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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • Musk, like Trump, is a narcist who loves to see himself in the news. Like a toddler deprived of parental love, he, like Trump, will frequently “act out” by saying outrageous things on social media to get any kind of attention from people.

    Musk only cares about leaving his mark on the world, to gain immortality. He would prefer to be loved for eternity, but if he can’t, then being hated for eternity is an acceptable second prize. This is why he started off talking big about taking humanity to Mars, but now spouts right-wing hate.




  • In this entire debate, you haven’t made any logical arguments. You have only started and ended with a single assumption, that being in possession of great wealth inherently makes you a bad person.

    I’m currently reading the Ender’s Game series, and just finished the 2nd book, Speaker for the Dead. Mild spoilers follow.

    Ender has been doing a lot of near-lightspeed travel, so due to time dilation, he is now about 3000 years old. He has a sentient AI friend who has been making investments in his name during his travels, so he has inadvertently become possibly the wealthiest human in existence. However, he never asked his friend to make those investments, and he only found out when he asked for her help with a problem one day. His wealth is rarely mentioned for the rest of the book.

    He wasn’t living a life of luxury before he found out about his wealth, and still doesn’t, and he’s too busy with protagonist stuff to devote any time to philanthropy; money just isn’t part of his identity or decision making. He helps lots of people in his adventures, but not using his money, and most things he or they need can’t be bought anyway. His wealth is just another tool to be used as needed, but it’s far from his most useful or important one.


  • In the modern world of fiat currencies, crypto currencies, stocks, and other fictitious denominations of value, I wouldn’t assume that having great wealth necessarily means that you are hoarding resources away from the greater public. In fact, people with massive bank accounts cannot withdraw all of their money even if they tried, because banks only hold a fractional reserve on the assumption that the overall sums of withdrawals will be balanced out by the overall sums of deposits.

    Money by itself is worthless, it is tokens to be traded for goods and services. No matter how much money you have, you cannot buy more than what is willingly for sale to you, and money that sits never spent may as well not exist.

    If a hacker got into your bank account, and added many zeros without your consent or knowledge, are you now a bad person?


  • Too tired to read logical arguments? Comfortable in your assumption that all rich people are bad people, based on your distaste for the few famous rich people who are constantly in the news? The vast majority of the world’s billionaires prefer to stay anonymous.

    Not that I’m pointing out any specific rich people as good people, I’m just pointing out the illogic of automatically linking a person’s moral qualities with their wealth without knowing anything else about them. Would you assume the contrapositive, that all poor people are good people?


  • There’s a lot of arguments here based on emotions and assumptions rather than logic.

    I don’t think any person is simply “good” or “bad”. A person can perform a “good” deed one moment, and a “bad” deed the next. When people look at someone and judge if they are a “good” or “bad” person, they are usually either: 1) judging that person by the overall sum of their publicly known deeds, or 2) judging that person by deeds they have performed for (or against) the judger.

    Being in possession of great wealth is not a deed. A person can come in possession of great wealth relative to other people in a society without taking any action (e.g. inheritance, etc) or without taking any evil action (e.g. winning the lottery, taking profit from a sufficiently large business that doesn’t perform any ethical violations, etc).