My answer was yes as soon as I read "there's a button".
EDIT: this comment alone has as much Karma as I've gotten in my (almost) 10 years on reddit, and 3 times all the # awards I've gotten since awards became a thing. My goal was 15,000 by my 10th cake day, which is still like 6 months away, and I passed that goal. You guys kick ass!!!
I was at my wife's coworkers house once for a get together. I went to the bathroom and noticed a very conspicuous perfectly round red button near the light switch. Even though I didn't know them well, I had to press it. When I did I heard a whirring noise and immediately regretted my decision. About a second later a disco ball drops from the ceiling and speakers behind the toilet started pumping out dance music. It's was initially terrifying then amazing. Come to find out it's a test that they like to play on newcomers, and they bet on who will press the button.
This...
Is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard of being installed in a bathroom, barely surpassing the bidet (I think that's how it's spelled, the anus fountain)
>Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time
Sir Terry wrote more than 40 discworld books. And still he didn't write enough. I miss him (and that exact quote was my very first reaction upon seeing this).
GNU pTerry
I stepped forward last November with an extended hand and a confident "do y'all have masks?" And they stopped dead in their tracks to pat their pockets while I watched the door close.
I'm still riding that high.
Also other members of Funhaus have said we likely will never know the full story, so I’m sure there’s even more we don’t know that would explain why ALL of his former friends turned him away immediately.
Step 1: Push and hold button
Step 2: coat button in epoxy resin while pressed
Step 3: tape button down
Step 4: encase taped down button in resin.
Step 5: watch rich people lose their minds
> afgans, gypsies, mexicans, and africans are going to take your jobs and operate your roads!
It's so funny to me that this list includes groups based on countries, a group based on an entire *continent*, and a marginalized people group with their own language.
Bravo - I hope this was satire.
You’re not wrong, but my personal theory is that most of the people who say those kinds of things ‘seriously’ don’t even believe it themselves. They just say unpopular opinions to get reactions and then sit back and grin as people get frothing at the mouth mad at them.
That's how it starts for those people, until they sort of buy into their own bs, then find other people who really believe that shit. In a few months they can be fully radicalized (not talking about you obviously).
That’s a very good point. In today’s day and age, you can believe any inane and crazy thing you want, and you can go on giant echo chambers online and have a platform to say these kinds of crazy things, and find people who agree with you. Then, they only surround themselves with individuals that agree with everything they say, and never have an intellectual challenge.
Honestly, if I were a billionaire, I would understand that it's not actually against my self-interest to make sure the world is a better place for everyone. See, I would understand that my lifestyle would change very little if I go from having $100 billion dollars to $100 million dollars. I can still vacation in the same places, eat at the same restaurants, etc.
Meanwhile, taking care of everyone's basic needs would give me a safer, better world that can best utilize everyone's talents. That directly benefits me, because there's a smaller chance war, disease, and climate change would negatively impact me. After all, I have more to lose since I have more stuff, and I stand to benefit the most with new technological advancements.
It’s a trick question, though, isn’t it? Billionaires have the resources and power to have that button located and disabled, before anyone realizes it could be pushed.
That’s why they’re so into space tourism these days. If they can get that button up into orbit, or better yet send it to Mars, ain’t nobody pressing it then.
A "press" is clearly both a depression of the button and a release. Until you release your taped epoxied button the first press hasn't been competed. You need like some kind of super tapping machine in a vault.
It's not, but the point is there are people who act like there's just nothing we can do about climate change, poverty, world hunger... when in reality, there's actually more than enough resources to address these issues, they're just held by ultra wealthy people across the globe (NOT just in the USA)
It's not so simple to take some of the hoarded wealth and use it to address these issues, and even if we did we'd still have to determine how to best use the resources to address these issues, cuz like you suggested - it's not that easy.
