politics

To me it’s not about being “rich” or a billionaire, it’s about staying “Rich” by exploiting others OR the law. Trump is a prime example of human trash that has millions(Or billions if you believe him) but he’s just about the poorest person I have ever heard of him you measure his integrity.

Hey! In a labor camp they can learn the meaning of a days hard work.

We had an economic plan for this almost a century ago. It was called the "euthenasia of the rentier class" advocated by john Maynard Keynes. I guess we didn't expect the rentier to also control the financial system.

Love Bill. The Monday morning podcast got me through the pandemic.

Im scared for my ole bald Billy. He has to be careful.

1.5 people died during hurricane Katrina.

For every billion in a billionaires hands, how many lives are lost? It can probably be quantified.

Using this paper, we can calculate a number of deaths per megawatt of energy consumed (using global averages). If the planet consumes 17,000 TWh annually, and there are 10 million deaths annually, thats about 0.0006 deaths per MWh.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33577774/

Just quick and dirty numbers but from some lazy searching the following companies used..

Samsung: Nearly 30 TWh in 2023. Google: Approximately 25 TWh in 2023. Microsoft: Around 23.5 TWh in 2023.

Samsung:

30,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=18,000 deaths

Google:

24,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=14,400 deaths

Microsoft:

24,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=14,400 deaths

Now these big tech companies don't all use fossil fuels, but we're just trying to get into a ball park... so lets continue as if they had used all fossil fuels.. Samsung:

18,000 deaths/ 17.92 billion USD≈1,004 deaths per billion USD

Google (Alphabet):

14,400 deaths/ 94.2 billion USD≈153 deaths per billion USD

Microsoft:

14,400 deaths/ 69.02 billion USD≈209 deaths per billion USD

So we can estimate some where between maybe 100 and 1000 deaths per billion dollars for these tech companies. Now of course how you make those billions matters (maybe). For example, we can do the same thing with Exxon mobile, which represents 3.7% of global emissions. 10,200,000 deaths×0.037≈377,400 deaths. 377,400/ 37 billion, Exxons 2024 profits gives us 11,200 deaths per billion.

We can of course also divide this out to get to about how much profit is generated before a single person dies. Maybe this could be considered the lower limit where profit extraction should be considered criminal

In the lower end scenario, it would be at between 6.5 million dollars and one million dollars in profit extraction would relate to at least 1 lost life. Obviously extremely rough numbers, but if we look at some one like Musk, allegedly worth 500 billion, that would relate to between 100k and 500k deaths their profit extraction is directly responsible for.

And of course this is only from particulate matter emissions from emissions. There are many, many other externalizes not quantified here. It also isn't fully representative because, yes, many companies do purchase renewables (Amazon claims to be renewable) but this probably gets us close enough to start having a more serious dialogue about the relationship between extractive capitalism and consequences to human life. Based on these back of the napkins, it would seem like every billionaire should be considered responsible for, at a minimum, at least one lost life.

And to put that into Hurricane terms, Elon Musk represents around 300 hurricane Katrinas.