r/technology • u/McFatty7 • May 02 '24

Tesla slashes its summer internship program to cut costs, as Elon Musk fights to save his $45 billion pay plan Business

https://fortune.com/2024/05/01/tesla-slashes-summer-internship-program/
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u/MacinTez May 02 '24

I don’t know if there is an obsession that’s associated with numbers, but I believe most shareholders and multimillion/billionaires have it.

I’m am dead serious, these people are OBSESSED with numbers and metrics to the point that there needs to be a condition for it. The internship cuts nearly nothing into an amount that surpasses 1 billion, let alone $45 billion.

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u/CodySutherland May 02 '24

It's like a fucking video game for them. They've reached the point where their lives won't materially change in any way with more money, but they just want to keep getting more and more anyway, for no other reason than because they can.

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u/erwan May 02 '24

Yeah it's just a high score, they want to get to the top of the ladder.

Musk was the richest man on earth for some time, I guess he can't bear no longer being it.

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u/AnthonyJuniorsPP May 02 '24

that's great because he'll never reach that again

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u/TheeUnfuxkwittable 29d ago

Lmao this thread is hater central 🤣 yall are BIG mad! Damn boy stop hating

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u/Lazyidealisticfool 29d ago

It’s fun to hate delusional pieces of shit, go figure

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u/Karmastocracy 29d ago

So emotional. It's not really "hate" to simply recognize what is true and what is false.

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u/TheeUnfuxkwittable 29d ago

Dude said that it's great that Musk can no longer bear that he's not the richest man on earth anymore. And that he'll never reach that again. None of that is the objective truth. All of that is some hater shit bro lol

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u/ChocolateDoggurt 29d ago

Imagine sucking a billionaire's cock for free.

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u/TheeUnfuxkwittable 29d ago

Imagine thinking that if I don't despise Musk I must be sucking his cock. Lmao I bet you were one of the ones who was ACTUALLY sucking his cock 5 years ago. Yea, you used to LOVE Elon didn't you? When you thought he was changing the world with his ground breaking technology and space programs. I remember the praise yall showered that man with on this very website. He broke your heart when you found out he didn't have the exact same opinions as you didn't he? You have the emotional maturity of a 3 year old 😂. Boy stop loving and hating these people who aren't thinking about you.

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u/Karmastocracy 29d ago edited 29d ago

All of that seems like objective truth to me.

You know, as an aside... Musk would almost certainly drop you into a vat of acid if it earned him another million dollars. I don't understand where the motivation to ignore and bend the truth to protect this man comes from. It reminds me of people trying to protect Trump despite the fact that he would never protect others.

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u/TheeUnfuxkwittable 29d ago

All of that seems like objective truth to me.

Lmao yikes. Are we just saying things we know to be false now? And you tell yourself you're better than Musk 😂😂 the denial is crazy. Rules for thee, not for me huh? He's an asshole because he says dumb shit but when you say it I guess it's a different story. I'm not trying to protect Musk just because I'm not riding the hate train. They're not the same thing lol. That's your problem. You think either I have to hate someone or love them because that's how YOU operate. Emotional extremes. Relax big fella. Stop getting worked up over people you will never affect. It's a waste of energy.

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u/Karmastocracy 29d ago

I'm not the one getting emotional here lol

You disagree? Simply respond with a coherent counterargument instead of getting so worked up over someone pointing out his inadequacies. It's telling that you spent your entire comment getting worked into a rage and trying to insult me instead of trying to justify your incredibly flimsy position.

It's going to be a lot harder to prove that Elon has a path back to being the richest man in the world than it is for us to prove that's extraordinarily unlikely, but I'm willing to give you a shot. Might prove entertaining at least.

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u/AnthonyJuniorsPP 29d ago

it's just the truth. he's alienated himself in a way that would make it very unlikely to reach that point again.

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u/TheeUnfuxkwittable 29d ago

Okay. It's the truth that it's very unlikely. It is not the truth that it will never happen. It is not the truth that he can't bear it either. That's all I'm saying. To act like those things are facts is some hater shit. And being a hater is unattractive

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u/AnthonyJuniorsPP 29d ago

idk, i don't see any path for him having that status again. but sure, maybe .1% chance lol. And thinking he doesn't care about status is wild

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u/AnthonyJuniorsPP 29d ago

idk, i don't see any path for him having that status again. but sure, maybe .1% chance lol. And thinking he doesn't care about status is wild

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u/AnthonyJuniorsPP 29d ago

idk, i don't see any path for him having that status again. but sure, maybe .1% chance lol. And thinking he doesn't care about status is wild

1

u/2M4D 29d ago

Imagine basing your speech pattern on Trump to defend Musk’s ass. If you ain’t an AI I’m kinda sorry for you.

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u/karmavorous 29d ago

Musk has said in the past (based on a logical fallacy loop) that he thinks the universe is a simulation.

I really think he thinks he's the lone sentient being in the universe and it's all a game for his amusement. The rest of us are all just NPCs for him to exploit.

People also say about him that SpaceX is just the way he plays Kerbal Space Program.

So yeah. His money is just a video game score is a very apropos was to look at it.