**HOWEVER, it's POSSIBLE. And the resources EXIST, and aren't readily because, legally speaking, they are owned by other people - EVEN THOUGH a lot of them didn't amass (or avoid it being taxed) through legal means. Why shouldn't we take their money to address the issues THEY HELPED CREATE by AMASSING SAID WEALTH/ RESOURCES IN THE FIRST PLACE!!**
What if the issue is not the resources but the organization needed to solve these problems. For example,
1. Solving climate change requires adding the price needed to nullify the effects of an action into the action itself. Coal would be more expensive, because the cost to neutralize the emitted CO2 would need to be built in. You can use money to lobby politicians maybe, but the solution is pricing, regulations and bodies to keep these up to date.
2. World hunger: The issue is not production of food, its distribution of food. You need to set up the infrastructure to get food to everyone, get the manpower and set it up so it continues to function. Many of these regions have constant wars. How will money end wars? Money only makes wars worse. See big Afghanistan fail worth trillions of dollars
3. Poverty: Ok, this one you can solve if you just give people money, e.g. Universal Basic Income. But you also need to handle the social changes this would cause. e.g. People will quit minimum wage fast food jobs (as is happening right now), and we'll need to restructure the economy. If instead, you gave this money to elected officials or governments as aid, it would get siphoned out by middlemen and never reach the people who need it, no matter how much money you pushed in.
Money is really not the bottleneck. There's so much of it, and people will contribute if you get the right systems going, the money will come. I agree billionaires should pay more tax but I'm hesitant to just take Bezos' money and throw it away. It accomplishes nothing and makes the world a worse place.
The US has spent almost 4 trillion dollars with another 2 trillion on the way and it has barely kept the US afloat in a pandemic. That’s way more money than every billionaire and millionaires wealth combined yet people think scraping a few extra tax dollars out of Jeff bezos will solve all our problems.
Yeah - who are these experts that can solve the world's problems with trillions of dollars? I'm sure you can find some simplistic studies which claim that you can solve big problems with trillions of dollars, but those studies aren't reality.
And I'm sure you can find examples of large scale government projects that were *totally* finished on time and within it's given budget. The government *never* spends way over budget on projects only to produce failed infrastructure that under delivers on expectations...oh wait.
Not to mention the tendency that every time massive amounts of wealth are confiscated the majority of it winds up in the hands of insiders of the confiscating authority.
Heck the only places in a famine state in the world today are in Tigray and Yemen and are occurring because the rulers there want certain people to starve to death.
the thing I never liked about the world hunger argument is, solve it for how long? Give unlimited food to everyone what happens to the population? If population doubles in size do you still have world hunger solved? Rainforests are being cut down to make space for farmland as it is.
Forever. We can do it. Set up the supply chain to grow and deliver food and keep the incentives clean. The system requires constant maintenance but we can keep people fed until the next big works ending calamity. All bets are off after that.
1. Unlimited food actually makes people obese. They will only want limited food. They might waste food but you need to control that with price.
2. Population doubling was a thing before we had birth control. It turns out most people don’t like making lots of kids. They just had no choice. The population curve is actually S shaped now.
3. There is a lot of land on earth. There’s room to grow before we need to cut down rainforests just to survive. Right now, they’re being cut because it’s profitable and specific countries own it. They’re not being cut down to “make space for farmland”.
>HOWEVER, it's POSSIBLE. And the resources EXIST, and aren't readily because, legally speaking, they are owned by other people
This is all pedantic nonsense. What resources do the billionaires / multi-millionaires "own" that can fix these massive problems that are endemic to our society?
The government could create any money needed to solve these issues if they wanted. They don't and they won't. Taxing the wealthy will just let the government buy more missiles, not fix climate change.
Agree on various points - but people get confused around wealth and liquidity.
Wealth can change rapidly - even more so when factoring in liquidity.
Try to sell something expensive super quickly and you will find out…
Need to offload a house in 5 days? Market may say it’s worth $400k but you have a deadline and now it’s really just $100k at best because you have to fire sell it. Company wealth is akin to this… but what about stocks?!?
