#World’s Billionaires

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[2smolbeans]

Yandere CEO in a room with darling, handing them a contract sheet for them to sign:

"I know this company is going to miss you, but you have to understand why I have to do this. You deserve more than this, you deserve to have so much-"

Otaku darling already knowing yandere CEO's intentions and signing it immediately:

"Yep, don't care! Chain me up, don't care. All I ask for is funding for my lovely figures - and oh! A membership for all of these streaming websites. You're right, I deserve so much more, so take me now!"

Yandere CEO surprised but not disappointed as they take the signed contract:

"Okay..Didn't plan that to happen..But then again you always belonged to me. So why would I be surprised..?"

Darling immediately jumping onto their lap, happily hugging them as they accept their fate:

"Mhn-hmn! <3"

.

.

The aftermath of yandere CEO consensually 'kidnapping' an otaku darling <3

[confessedlyfannish]

Writing Prompt #14

"You foolish, stupid child," Vlad hisses, pinning Danny to the wall. Danny's eyes turn green as he wraps both his fists around the one Vlad has clenched in his collar, his feet dangling in the air. Vlad leans in, his own eyes burning red.

"When, exactly, did you plan on telling me your biological father was Bruce Wayne?" he says furiously.

Danny's hands drop in surprise. "W-What?" he gasps.

Vlad drops him unceremoniously and he lands on the floor in a heap. Vlad claws at the air in frustration.

"Don't lie to me, boy." Vlad says, omitting his often used possessive "my" in front of "boy".

"How do you know that?" Danny asks warily, propping himself up. He watches Vlad push a shaking hand through his hair. The man looks down at him before dropping in an ungainly squat beside him.

"Of all the sperm donors, Bruce Wayne, Daniel? Really?" The man asks, despairingly.

"I didn't exactly choose him, Vlad."

"No, I suppose you didn't."

"Seriously," Danny says, watching the man rock back on his heels as a growing pit forms in his stomach. "How did you know about him?"

Vlad's mouth twists bitterly. "Because he now knows about you."

"What do you—"

"Vladdy! Danno! What are the two of you doing on the floor?" Jack flops down beside them, a tray of freshly prepared fudge in his hands. "We having a heart-to-heart boys? Let me in on this!"

"Jack," Vlad says. "If you truly want to have a heart-to-heart with your son, I suggest you tell him the real reason I've come over today."

Jack's face falls.

"Vlad," Maddie says from behind him. "Thank you for coming. We're grateful for all you've done, but I think we can handle it from here."

"Madeline," Vlad says, rushing to his feet. "I must insist—"

"And I must insist you see yourself out," Maddie smiles tightly. "You know where the door is, don't you?"

"Mads," Jack says gently, looking between the two.

"I can show him out," Danny says, getting up as well.

"That's alright, Danny," Maddie says. "Why don't you go get your sister? We need to have a talk...as a family."

Danny glances at Vlad.

"Now, Danny," Maddie says. Danny heads for the stairs, pit growing ever larger.

--

The next time they meet it is Danny who has Vlad pinned, the gaudy chandelier above him shaking with the force of his rage.

"You should've told me," Danny growls.

"I thought your parents had you informed," Vlad says, utterly unbothered by the teen cracking what is thankfully not a load-bearing wall of his mansion. "Honestly Daniel, we could throw around allegations of deception on both sides, particularly mine as I assume you've known for quite some time now, if not the entire time, about your father hmm?"

Danny's eyes flick away in an obvious tell.

"Yes, I thought as much. But rather than whinging about being blindsided, I suggest we focus our energy on the solution."

Danny drops Vlad, barely biting back a snarl when the man lands gracefully on both feet.

"Which is?" Danny asks.

"First of all, your well-meaning but frankly moronic parents seem to believe that they can make a case for your custody without the assistance of my legal team. It is in both of our best interests to dissuade them of this."

"They don't like feeling indebted, Mom in particular."

