this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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Where my Orcas at?
As a sailor, it bugs me when I hear this sentiment. Orcas can't do anything to mega-yachts. The billiionaires are completely unaffected. The boats that they attack and damage are the sailboats in the 35 to 50-foot range, that is, the kind of boats that I might be able to buy, if I were motivated enough. (Like, $200,000, rather than $250,000,000.)
If you have 200k to spend on a boat that isn't your livelihood, that's nice, but I need you to stand up against this wall for a moment
You do know that the working poor and a neurosurgeon are much, much closer in terms of money than a neurosurgeon and a billionaire, right? The neurosurgeon that I know is fabulously well-off, but his net worth is a rounding error compared to a the 0.01%.
Define "fabulously well off" and explain why they deserve that and someone who works twice as many hours to feed twice as many people does not?
You need "just" 30 million dollars to be in the global 0.01% BTW. Not a rounding error. Again, you've let the fact America has created a few actual supervillains get in the way of recognising where actual inequality begins.
Thirty million is a rounding error for a billionaire. Anyway, good luck effecting change by making an enemy of everybody.
You don't get it. We have billionaires - trillionaires - because we allowed millionaires to happen.
Both are problems. One is the direct result of the other though.
How about you save your bullets for the actual, child eating billionaires instead of some guy who is just kinda well off, huh?
On a global scale, anyone dropping 200k on a pleasure boat, lets assume they have a net wealth of at least 1 million (insane to spend 1/5th of your wealth on a toy but anyway...), is in the top 0.1%. It's not "kind of well off".
Even possessing 200k dollars puts you in the top 5%.
People don't understand numbers and that's ok. You let one lunatic have a trillion and now you're excusing the 0.1% as "kind of well off".
A lot people can earn a million dollars by scrimping and saving for years. This includes many everyday working people who happen to make a decent salary. A billionaire only gets there by exploitation and taking advantage of others, you can't save up a billion dollars by having a good job and being thrifty. If somebody works a job for 30 years, saves, and then wants to buy a boat to retire on then good for him. They are not the enemy.
I've just explained to you that in the unrealistic circumstances that someone with 1,000,000 buys a boat for 200,000, that puts them in the top 0.1% of global wealth. Again, what part of that says "everyday worker" to you?
Someone who owns $1 million is maybe like 5 years away from complete bankruptcy if they drop $200k to purchase a boat.
There is a reason people say that boats are "a hole in the water to throw your money into". They cost a literal fortune to maintain.
Nobody with "just" $1 million can afford to buy and maintain a $200,000 boat.
You can if the boat is also your home. That's what I meant when I said I could buy one if I were really motivated.
But yeah, you're right, anybody with $1 million who buys a $200,000 boat as a toy is bad with money.
And this is ignoring the fact that boats cost an absolute fortune to maintain. That $200k is just the beginning.
As my dad who grew up sailing says, "a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into."
There's nothing you can do to them that's worse than they're already doing to themselves by owning a boat.
Besides, they're talking about the kind of boat that you'd see in every harbor all over the world, not some monument to greed:
It's no 15 foot Boston Whaler, but there's hundreds of boats that size in every harbor and marina you can think of.
Yes, and they cost a shit ton of money to own. Most of the people who own those boats literally own multiple houses.
Lemmy ahh comment
Orcas wouldn't do anything to those yachts... If they went swimming / fell overboard then yeah.