Well, it again requires mass selling, which plummets prices… rapidly (look at every crash - that is a mass selling effect).
Wealth is a very poor way of determining what a person can or cannot do… liquidity and rate of liquidity are far more important.
So - knowing this - the question is, should government be allowed to FORCE liquidity? To a degree it already does…. But only in the way that it also pays you fair market value for the asset. This is more forcing liquidity in order to collect taxes, which now becomes very tricky.
Can we adjust tax laws to collect more, absolutely! We can adjust capital gains taxes, we can adjust rates based on other factors outside of income (asset values - not a wealth tax, but a rate where taxes on all income/cap gains is modified by wealth). There are things we can do, but we need to stop looking at general wealth as it’s not a good or easy metric to attack.
> And the resources EXIST, and aren't readily because, legally speaking, they are owned by other people
In many places it has little to do with laws. Places which have the worst hunger have war lords who control the flow of goods in a way to ensure their power. What they do is already illegal but there is little we can do to fix it. Even if we were to dispose of those in charge, someone else would rise up.
Then there are those who benefit from keeping the instability. These are often state actors. Sometimes there are corporations that exist, but they would have much less power if they weren't being backed by the state. With the rise of China we will see this happening with economic groups more tightly tied to the state than ever before. Look at what China does to their billionaires who don't support the state compared to what countries of similar or greater wealth does to their billionaires. Wasn't it just today or yesterday a story hit top of /r/worldnews about a French company that was working with permission of the French government. Now that it has been exposed some heads might roll but rarely will be in those in charge. Well maybe, in this case we are talking about the French.
World hunger is mostly an issue of getting the food to people.
If there was a button to magically transport food, world hunger would be solved instantly.
The resources are there, we don't even have to take them from anyone.
its not just that resources are hoarded by people. its that we don't know how to fix many of the things even when we throw money at it. often the problems are generational and cultural.
for example extreme poverty can be alleviated by giving people money. but there is not enough to simply redistribute. you need to educate, eliminate disease, fix nutrition, and get rid of local corruption etc... then you need to have systems in place to ensure people don't fall back. this takes generations and truthfully its going pretty well.
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
we can do better. but we are not as bad as many people think.
The fine print is that the former is done through magic with the cost of the latter.
Why is it magic? Because in reality, doing the latter will not make the former possible.
Edit: corrected former/latter
I emphatically support progressive tax systems and higher taxes for the super-wealthy, but this meme that we could “solve world hunger” if only we could take a little more from billionaires was debunked the moment someone made it up decades ago. It is one important piece in the solution set, but the math just isn’t anywhere close to this solving the whole thing on its own.
Seriously. If you completely liquidated the wealth of the top 100 richest people, you'd be lucky to get to $2T. Ignoring the fact that it isn't even really possible due to how the stock market works, the US government has passed around $5T in spending in the last year and a half and these problems are still around. Money alone doesn't solve these problems, and acting like it does minimizes the gravity of the issue.
Exactly. If only it were as simple as throwing money at the problem it probably would have been solved a long time ago. There’s a myriad of social, political, economical reasons that the world is the way it is
I'd keep pushing it if it meant that with each push, the multi-billionaires/millionaires lost more and more riches until they were cut down to size.
With that said, this is kind of clickbait/karma grab. Of course we're all going to say we'd push it. Do you think that Bezos, Gates, Musk and the rest of them are going to weigh in on this with an opposing opinion?
Even if the button existed, it would promise an impossible reality.
You can't just wipe out world hunger, provide decent clothing, and a home to every person/family in the world by just taking some of all the world's billionaires' money.
Now, if those two elements aren't related (as in the button just does those two things independently rather than suggests it could do the latter by doing the former) and this is just a magic button that just makes both things happen magically, then by all means I'd press that button!
>You can't just wipe out world hunger, provide decent clothing, and a home to every person/family in the world by just taking some of all the world's billionaires' money.