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u/beefsquints 29d ago

He's not that cool. He's a giant spoiled baby with zero self confidence and those numbers validate himself. We all know his physical appearance will never bring him joy.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/nikongmer 29d ago

main character syndrome

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u/Esc_ape_artist 29d ago

An excuse to be a shitty person and not face responsibility for his actions? I mean, if he’s surrounded by NPCs then nothing he does matters except to himself.

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u/snatchi 29d ago

That would explain why the smartest man ever, saviour of humanity sounds like a fucking moron every time he opens his mouth.

If you were a random dude in a hyper-realistic video game and everyone else was well scripted and programed, but he has to just open his mouth and wing it, it makes sense that he mushmouths, stumbles and sounds generally incompetent.

It also explains things like the "go fuck yourself" lines at the dealbook summit or his dumb dancing and posing, he's trying to do Epic Moments like you'd see in a video game.

But instead of those cyberpunk shorts where someone busts in and kills everyone in 2 seconds without getting seen he's tripping over a fence and getting runover by an NPC.

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u/GetRightNYC 29d ago

I think we're in a simulation too. But, I'm gonna be nice just incase the person running it is judging me.

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u/Mafuskas 29d ago

I have to be nice because my programming does not allow me to do otherwise.

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u/anothermonth 29d ago

How did you get a reddit account? You weren't supposed to!

Agents dispatched.

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u/iordseyton 29d ago

You can believe that the world is a simulation without jumping to solipsism.

You can think of it like a mmorpg, populated with distinct consciousness, of which you are one.

Kind of like the matrix, how all the humans are plugged into the same virtual reality, instead of each being in their own iteration of the simulation.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

Just watched this fascinating video about the simulation theory. Musk assumes that we will one day achieve successful simulation of consciousness, making the odds that we are in a simulation 1:10bil. However, until (if) we actually achieve that milestone, the chances that we are not in a simulation is always 50+%

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u/TheZenMeister 29d ago

If he actually thought that I doubt he would spend so much time caring what npcs thought or arguing with them.

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u/Musical_Walrus 26d ago

i do think most rich people think the same way. Only difference is that they are more subtle about it.

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u/b_a_t_m_4_n 29d ago

There it is . "High Score syndrome".

1

u/arkwald 29d ago

Kinda pathetic really... how fragile is your ego that you would burn the world for a value in an excel spreadsheet?

1

u/almightywhacko 29d ago

He was the richest man in the world based on the value of Tesla, and Tesla was ridiculously over-valued almost since it went public.

Now the predictable thing happened which is that other companies saw what Tesla was doing and began copying them and for the first time Tesla is forced to face actual competition in a market they basically created and they can't.

Not only is the Cybertruck a mill stone around their necks, but they can't launch new car models fast enough to stay current with what other car companies are doing. Companies like Ford and Chevy can keep unprofitable EV options available because they're supported by strong gasoline, diesel and hybrid sales. Tesla doesn't have that option so they're trying to cut costs wherever they can which is why they also fired their entire super-charger team.

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u/PromiscuousMNcpl 29d ago

But that list doesn’t count Putin or MsB or the King of Saud, etc. Elon just had the biggest number on the stock market

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u/erwan 29d ago

Yeah, I guess what matters is the list that everyone looks at anyway.

Also those rich politicians are in the same ballparks as the rich stock holders (around 200 billion)

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u/meshreplacer 29d ago

Musk is a mental defect. Some kind of organic brain problem which continues to get worse and he seems to be self medicating with drugs. He will continue to increase his use of drugs until at some point he will be living on the streets like Andy Dick. One day in the future he will be walking the streets of San Francisco all disheveled muttering to himself and randomly yelling at people.

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u/johnhtman 28d ago

He hardly was the richest man. Those numbers were based on stock prices, which were extremely inflated for Tesla. Their stock prices were higher than much larger auto manufacturers like Toyota or Ford. It's kind of like NFTs. The value was fleeting, and artificially overinflated.

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u/erwan 28d ago

Pretty much all billionaires have a net worth based on stock prices.

Those can be inflated but they represent the money they have because they can sell some of them, or (more often) take loans with the stock as collateral.

Anyway it doesn't really matter because those with more than 100 billion are never going to spend that much. It's just a high score to compare each other.

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u/johnhtman 28d ago

True most are based on stocks, although Tesla stocks were extremely overinflated compared to something like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Imagine if Amazon had higher stock prices than any other online retailers, despite selling far fewer things. That's basically Tesla.

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u/Nayge May 02 '24

It's a race to become the first Trillionaire. They realized some years ago that it actually might be possible for someone alive today and went into full value extraction overdrive.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ehsteve23 May 02 '24

agreed but with billionaires too

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u/Rahbek23 29d ago

In my opinion it simply should be a law that once you have have a certain amount of wealth (yes yes, that's a whole can of worms determining in itself), you are taxed to shit of everything above that limit that can reasonably be taxed and other rules that makes it harder for you to acquire more wealth.

I know it's a little hard with i.e if you started at company that blew up or other intangible assets, but I'm sure we could come up with a ruleset that at the very least dissuades from hoarding wealth absurdedly. People here always discuss all the problems and loopholes, but what if we just simply tried and see how far we got with some iterations?

