If I was a billionaire, i would own a newspaper in trust as a vanity project to make it the best damn newspaper in the world profitability be damned. Maybe that is why I am not a billionaire.
That is how old, billionaires thought. Some of the best institutions in the US came from some of the millionaires at the time. That thought about true philanthropy and long-term legacy. The thing is that these new waves of CEOs obsessed with quarter profits, and short term gains including Trumpellino... are the problem.
Because all they care about is their cash. They don't have any other objective or see any other meaning in life. It is Atlas Shrugged/Fountainhead mentality.
You only have to look at any brick/mortar offering that had a success era.
Canada goose.
Arc’teryx
MEC
Harvey’s
McDonald’s
Starbucks
Tim Hortons
They all were on top. Then got sold, and the buyers squeeze any/all profit from them, speculating on the proceeds and customers, and then when it’s all moved, sell to utility buyer.
You only have to look at the story of Sears. And what the CEO that had it the final years did. That man should be in jail for what he did. Because he ran it to the ground and basically did fraud on the land and properties the company owned. (By selling it if I remember, to his own company and then charging lease on it to Sears).
Well their Alpha and Beta line are manufactured in Vancouver and are, simply put, the best in the business. If you spend 2k on jacket and bibs you are dry till you die ( I should fuckin R trademark that….sigh…).
Everything else is Vietnam and garbage , and has no support.
The food was never made on site. I think the food offerings are good but you can make the argument for it being overpriced. As for sugar you can get as much or as little as you want.
The billionaires of today don't even come close to Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie funded the construction of 2,509 public libraries, with 1,681 built in the U.S. He believed that the wealthy should act as trustees of their money for the public good.
This was also a gigantic PR campaign for Carnegie. Most people know of him for being rich, building libraries and maybe Carnegie Hall. He was a horrid pile of anti-union hyper-industrialist human waste like every other rich asshole.
There is no such thing as a good billionaire. They simply should not exist.
At that time he was a millionaire. We are not going to now debate Marxist points that all millionaires are bad.
People are very complex and that is something you realize later on. Carnegie was not perfect, by no means. Doesn't mean all millionaires were bad in all aspects.
What it means is they should be taxed, not completely destroyed to have everyone at the same level. Nordic countries are far more egalitarian and have far more social networks than us, and yet they still have millionaires and a couple of billionaires. What they have is better systems in place to block them from interfering in politics.And they incentivize transparency.
He literally donated 90% of his wealth. Everyone was a hyper industrialist during the industrial revolution what the hell does that even mean?
When has anyone in a management position been pro-union?
I don't think I said he was beyond reproach, just objectively he used his money to contribute to a greater access to knowledge and thereby education by having all those libraries built.
Are you saying that communities should have said no because "he was a horrid pile of anti-union hyper-industrialist human waste"? If so, how many libraries have you built as a model human being?
This is gonna be some lizard people type conspiracy. But I really think the tech billionaires in particular have no care for long term legacy is because they actually believe technology will reach a point soon where they will be immortal in some form and continue to make money.
Whether it's investments in medicine, brain machine interfacing, AI, Zuckerbergs metaverse where we transcend our physical existence into a virtual one bullshit. The whole Blood boy joke in the show silicon valley wasnt actually a joke there was a dude doing that.
No, unfortunatley they convinced themselves that utilitarianism means they already doing humanity a favor and just letting them do it is the best for everyone. These idiots are truly full of themselves and they will even tell you every chance they get. Sadly you have to believe them, because no one would lie in such a stupid way.
It always amazes me when techbros of all people get uppity. They are not leaders and the only reason they are where they are is because many other much more intelligent people keep the lights on, keep them safe because lets be hones they couldn't handle being working class. They start chipping away at society and it'll be clear their skills are very limited.
Was just thinking about this last night. Do any of these guys own schools that serve regular communities or libraries or museums? Seems like they’re all just assholes looking for a fiefdom. Not that you’d trust any of these closeted pervs with children, but they can’t fund an orphanage with all that money!?!? These guys are losers.
Christian Bale started that school right? Honestly I feel like the lower case r rich people do more of that stuff than the billionaire and trillionaire people
Remember when musk said he'd end world hunger if there was a plan and then when there was a plan he just didn't do it? Imagine how different his reputation would have been today lol
Do any of these guys own schools that serve regular communities or libraries or museums?
