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Rising inequality is turning US into an autocratic state, billionaire warns
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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politics
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Dragon hoard doesn’t really describe what it’s like.
It’s more like going in to work every day, like everybody else at the office, sitting in meetings all day, and then watching the stock price shoot up until one day your net worth crosses 1,000,000,000.
It’s like getting a high score in a video game. There’s no mountain of cash in some warehouse. It’s just a number on a screen.
You seem like you're doing your best to downplay all the amoral decisions that exploit millions of people in your description of a passive income generating a billion dollars. No one generates a billion dollars passively and no one does it without ignoring a significant amount of suffering along the way.
Do you have an example of a particular billionaire you’d like to discuss?
My example would be Google. Founded in 1998, IPO in 2004. That’s essentially when Sergey Brin became a billionaire.
We can all point to bad things Google has done over the years but I’m having a hard time finding any of them that occurred before 2004. Who are the millions of people that Sergey Brin exploited between 1998 and 2004?
Note that Google had only 2500 employees in 2004 and almost all of them became millionaires on the day of the IPO.