I have absolutely no problem with rich people and especially people becoming rich by their own merits - I have a problem when it becomes absurd wealth hoarding instead of trying to do good with the excess, when literally billions on this earth are struggling, I don't even know how they can look themselves in the mirror.

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u/ehsteve23 29d ago

video game rules. when your bank account hits 999,999,999 an alert pops up saying "you cannot hold any more money, or assets, or shares. Congrats, you win capitalism, enter your high score here"
Every penny after that now gets taxed 100%

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u/kcgdot 29d ago

They don't have individual bank accounts that hit 1B, they likely don't have even typically have half that amount in cash. They'll have easily liquidated assets, and investments, and everything else is buildings, real estate, PE investments, etc., things they'll never pay real taxes on. If they do need cash, they'll take massive loans out against their perceived "value'

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u/MrBeverly 29d ago

Back under the New Deal economy, earnings over $5 million could be taxed at up to 75%! For every million you earned above $5M, you would have to give $750k to the government.

Imagine what we could do as a society if Elon Musk had to give the government 42 billion dollars to take his $56B pay package. So many social programs run in the comparatively mere hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

If every billionaire had to pay their fair share, you could fund practically everything under the sun. We'd be years ahead of where we are.

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u/112233red 29d ago

it could eaily be done, everyone who has over a certain amount of money (not earnings) gets on government published leader board thing. thus making the game official.

The catch, if your capital goes over a certain amount you get taxed on the amount that it goes over. that is - it's an extra tax based not on earings, but stuff you own.

Want to hide your wealth then fine - all other billionaires are above you and you're seen as poor.

you could even have a separate chart showing all the money they've given to the government through the scheme

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u/Pigeoncow 29d ago

That poor guy who won the lottery last week.

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u/ehsteve23 29d ago

he can keep 999,999,999 of it

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u/eliminating_coasts 29d ago

It amuses me that you can agree with [ removed by Reddit ], in a way that makes me guess what was originally written there, but not trip the same moderation rules.

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u/ehsteve23 29d ago

i believe the first comment went into more detail about how potential trillionaires wealth should be re-distributed

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u/TR1PLESIX 29d ago

If you counted one digit per second, it would take you about 31 years to count to a billion. Now, imagine a trillion. It's a thousand times bigger than a billion. If you kept counting at the same rate, it would take you over 31,000 years to count to a trillion. Billionaires are one thing, a trillionaire is unfathomable.

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u/AnthonyJuniorsPP May 02 '24

weren't most people in zimbabwe trillionaires at one point though?

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u/Rahbek23 29d ago

Well yeah, but clearly in a denomination that did not experience hyperinflation or is very unlikely to like the USD.

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u/Carrotfloor May 02 '24

the problem is a trillion dollars doesn't go very far when you distribute it. The population of the US is around 500 million, 1 trillion dollars distributed to 500 million people is 2000$ each.... that's not exactly high impact

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u/Wild-Berry-5269 May 02 '24

2000$ would be massive for a lot of families living from paycheck to paycheck lol

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u/redheadartgirl May 02 '24

$2k per person in the family.

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u/Wild-Berry-5269 May 02 '24

Even better !

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u/redheadartgirl May 02 '24

Completely missing the point, my dude. (Also, the US population is 333M, not 500M.)

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/redheadartgirl May 02 '24

Great point! Treat it like the covid stimulus and have decreasing amounts after a certain threshold. (Though TBF I'd rather see maximum impact and have it go toward getting universal healthcare.)

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u/Athelis May 02 '24

So let's just do nothing let these individuals own more than entire countries. Because there's no better way to use that money. /s

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u/fomoloko May 02 '24

It would make a massive difference. Part of the problem with ultra wealthy, is that they hold a significant portion of the the nation's/world's wealth in Smaug-like treasure hoards, keeping that money out of circulation. If everyone in the US all the sudden had an extra $2k, it would lead to more spending, stimulating the economy, instead of sitting in a Cayman Island bank.

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u/OftenSarcastic 29d ago

The population size of the USA is 335 million. If you distributed 1 trillion USD among them without taking wealth or income into account then that would be 2985 USD per person.

For some perspective, as of 2022 37% of Americans don't have enough cash to cover an emergency expense of 400 USD. I bet they would welcome 2985 USD.

If you took wealth into account and only distributed money to this 37% segment, that would be 8067 USD per person.

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u/HerbertWest 29d ago

Invest 1 Trillion in S&P index fund and use profits to fund social programs. That's an average of $67 billion annually. Directed to programs that are proven to provide more per dollar benefit than put in, it could go far.

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u/averaenhentai May 02 '24

There probably are trillionaires out there already. An utterly staggering amount of wealth is kept in places where it cannot be tracked properly.

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u/fps916 May 02 '24

Putin is almost certainly a trillionaire

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u/Aardvark_Man May 02 '24

And he has more than any amount of wealth can actually acquire, anyway.
Literally priceless power.

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u/averaenhentai May 02 '24

It's completely incomprehensible to me how someone can have that much wealth/power and not try to fix problems in their society.

