this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Aspen Anti-Billionaire Society
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A community dedicated to spreading awareness of the negative impacts of the billionaire class, especially the 250 richest people on the planet
We believe that the existence of the 0.01% comes at a cost to the rest of us, even multi-millionaires, and hope to spread awareness of this problem among the 1% (who have the most resources to affect change)
All discussion and links related to wealth inequality and related activism are welcome. We hope that this community can serve as an easily accessible repository of information about wealth inequality
Please meet disagreement with civility so we can foster productive discourse
founded 2 days ago
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See the stickied comment below for an explanation and statement of our purpose, based on simple back-of-the-napkin math
E: if someone could please link this community to r/aspen and r/roaringforkvalley I would greatly appreciate it. I’ve been IP banned by the all powerful AI mod monster, like many folks on Lemmy
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I feel like we should be anchoring our numbers far lower. Net worth of more than 100 million or 50 million or 20 million should be impossible.
I agree with your policies and I'd support them as is, I'd be happy to get anything improved. But I'd love to suggest a lower starting point. 1 billion is more money or net worth than any dynasty needs let alone a single person.
Part of the entire point is that $12B is 36x less of a problem than people having Musk level wealth. Like the existence of billionaires in and of themselves is not that crippling based on the total wealth in the world, but yes I would love to see them taxed appropriately for sure.
Having a cap on wealth at such a ludicrously high point means that virtually no one in the 1% will even need be concerned about it, as they will probably never make it to $12B. Again, there are over 3k billionaires in the world, but only 250 of them have over $12B. But those people hold virtually all the money. 6 of them have well over half the money in the entire world.
The point of putting it where it is is to make the tent as big as is possible. I completely agree $1B is more than anyone could ever need or use, but that shrinks the tent and also threatens the sensitivities of some hundred millionaires. We need those people to ever actually make this a success. We all know congress is bought and paid for. Thats the only way anything will ever change
I don't think appealing to the worst people in the world will ever work, hence why I recommend lowering it to a good value and not a possibly feasible but less meaningful number.
I agree my suggestions are not based on data, and ideally they would be, but the goal is that no one accumulates enough wealth to influence whole cities let alone countries. 1B is still too much.
I think change will only come when the vast majority of people want it, and what motivates the vast majority of people is not a slightly better value but an actually good number.
To be quite honest, I had a similar perspective to you for a long time, until I ended up working directly for people with that level of wealth.
For one, theyre people just like you and I, quite frankly. Sure, they float through life rarely having to concern themselves with the problems normal people have and can be called selfish I suppose. Although to be fair to them, many are philanthropic, but either way: thats pretty much what all working class Americans also do. Yeah sure we have problems ourselves, but we also largely ignore the impact that us having it better off comes at the cost of other people. And honestly people with a shitload of money have no shortage of problems themselves. Rarely do they seem well adjusted. Many of them end up in marriages young, trying to crank out kids, because inheritance is often tied to number of children. Like again, boo hoo when people are literally not able to afford food. But still, theyre just people like you and I.
More importantly, they care about their money more than almost anything else. Its not even “appealing” to them IMO so much as the point is to make it plainly obvious to them that the system is unsustainable. If we dont pay people enough to afford cost of living then their businesses will fail to find customers, the resort communities they love to visit or have second homes in will implode on themselves, whatever major metro they live in will follow, and really having whatever amount of money they have will be meaningless. Were at a tipping point where a non-insignificant amount of people are buying groceries on Klarna to survive, the tourism industry is taking a $20B hit, and they could probably lose most of the benefits of their wealth without doing something. If anything Im appealing specifically to their selfishness, and Im fine with their selfishness if it means we can end the selfishness of the richest 250 people. Because that, by the numbers, is the driving economic issue in the world. Money was made to move
I definitely agree the majority of people have to want it, which is why I want the tent as large as possible, and the message as simple as possible
Look it, you can defend them as much as you like, I'm not here to debate the granularity about which hundred millionaire is less awful for remaining a hundred millionaire or judging them individually based on their human woes and vices.