"Well, to be crude for a moment Daniel, tough shit. Yes," Vlad says in response to Danny's widening eyes, "I said it. Bruce Wayne has the best of the best on his payroll and your parent's rinky-dink attorney from the local practice won't stand a chance against Friedman & Sons. Especially once he establishes paternity."

"He can do that?" Danny asks. "I mean I'm almost eighteen, can't I just refuse?"

"The keyword here, Daniel, is almost. As in, you are not. The judge can take your wishes into consideration, but I suspect Wayne will make a case for an unsafe living environment alongside his paternity to win his petition for full custody."

"Un-unsafe living environment?" Danny sputters. Vlad eyes the boy dryly before gesturing to all of him, currently clad in silver and black hazmat. Danny drops the transformation with a wince.

"In fact, I suspect that's the main reason the man filed in the first place," Vlad continues. "Lord knows he doesn't need anymore heirs to fight over his fortune once he passes—"

"Jesus, Vlad,"

"—so I believe he did some digging and found your home to be, well, wanting. On paper, Daniel, your parents sound eccentric at best, dangerous at worst. Pull the right strings, and hospital records just fall into laps. He probably thinks he's rescuing you." Vlad sneers. "If only he knew how quick you are to spit in the face of one offering you a comfortable and wealthy home."

"Fuck off," Danny says. "Is that what this is about? If you can't have me, no one can?"

Vlad rolls his eyes. "Come now, Daniel. Are you really intending to keep up this pretense?"

"What are you talking about?"

"We agreed a long time ago that no matter the nature of our quarrel, we would leave the Justice League out of it," Vlad says, taking a menacing step forward. "You think I, running in the circles I do, would have no knowledge of Bruce Wayne's alter-ego?" He takes another step, voice rising. "I have avoided drawing The Batman's attention for years, no matter how often our paths crossed. I stayed under his radar for decades, and now, BECAUSE OF YOU, I AM ABOUT TO BE RUINED."

With a creak and a groan, the chandelier drops, landing between them with a crash. Danny coughs from the dust as Vlad takes a heaving, calming breath.

"Then why get involved at all?" Danny asks, staring at the ground.

Vlad sighs, clapping his hands twice. Several ghosts dressed in service uniforms fly out the woodwork, gathering up bits of chandelier as others begin to mop.

"Because, little badger," Vlad says, walking away from the mess. "If we lose this, he'll have you in the palm of his hands. Which is infinitely worse."

Entering the kitchen, he pulls an open bottle of white out of the kitchen fridge and pours himself a glass, throwing a Fiji water to Danny who takes it for the peace offering it is.

"He won't."

"Won't what, Daniel? Please speak in full sentences."

"Won't have me," Danny says, letting a thin coat of frost spread over the bottle. He tips the freezing cold water into his mouth and wipes his face with his sleeve, mostly to see Vlad grimace.

"Why, because you'll run away if he wins? Until you turn eighteen? I won't have you fail to complete your education because of a cockamamie scheme, Daniel—"

"Because I have a solution, Vlad, one that doesn't involve the courts or running away."

"And what is that, exactly, Daniel?"

--

"You're going to leave my family alone."

"Danny," Mr. Wayne says, blinking in surprise at the boy on his doorstep and miles away from Illinois.

"I mean it," Danny says firmly. "You're going to drop your petition and whatever smear campaign you were planning on and leave the Fentons alone."

"Danny...why don't you come inside?"

Danny takes a step back from the manor's large doors. "You want a relationship with me? Brute force isn't the answer."

Bruce takes in the teenager, lanky but almost to his eye level. His eyes are clear and sharp, his demeanor forcibly calm.

"I debated whether going through the court was the right thing to do," Bruce says slowly, matching calm with calm. "But I wanted to be above board."

"Because my adoption wasn't?" Danny says, arms crossed. "Yeah, I'm aware. Kinda hard to adopt a kid that doesn't legally exist. And I know what you're going to say, the Fentons should've reported me to the system, but they didn't do it because I begged them not to. Because I didn't want my biological parents to find me."

