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which ones do you think I missed?

image transcription:

big collage of people captioned, “the only people I wouldn’t have minded being billionaires”
names(and a bit of info, which is not included in the collage) of people in collage(from top left, row-wise):

  • Alexandra Elbakyan, creator of Sci-Hub. perhaps the single-most important person in the scientific community regarding access to research papers.
  • Linus Torvalds, creator of linux kernel and git, courtesy of which we have GNU/Linux.
  • David Revoy, french artist famous for his pepper&carrot, a libre webcomic. inspiration for artists who are into free software movement
  • Richard Stallman, arch-hacker who started it all. founded the GNU project, free software movement, Emacs, GCC, GPL, concept of copyleft, among many other things. champions for free software to this day(is undergoing treatment for cancer at the moment).
  • Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VLC media player for 2 decades now
  • Ian Murdock, founder of Debian GNU/Linux and Debian manifesto. died too soon.
  • Alexis Kauffmann, creator of framasoft, a French nonprofit organisation that champions free software. known for providing alternatives to centralised services, notable one being framapad and peertube.
  • Aaron Swartz, a brilliant programmer who created RSS, markdown, creative commons, and is known for his involvement in creation of reddit. he also died too soon.
  • Bram Moolenaar, creator of vim, a charityware.

on the bottom right is the text reading, “plus the thousands of free software enthusiasts working tirelessly.”

rockettaco37 ,
@rockettaco37@lemmy.world avatar

I’m sorry, but Stallman is an asshole…

idk837384 ,

I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

blackn1ght ,

None of them. I don’t care who they are, nobody should be a billionaire.

puppy ,

I think they aren’t billionaires precisely because they worked for the good of the internet/knowledge.

If they indeed became billionaires that would imply that how they conduct themselves had completely been altered along with their core beliefs.

m13 ,

None of these people could ever be billionaires. Only a sociopathic, narcissistic mind could ever do what it takes to hoard a billion dollars. Capitalism rewards having a lack of empathy for other people.

riodoro1 ,

Richard Stallman

Are you sure about that one?

lolcatnip ,

If you’re talking about what he’s accused of saying, he did not say that. People kept repeating a badly garbled version of what he said that makes him sound awful, even though his actual words are easy to find and completely disprove the accusations.

topinambour_rex ,
@topinambour_rex@lemmy.world avatar

So what he been accused of saying that he didn’t said ?

misophist ,

Some examples are mentioned in this article

topinambour_rex ,
@topinambour_rex@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah I read this article, or his comment about how it’s only natural for adult to be attracted to adolescents. I was more interested by @lolcatnip answer. But as a billionaire, he could buy tons of feet cheese.

Nacktmull ,
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

Nope, there should not be any! Fuck capitalism!

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7bcc4f82-2519-4bf6-9e9d-1414de79092e.jpeg

4lan ,

right, Swartz totally cared about no one else…

go suck on Musk’s toes or something

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d7bd0bc7-7e6c-438e-baa9-0edb191abb5c.jpeg

4lan ,

You’ve completely changed my mind

HubertManne ,

no one should be billionaires.

LesserAbe ,

Reminds me of this tweet from Merman_Melville: “Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it’s probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day” The experience itself is probably harmful and changes the person. https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/18e0c77d-e341-4343-bbeb-80a0c47c8be9.png

Bishma ,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Studies have shown that people change at a certain amount of money, like they cross a line in the sand. When you can buy anything everything just becomes yours by default in your mind. And anyone who can’t do that are basically sheep dogs - useful but not worth your time. These studies were done in the twenty-tens and the number then was between 20 and 30 million for most people. Imagine your view on the world if you have 100 times that amount.

Professorozone ,

Whew! Dodged that bullet.

SpongyAneurism ,

Lucky you!

AllonzeeLV ,

No one should have that much power.

I wouldn’t have trusted Fred Rogers with a billion dollars, and he’s practically the only famous stranger I could have seen trusting with my newborn alone.

It’s a society warping level of wealth. No single, unelected, unaccountable person should possess that much uniltateral power.

