I think that, somewhere north of $1 ~ $5 million is life-changing on its own. There’s no need for someone to have tens of millions or hundreds of millions. Tens of millions is like, changing multiple lives in a family with how much that can stretch.

Whenever someone has billions to their name, it is boggling to think about. That it becomes just ‘fuck you’ money at that point because more often than not, not a lot of billionaires out there being charitable. When they know they’re set for a few lifetimes just by a single billion alone.

No single person should ever have that amount of gross wealth.

    • sbird@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      11·
      1 day ago

      It’s a nice idea in theory, but that requires all the humans to be super altruistic and just give stuff to everyone for seemingly no benefit to themselves.

      As the other person said, bartering would only work if you both have the thing you need. If Allen is a woodworker and doesn’t have any bacon, and Alice wants some bacon in exchange for X thing, then a transaction can’t happen. It worked well when different tribes of humans could sustain themselves (hunt their own food, gather their own resources, etc.) and when people had very few needs (no technologies, no nice furniture, less mass produced plastic, etc.)

      In other words, humans are selfish, and the promise of future benefit in the metals and paper (and now 0s and 1s with stuff like PayPal and plastic cards) we call “money” is necessary for people to trade effectively in the modern, interconnected world.