I made a low effort post a couple months ago about Gabe Newell having a fleet of yachts, which some people shared, and then those posts did absolute severals, and still do - recently I woke up to having 99+ notifications and it was all just interactions on those shared posts - so as it's doing the rounds again it made me think more about me using the hashtag #it's morally okay to murder billionnaires
Which, okay, I'm obviously not gonna die on that hill, it's just some edgelord shit that I said because sometimes it's funnier to just omit any nuance and refuse to elaborate. Weirdly I don't think that jumping to murder is OK without exhausting all other options first! Let's say we give them a generous deadline - I dunno, a year - to redistribute everything, in a sensible and direct way, to easily agreeable places until they're under A Bil (which is still, really, way too much but let's start there). Really though I'm a big softie and I don't got it in me to punch a guy, let alone release a guillotine blade. And hey, that money would just flow right to their kids who will have the same elaborate secure setup.
But if I was to unpick that statement, what I really think is something like: #we should distribute the wealth of billionnaires by any means necessary
I'm not a Marxist Theory Bigbrain Girl, much as I do feel a deep connection to the criticisms of capitalism and the potential we could fulfil under other societal systems, I'm not especially educated other than just huffing that commie shit for the past several years as I've only slid more and more to the left with age, as a product of my environment and experiences.
So before we upend our entire global economic system, what do we do with that money they hoard and how do we get it out of their mitts? I do like the whole deadline idea, but aside from that, what is there: Mr. Robot-esque hacking attack into their bank accounts? Findomming them into oblivion? Blow Up A Pipeline Safe Deposit? Rationally debate them into having a change of heart (lmao)? It's obviously not that simple when they have the resources to cleverly stash their fortune and worth in different places - some hidden, some in self-established charitable organisations.
Can we even do anything without crumbling the organisations and structures which all of our own tiny fortunes are saved in?
Maybe we just annoy them, and become their personal wasp swarm. Find out where they live, or some way to get direct proximity, and just make their life incredibly annoying with the use of alarms, throwing rocks at windows, graffiti, sink their yachts, make them unable to sleep until they get the point. Get real personal with it.
I think the same about bigoted and hateful news print organisations that are owned by the moguls at the top, and serve the system that allows them to stay there. Can you safely disable the printing mechanisms via subterfuge? Would it have to be all done at the same time to prevent an escalation of security in their other organisations using their deep coffers?
But that's a whole other tangent.
Gabe Newell, in this example, earned his money "fairly" by establishing a business that was incredibly successful and has evaded any public desire for a reduction in how much of a cut they take from developers/publishers. But I don't think that should entitle someone to keeping all of it. A person should be taught, and inherently know, that at some point, you have orders of magnitude more money than anyone ought to have, and it is on you to give away the excess (and still be extremely rich!), because you do not need it and the world is in inequal turmoil.
You could equally split that money amongst your employees at the very least. You can divide it equally and provide direct donations to public schools. Publically funded scientific institutions. Hospitals and fire services. You can buy out, and build, houses to be provided to the homeless. This is real basic shit here that I'm are the first things to come out of my uneducated mind.
But how?