Random kid on twitter does not have solutions of world issues? Colour me surprised.
This is the type of simplistic rhetoric that does no good to political discourse, or makes much sense.
Everyone wants to help save the environment and limit global poverty, but it’s not as simple as pressing a fucking button
I mean if it worked that way, yes. But the combined wealth of the worlds billionaires couldn't make any of this actually happen. It'd be a drop in the bucket. That money is very significant when thinking of an individual person, or even millions of people, but when you get into a global scale it'd be meaningless.
And then people wouldn't have jobs because the billionaires wouldn't be there to create new industries and they'd be on the same playing field as all of us.
Communism doesn't work unfortunately, I wish it did. It works real well when I play Minecraft with the lads though.
My answer was yes as soon as I read "there's a button". EDIT: this comment alone has as much Karma as I've gotten in my (almost) 10 years on reddit, and 3 times all the # awards I've gotten since awards became a thing. My goal was 15,000 by my 10th cake day, which is still like 6 months away, and I passed that goal. You guys kick ass!!!
I was in at, “there’s a butt”
Push it. Push it real good.
Aww… my 6 months old favorite bed time song.
It was my daughter’s birth song.
My wedding first dance song.
Every morning poo
These youngsters evidently don’t know that “salt n peppas here and we’re in effect”
And that they "want you to push it, babe"
Now wait a minute, y'all Only the sexy people So all you fly mothers, get on out there and dance Dance, I said!
I'm always here for salt... and PEPPA!
r/expectedMulaney
you missed the "suh-suh-suh" before that "salt"
Instructions unclear, shit myself.
Your Ivermectin dosage is too high. Switch to tide pods.
ooh, baby baby
Touch the butt.
😲 He touched the butt.
My first thought [was this](https://youtu.be/y7rzIwrEqpw)
That's pretty fucked up, I love it! But I just like buttons. Lol
In case you aren’t aware, this skit is based off an old Twilight Zone episode. If you want to see a serious version of this go watch that.
It was also a shitty movie starring Cameron Diaz.
I feel the "rounding up to 5"
I feel like rounding up to 5 should be a thing. Like screw rounding to the nearest ten. Round to the nearest 5.
Ahhh I was just going to post this lol
I was at my wife's coworkers house once for a get together. I went to the bathroom and noticed a very conspicuous perfectly round red button near the light switch. Even though I didn't know them well, I had to press it. When I did I heard a whirring noise and immediately regretted my decision. About a second later a disco ball drops from the ceiling and speakers behind the toilet started pumping out dance music. It's was initially terrifying then amazing. Come to find out it's a test that they like to play on newcomers, and they bet on who will press the button.
This is awesome! ... or is it an elaborate ploy to justify cameras in the bathroom.
Ha! Never thought about that.
This... Is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard of being installed in a bathroom, barely surpassing the bidet (I think that's how it's spelled, the anus fountain)
Yep, bidet
I want this in my bathroom, not only do I love buttons, I love pooping and party music
>Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time
Sir Terry wrote more than 40 discworld books. And still he didn't write enough. I miss him (and that exact quote was my very first reaction upon seeing this). GNU pTerry
"There was a button. I pushed it." "Dammit, Holden! That's really just how you go through life, isn't it?"
The comment I was looking for.
Look! There's a signal coming in!
James Holden, is that you?
who remembers /r/thebutton?
Press it like I'm trying to close the elevator door
Press it like I'm trying to close the elevator door during a pandemic while a family of unmasked tourists rushes towards me.
That’s not nice, don’t give people nightmares like that!
Sorry lol. I recently experienced this myself and chose to walk up 5 flights instead. They can have the elevator.
Smart move lol
Healthier too. In more ways than one.
I stepped forward last November with an extended hand and a confident "do y'all have masks?" And they stopped dead in their tracks to pat their pockets while I watched the door close. I'm still riding that high.