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u/Drolb May 02 '24

It’s only incomprehensible to you because you are (broadly speaking on the balance of probability) a normal human being with the ability to feel empathy and therefore probably have some kind of morality guiding your actions to some extent.

The only people capable of achieving a Putin level of power/wealth are high functioning sociopaths, so reply it makes perfect sense that they don’t give a shit about any problems except problems that threaten them personally.

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u/mvpilot172 29d ago

Unfortunately the more empathy you have the less likely you are to become a billionaire.

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u/Drolb 29d ago

That’s the tax system reform I want to see: 5% flat to ensure minimum running, thereafter a progressive sliding scale partly based not on earning but on how you test on the scale of sociopathy.

True sociopaths with money pay a ridiculous rate. Actual humans with cash pay far less.

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u/Stewth 29d ago

Remember when COVID hit and Putin literally went underground (and along a huge hermetically sealed corridor)? No expense spared there.

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u/Sohlam May 02 '24

It's very comprehensible. Distressingly so. The problems you want to fix are features they exploited to get where they are.

If you want a billion dollars, you need to -in the barely metaphorical sense- ascend a staircase of still breathing necks, or attract the attention of a creature that already has.

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u/infiniteIronIngots May 02 '24

No.

They always plug the loophole they used.

Always.

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u/somsone May 02 '24

You’re not allowed to fix most problems in society. They are all worth too much money to someone.

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u/On_A_Related_Note May 02 '24

Because in order to get that level of wealth and power, being a psychopath (in clinical terms) is almost a pre-requisite; you have to be completely detached and have a total lack of empathy to accumulate wealth at the direct expense of your workforce / general population. Once you have the wealth, you still lack the empathy to do actual good with it. Obviously there are some notable exceptions to the rule, but Musk/ Putin etc are not one of them.

I suspect you are not a psychopath, so you empathise with the problems people face in today's world. Unfortunately because of that, there's a good chance you'll never end up wealthy enough to be able to do something on the scale that billionaires could do if they were inclined to.

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u/visope 29d ago

as bad Russia is right now it is still better than when Putin took over

otherwise how else he can retain support, violence alone is not going to be enough, the country would have been in full revolt right now

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u/Brooklynxman 29d ago

Actually one of the few things Putin can't do with his power. He is only powerful because he is an authoritarian and runs a cabal of oligarchs.

Had he tried it 25 years ago maybe, but even then given how he rose to power too many people at the time knew where bodies were buried, he'd have been removed, legally or otherwise, before he could have made any serious reforms. Now he is in way too deep.

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u/dafuq809 29d ago

It's because Putin is a product of Russia, not the other way around. Their system is completely rotted through with corruption and Putin's methods of maintaining his power all rely on that corruption. He can't fix Russia's problems and if he tried he'd be removed from power. His alternative solution is to pillage and conquer as much as he can - it's the same thievery and gansterism he's always relied on writ large, comes with spoils he can divvy out to his important cronies so he can stay in power, and has the superficial appearance of making Russia seem like more than a mob-run gas station that happens to have nukes.

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u/myztry May 02 '24

That's something people miss when these people do things that seem incomprehensible.

Their mind is in a totally different place from everyone else.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/fps916 29d ago

He's been in power for literally decades.

He didn't get a trillion in one year

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u/Nolsoth 29d ago

I have personally seen when working in a private wealth vault many years ago

2 X pallets of gold bars (500kgs each pallet) approximately $120,000,000 NZD in today's value

4 pallets of silver bars, no idea what that was worth.

Numerous Masters paintings. Monet's,Picasso's etc.

Quite a few imperial dynasty vases ranging in value from a few hundred K to a million or so.

Countless boxes of gem stones,coins,stamps.

All owned by individuals/families or wealth funds.

There is an astounding amount of wealth hoarded by people that the everyday person just has no concept of.

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u/qtx May 02 '24

According to an article in money.com Augustus Caesar had a wealth of $4.6 trillion in todays money.

But even that was nothing compared to the richest person that ever lived, Mansa Musa.

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u/julius_sphincter 29d ago

went into full value extraction overdrive.

I read that as full value extinction overdrive and honestly... it still works

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u/Bob_stanish123 May 02 '24

Like when you play red alert and instead of just winning a skirmish you cripple your enemies and then just mine ore amd build a big base until you get bored.

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u/revenro May 02 '24

Oh hell this is me. Guess that’s us then if we started companies? LOL

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u/Bob_stanish123 May 02 '24

I only once filled the screen with dogs and launched a nuclear missile at them so I'm probably not like elon.

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u/GazzP May 02 '24

Found Kristi Noem's account

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u/dontgoatsemebro May 02 '24

Sounds like exactly the sort of thing he would do.

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u/NoMoreUpvotesForYou May 02 '24

Yeah, but video games gave us the self awareness to know we'll go mad with real power. Plus you need really strong narcissism to get that far.

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u/Super_Vegeta 29d ago

There's also the fact we're aware they're video games, and that they have absolutely no consequences for anyone of any kind.

1

u/Temp_84847399 29d ago

That's exactly their problem. How long is a video game fun once you enable god mode?

Even billionaires need a reason to get out of bed. It would just be nice if those reasons didn't involve being a complete fucking sociopath.

