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My partner and I were discussing this over dinner, our ideas went from buying up land to finance organic farming and distributing it at the lowest price to crashing the financial system to "reset" everybody's bank account with no possible recovery. Any other ideas?

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[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 year ago

With the pennies they actually pay lawmakers, though? 100 billion could go a loooooooooong fucking way to outspend the billionaires.

The reason they're billionaires is because they're fuckin misers and penny-pinchers. They hate spending money and that is evidenced by how cheaply our politicians are bought for.

Simply outspend them quickly, and you'll have the politicians licking your boots.

[-] CableP13@waveform.social 12 points 1 year ago

This one crossed our mind as well, the problem is you usually don't compete against billionaires but rather against corporations or conglomerate which has much more economic power that single individuals. You also have to account for the benefits that these private entities can promise (knowing a law will favor a certain industry is a good way to make cash by buying stocks before said law passes), that's quite hard to compete with that when you're a philanthropist

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

don’t compete against billionaires but rather against corporations or conglomerate which has much more economic power that single individuals. You also have to account for the benefits that these private entities can promise (knowing a law will favor a certain industry is a good way to make cash by buying stocks before said law passes)

I don't disagree. However, 100 billion is still a massive amount.

$1 million is literally only 0.1% of $1 billion. That means $100 million is similarly 0.1% of $100 billion.

Nancy Pelosi is one of the wealthiest people in congress and with all her assets, she's only worth around $114 million.

Rick Scott, the richest, is only worth around $259 million.

If $100 million is only 0.1% of the total amount I am working with, I can literally EXPLODE the valuations of these people really simply.

Sure, they can "make a lot of money" by knowing insider information before others do, and people like Pelosi and Scott are doing well because of it, but I have a hard time believing they would shake their head and say "No, not enough" to increasing their personal wealth by 10 times.

I could give Rick Scott a cool $2 billion and Pelosi $1.5 billion and still be left with $97.5 billion dollars to spend. Their personal wealth has just been multiplied by a factor of 10.

I think people vastly underestimate just how much 1 billion is, let alone 100 billion, and genuinely don't understand how much more wealth that is than those people will ever see by just investing. On top of that, wouldn't they prefer to have 10 times the amount of money to invest?

[-] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml -3 points 1 year ago

If you had 100billion, then why pay the existing shitbags, instead of getting every single one voted out?

[-] dingus@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I personally feel like changing the laws to limit corruption has to come first before politicians stop taking bribes.

If they can be bought by me, they can be bought by someone else just as easily.

What hopes do I have that the new people will be different? Just look at fucking Kyrsten Sinema. She ran as a moderately progressive candidate and hasn't just become a Republican and Billionaire enabler, she straight switched to Independent after running as a Democrat.

If we get the laws changed first then there are fewer ways for them to be corrupted/bought. Just changing the person in the position leaves open the option of the new person being corrupted by the same system. Personal opinion, of course.

this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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