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Wasn’t there some guy who set themselves a challenge where they were going to make a living without using any of their money?
I believe he had to stop after 3 months because of health concerns.
They see being poor as entertainment.
It didn’t end that quick, but he stopped after 9 months due to health concerns. The goal was to earn $1 million in a year, he had earned $62k.
And IIRC, he only did so through siphoning off the value of free facebook/craigslist furniture.
It sucks that the only reporting on this is shitty tabloids.
Don’t forget he accepted charity in the form of free housing and donations that were likely only available to him through existing connections.
Also this:
Despite failing to make the million dollars he had aimed for, Black says it was still a successful experiment after demonstrating how it was possible to rebuild his life through the power of determination.
So this dipshit learned nothing. He failed, and would probably have died in the gutter, but instead he pulled the ripcord and bailed on poverty in a way that isn’t available to 99% of humans on earth.
He had knowledge and connections to the upper echelons and he couldn’t make it, and when health concerns arose he went back to his money because it sucks to be working poor and in need of medical assistance.
He also didn’t have the stress that would come from actual failure with no money.
Bankruptcy, homelessness and real poverty fuck up your ability to succeed in a vastly underrated way.
Exactly. The calculus for taking risks is vastly different when there’s a safety net. You can treat it as a game and go all in.
On the other hand if there’s even a small chance of losing housing or getting in legal trouble or your family being destitute you take no risks - if you are a person with a sense of responsibility that is.
Yup, or you take maybe a couple risks in a lifetime, but if they don’t pan out you suffer from them for years as you go back to stability and try to regain what little of a toehold on a good life you might have had.
The very real lesson for the poor is “don’t try,” especially if you have dependents. You’ll be knocked back harder than you can imagine.
These mfs don’t know what it’s like to see loved ones start losing teeth because you made a failed push and now you’re paying it back with interest.
For most people, it’s easier to become homeless than it is for the homeless to extricate themselves from it.
This is all political horseshit. It’s not that hard to get out of homelessness, I was homeless a lot in my late teens and early twenties. Of course freezing to death in a Canadian winter is a strong motivator. Fucking taking a shower and doing work that you’d rather not is all it takes if you’re not mentally fucked or strung out
His father got cancer during the experiment. He considered ending it then, but he continued with the experiment.
Imagine having that sort of choice. He didn’t have to skip work to take his dad to appointments. He didn’t have to eat ramen to afford chemo. It was only when his own health was at risk that he pulled the plug.
Imagine a world where everybody had that sort of safety net. Just like, “Nope, shit’s too hard.”
Even the stress of worrying about money. Yeah you can take out a loan for your risky business venture when you know you won’t have to worry about paying it back. Yeah, you can couch surf for a while when you aren’t staring down the next few decades of your life.
Right, those 62k he did earn would have been gone and him probably homeless as soon as his health issues got worse. It’s a reality for a lot of Americans. Also those 62k he earned were thanks to all the education and experience he was able to get thanks to his privilege. Most people aren’t fortunate enough to have his level of education and experience to help them even get to 62k. I make 25 percent less than that and still feel fortunate of where I got to since I came from absolutely nothing.
Yea, he flipped free furniture off of Facebook. Only a rich asshole would come up with an idea like that
“If I can be a parasite, you can too*”
* just ignore that I didn’t again become a millionaire like I said I would. And just ignore all the experience and schooling I started with that others don’t.
This video was such absolute bull crap lol. He randomly found some dude on like his SECOND night homeless that let him stay in a spare room for free.
Then he flipped free stuff on Craigslist and Facebook for cash which is… fine I guess. A little sleazy but whatever. Magically found transportation and the ability to store and haul this stuff all over town but never explained any of that.
Then he majestically found someone to cosign and provide initial payments to rent like a four bedroom house that he sublet to 3 other tenants… So he found some random guy to COSIGN for him which is crazy knowing how much liability that puts on you while ALSO finding a landlord that is allowing a guy with no job, no income, no credit, no prior residences, and no money to not only rent from him with a random co signer but also allowing him to sublet to three other random ass people the landlord will never even meet. This is possible… But EXTREMELY unlikely. Also, the fact that this dude tries to do a homeless challenge by immediately becoming a landlord is pretty funny ngl. Also it’s worth noting that his final number ($64k or whatever) was revenue not profit. He said himself he was making about 50% profit so he made closer to around $30k on the year.