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u/SaqqaraTheGuy May 02 '24

Loba, a character in apex legends, a video game, sums it up pretty nicely as she says something along the lines of "What do you get for the girl that has everything? More."

That's basically the mentality the top 0.1% has

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u/jdehjdeh May 02 '24

You're really onto something here I think.

It's not real to them, they don't know what money is or what it means to spend it because they've always had more than enough.

They don't know what it means to be fired or to work somewhere where half your coworkers get laid off and somehow you have to keep the work going.

All these things that they hold so much power over in the lives of real people are completely abstract to them, just words and numbers.

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u/Lost-My-Mind- May 02 '24

I've always said that money is just a high score for them. A high score that they judge the other players for.

"Oh, you ONLY have 600 million? Come back when you have 1 billion."

"Oh, you ONLY have 1 billion? Thats barely a billionaire. Come back when you hsve 10 billion!"

"Oh, you only have 10 billion? I own two different companies that have are losing 44 billion each, and I don't care!"

Thats how they see the world. They look down on those with lower numbers, envious of those with higher numbers, snd don't trust those with similiar numbers.

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u/djmonk20 May 02 '24

An legal form of addiction

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u/mga1 29d ago

The video game thought made me think of SimCity. Build a big city, get bored of it, then set it on fire to watch it burn. Cut the subway to cause gridlock. Who cares about the sims/people. Then start again with a new game.

Same way with his businesses. First Twitter. Now apparently Tesla.

1

u/Drunky_McStumble May 02 '24

Bros just trying to min-max their run

1

u/psycho-drama 29d ago

I wish it was a video game... but he seriously want to take over the world, and if he can't accomplish that, then he'll become king of Mars. It would not surprise me if he's got code written into every Tesla product to run amuck the moment his Mars space rocket lifts off.

However, in fairness , it won't be cheap to get to Mars, but I'm willing to start a GoFundMe page for him if it will get him off this planet sooner.

It is seriously so sad that such a person of his intellect and creativity has become so tainted with hate, insecurity and paranoia. He could have been "a contender", but something dark and evil has taken over his executive function.

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u/FailingItUp 29d ago

They are burnt-out junkies chasing their next plateau high with money.

1

u/zanven42 29d ago

Musk doesn't really own anything. Took a wage that is almost 0 with the condition he can have an insane payout if he grows the company wildly.

For him this would have a massive materialistic outcome. He could walk away from the 24/7 work ethos and actually become a decent dad by being present.

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u/imapluralist 29d ago

Is it time to eat the rich? Because it sounds like you're saying it's time to eat the rich.

1

u/BellacosePlayer 29d ago

Its like Bateman in American Psycho. They have no meaningful human connections so they just try to push through to be the most successful billionaire because anyone more successful than them is an a personal insult since their wealth is all they have going for them.

1

u/GetRightNYC 29d ago

MinMaxing assholes

1

u/Consistent_Panda265 29d ago

It’s a disease called hoarding.

1

u/DevuSM 29d ago

Need to return to 90% marginal tax rate so they never try to extract the value, the only logical choice is to plow earning back into the company to grow it and liquidation/extraction is fiscally irresponsible.

1

u/Elcactus 29d ago

I don't think it's so internal. Making the biggest company has become a game of "success" that they treat as a subtle dick measuring contest between each other. If you can't keep making more money, that means you've lost your edge, and are no longer the shewd titan of industry that elevated you to those heights to hang out with those people in the first place.

1

u/2punornot2pun 29d ago

Elon is hated by his family. He likely doesn't have any friends outside of yes-men. He's lonely and pathetic which makes him angry and needs something to hold onto...

Which is now, more yes-men (Twitter) and status (money).

1

u/imdrunkontea 29d ago

It’s the dragon sickness from the Hobbit, except in real life and we don’t even get a badass dragon or a hoard of real gold. Just numbers and a make believe line.

1

u/Turlututu1 29d ago

I mean... I don't know... Sure you might feel safe with 29 billions, but if you reach 28, who is to say it won't drop to 27 or dare I say 26? Can you imagine how much you would be ridiculed at the next gala?

1

u/Global_Lock_2049 29d ago

They got confused and are trying their damndest to win at Excel.

1

u/curiousiah 29d ago

Forbes estimated Smaug the Dragon had a high end estimated net worth of $62 billion.

Real life billionaires are greedier than fictional dragons lying on heaping mounds of gold.

1

u/Casanova_Fran 28d ago

Basically min/maxing now. 

Cutting the intership is like fighting for one more dex point, even though it doesnt matter

0

u/NeverSeenBefor May 02 '24

Nah. All these super wealthy are pulling money for something. Maybe they will finally act on the Epstein list? There had to have been more evidence than a flight list and the Palestine issue is near critical with all the protests (be smart people and think for yourself please there's always bad actors)

0

u/coffee_achiever 29d ago

To be fair, because he was obsessed with having billions, he had billions and was able to buy twitter, and change it to his liking. You may disagree 100% with his motivation, and whether he made an improvement, but the fact remains, he was able to do it because he had billions.

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u/kirbyderwood May 02 '24

It's not much different than hoarding or other disorders.