I'm here to say the largest tent pole and the simplest message is constructed by being honest and effective. The honest and effective truth is when someone gets more than some tens of millions, let's say 20 or 50 if you're worried about the millionaires, they become a danger to society and to their communities. Any number of billion is so far removed from reality that I don't think it will actually interest most people. If I had heard that just 6 months ago I would have chalked it up to just another fake effort that won't change anything. And even if now I see the value of putting aside these nitpicking differences when it comes to the movements overall health, I still feel obligated to say dream bigger.
We don't need hundred millionaires, we need neighborhoods and family and unions and community and if we have to guns.
Im not debating the granularity of anything, I’m stating a fact that you don’t seem to understand about the gravity of someone having $430B versus $12B versus $100M.
Would you say there is “granularity” in comparing a 36 story skyscraper to a 1 story house? They are inarguably 2 completely different magnitudes of building.
Im being very clear and very honest, by simple plain math someone having $100M is not affecting your life in any way. Literally people make this whole idea of “the 1% have us all turned against each other with culture wars” which is almost all the way correct. The reality is that a handful of fucking people have everyone distracted, and that even the separation between you and someone with $100M is a petty class war from those 250 people’s perspective. People with hundreds of millions are not this evil monster that are any different from you, they hardly have any more money than you in comparison to a multi-billionaire. That is just factual, plain, and honest. Whether you want to accept it is a different story
I'm not debating magnitudes dude. The question is should a functioning society allow for someone to accumulate 12 billion USD in networth? Now answer that same question for 1 billion? Now again for 500 million? Now again for 100 million? Now again for 50 million?
The answer is no. Plain and simple. I don't care that I'm closer to 100 million than 100 million is to 12 billion, to simplify your point. Idgaf. The reality is neither 100 million nor 12 billion should be allowed. So why are you not advocating for a lower boundary value? You're saying it's because we need the 100 millionaires to make this work. I'm saying no we don't. I'm saying we can get more support from people if we pick a value that actually makes sense. Letting anyone own a 100 million dollars is still letting someone play king to an unbelievably large group of people. That shouldn't be allowed.
Again, you still dont understand, the one story house is $12B, not $100M. Magnitudes is hardly even the right term, its just the closest we can get. Someone having $12B is not the actual functional issue with society either. The issue is someone having hundreds of billions of dollars.
Ill be willing to debate the ethics of wealth between $13M and $12B once we solve the actual problem that is fucking up everyone’s lives. I personally dont think anyone needs so much money at all, but that isnt the point. The point is what can we actually do to make the system a base level of economically sustainable, otherwise we will be guaranteed to never see a day when it becomes ethical. Its about rationality in pursuit of ethics, not demanding pure ethics from any possible solution
The biggest problem here is trying to use a utopian solution for a systemic issue, and doing so based on vibes. Whether that number be 1 billion, 200 million, or 100 billion, the working class has no power to enact that without destroying the Capitalist state that gives the Capitalists dictatorial power over the system itself, and replacing the state with a working class state. It doesn't matter if it would be better to have less obscenely wealthy individuals or not if there are no levers to pull within the system created and run to support them and their interests.
This doesn't really add anything to the conversation. I, and I assume anyone here interacting with this content, know that things don't just change based on Internet conversations. So... What's your point? Are you offering levers to pull within legal boundaries? Or are you just stating "we need to change society by changing society or we'll never change society!", cause again I don't think that's useful.
As I already said, the working class needs to overthrow the state and replace it with a working class state. This is accomplished through organizing, such as what the Party for Socialism and Liberation is already doing quite effectively. The reason I take issue with OP's measures and methods is because they focus on working within the existing system, and appealing to the lowest denominator of the megawealthy as though their financial power can topple the .1%. In reality, the working class has far more power, and the will to carry it through, and that power is through force of numbers and effective organization.