I Don't Think People Understand How Bad Billionaires Really Are

It's not their greed that's the problem....

Photo by Mackenzie Marco on Unsplash

Billionaires are a problem. They are a problem that come directly from neoliberal extremism (which is the era we are living in now).

This is because neoliberal extremism is the pursuit of money at all and every cost. Gaza is just one manifestation of how far it will go without even a shrug. The Democratic Republic of Congo is another.

It's not really accurate to say ‘neoliberal extremism’, as neoliberalism by definition is an extremist ideology, and the adjective is not needed.

From elaborate tax loopholes - completely intentionally designed, ‘non-dom’ status, forex trading (the inexplicable treating of currency as a commodity), to making millions from money just sitting in a bank through usury, the game is rigged to favour the rich and for the rich to get richer by doing nothing. In Islam, this type of money-making is called Riba, and it is banned. I know we are all meant to hate the big, scary Muslims who block our roads on Fridays when they have the audacity to spend 20 minutes of their week showing appreciation to God and putting money in the charity box, but if we had an Islamic economic system, it’d be extremely difficult to have billionaires. Islamic law directly challenges billionaires and is the single biggest threat to neoliberalism money hoarding. Next time you read a dog-whistle BS Muslim hate story, published by billionaire tax avoiders, maybe you’ll now understand why.

Yes billionaires are greedy. They have a very real addiction to money - they always want more though they have more than enough.

We are humans and we are limited. Our bodies are limited. The numbers of our years is limited. The hours of our days are limited. The amount we are physically able to do and physically able to consume, is limited. In fact, everything on earth is limited in exactly the same way.

However, despite these limits, neoliberal extremism always wants more. Billionaires are the personification of this extremism and embrace it's ideology. This is arguably where a sense of psychopathy comes in. It is completely irrational to try to pursue unlimited wealth when there are only limited resources to generate that wealth. But that's what neoliberal extremism wants. And it is, in my very humble opinion, a form of insanity.

Because we are limited, neoliberalism simply invented the printing of money via the fractional reserve banking system to create an ‘unlimited’ money supply. In short, the fractional reserve banking system permits banks to create faux money from actual money deposits, at a certain ratio. For example, let's take the ratio 1:9. This means for every relationship £100 you put in the bank, the bank is allowed to ‘create’ an extra £90 to loan out. It therefore has a ledger of £190, despite only have £100 of real money, and £90 is this faux money which is simply numbers on a screen or a spreadsheet. In other words, the bank us allowed to print money. (If it sounds complicated, you're right, it is. It is designed to be so the average Joe can't keep up with the machinations of exploitation around him. However, watch this excellent documentary which explains it well.)

This creation of money from thin air in turn allows the banks to create ‘unlimited growth’ from limited resources. It's all a trick and it's not real money, but the neoliberal system treats it as ‘real money.’ With this fake money, a bank is able to give you a loan, such as a mortgage. If you default on your mortgage, the bank can take your house. In other words, from this fake money, loaned out to the average Joe who could not pay it back with the added interest, they end up with a real, tangible asset, i.e., real wealth. This is how the banks become rich in real terms. It’s all a duplicitous trick and nothing more than common theft.

By creating this fake money, the banking system inflates the economy with debt and credit, leading to artificial booms that inevitably result in devastating busts. In other world it creates fake and relentless bubbles of ‘growth’ that relies on over-leveraging, environmental degradation, and the exploitation of human beings and the earth. The bubbles always pop, and everyone but the billionaires bear the brunt.

But I go back to limits. We are LIMITED. That means we cannot do everything, we cannot experience everything, we cannot be everywhere, we cannot eat or drink everything, we cannot sleep with everyone.

This means at some point in time, you will reach a point that you cannot physically do anything more. This means, if you have made money in order to do things, you will reach a point where any money beyond a certain threshold can no longer benefit you: you simply cannot use it on yourself, as you reach the limits of your human, physical capacity to do more.

This is where every, single billionaire is at. They cannot personally receive any single further benefit from their money. And they know this. But yet, they want more and go to great lengths to get more.

Why?

Because, being a billionaire is not about hoarding wealth to use for oneself, but actively working to deprive everyone else from the Earth’s resources.

That is the mindset of the billionaire.

It is not about growth. It is about depriving others.

The more billions they have, the greater they deprive the rest of us of the resources of the Earth.

It is for this reason why billionaires are so dangerous. It isn’t that they are greedy; it is that they want to ensure others do not have anything. They actively work for this. They can never benefit from their billions; but by hoarding billions, they can prevent you and I - and the majority of the world- from having a fair, just and equitable life.

Don’t believe me? It is estimated it would cost $70 billion to end world hunger. Elon Musk has over $400 billion, double that of the second richest man on earth. But he will not spend that money to end world hunger; as deprivation of others is the name of the game. The more you can deprive, the bigger the adrenalin rush.

We are gaslit and propagandised and told the poor don’t like billionaires due to jealousy.

However, true jealousy emanates from billionaires who, with no community of their own, set out to destroy communities all around the world, and take from them the very earth they need to survive, just because they can.

And when you realise that, you’ll understand how evil it is to court billions upon billions upon billions.