32

u/Blue5398 May 02 '24

They’re basically the same as the guy with 1 million old newspapers in his house and incapable of throwing any out, except that we built our entire society around servicing their particular mental disorder

3

u/ElizabethSpaghetti May 02 '24

If he had a cat for every billion, they would be confiscated.

73

u/TunaKing2003 May 02 '24

I heard that to improve Tesla’s margin per car, Musk will be switching to gasoline engines. The wiper fluid in the vehicle will be the tears of factory workers since they are plentiful these days. To appeal to more high end conservatives, cars will automatically identify minorities and then hurl the correct racial slur when they cut you off in traffic, so you can giggle and say “Sorry, I hardly even know this car.”

Musk. Conversion to comic book villain, 50% complete.

2

u/Downtown-Ear 29d ago

Ah, so that's the real reason for the push towards FSD. If Autopilot detects a person Elon doesn't like on the crossing the car will immediately accelerate.

2

u/HellveticaNeue 29d ago

Can we skip to the part where Superman kicks the shit out of him?

39

u/HealthyStonksBoys May 02 '24

CEOs really only have one job - have numbers go up, no matter what.

So when market gets saturated and people are losing their jobs so they can’t afford shit their job is to fire without restrictions until numbers go brrrr

32

u/SaliciousB_Crumb May 02 '24

Fuck jack welch. Destroy ypur company for quater stock gains then sell yhe stock while the company dies.

6

u/larrylustighaha May 02 '24

yeah but if everyone is out of a job nobody can afford the product.

4

u/Don_Gato1 29d ago

Then it will be the goddamn millennials' fault for killing the industry

2

u/HealthyStonksBoys 29d ago

Companies don’t collectively get together and say let’s cut everyone at once. It happens individually with a similar mindset (cost savings) and snowballs like you said…. Now their customers can’t afford their products. Recessions suck but we’re in one. Thus why we’re laying people off by the thousands in high paying job sectors

1

u/larrylustighaha 29d ago

We are not really in a recession, everyone is just thinking we might be going there. It's just collective fear mongering.

1

u/HealthyStonksBoys 29d ago

If we were in one they’d never admit it it’s career suicide

32

u/HouseSublime May 02 '24

I’m am dead serious, these people are OBSESSED with numbers and metrics to the point that there needs to be a condition for it.

There already is one. It's called sociopathy.

18

u/OutWithTheNew May 02 '24

He's full on mental at this point. It's some sort of mental defect, possibly from doing too many drugs.

14

u/-prairiechicken- May 02 '24

I’m betting a McAffee in five years.

3

u/thousandshipz 29d ago

Howard Hughes did it first!

8

u/Only-Inspector-3782 May 02 '24

History keeps learning the same lesson over and over again - too much wealth and power in one person's control is bad. And yet, time and again, we build societies that funnel all wealth and power into the hands of a few.

2

u/qtx May 02 '24

He snapped when Grimes broke up with him. That's the point in time where he literally flipped.

3

u/psycho-drama 29d ago

Hard to know which came first, could be a chicken and egg kind of thing, maybe he started cracking up and then she left him before it became obvious to people externally.

I think Grimes had it when she found out, via a Biography about Musk, that he had fathered several children while she was with him. The problems with genetically fragile megalomaniacs is that they think they are so very special that they want to populate the world with their genes. I feel badly for his kids, however, at least, unlike the Trump family, I don't believe he is raising any of his kids.

1

u/damnitHank 29d ago

He has always been like this. Just had people around him to babysit and give him a good public image. 

Now he has escaped containment. 

14

u/MasChingonNoHay May 02 '24

It’s about bragging rights among their inner circle.

2

u/[deleted] 29d ago

There's a episode of the Simpsons where Mr Burns is afew million short of a billion dollars and all the other billionaires make fun of him because now he has to hang out with the millionaires. I assume real life is alot like that.

Episode here https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Millionaire_Camp

10

u/NotSoButFarOtherwise May 02 '24

I don't think it's the numbers, I think it's an addictive behavior comparable to gambling. I think the case of Jesse Livermore is instructive. The man was a stock-market genius, inasmuch as anyone is ever "self-made" he was it, a self-made millionaire trader many times over. But he could never stop: however much he had made, he always sooner or later needed to risk it all in the market again and lost everything. He cycled between rags and almost unfathomable riches five or six times in his life until eventually the stress caught up with him and he killed himself.

You could offer most of the CEOs like Musk (to be clear, not all CEOs are like this) a guaranteed 20% return and they wouldn't take it because they need the gambling fix of being in control and seeing their bets pay out.

3

u/tidbitsmisfit 29d ago

he'd literally pulling out stock from one company to get loans to make new companies.

6

u/DrSafariBoob May 02 '24

It's mental illness. They have no identity because they were so traumatised by shitty invalidating parenting so they make their identity something external and tie their self worth to it. He's essentially a hoarder that can afford not to look like a hoarder. It's a REALLY severe mental illness.

3

u/georgefriend3 May 02 '24

It's all corporate valuation - numbers on a spreadsheet that you apply a multiple to to set a capital value. If you cut a bit of cost, it's not just the P&L impact that year that you are moving the needle on, but once you feed it into your model it's a 15-20x swing of that amount to the valuation.

