[Technology] What is 'obscenely rich' in 2023?

[Titanic]

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg agree to hold cage fight

Earlier this month, Meta showed staff plans for a text-based social network designed to compete with Twitter.

www.bbc.co.uk

Two of the world's most high-profile technology billionaires - Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg - have agreed to fight each other in a cage match.

Mr Musk posted a message on his social media platform Twitter that he was "up for a cage fight" with Mr Zuckerberg.
Mr Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, then posted a screenshot of Mr Musk's tweet with the caption "send me location".
"The story speaks for itself"

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

#Live by the Sea

 

[worthingweird]

To have good health...

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Who was that oaf of a student in the 80s who would set fire to ten pound notes in front of beggars? Don't know how rich he was (probably not very) but he was certainly obscene.

 

[Stat Brother]

Food in the house and the heating on, at the same time.

 

[Biscuit Barrel]

A back up left back.

 

[BBassic]

Billionaires should not exist. Nobody needs that much money.

I don't get how people with that much money can look at their pile of cash and think "I definitely deserve all of this and I'm going to build a space rocket because I can" rather than "Hmm, I should use some of this to help humanity, the poor, the hungry, the sick"

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Who was that oaf of a student in the 80s who would set fire to ten pound notes in front of beggars? Don't know how rich he was (probably not very) but he was certainly obscene.

Ten pound notes? Wasn’t one of the ‘tasks’ to join the Bullingdon Club, to burn a £50 note in front of a homeless person?

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Ten pound notes? Wasn’t one of the ‘tasks’ to join the Bullingdon Club, to burn a £50 note in front of a homeless person?

Ah yes. It was Gideon, 'Call me' Dave, and the greased piglet. How could I have possibly forgotten?

 

[Gabbiano]

Billionaires should not exist. Nobody needs that much money.

I don't get how people with that much money can look at their pile of cash and think "I definitely deserve all of this and I'm going to build a space rocket because I can" rather than "Hmm, I should use some of this to help humanity, the poor, the hungry, the sick"

It’s so much money that people can’t even comprehend it. We can split hairs and talk about how it’s all in stocks and shares and not liquid assets, and how if Musk decided to sell his shares he’d never get that amount, but the scale we’re talking at here makes that largely irrelevant.

A little thought experiment, setting practicalities aside just to demonstrate scale: We would all consider Lewis Dunk to be an extremely well off man, making a speculated £75k per week.

He would have to make that salary for over 50,000 years in order to be worth what Musk is worth now.

For your average schmuck on a UK median income of about £30,000pa, you can make that 6.5 million years, when pre-human hominid species were just starting to become distinct from chimpanzees and other apes.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Billionaires should not exist. Nobody needs that much money.

I don't get how people with that much money can look at their pile of cash and think "I definitely deserve all of this and I'm going to build a space rocket because I can" rather than "Hmm, I should use some of this to help humanity, the poor, the hungry, the sick"

I reckon Tony Bloom is a billionaire or not far off. He's doing lots of good with his cash, not only for our club but the local community via support for things like AITC etc. Bill Gates is actively doing exactly as you suggest. His reward is nefarious lies propagated by hard of thinking conspiracy wankers.

The two mentioned in the OP, however, are basically Bond villains. If there was a Bond movie with a baddie called Elon Musk who ran a company that took people into Space called Space X, worked 20 hour days and named his kid after a series of random characters people would probably think that this was the one movie that had stretched the truth a bit. If the plot then developed into him and another power crazy rich guy controlling all of the messages on the internet you'd say the inheritors of Fleming and Broccoli's characters had totally lost it.

 

[AK74]

Ten pound notes? Wasn’t one of the ‘tasks’ to join the Bullingdon Club, to burn a £50 note in front of a homeless person?

Ryan Giggs allegedly did the same thing in a nightclub to a group of Liverpool fans.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

According to Oxfam, the top 1% of the richest bag as much as the rest of the world put together.

• Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages.

Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years | Oxfam International

www.oxfam.org

 

[sparkie]

Ah yes. It was Gideon, 'Call me' Dave, and the greased piglet. How could I have possibly forgotten?

It is reckoned that the piglet story was completely made up.... ...and the likely source was.... a very high profile recently disgraced compulsive liar.

 

[Frutos]

Ask @Steve Foster.