And on top of all that, the fact that he cites health issues as this unforeseen unfortunate issue that got in the way of his inevitable success is kinda rich. That’s… kinda the deal with poverty. You fall on hard times. Health often falls apart. Unexpected expenses destroy you. It can and often does completely tear your world apart. Thems the breaks man lol. Dude just experienced life a little and quit.
It sounds like he wasn’t using his money directly but might have used his ability to access his money to build “credit” with others.
Used his existing social credit too. All his random business successes during those 9 months were from “I know a guy that might want in on this” kind of crap.
Nitpicking, but that’s also not like a sustainable way to conduct oneself in a society. Like his only “service” was inserting himself as an unnecessary middleman.
If everyone did that you’d have nothing but grifters making money moves on eachother, and nothing would ever get actually made. Basically, it’s not the kind of work which produces new value through labour.
Which maybe if the point idk, I’m not a total parasite
0-62k in a year aint bad tbf
Sure, without any debt plus free housing and donations from folks you already know.
He made $62k and called that a success. Why not then use said $62k to fix his health issues? Wouldn’t that be much more realistic in terms of unplanned medical costs setting back a lot of Americans?
That’s revenue not profit. He said he only made about 50% profit, so he made about 30k for the year.
imagine the privilege to just quit being homeless for health concerns while a lot of people go homeless because of health complications. so he ended where homeless people frequently start. fuck that guy.
*chose to stop
*because of high health care prices
And as far as I know they have not used any of their privilege to do anything to change that situation for others who don’t have that choice.
It’s because the problem was being poor.
So…stop being poor.
It’s easy. He just proved it!
(Massive /s but sadly, for the privileged guy, not sarcasm)
Omg you’re so right!
If the experiment was a success, shouldn’t he help others with that path?
Or maybe that path was overinflated as much as possible…
100% It will work.
They would still have all the advantages of the business connections they made as a billionaire, and would still have a massive advantage over everyone else.
Run the experiment.
But many of their connections would be poor as well. Do you think people actually care what Elon or Bezos think? They’re not geniuses, they just have money. Compare them to Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett, who actually knew what they were doing.
No one seriously asks Bezos or Elon for advice because they were just lucky. Their companies succeed despite them, not because of them. Like the guy who started Uber (forgot his name). Nobody listens to them.
Compare them to Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett, who actually knew what they were doing.
Steve Jobs, the man who thought he could beat pancreatic cancer with a juice cleanse?
The guy who wanted to build fanless computers. Forcing designers to turn down the fans on laptops, having them cook but silent.
Yeah, that guy was a true genius. /s
He was great with words though.
The Apple Silicon machines are fucking awesome though, and most of them are fanless. Even the ones that do have them, you have to do some pretty special shit to make them turn on.
I hope the Linux world gets proper ARM machines some day too, but for the time being, the Apple machines are like a full generation ahead.
I mean, Jobs was long dead by the time Apple Silicon came along.
Well, being super smart in one field doesn’t necessarily mean you have common sense. You could be the greatest physicist in the world but still think lizard people control everything.
TBF Woz was the brains behind Apple. Jobs was just a good salesperson.
So maybe Woz would get rich again? There have to be a few others…
I don’t think Woz would. He had the opportunity but realised he had more than enough to last his whole life, so noped out of there to play pinball and watch his children grow up.
He really is the smart one.
This goes along with a thing I like to say: Being rich doesn’t make one an asshole. It takes an asshole to become rich.
Jobs was good at getting the right people together.
Steve Jobs was a grade A cunt with the rest of them. Don’t give him a pass for his high charisma score. Dude walked into Atari with no fucken shoes on back in the 70s trying to get a job. I used to work with a 72 year old dude who was a head repairman there working on the consoles. Its all confidence, smoke, and mirrors. Skills are secondary to spewing bullshit and making people feel excited.
If he wasn’t integral to Apple’s success, then why did they fail after he left, and then succeed after he returned? What innovative products has Tim Apple created? Air Pods? The Apple Watch?
Why do we have party faces in tabletops? Why focus our skillsets on salesmenship while others become engineers? He was a great ringleader, he could probably sell people a wet banana peel like it was life changing. Maybe the products themselves aren’t as stellar as Jobs made them out to be. Maybe a phone is just a phone and when Merlin isn’t there blowing smoke up your ass you can finally see that.
Take the money away and the connections are worthless. They have business connection because of money.
I don’t think so. They know each other.
Rich people are not good at being friends, especially the one who are in charge of large businesses. They are good at exploiting others.
Or would their connections who weren’t billionaires just exploit them so they could take the top spot?
Only one way to find out
I mean those who have a crap ton of money have it because they don’t mind exploiting others in terrible ways to get it. So maybe the cream would rise back up to the top psychopaths.