"Danny..."

"You can swing your dick around and get your way, exactly the way I thought you would do things," Danny says, "Or you can have a relationship with me on my terms. A relationship where I don't despise you because you took me away from the people who've loved me no matter their faults."

"You're asking me to choose your happiness over your safety." Bruce says carefully.

"That's bullshit," Danny says. "I had a lab accident when I was fourteen and went directly against my parents' instructions. They trusted me, and I made a mistake."

"It's not a matter of trust. You were a child, Danny, and you almost died." Bruce says, not bothering to feign ignorance. Footsteps echo behind him.

"Bruce?" A voice calls. "Is that..?"

"Your son did die," Danny says. "He took a flight with your credit card to Ethiopia and got blown up. I bet you trusted him too."

Bruce reels back as a hand lands on his shoulder, the other on the door.

"Whoa, whoa, uh, Danny, right? I'm Tim, I'm—"

"I know who you are," Danny says, clenching his fists. Powering through the hurt he is causing. "I didn't come here to point out what a total hypocrite you are. I just want you to back off. And if you give me your number, we can text and I'll come to Gotham for Thanksgiving or the ski chalet in Vermont or your villa in where-the-fuck-ever and you can be Uncle Bruce that I maybe even tolerate being around once in a while. Just leave my family alone."

"Bruce, what is he talking about?" Tim asks. "Back off of what?"

"Your Dad is suing my parents for full custody," Danny says when it becomes clear Bruce isn't answering.

"What?" Tim hisses, turning to Bruce. "That isn't what we talked about!"

"Danny. I..."

"Here," Danny says, thrusting an index card forward that he's scrawled his phone number and email onto. On the other side is the past participle conjugation for 'venir'. "I won't answer until you drop the custody petition. Which I expect you to do by tomorrow morning."

"Done," Tim says, stepping past Bruce and taking the card. "Give me about noon to get it all squared away with the lawyers. Do you have a hotel? A way home? I'd be happy to reimburse your flight and accommodation."

"Overstepping already."

"Fair enough," Tim says coolly, raising his hands. "Our lawyers will reach out when it's settled."

"Great. Bye." Danny says, turning to leave. He waits until he hears the manor door close behind him before pulling out his cell phone.

Ring!

Ring!

"Hello?"

"It's done."

"What's done? Again, little badger, full sentences, I beg of you."

[icewindandboringhorror]

On average, what is the total MONTHLY amount that you spend on dining out*?

*(This doesn't only count going out to restaurants, but also stuff like picking up fast food to bring home, getting a coffee on the way to work, getting a premade sandwich from a grocery store deli during lunch, buying a quick snack from a convenience store or food cart whilst walking somewhere, ordering a pizza or any other food to be delivered to your home, etc.)

*(If you often dine out in groups/as a household: calculate and divide the costs so that you get a Per Person average. This is for YOU individually, NOT the total household/group costs)

(I'm sure polls similar to this have been made before (very common topic), I just haven't personally seen one that I can remember, so, I was curious to do my own! I was discussing this with a group of people today and it was very interesting to see how widely the number varied between individuals. :0c )

(Reblog for bigger sample size if you can, and feel free to explain your answer in tags if there's anything extra to add!)

[lazycranberrydoodles]

i think the barbie movie would have a profound psychological impact on hua cheng

prev comic / next comic / follow for still more hualian barbie movie content because i am not done

bonus angsty version 🎉 i hate love expressions just a couple tiny lines on the mouth and eyebrows and it goes from silly to sad

:(

[wisebeth]

do swifties realise criticising taylor swift isn't always “misogyny” and there are valid reasons to not like her?

[inkedberries]

i absolutely love fics where bruce and clark have no idea who their secret identities are and they fall in love. that’s my iv drip

[never-was-has-been]

[ladyvaderpixetc]

Jon Stewart, hitting the nail on the head once again.