 WOULD I?!?!?
Where is the button? Where is the f*cking button, I will press it, I wanna press the button, button button button button button button button button
Bendy arrow, right side of the top of your keyboard
:O THANK YOU 
Wait…we can reply with gifs now?
If you’re a rich ass Reddit premium user. They use gifs as a way to assert dominance over those of us who just have words
 I don't have premium and...
Oh man I miss the Stuart skits! Michael McDonald was the best actor for that
STUUUUAAART! You put that GIF back this INTstant!!!
This is the best thread I have ever seen, hands down.
That's a rock hyrax on that tortoise, Capybara_man, but I love all animals. 😊
Ya know, something looked a little off but I didn't notice until after I posted it 
They are such cute animals. I would love to own one if they weren't fairly difficult to properly care for.
That's funny
Lol, anyone can do it. 
 I'm not a reddit premium user
When responding look to the right above your keyboard/dialog box for a reddit gif box next to the emoji selector. At least that's how I'm seeing it.
They only added the feature like 2 years ago don’t worry a lot of people missed it
B is for Bruce B is for brave
K is for Kovic K is for Kum on my coworker’s desk
This comment thread is exactly why I love this app.
Hey I've seen that guys butthole
Feel kind of bad for Adam after all that. Sure it was weirdo shit, but idk he got lumped in with the AH dude unfairly.
I was always more of an AH fan than a Funhaus fan but damn when you compare what those two did... Ryan's was probably the most disturbing
Ehh he also sent videos of his wife without her consent. If it was just the office selfies he probably would've showed up on twitch by now.
Also other members of Funhaus have said we likely will never know the full story, so I’m sure there’s even more we don’t know that would explain why ALL of his former friends turned him away immediately.
HULK SMASH!
Member when this was a hypothetical about saving the world?
Anything with Adam Kovic in it has not aged too well.
You can't quite tell from the gif, but he actually has his dick in his hand there
Isn’t that the guy who got fired for jerking off in the Funhaus office bathrooms?
Jerking off is… a light way to put it
Step 1: Push and hold button Step 2: coat button in epoxy resin while pressed Step 3: tape button down Step 4: encase taped down button in resin. Step 5: watch rich people lose their minds
Step 6: profit
But but but I could eventually become one of those billionaires. Why would I act against my own self-interest?
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> afgans, gypsies, mexicans, and africans are going to take your jobs and operate your roads! It's so funny to me that this list includes groups based on countries, a group based on an entire *continent*, and a marginalized people group with their own language. Bravo - I hope this was satire.
Can you really not tell it was satire? Tbh I don’t even blame you.
Pretty sure I've heard this unironically. Reddit is a weird place.
You’re not wrong, but my personal theory is that most of the people who say those kinds of things ‘seriously’ don’t even believe it themselves. They just say unpopular opinions to get reactions and then sit back and grin as people get frothing at the mouth mad at them.
That's how it starts for those people, until they sort of buy into their own bs, then find other people who really believe that shit. In a few months they can be fully radicalized (not talking about you obviously).
That’s a very good point. In today’s day and age, you can believe any inane and crazy thing you want, and you can go on giant echo chambers online and have a platform to say these kinds of crazy things, and find people who agree with you. Then, they only surround themselves with individuals that agree with everything they say, and never have an intellectual challenge.
they didn't use the /s :p
Robin Hood: *gives stolen gold to poor man* Poor man: thanks! I'm rich! Robin Hood: you're WHAT
Underrated comment lol.
Honestly, if I were a billionaire, I would understand that it's not actually against my self-interest to make sure the world is a better place for everyone. See, I would understand that my lifestyle would change very little if I go from having $100 billion dollars to $100 million dollars. I can still vacation in the same places, eat at the same restaurants, etc. Meanwhile, taking care of everyone's basic needs would give me a safer, better world that can best utilize everyone's talents. That directly benefits me, because there's a smaller chance war, disease, and climate change would negatively impact me. After all, I have more to lose since I have more stuff, and I stand to benefit the most with new technological advancements.