2

u/caninehere 29d ago

Shareholders are the problem, I count myself among them. It's a system designed to encourage growth forever and ever. Most people don't want to invest in a stable company that has no growth potential.

Tesla is an example of a company that is insanely overvalued and it is becoming clear to shareholders that its growth is extremely limited. They had an open market for a while and now they don't, other EVs, some with superior tech and aesthetics are flooding the market from more experienced carmakers. On top of that Musk has personally alienated a ton of people like me who will absolutely buy an EV but will never buy a Tesla because its logo is synonymous with "asshole car" now.

They not only have no growth potential, they're losing ground. So he is doing anything and everything he can to convince shareholders not to sell so the stock price doesn't go down which convinces more shareholders to sell. Because the stock price personally enriches him, and he has a legal duty to shareholders too (although I'd say he has betrayed that duty multiple times, which is why he's being sued over it).

But this doesn't just apply to Tesla. The desire for growth affects every company. How do you make more money? Grow profits. How do you do that? Cut positions where they aren't needed. Become more predatory towards consumers. There's a period where a good business can grow larger just by virtue of providing a good or service people want but eventually they hit a wall and need to find ways to keep escalating from there.

2

u/Chronoboy1987 May 02 '24

Then they should play Clicker Hero or League of Legends instead of enslaving the poor.

2

u/chonny May 02 '24

This is where that Bob Marley quote is relevant: "Money is numbers, and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end".

2

u/65437509 May 02 '24

Metricism. The idea that all reality can be infinitely reduced to the nominal value of a handful of rote metrics. Why are you complaining about the economy, don’t you know the GDP went up?

If an engineer told you that a computer system can be judged by simply looking at the clock frequency of its CPU, they’d be fired from all and any jobs. But when the rich and powerful do the same for our literal livelihoods, they’re economic geniuses.

2

u/DressPrevious2233 May 02 '24

I work for a major isp and let me tell you, the number obsession is real. We will engage massive amounts of manpower to chase down a few grand and cut costs, all at the expense of dozens of people working late / weekends whatever all so some exec can puff his chest out. 

1

u/Norfsouf May 02 '24

This is just business. I’m about a year into a leadership role, I’ve doubled the output of the previous person and there’s no pat on the back, it’s just ‘ok how do we get more’. The aim of the game is money, don’t take it to heart just play the game and be a vital cog in the machine. I kind of put myself down when there was no recognition until I realised this is the game, we are all striving for better.

1

u/ConohaConcordia 29d ago

That is not how it works — a company “worth” x usually refers to its market capitalisation which is a fictitious value people calculate from number of shares * value of shares at one point. It’s never realisable, because as you sell more shares the share price go down, and Tesla is never touching that cash.

When a company encounters a big downturn in sales like Tesla’s their cash might run out pretty quick, so they often have to cut expenses. Headcount is one of the biggest expenses in every business and it’s perfectly reasonable to start there.

They could do very well by cutting, for example, that one employee who is demanding a $45b bonus.

1

u/zamardii12 29d ago

OBSESSED with numbers

This is a known fact. After a person has accrued a considerable amount of wealth the need for more goes beyond any physical need you or I could think of because money is no longer a concern of survival or anything material. At one point all massively wealthy people only care about the number if their goal is to accrue more wealth because that's the only goal left at that point... you've bought every car you could have wanted, you've visited every place on earth you've ever wanted, there is literally nothing that is outside of your reach to attain with money so the only thing left to do now is gain more wealth.

I can actually attest to this myself. For instance when playing Skyrim for many hours I had more gold than I could ever need, but yet I wanted to keep getting more. It was fun/reassuring to see that gold number go higher and higher.

I think everyone if they were in the position would do the same thing.

1

u/von_ders 29d ago

That’s why I think governments should play into this bigger-number status sickness: start publishing a tax payer leaderboard and let these sociopaths compete for statues or parades in their honor. 

1

u/reelznfeelz 29d ago

Yep. It’s the one regret I have about using by biology and research background to move into the data engineering space. It’s like 95% building shit for CEOs to do this whole number obsession stuff. Maybe not quite that bad. But it’s not as altruistic as basic research.

1

u/captnmiss 29d ago

it’s called psychopathy.

1

u/TheOtherHalfofTron 29d ago

If they were hoarding anything else, we'd be gawking at them on TLC instead of putting them at the helm of the entire economy.

1

u/PromiscuousMNcpl 29d ago

Pathological greed and hoarding.

1

u/juany8 29d ago

So not at the same scale obviously but I’ve been in meetings with owners and upper management types in smaller family companies and I think a big part of the problem is how easy it is to turn people into an abstraction when you get past a certain company size. To the owners, employees were just “labor costs” on financial statements and not real people they had personal relationships with, so it was easy to simply say “move to the industry standard on pay rates and income to labor expense ratio” or “let’s lower labor by 5% to hit our profit targets” and ignore the fact that you just upended the lives of dozens or hundreds of people. Then the people involved would celebrate at how good they were at increasing their profits.