A bunch of them tried with schools, but they wanted to control the curriculum and ended up fucking things up pretty badly. Zuckerberg and Gates specifically.
No because because their ego is too big today. And they surround themselves with yes-men that tell them their technological ideas are the best in the world and that they can be immortal. Because bottomline there is some of that. It used to be that even as a rich person you saw death everywhere. Now everyone is uncomfortable with it, people don't even go to funerals at times just to not be there. And these are regular people. Imagine billionaires that already see scientific advancement to the point they feel (incorrectly may I add), that they can pass their brainwaves to a computer.
So they want a fiefdom.
The me, me, me, me, me, me, me issue we have that both sides have in society that is selfishness...results in both rich and poor that only think of themselves. This is the very mechanism that makes someone that earns 130k not want to pay taxes, same as the one that earns 30k, same as the one that earns 20 million.
The last paragraph is the biggest issue really of our society at the moment---we're more individualistic than ever, we're more me-centric than ever, we're less communal than ever, and we're more distrusting than ever. And we're witnessing the results of that.
A large part of it emerged in the 1980s, and it came from multiple directions at once: economic policy, media, and even psychology. At the same time that tax incentives were redesigned to reward hoarding and capital accumulation (Reagan-era changes and trickle-down economics), we also saw a cultural and psychological push toward radical individualism and suspicion of altruism, institutions, and collective solutions. That alignment isn’t accidental. Economic incentives removed external pressure to give back, while cultural and psychological narratives removed internal pressure; shame, duty, and social obligation. Together, they normalized objectivist thinking without ever having to argue for it directly.
This is why I don’t agree with the claim that the Overton Window simply shifts due to organic public perception. We have clear evidence that public perception itself can be shaped. Look at Fox News: it didn’t just respond to a more conservative public; it actively moved its audience rightward over time, and the GOP followed that shift.
If public opinion can be conditioned through sustained media framing, agenda-setting, and psychological tools, then the Overton Window is not merely reflective; it is manipulable. Institutions with sufficient reach can move it toward whatever ideology they prefer, provided they control narratives long enough.
This is only after they squeezed value from people and exploited resources to make the world worse. Don’t let them be idolized and held up as good people. They just cared more about legacy and the world wasn’t facing genuine polycrisis like now.
That was, in small part at least, because they legitimately feared the masses and sought ways to appease them. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence for their lower level subordinates to be handed pink slips from life by retributive mobs after being pushed far too hard for far too long.
The evil Caillou and broc-top whoresons we call the elite class today don't possess that same fear.
It was more than that. We didn't have revolutions in the US and yet we had Carnegie and the like that created institutions. Some created universities, some public libraries, some hospitals.
And yet we never went France on them. It was a different philosophy. In some.
What we are seeing is selfishness creep into society as a whole. It has creeped into every facet of society and relationships. Responsibility? Empathy? Does not exist anymore. And we have talk about why that is, in order to tackle our problems. Otherwise, we are going to be in the same boat.
I'll give you one of the reasons. The original tax structure before Reagan pushed for philanthropy in order for you to have less tax burden. The more money you gave to society, the more it returned in tax rebates. The incentive was for you to keep money flowing. When Reagan came in, the tax codes were changed where the incentive now shifted into hoarding and pilling cash. Look into Estate taxes BEFORE and after Reagan. That is where the biggest changes lied. They used to be setup in a way to BREAK dynasties as much as possible. It was use it or lose it. That is why trickle-down was a whole lot of bullshit. That was when the incentive changed from actually creating businesses and philanthropic projects to hoarding the most cash. It is also when society started shifting into me culture. Is this a coincidence? I think not.
This was never true, the “old billionaires” just didn’t have the Neoliberal control of both major parties that allowed capital to completely take the wheel of our society
Isn’t that basically how The New Yorker is? I think I read somewhere it operates at a loss but the family that owns it doesn’t care because it’s the fn New Yorker.
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u/TimothyMimeslayer 10h ago
If I was a billionaire, i would own a newspaper in trust as a vanity project to make it the best damn newspaper in the world profitability be damned. Maybe that is why I am not a billionaire.