• MummifiedClient5000@feddit.dk
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    1 day ago

    Elon Musk is now worth more than the 2nd richest greediest man (Jeff Bezos) and the third richest greediest man (Mark Zuckerberg) combined!

    • uebquauntbez@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Imagine every single minion stopping to work for him. Even the bankers. He’d be stranded and helpless. No family member (if there still are any) would help him for free.

  • udon@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It’s weird how in English you say “he is worth x” if you just mean he has x money/assets

      • udon@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        I don’t want to argue against the correctness of the sentence in English (I think you’re correct with that). I’m just uncomfortable by the conflation of two meanings. This makes:

        “He spent his last penny” technically the same as “He is worth nothing”

        So a rich person is “worthy”, which also means they are good, have achieved good things, and we are happy they exist. A poor person is “unworthy” and we can throw them away like garbage. That conflation is a problem to me.

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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          13 hours ago

          I’m from a primarily English speaking place and you’re absolutely right. The phrase is completely bizarre. Like we could talk about assets, but we equate it to the person, and it’s a phrase that comes from the upper echelons of the capitalist ruling class and now everyone uses it. Like we’ve all just accepted the reality that our society doesn’t care about people unless they can pay.

  • ShadowZone@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Can we please stop calling someone “being worth” x amount of money? It’s disgusting on a fundamental level.

    • lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com
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      1 day ago

      In Germany, some people call people on the bottom of the money pyramid “socially weak”…

      Disgusting as well. Whoever has billions and doesn’t help otherd, is socially weak!

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Yes!

      I guess we can’t exactly say he has more money, but we could say he has more “wealth.”

      But he’s about the most worthless piece of shit on the planet.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Okay lets brainstorm, they are all parasites on society, they are not more worthy than anyone else, but “king” has a sort of good vibe to it for many people so…

      Something along Robber Baron? But again, baron is kind of cool.

      Gangster? Too cool.

      Oligarch is for russians right?

      Child prince, too demeaning.

      Hyper burglar, too complicated.

      Thief sounds good IMO but they steal so much, and in history we’ve always been facinated with oeople being able to do that (kings, dragons, and actual thiefs).

      Bureaucratic parasites? Because they steal the work by shuffling the papers. Also doesn’t sound “cool”.

      Accountant or clerk seems to be what they actually are, cooking the book on the whole society.

      Elon Musk: super clerc.

      Zuccenberg: society accountant.

      Bill Gates: fraudulent clerc.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
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      1 day ago

      i was thinking about this the other day. i know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is disputed but i think there must be something to linguistic relativism. like, in english words describing wealth are all tied to “worthiness”, and we talk about being wealthy as being more good.

      in my language words describing wealth are all tied to effort: the ability and/or will to do something is “förmåga”, and if someone is wealthy they are “förmögen”, which i’m not entirely sure of the conjugation for but intuitively i read it as “has expended effort”. this is a more neutral term, and our class divide has historically been much shallower than the anglophone world. of course this is mostly due to different social systems but… why were they put in place ho begin with?

  • zergtoshi@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    In my opinion Elon is worth shit, but I’m no native speaker, hence I might be confused by the phrase.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Makes me want to bring it all back to tribes and shitting in the woods. We can play the nobody gets shit if we dont game too.

      • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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        1 day ago

        thats how I am with consumerism and buying stuff now. in the sense of like. you know what. I can still read books ya bastards and I don’t need most of whats being sold.

  • UmeU@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Anyone know how this is being accounted for?

    Which of his assets gained him like 200+billion in the last year?

    I know twitter lost value after he financed it through the saudis, so he must have gained somewhere else, anyone want to save me a Google?

  • Subtracty@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    What will it be once he gets his hands on the government? He is poised to line his pockets at an unbelievable scale.

  • zephorah@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    And he’s just been put in charge of destroying all the things fed side that actually do help the working class.

    This, our situation, could be worse. And this South African child of Apartheid has the power to make it so.

  • Ultimately, there can be only one, which is why J. P. Morgan scared Andrew Carnegie quite a bit. They just didn’t get to the part where Morgan would actively bring Carnegie to ruin.

    The rich are tasty even to other rich, though they’ll eat the rest of us first because we can’t defend ourselves or escape.