Good as far as we know until they get Cosby’d

  • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    If they were genuinely good people they wouldn’t be in the 1%.

    Being 1% is not just rich, not just disgustingly rich, you needed to have exploited BILLIONS of people for DECADES and had no moral qualms about it. If you did, you would have stopped long before you reached that high.

    It’s like asking if any 1st degree murderers did it by accident.

    • dehyzer@piefed.social
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      21 hours ago

      Seems like everyone is getting the 1% confused with billionaires. The average 1%er is something like a doctor or a plumber that owns his own business, not the assholes floating around on superyachts.

    • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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      1 day ago

      That doesn’t sound like the 1%. There are 3.6 million 1%ers in the US alone, by definition. Being in the 1% might you very comfortable but it won’t necessarily make you an evil overlord. For that I suspect you need to be in the 0.001% (meaning there’s 3600ish in the US, a more manageable group of absolute bastard. There aren’t 3.6 million disgustingly rich people in the US.

  • Samus Crankpork@beehaw.org
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    1 day ago

    If you have enough money to be in the 1% and choose to keep it to remain in the 1% instead of using it to right the many many wrongs in the world, you can’t be a good person.

    Just having that much money, and not using it is a moral failing.

  • vfreire85@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    it’s not a moral problem per se. it doesn’t matter if members of the so called 1% are personally good or bad. if they reached those positions then they are performing roles that are prejudicial for the society.

    politics is less about people’s morality or intentions. it’s about what they effectively do.

  • muusemuuse@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Being that powerful and wealthy doesn’t happen without doing horrible things. Then, once a person achieves that status, the pressures change and they just become worse.

  • davel@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Bourgeois class traitors are a rare breed, and bourgeois class traitors in powerful positions are a pipe dream. The capitalist class—which owns the means of production and gets its wealth by expropriating surplus value from the working class’ wages or by rent-seeking—are not going to save us.

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    It’s not possible. They’ve Hoover’d up money and direct where it’s used.

    At any point they could give emough back to the people to become less then billionaires. But they don’t.

    • stevestevesteve@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I have a benefit of the doubt thing here, not that any billionaire I’ve heard of deserves it. If I suddenly had a billion dollars, would I donate to an existing charity with an administration I don’t know and trust or would I think “hmm I can better choose what happens with this money” and start my own charitable enterprise? Like a bill/Miranda Gates situation.

      I know if I had a billion dollars worth of shares of a company I wouldn’t necessarily liquidate it all for philanthropy either. Do I hold onto control of these stocks while attempting to guide the company in a more ethical way? Idk. It’s an interesting thought

    • AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Mark Cuban is the closest I can think of. Most of his wealth came from stocks he received when he sold his dot com business to Yahoo. He’s invested a bunch after that. Now he does some decent things like his at cost prescriptions. He definitely seems personable and understands that he is extremely lucky.

  • zbyte64@awful.systems
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    3 days ago

    Being a billionaire is like staying alive long enough to be a villain. They were great at something but nothing justifies holding that much power for so long.

  • Roguelazer@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Jeff Atwood (stack overflow and discourse cofounder) seems pretty cool for someone who made a shitton of money in tech. Everyone I know who’s met him says he’s a nice and normal human being, and he’s currently funding a UBI program as well as giving copiously to high-quality charities.