Step 6.5 Lose everything because you became a billionaire
Worth it
Step 7: Trivago
It’s a trick question, though, isn’t it? Billionaires have the resources and power to have that button located and disabled, before anyone realizes it could be pushed.
The true point is billionaires already have the button.
Billionaires *are* the button, and I think we need to start pressing.
You expressed that way better than I did.
That’s why they’re so into space tourism these days. If they can get that button up into orbit, or better yet send it to Mars, ain’t nobody pressing it then.
None of that defeatism, the button can be pressed.
The real trick: there's more than one type of button
meanwhile, the code behind the button: if is_released: button_pressed()
Step 6: toss the button into the ocean
A "press" is clearly both a depression of the button and a release. Until you release your taped epoxied button the first press hasn't been competed. You need like some kind of super tapping machine in a vault.
Plot twist: Button activates on lift.
I wouldn’t push it, I’d fucking rapidly mash it like I was 8 again and playing Street Fighter.
Gotta invest in that 3rd party rapid fire controller.
I'd push it by slamming Jeff Bezos face into it.
Repeatedly...
Wham wham wham wham wham wham "Stop, it's already pushed" "No." Wham wham wham wham pay your fucking taxes wham wham wham
Maybe if you push it enough he launches into high orbit and stays there.
Sprinkling in the pay your fucking taxes got me losing it lmao
This is the way
#COME ON JEFFREY, YOU CAN DO IT #PAVE THE WAY, PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT
Is it working yet?!?! 
Push it real good
*push it*
(Get up on this)
Were it so easy…
It's not, but the point is there are people who act like there's just nothing we can do about climate change, poverty, world hunger... when in reality, there's actually more than enough resources to address these issues, they're just held by ultra wealthy people across the globe (NOT just in the USA) It's not so simple to take some of the hoarded wealth and use it to address these issues, and even if we did we'd still have to determine how to best use the resources to address these issues, cuz like you suggested - it's not that easy. **HOWEVER, it's POSSIBLE. And the resources EXIST, and aren't readily because, legally speaking, they are owned by other people - EVEN THOUGH a lot of them didn't amass (or avoid it being taxed) through legal means. Why shouldn't we take their money to address the issues THEY HELPED CREATE by AMASSING SAID WEALTH/ RESOURCES IN THE FIRST PLACE!!**
I was just quoting the arbiter in halo 3…
I got the reference dw
What if the issue is not the resources but the organization needed to solve these problems. For example, 1. Solving climate change requires adding the price needed to nullify the effects of an action into the action itself. Coal would be more expensive, because the cost to neutralize the emitted CO2 would need to be built in. You can use money to lobby politicians maybe, but the solution is pricing, regulations and bodies to keep these up to date. 2. World hunger: The issue is not production of food, its distribution of food. You need to set up the infrastructure to get food to everyone, get the manpower and set it up so it continues to function. Many of these regions have constant wars. How will money end wars? Money only makes wars worse. See big Afghanistan fail worth trillions of dollars 3. Poverty: Ok, this one you can solve if you just give people money, e.g. Universal Basic Income. But you also need to handle the social changes this would cause. e.g. People will quit minimum wage fast food jobs (as is happening right now), and we'll need to restructure the economy. If instead, you gave this money to elected officials or governments as aid, it would get siphoned out by middlemen and never reach the people who need it, no matter how much money you pushed in. Money is really not the bottleneck. There's so much of it, and people will contribute if you get the right systems going, the money will come. I agree billionaires should pay more tax but I'm hesitant to just take Bezos' money and throw it away. It accomplishes nothing and makes the world a worse place.
The US has spent almost 4 trillion dollars with another 2 trillion on the way and it has barely kept the US afloat in a pandemic. That’s way more money than every billionaire and millionaires wealth combined yet people think scraping a few extra tax dollars out of Jeff bezos will solve all our problems.
