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Comment by conradfr | Hacker News Reader

What is the benefit? Separate from the "Democrat states"? But aren't they the richest?

I think the theory is something like 'ok, the bucket will be smaller but we're the same so effectively we will grow' where 'we' is the wealthy assholes that power this movement.

The fact that a couple of million (billion?) people could die as a result of their landgrab is none of their concern. The billionaire class appears to be divorced from reality to a very dangerous degree, and there are enough useful idiots willing to hand them their support to make this a very dangerous time. I don't think we've ever been closer to potentially losing it all than we are right now.

You're looking at 'divide and conquer' on a scale that we have never seen before and there are enough dominoes falling already that I don't even know if it still can be arrested.

A disregard for other people seems to be a prerequisite to becoming that wealthy for me. Hope i'm wrong, guess the good ones don't make the news. Surely they must exist

I think if you cared even a little bit about other people, you'd realize that after say, ten million, your life is gonna be pretty damn sweet already and you'd try to help other people with your money instead of buying yachts.

To become a billionaire requires sociopathic disregard for the suffering of others and a pathological need for more.

There's no such thing as a good billionaire.

> you'd realize that after say, ten million

If you don't realize it by two you never will. Really, this is completely out of proportion by now, Marie Antoinette was a pauper by the standards these people live by.

With single family homes in some part of the world costing two by themselves, I think we can give it a little bit more leeway, especially if you're planning to retire and support your kids through college.

But the point stands.

Sure, but you could still realize it, even if you are still amassing more money. Nothing stops people from doing so at lower points than 10 million and my point was that if you don't realize it by the time 2 million rolls around you probably never will.

Yes, I agree.

I'm not saying you shouldn't realize it before 10M, I'm saying you should probably stop hoarding resources after 10M at most.

I can see how my phrasing was a bit ambiguous there.

> I think if you cared even a little bit about other people, you'd realize that after say, ten million, your life is gonna be pretty damn sweet already and you'd try to help other people with your money instead of buying yachts.

In general their money isn't money, it's stock. The thing it buys them is being the CEO of their company instead of letting Wall St pick someone even worse.

The real problem is that companies are now so large that you'd have to be a multi-billionaire to have a controlling interest.

Even muli-billionaires often don't have a direct controlling interest. Sometimes have special shares that give them 10x votes like Larry and Sergey. Bezos, Zuck, and Musk have significant direct amounts of their companies.

The list almost always reads the same on every major corporation. Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street, ect... Numbers may be slightly out of date in some cases. If the Institutionals all vote together or collectively, almost none of the wealthy have "controlling amounts". (wikipedia listings)

  - NVIDIA: The Vanguard Group(8.280%), BlackRock(5.623%), Fidelity Investments(5.161%), State Street Corporation(3.711%), *Jensen Huang(3.507%)*, Geode Capital Management(2.024%), T. Rowe Price(2.013%), JPMorgan Chase(1.417%)

  - Apple: Vanguard Group Inc(9.47%), Blackrock Inc.(7.76%), State Street Corporation(4.04%), JPMORGAN CHASE & CO(3.20%), Geode Capital Management, LLC(2.41%), FMR, LLC(2.05%)

  - Microsoft: The Vanguard Group(8.9%), BlackRock(5.6%), State Street Corporation(4.0%), *Steve Ballmer(4.0%),* Fidelity Investments(2.9%), Geode Capital Management(2.1%), T. Rowe Price International(1.9%) (Ballmer is a notable exception)

  - Alphabet: The Vanguard Group(7.25%), BlackRock(6.27%), State Street Corporation(3.36%), *Sergey Brin(3.0%)*, *Larry Page(3.0%)*, Fidelity Investments(2.07%), Geode Capital Management(1.76%), T. Rowe Price(1.73%) (Sergey and Larry each get 10x votes)

  - Amazon: (Notable exception to this trend) *Jeff Bezos(9.04%)*, The Vanguard Group(7.96%), BlackRock(4.93%), State Street Corporation(3.5%), Fidelity Investments(3.22%), Geode Capital Management(2.03%), JP Morgan Investment Management(1.81%), Eaton Vance(1.5%), T. Rowe Price(1.48%)

  - Meta: (Another exception) *Mark Zuckerberg (13.5%)*, The Vanguard Group (8.8%), BlackRock (7.66%), Fidelity Investments (6.28%), State Street Corporation (3.97%), JPMorgan Chase (2.38%), Geode Capital Management (2.27%), T. Rowe Price (1.95%)

  - Broadcom: The Vanguard Group(10.03%), BlackRock(7.63%), Capital World Investors(4.53%), Capital International Investors(4.04%), State Street Corporation(3.95%), Geode Capital Management(2.12%), Insiders[Various](2.04%)

  - Tesla: *Elon Musk(12.9%)*, The Vanguard Group(7.2%), BlackRock(4.5%), State Street Corporation(3.4%), Geode Capital Management(1.7%), Capital Research & Management(1.3%)

Basically, it usually reads like "if Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street agree on anything, you lose the vote." Alphabet being somewhat exception because of the 10x special votes. Everything listed has more than $1,400,000,000,000 share cost outstanding. Even $100,000,000,000 won't buy enough.

Notably, in-practice they probably usually just vote whatever one of the main founders, CEO's, ect... recommends unless there's some actual major issue. Although that's so far above my pay grade, no idea what actually goes on.

Funnily, the next one on the list is JPMorgan and they're controlled by ... Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street... Who in turn control major portions of NVIDIA, Apple, Amazon, Meta... It's all rather incestuous and circular.

And funnier, they all own each other.

  Vanguard itself is weird, like a mutual fund, and owned by its funds, then in turned owned by shareholders.  However, *those* owners, are almost entire large institutional also.  Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, UBS Group, JPMorgan Chase, LPL Financial, Envestnet Asset Management, Ameriprise Financial, TIAA Trust, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Beacon Capital Management, Betterment, Wealthfront Advisers, and Cove Street Capital

  Blackrock is pretty the same circular ownership: The Vanguard Group(9.08%), BlackRock Inc(7.02%), State Street Corporation(4.95%), Temasek Holdings Ltd(4.28%), Bank of America Corp(4.28%), Capital Research Global Investors(3.78%), Morgan Stanley(3.62%), Charles Schwab Corporation(3.14%), Capital World Investors(2.68%), Geode Capital Management(2.32%)

  State Street is ... of course, the same ownership: Vanguard Group Inc(13.23%), Blackrock Inc(8.71%), JPMorgan Chase(6.06%), State Street Corporation(4.83%), FMR, LLC(4.05%), Invesco Ltd(3.00%), Harris Associates L.P(2.73%), Geode Capital Management, LLC(2.66%), Dodge & Cox Inc(2.43%), Morgan Stanley(1.71%)

> Funnily, the next one on the list is JPMorgan and they're controlled by ... Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street... Who in turn control major portions of NVIDIA, Apple, Amazon, Meta... It's all rather incestuous and circular.

It's almost like there could be a book about this from a hundred years ago:

https://www.amazon.com/Other-Peoples-Money-How-Bankers/dp/19...

It's almost like they learned nothing over 100 years other than how to hide their behavior better.

- And, thanks for the reference on the book. Never seen it before, yet not very surprising it looks pretty much like the Gilded Age with '"robber barons" who's fortunes were made at the expense of the working class, by chicanery and betrayal of democracy.'

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