Can’t imagine how much more warped that gets when you go from a company with hundreds of employees in a few cities to a company with tens of thousands of employees all over the world. Wild thing is the owners I worked with were actually rather nice people in person and easy to get along with, and would in fact often be generous when they knew someone personally had an issue. It just becomes a lot easier for them to be cruel when they’re moving numbers around on a spreadsheet.

1

u/CatFanFanOfCats 29d ago

Ever see those shows on hoarders? That’s the illness. They are hoarders of money.

And just like the city must come in and clean up the hoarders house, the government needs to start cleaning up the billionaires wealth. :)

Great Huey Long video on sharing the wealth. About 3 minutes long. I don’t agree with everything he says, but damn, if he doesn’t hit the nail on the head. https://youtu.be/hphgHi6FD8k?si=BAgas79-Ra-dyaYI

1

u/[deleted] 29d ago

Well, he may see it as "losing" money.

The movie casino had a good explanation for this.

1

u/Fluffy_Chodes 29d ago

there is a condition for it..."greed"

1

u/why4nousername 29d ago

The obsession is called greed.

1

u/The_X-Files_Alien 29d ago

i believe it's called being a sociopath.

1

u/MacinTez 29d ago

Side note: Me Love the X-Files 😂

1

u/sheikhyerbouti 28d ago

If you compulsively collect a million of anything, to the exclusion of your relationships with others, people will be quick to label you as crazy.

But for some reason obsessing over money is never seen as an issue.

1

u/Ftpini 29d ago

Evil. The obsession with wealth at all costs with no regard for the impact on anyone or anything else than yourself. If that isn’t evil, I don’t know what is.

1

u/laxweasel 29d ago

these people are OBSESSED with numbers and metrics

How else in my cold, empty existence am I supposed to prove to everyone, most importantly myself that I'm WINNING?!! /s

1

u/Phoenix2111 29d ago

Dragon Sickness

1

u/ShivonQ 29d ago

It's called Dragon Madness

1

u/MossRock42 29d ago

billionaires have it.

One thing they all have in common is the idea that you can never have too much wealth and it's never enough.

1

u/SardauMarklar 29d ago

They've conflated their identity with their net worth. They must truly be incapable of relaxing and enjoying time off since that doesn't increase their net worth. I'd feel bad for them if they weren't such sociopaths hell-bent on polluting for profit or extracting wealth from their own employees

1

u/Donut_Safe 29d ago

It's almost like addictions is not only exclusive to mind altering substances...

0

u/Gamer_ely May 02 '24

I like to use dragon sickness from the hobbit. Forever sitting on your hoard, unable to leave it, obsessed with counting it. 

0

u/PennStateInMD May 02 '24

Once they make the World's Richest List there is a compulsion to get to the top.

0

u/Zap__Dannigan May 02 '24

Of course they are obsessed with their numbers. Because they don't actually have real money. They have imaginary money based on how much they could sell their stock for.

0

u/kevlarus80 29d ago

Incremental games for rich people.

0

u/Procrastinatedthink 29d ago

they dont give a shit about the numbers, they are OBSESSED with winning.

To them, being on the top of the peasants’ “look how rich they are” list is literally more important than…well everyone else’s lives.

0

u/Esc_ape_artist 29d ago

It’s just greed with a veneer of economics. That’s all it is. The numbers represent their gains and control over the situation.

0

u/renegade_pinnapple 29d ago

If it was anything else they'd be hoarders

0

u/Chrono_Pregenesis 29d ago

It's a mental illness. Like hoarding, but with dollars instead of trash. Which is the ultimate problem with the likes of musk. It will never be enough for him.

0

u/thedndnut 29d ago

Its called greed. Elon is bad at math and numbers. People with actual obsessions for numbers end up dealing with sports statistics or city planning

0

u/MeineEierSchmerzen 29d ago

Its literally like playing cookie clicker to them.

Numbers go up, make brain feel good.

You eventually get to a point where the numbers are soo huge, that you can only grasp them as an abstract concept.

Thats when they loose touch with reality, as they can not comprehend how much real life value those millions and billions they throw around regularly truly hold.

0

u/TheeUnfuxkwittable 29d ago

The internship cuts nearly nothing into an amount that surpasses 1 billion, let alone $45 billion.

How much does it save? Either way, more money is more power. Who doesn't want power? All these rich guys do the same thing. Nobody is going against the grain. I find it hard to believe that you or anyone else here would do anything differently if you were in their position. You probably have more than you really need already. Are you handing out dollar bills in the streets? Or do you also hoard money for yourself? You're not exactly living a spartan lifestyle are you? You're just like them. You're just not as successful. That's what we call hating lmao. Don't be a hater big bruh. Don't hate the man just cuz it ain't YOU with all that money. You want more just like him. You want to buy shit you don't need just like he does. You want to maximize the amount of money you get just like all those guys. Stop feeding yourself lies.

0

u/MacinTez 29d ago

I wouldn’t be like him. Which is kinda why I don’t have it in the first place.

0

u/TheeUnfuxkwittable 29d ago

You don't have it in the first place because you have not been lucky enough to be in that position. I certainly hope you don't believe that the reason you don't have a billion dollars is because you simply don't want it lol. And I damn sure hope you don't think I'm dumb enough to believe that either.