The first trillionaire is a killer | Hacker News Reader

The first trillionaire is a killer

theverge.com

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there is a counter argument that USAID was a saviors camp for white people to "solve" the problems that systemic inequity against africa and the rest of the developing world caused by those same white peoples governments and industrys

If you were right it would still be wrong to solve the bigger equation by first cancelling the good things that trickled from the US GDP in the general direction of people whose lives are on the line, many of them children. And this is exactly what they did, and it is shameful.

That’s a pretty uninformed argument.

For most of the global south USAID was the arm of America they were most likely to interact with. It was food and schools and medicine and disaster relief. It was soft power and goodwill.

Not only has the longest charm campaign in history ended, but a door to China and others been opened.

Of course he is.

Nobody gets that rich without throwing overboard any morals or ethics. You won't become a billionaire - let alone a trillionaire - if you are bothered by the wellbeing of other humans. Just being that rich is unethical, given that there are currently people starving to death on the planet.

To our society it's more important that few people have the opportunity to get insanely rich rather than that all people have food and shelter.

Priorities I guess.

> Priorities I guess

It's more that the ultra-riches' money opens doors, enabling them to influence the public's perception of reality. Never mind 'think tanks', lobbying, lining politicians pockets to have them ignore the public's interests. Clip free speech here & there, or hammer critics with legal threats or troll armies. Maaany tools in the box when money is no object.

After a while this trickles down & promotes an environment where people really don't care about others' suffering. America first! Oh my, gas prices jumped! Groceries went up! Who cares about HIV infected babies in Africa.

Probably preaching to the choir here but anyways: how much is one trillion?

If you were to get your dream job where they promise you a pay of 1$ per second, 24/7:

* You'd have earned 3,600$ after the first hour, and 86,400$ by the next day. After a single day on the job, you're already richer than a good portion of the working population in Western countries. That's how much 1$/s is; in many jobs it would take you like 3 to 4 hundred times as long—a year—to get as much. In other words, this fabulous job gives a (generous) yearly salary, each single day.

* But why stop after a day? How long would it take you to become a millionaire? Answer: approximately 10 days, less than a fortnight.

* But why stop there? Sure if after a week plus I'm a millionaire, becoming a billionaire can't be that difficult, can it? Well, you'd still spend around 30 years, no less, doing whatever that job requires you to do. A billion dollars is the equivalent of 30 years on the job, but it's a job where each day you get what anybody else would consider a generous yearly salary. This is outrageous.

* Surely, why stop there? I planned carefully and started aforementioned job in 1996, meaning today I'm a billionaire, you're welcome. Unfortunately someone rained on my party and became a trillionaire. I should've started out much earlier, it dawns on me. Quick, at 1$ per second trickling into my wallet, how long does it take for the wallet to be filled with one trillion? Turns out that's a bit over 30,000 years. Thirty thousand years of constantly getting money at a rate of one generous yearly salary per day. Surely this person must have put in a lot of hard work and done something good for humanity. Indeed, as a certain Mr Grok has recently stated, "at this point it would be more immoral to [get rid of] Musk than to [unalive] a billion infants" [paraphrasing].

* At this point you can imagine how utterly devastating it must be for Mr Musk to be a trillionaire... and not a quadrillionaire!! What's to stop him, after all? Nothing will, apparently.

* Recommended reading: Von dem Fischer und syner Fru, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vom_Fischer_und_seiner_Frau

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