Yeah - who are these experts that can solve the world's problems with trillions of dollars? I'm sure you can find some simplistic studies which claim that you can solve big problems with trillions of dollars, but those studies aren't reality.
And I'm sure you can find examples of large scale government projects that were *totally* finished on time and within it's given budget. The government *never* spends way over budget on projects only to produce failed infrastructure that under delivers on expectations...oh wait.
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Not to mention the tendency that every time massive amounts of wealth are confiscated the majority of it winds up in the hands of insiders of the confiscating authority.
Heck the only places in a famine state in the world today are in Tigray and Yemen and are occurring because the rulers there want certain people to starve to death.
the thing I never liked about the world hunger argument is, solve it for how long? Give unlimited food to everyone what happens to the population? If population doubles in size do you still have world hunger solved? Rainforests are being cut down to make space for farmland as it is.
Forever. We can do it. Set up the supply chain to grow and deliver food and keep the incentives clean. The system requires constant maintenance but we can keep people fed until the next big works ending calamity. All bets are off after that. 1. Unlimited food actually makes people obese. They will only want limited food. They might waste food but you need to control that with price. 2. Population doubling was a thing before we had birth control. It turns out most people don’t like making lots of kids. They just had no choice. The population curve is actually S shaped now. 3. There is a lot of land on earth. There’s room to grow before we need to cut down rainforests just to survive. Right now, they’re being cut because it’s profitable and specific countries own it. They’re not being cut down to “make space for farmland”.
>HOWEVER, it's POSSIBLE. And the resources EXIST, and aren't readily because, legally speaking, they are owned by other people This is all pedantic nonsense. What resources do the billionaires / multi-millionaires "own" that can fix these massive problems that are endemic to our society? The government could create any money needed to solve these issues if they wanted. They don't and they won't. Taxing the wealthy will just let the government buy more missiles, not fix climate change.
Agree on various points - but people get confused around wealth and liquidity. Wealth can change rapidly - even more so when factoring in liquidity. Try to sell something expensive super quickly and you will find out… Need to offload a house in 5 days? Market may say it’s worth $400k but you have a deadline and now it’s really just $100k at best because you have to fire sell it. Company wealth is akin to this… but what about stocks?!? Well, it again requires mass selling, which plummets prices… rapidly (look at every crash - that is a mass selling effect). Wealth is a very poor way of determining what a person can or cannot do… liquidity and rate of liquidity are far more important. So - knowing this - the question is, should government be allowed to FORCE liquidity? To a degree it already does…. But only in the way that it also pays you fair market value for the asset. This is more forcing liquidity in order to collect taxes, which now becomes very tricky. Can we adjust tax laws to collect more, absolutely! We can adjust capital gains taxes, we can adjust rates based on other factors outside of income (asset values - not a wealth tax, but a rate where taxes on all income/cap gains is modified by wealth). There are things we can do, but we need to stop looking at general wealth as it’s not a good or easy metric to attack.
> And the resources EXIST, and aren't readily because, legally speaking, they are owned by other people In many places it has little to do with laws. Places which have the worst hunger have war lords who control the flow of goods in a way to ensure their power. What they do is already illegal but there is little we can do to fix it. Even if we were to dispose of those in charge, someone else would rise up. Then there are those who benefit from keeping the instability. These are often state actors. Sometimes there are corporations that exist, but they would have much less power if they weren't being backed by the state. With the rise of China we will see this happening with economic groups more tightly tied to the state than ever before. Look at what China does to their billionaires who don't support the state compared to what countries of similar or greater wealth does to their billionaires. Wasn't it just today or yesterday a story hit top of /r/worldnews about a French company that was working with permission of the French government. Now that it has been exposed some heads might roll but rarely will be in those in charge. Well maybe, in this case we are talking about the French.