Naw, I’m down with exploiting others for personal gain but I simply lack the capital to do so in the same way as the ultra rich.
I’m not going to pretend every low income person is some ethical ideal, because I sure as fuck aren’t.
And that’s why like laws and shit are needed to prevent that exploitation or whatever.
True they’d need to keep at least a few million to rise back to the top
Don’t underestimate the power of social capital.
Don’t forget, Nepotism and “net working” aka groups of sociopaths working together to shear the sheep…
If you take their money, they still have their connections, as long as the other wolves don’t turn on them.
Edit: as another poster said “social capital” is a thing.
Division of labor would suggest the people that are best at hunting money, hunt the money for the tribe while the others do other stuff.
This was tested…sort of. He didn’t give away his money he just supposedly didn’t make use of it essentially hitting the road as a fake homeless and making money by selling stuff he bought on facebook market.
The fellow was a millionaire not a billionaire and I think he went from nothing to ~50k in nearly a year. He called it off early because he was basically destroying his health.
Yeah, with friends housing him and hiring him 🤡
Not to mention that actually poor people don’t have a cheat code to get them out when their health suffers. Which then makes them less able to keep working at maximum mental and physical capacity.
So this was nothing but a demonstration that nepotism and money is what one really needs.
He could also take higher risks, since he knew that there was a security net to catch him. Much easier to make high risk/reward decisions, if the risk (e.g. going broke) isn’t actually real. He presumably also had an above average education and many other benefits. This is also why many rich people might end up building successful businesses. The average person might get one shot and either makes it or goes broke. The rich person can roll the dice multiple times (and might have learned something from the last try).
Also disregarding everything even, if he had succeded: That would still only have been a sample size of one. I doubt anyone is saying that you can’t under any circumstances pull yourself out of poverty, but on average the cards are just stacked against you in many ways.
Also i doubt that reselling second hand stuff is a viable business model for a larger group. Like sure in a large city a few people might be able to carve out a niche for themself, but the more people do it or the smaller the market, the less it works.
So you have a link? That sounds interesting as.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13332399/Millionaire-Mike-Black-homeless-broke-purpose-ends-bizarre-social-experiment.html He made 64,000 before he tapped out. His trajectory is also not entirely kosher
Eventually, a man with an RV allowed him to stay for several nights in his van. Black started off small and managed to make his first $300 by selling furniture online.
Nobody lets a homeless stay in their van to bootstrap their buy and sell craigslist furniture business
Three months into the challenge, Black’s entrepreneurial spirit appeared to shine through having set himself up as a social media manager, managing to land clients - while even coming up with his own brand of coffee.
Most people who were homeless 90 days prior is going to be in a position to be appointed someone’s social media manager or else they likely wouldn’t even be homeless in the first place.
Even with obvious cheat codes he couldn’t get more than 64k starting from “zero” wherein zero means being homeless in nice gear with your $1000 phone and unlimited internet plan with a health plan and a GP and specialists
Throughout the entire project, we haven’t shared it with you, but I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office.’
It’s also not one or two billion, it’s multiple hundreds of billion owned by one person. I don’t think you can overstress the difference in scale between millions, hundred millions, billions, and hundred billions.
There used to be taxes assessed by total asset valuation that focused more on wealthy individuals because they don’t earn as much from income it’s mostly assets increasing in value like property or ownership shares, that was stopped when they introduced the income tax that mostly targets low and middle class people who almost exclusively earn by income.
Loopholes like offshore accounts used to dodge income taxes by higher earners should be illegal, but the whole system is backwards forcing the least prosperous to shoulder the largest tax burden instead of the wealthiest who benefit from society the most.
What’s stopping the wealthy from just up and leaving? They could liquidate their assets and invest in somewhere with tax laws more favourable to them.
Liquidate to who? Are those assets things they can take with them, or are they things like buildings that stay right where they are?
Anyone who would buy. Unless you’re sentimentally attached to something then I doubt you’d have a difficult time selling it. Billionaires own property as investment, not for use. Just sell it to another billionaire and buy property in a country more favourable to you. As for things like cars, collections, yachts, and other such mobile assets, just stick them on a container ship and unpack at your destination.
But then there has to be at least one billionaire who is staying right there, and can be taxed.
Yeah that sounds awesome let’s divide those 200 billions into 333 million people and let’s get a whooping one time only 600 USD extra for the month. Then let’s repeat it again.
