world
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            1 年前

            Miles and pounds came to America from England, but miles were the common system at least as far back as the Romans.

            Short form numbers are used throughout the English speaking world and are the international scientific standard.

            Why is is that you think that your system of squaring makes more sense than the system of a new name for every third power of ten?

            • Logi@lemmy.world
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              1 年前

              Short form is used in English only and was reluctantly adopted outside of the US since the 'mericans weren’t going to budge. Any science done in other languages uses the more logical form. I’ve done it myself in 3 of them. And it’s weird how I fluently translate between American billion and international milliard or American trillion and international billion. But I’m sure there is going to be a rocket blown up over this at some point.

              Why more logical? Billion, prefix bi for 2 is million squared. Trillion, prefix tri for 3 is million cubed. Septillion, prefix sep for 7 is? Honestly, though, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter that much. It’s just grating that were being yanked backwards. However slightly. And yes, that pun was intentional.

              Sure, the US didn’t come up with the imperial measuring system but everyone else has moved on. Miles were used by the Romans but were they the same miles? Everyone had their own foot… the story about Napoleon being short was simply that he was measured in French feet and they were longer than English feet so he amounted to fewer of them. I guess it’s slightly better now that there is only one set* of archaic pre-enlightenment units in play :shrug:

              *having said all that, some of the US measurements don’t quite coincide with the UK ones but I can’t remember any if those details. But it’ll probably kill a other rocket too.

              PS I dare you to look up the Swedish mile.

        • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com
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          1 年前

          From memory, when I was a kid, it used to be that a billion was 10^12, but I think most of the world changed at some point to adopt the American billion of 10^9.

          Edit: wiki article that discuss a little of this

      • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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        1 年前

        But I want to quietly pull the strings of society so everyone can have food and housing security, get rid of food deserts, and end Elon Musk personally. Like, with my hands. Give me a billion dollars

        • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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          I don’t think you’d be a billionaire for long. I’d have that problem too. How can you just sit on a huge pile of money when you could do so much good with it? They are all like stinky dragons hoarding their gold.

          • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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            1 年前

            Nah the billion dollars is a get out of jail free card.

            Oh wait you were talking about the stuff I wasn’t being facetious about.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      More that it’s a confirmation that having money doesn’t make you a good person.

  • Taco2112@lemmy.world
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    1 年前

    So he’s offering that money to name it after himself?

    I’m not even clicking on that link, I never click on stuff with that turd’s name on the headline, just wanted to make the joke.

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      1 年前
      1. Rename to elonpedia for a day
      2. Demand the billion dollars
      3. Find a young attorney to sue pro bono on the grounds that Elon is a dick
      4. Laugh about the fact musk has to pay attorneys to defend himself in court.
      5. ???
      6. Profit.
  • Conyak@lemmy.tf
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    More evidence to support taxing the fuck out of billionaires. No one needs that much money.

        • u/unhappy_grapefruit_2@lemmy.world
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          1 年前

          Are they really tho it just seems to me like you just really don’t like anyone with a differing opinion after a quick glance through your comments I could be wrong dare I say but after looking through your comments it looks like you think anyone remotely right wing is a big nazis facist boogeyman sure there are some people out there with those beliefs but there generally quite small in numbers

  • rawn@feddit.de
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    1 年前

    He’s trying to distract from the probe into Tesla’s range. It’s working.