The global allowance encouragement of such an exploitative, reckless goal is why we are in our various bleak situations.

dojan ,
@dojan@lemmy.world avatar

You need to be a horrible person to become a billionaire.

Rozauhtuno ,
@Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

You need to be a horrible person to become a billionaire

And to STAY a billionaire. If you have immense power to do good, and every single morning you wake and choose not to, you are an evil ghoul driven by greed, period.

BestBouclettes ,

Or divorcing Jeff Bezos.

Joke aside, apparently she has a hard time spending enough money to lower her net worth (currently at $40B). Which is an absolutely bonkers amount of money, no one ever should have that much.

HerbalGamer ,
@HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works avatar

As if a good person would’ve married him in the first place.

BestBouclettes ,

She married him in 1993 way before Amazon happened, maybe he wasn’t a gigantic ass back then. I don’t know much about her, but she seems decent from what I can see, she has donated massive amounts of money to charitable causes.

Cralder ,

It’s nice to appreciate people who do good things, but keep in mind that the only way people become billionaires is by exploiting people. So I would not want any of these people to be billionaires because it would mean they got that wealth not by doing good things, but by owning ridiculous amounts of capital and exploiting people.

Rant over, sorry.

lemmesay OP ,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

it’s alright mate. your rant helped me see things in a different light. so thank you.

ricecake ,

I could see someone making something useful and selling it to billions of people at a fair price not being exploitative and also being a billionaire.

I think it’s rare to the point of maybe happening once ever, but I’m not super upset about the behavior of the guy currently bankrolling the signal foundation.

maryjayjay ,

Paul McCartney is a billionaire. What people did he exploit?

I think Taylor Swift is now worth a billion dollars, despite being the exploited

RegalPotoo ,
@RegalPotoo@lemmy.world avatar

Simply by having a billion dollars means they have decided to hoard that wealth. They could give away 90% of it, leaving them with $100 million, it wouldn’t impact their quality of life in any way, and still leave them with more wealth than 99.9% of the planet. Imagine the good that $900 million could do if it was put to good use rather than sitting in a bank account as a status symbol - having the capability to do that good with no impact on yourself or your family and choosing not to makes you an immoral person.

Billionaires shouldn’t exist. At all.

maryjayjay ,

How much money should a person be allowed to have?

lolcatnip ,

A lot less than a billion. The exact amount is negotiable.

RegalPotoo ,
@RegalPotoo@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t know, but there probably should be a line somewhere. More wealth than 99.9% of the rest of the planet sounds like a good place to start

yesman ,

Well said. Thinking billionaires are assholes because they’re naturally shitty is like thinking they got rich by being naturally hard working.

Take landlords for example. You can be the nicest person in the world. The kind of person who makes friends with the tenant. What do you think happens to you after you’ve evicted a few of your friends?

Systems are a bitch.

Cosmicomical ,

Landlords are parasites in any case

Sagifurius ,

Ok, so who did Taylor Swift exploit? She literally is just a singer and the whole thing is odd, but it’s more she’s a billionaire because the currency is worthless.

dominiquec ,
@dominiquec@lemmy.world avatar

Her ex-boyfriends.

Sagifurius ,

oh no. they had to fuck taylor swift. boo fucking hoo

demonsword ,
@demonsword@lemmy.world avatar

her little private jet already put out more CO^2 this year alone than everyone on lemmy combined

billionaires are shitty people, period.

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

If they were billionaires, they likely wouldn’t be the people they are today.

lemmesay OP ,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I meant billionaires for their actions and creations, and not by birth like most techbros are.

Cralder ,

That’s worse. You see how that is worse right?

lemmesay OP ,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

yeah, now I do see that.

NAXLAB ,

That seems worse because it means they went out of the way to get so rich, rather than just having it handed to them.

lemmesay OP ,
@lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I was thinking more along the lines of “if they had that much money, their projects could’ve received more impact.”
like if free software would become mainstream.

though now I realise that’s an idealistic view and with money, people will become corrupt.

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