It sure will last foreverrrrrrrrr
First of all 200 billion is chump change compared to how much the wealthy have. Second, spreading money would do far more to stimulate the economy than wealthy people buying yachts, flying into space, and visiting the Titanic.
I am sure if you removed your mouth from the wealthy’s cocks for a moment you would realize how fucked up the situation is. But I know you will just suck it foreverrrrrrrrrrr hoping they will gild you into their club.
Stimulate the economy LMAO 🤣
Bro just admit you don’t know shit about how money works and leave it at that haha
The money itself is not the only reason. Eliminating their undue influence is.
Foreverrrrrrrrr
The fact that you already confiscated them. Since we’re talking hypotheticals though, you could confiscate those assets at the border. Or set up international treaties with a look-back provision.
See, what I don’t like about this is that if you have the power to confiscate a billionaire’s possessions for no other reason that they’re a billionaire, then there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from turning that power against anyone you don’t like. And I’m not talking “you” as in you specifically, or anyone with a sense of morality and ethics, but “you” as in the inevitable exploitative scum that would at some point hold that power.
Now, if the confiscation is contingent on a billionaire commiting a crime then that’s another thing, but then the billionaire would actually have to commit a crime. And if you made tax law ironclad then sure, if they break the law then they should have their things confiscated in recompense. But that’s assuming that the trial wouldn’t be bogged down in court by a billionaire being able to throw money at the problem.
You seem to be under the assumptions that hoarding vast wealth to the point of extreme inequality is benign and not damaging to society & individuals living in that type of civilization, and that limiting extreme wealth inequality for billionaires means they’re coming for everyone next with no limits. These are some of the main ingredients in cooking an oligarchy soup.
No, I’m well aware that it’s damaging and I’m not a proponent of the system. You would do well not to make assumptions. My problem is that the people that take power are rarely the ones who will use it with temperance. I see no way that the same laws used to penalize the accumulation of wealth wouldn’t be applied to dissidents regardless of class. Rather than having an oligarchy of private citizens, you’ll have an oligarchy of people with government powers. At least in the current system there’s a degree of separation. What’s needed is a way to strengthen the people, not to punish the wealthy. And I have some ideas for that, but I doubt any would be feasible.
you have the power to confiscate a billionaire’s possessions for no other reason that they’re a billionaire, then there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from turning that power against anyone you don’t like.
This is already how it is for poor people…
contingent on a billionaire commiting a crime
Weird how so many crimes are the things poor people do out of desperation rather than the things rich people do to coerce poor people to do the things poor people don’t want to do…
Every billionaire has committed wage theft. Wage theft is a crime.
Who do I vote for to make this happen?
Or is that French shortening device the only way at this point?Vote in favor of the union at your workplace
If that were to happen, my cream would rise to the top.
Alternatively just take their shit because billionaires shouldn’t exist.
You know what else rises to the top of liquid?
A turd.
Uh… my turds sink. Is there a problem with my diet?
If they float, it typically means the person is consuming too much fat in their diet. Not always but moat times.
Stool’s ability to float is usually related to air. A high fiber diet and gas can cause stool to float. A diet high in fiber leads to increased bacterial fermentation during digestion. This produces more air, which can get trapped in stool, causing it to float.
Source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325274
This same source says that too much fat could also cause floating, but from a different article:
Some people think that floating poop is caused by fat, but it’s usually caused by gas. Research has indicated that once floating stools were degassed, they weighed the same as sinking poop. This indicates that gas was responsible for making floating stools float, rather than fat inside the poop.
Source: https://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/what-to-know-about-floating-stools
But, in general, not necessarily something to worry about.
I need to start shitting in moats again
What do you call fine paintings floating in a water-filled ditch? Mozart!
That’s close to being a joke.
Which fits perfectly to the metaphor
Randy Savage?
And do what with it? Just, like, fund society and shit? how are we going to grow extra assholes doing that?
A millionaire tried doing this and gave up
What’s fun is everytime something like this is tried, it fails spectacularly… and they know that.
When in history did anybody take away billionaires’ money?
There was a recent case of a young billionaire who basically signed over everything to a family member to live on the street to prove he could “Make millions from nothing!” and that the poors “Were just being lazy”
It didn’t end well for him and he begged mommy to give him his wealth back because going too long without his gold-plated jaquzzi was hard
The French revolution and other related uprisings. See: Romanov family vs Bolsheviks.
Edit: it was a joke ffs
They killed left and right, we’re talking about like taxing unusable wealth from peop’e who don’t need it (and didn’t earn it in any kind of morally okay way).
You can’t tax wealth.
Eat the rich.
And get food poisoning