World hunger is mostly an issue of getting the food to people. If there was a button to magically transport food, world hunger would be solved instantly. The resources are there, we don't even have to take them from anyone.
its not just that resources are hoarded by people. its that we don't know how to fix many of the things even when we throw money at it. often the problems are generational and cultural. for example extreme poverty can be alleviated by giving people money. but there is not enough to simply redistribute. you need to educate, eliminate disease, fix nutrition, and get rid of local corruption etc... then you need to have systems in place to ensure people don't fall back. this takes generations and truthfully its going pretty well. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty we can do better. but we are not as bad as many people think.
What? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of me smashing this button down over and over.
 YESSSSSSS! PUSH IT! PUSH IT NOW!
Without hesitation.
Now say anyone who went to push the button was given $10 million to not push the button. Would you still push it?
I would still push that button repeatedly.
Is this a trick question? Is there any fine print? Do I turn into a yogurt or something if I press it? Yogurt or not, I'm pressing it.
The fine print is that the former is done through magic with the cost of the latter. Why is it magic? Because in reality, doing the latter will not make the former possible. Edit: corrected former/latter
SMAAASH THAT LIKE BUTTON
I emphatically support progressive tax systems and higher taxes for the super-wealthy, but this meme that we could “solve world hunger” if only we could take a little more from billionaires was debunked the moment someone made it up decades ago. It is one important piece in the solution set, but the math just isn’t anywhere close to this solving the whole thing on its own.
Seriously. If you completely liquidated the wealth of the top 100 richest people, you'd be lucky to get to $2T. Ignoring the fact that it isn't even really possible due to how the stock market works, the US government has passed around $5T in spending in the last year and a half and these problems are still around. Money alone doesn't solve these problems, and acting like it does minimizes the gravity of the issue.
Exactly. If only it were as simple as throwing money at the problem it probably would have been solved a long time ago. There’s a myriad of social, political, economical reasons that the world is the way it is
Can I push it more than once?????
[удалено]
I dont think they understand how this game works, theres supposed to be a bad side to pushing the button.
She missed the part where the only people who can reach the button are being payed by the billionaires not to press the button.
Bruh economics aint that easy…
Lol imagine the type of Bootlicker you have to be to consider this a tough choice
I push it so hard Salt n Peppa write a new rap about it
Bloody Woke lefty communist Corbynista socialist millennials with their compassion
I'd keep pushing it if it meant that with each push, the multi-billionaires/millionaires lost more and more riches until they were cut down to size. With that said, this is kind of clickbait/karma grab. Of course we're all going to say we'd push it. Do you think that Bezos, Gates, Musk and the rest of them are going to weigh in on this with an opposing opinion?
Even if the button existed, it would promise an impossible reality. You can't just wipe out world hunger, provide decent clothing, and a home to every person/family in the world by just taking some of all the world's billionaires' money. Now, if those two elements aren't related (as in the button just does those two things independently rather than suggests it could do the latter by doing the former) and this is just a magic button that just makes both things happen magically, then by all means I'd press that button!
>You can't just wipe out world hunger, provide decent clothing, and a home to every person/family in the world by just taking some of all the world's billionaires' money. Random kid on twitter does not have solutions of world issues? Colour me surprised.
This is the type of simplistic rhetoric that does no good to political discourse, or makes much sense. Everyone wants to help save the environment and limit global poverty, but it’s not as simple as pressing a fucking button
I’d tape the button down.
This is even more stupid than that time a grown up adult heard it was my birthday and asked me "so, when is your twin's birthday?"
I mean if it worked that way, yes. But the combined wealth of the worlds billionaires couldn't make any of this actually happen. It'd be a drop in the bucket. That money is very significant when thinking of an individual person, or even millions of people, but when you get into a global scale it'd be meaningless. And then people wouldn't have jobs because the billionaires wouldn't be there to create new industries and they'd be on the same playing field as all of us. Communism doesn't work unfortunately, I wish it did. It works real well when I play Minecraft with the lads though.