[queerism1969]

[juniperhillpatient]

the way some of y'all speak so condescendingly to & about vegans & vegetarians or just people trying to recycle or do a little better for the world is sick actually. sorry corporations are the real problem & everything is hopeless but I'm a receptionist lmao I won't fix that in my lifetime but I can minimize the animal products I buy & recyle & try not to buy aersol products & be nice to people. sorry the idea of doing the bare minimum infuriates some of u guys to ur cores but like. get fucked

[kayas-kosmos]

Because of what's happening on Twitter...

I've made a little diagram to demonstrate why billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are bad for society.

(Text in Image)

"If we view society as a body, every sector is like a different organ within the body that serves a function and works in harmony with other organs to maintain balance. Every part of the body is important for the whole thing to function."

"The ultra-wealthy want you to believe they are the beating heart and thinking mind of the society – they are the innovators who create our jobs and their brilliance drives society forward. They deserve to be at the top of society because they have earned that. Without them, the body won’t function because they are the most important part."

"In reality, they are more like a malignant tumour, sucking all of the blood (resources) away from everything else (people and the planet) to fuel its own infinite growth, depriving the rest of the body and slowly killing it. Workers create all of the innovation and keep things running, the ultra-wealthy take all the credit."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a public domain image so feel free to pinch it for whatever.

Elon Musk has put the careers of thousands of small business owners who depend on Twitter (myself included) in jeopardy by completely running it into the ground. Before this, Mark Zuckerberg had already been doing the same when he started pursuing Metaverse, making Instagram and Facebook much more unusable for artists. Do I really need to go into other examples of CEOs and very normalised practise of wage theft?

Meanwhile, the UK currently has the richest Prime Minister in its history. What is this man doing with this wealth? Continuing the Tory legacy of austerity in order to line his pockets and the pockets of his crony friends. This has resulted in a devastating cost of living crisis that continues to ravage the country as people's energy bills skyrocket out of control.

My diagram is pretty basic and lacks nuance, there's definitely more I could elaborate on with this comparison but I really don't have time. I just want people to get the basic point of how billionaires view themselves vs what function they actually serve. I'm also not here to debate whether some organs are more important than others since I'm not a doctor, that's not really the point here. And no, I don't care if people think I'm being harsh by comparing billionaires to a tumour. If they don't want to be compared to one they should stop acting like one. Jeff Bezos could end world hunger right now and chooses not to.

Also, I know a lot of people are going to come at me with the argument that billionaires give away massive amounts of money. First off, people like Jeff Bezos only give large sums of money to charity a.) for the sake of improving their public image and b.) because giving to charity allows them to write it off in their taxes. Also, charities in of themselves have a lot of problems, but that's a blog post for another day. Mutual Aid is a better way to help people directly. Really, the ultra wealthy need to be taxed, of course they do everything within their power to avoid taxes.

Also:

"Earning a lot of money" and "holding onto a lot of money" are two different things. You cannot be a multi-millionaire unless you hold onto that money. If you give away massive chunks of it to enrich society, you cease to be a billionaire.

Oh and this is worth a watch, too.

Furthermore:

Also before the inevitable great man comments:

Being a billionaire is a moral failing. Nobody needs that much money.

[Slight edit here - I made the assertion that a billionaire could not spend all of their money in their lifetime, but as someone in the comments pointed out it's very easy for them to completely waste billions in no time. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have shown that].

Anyway, if you would like to see more anti-Capitalist art from me, I am currently working on a webcomic called "Flowerpunk" - a story about a group of anarchists who are trying to save the city of Wyrdon from a supernatural plague known as "the rot." The comic heavily discusses disaster Capitalism and how the rich will use mass death and destruction as an opportunity to further line their pockets.

I also like to do little anti-Capitalist doodles relating to this project, which I plan to make into posters at some point.

Please consider donating a Ko-Fi also if you would like to help support this project. I am really struggling at the moment because I've basically lost a massive chunk of my client base due to this Twitter implosion and also because of the AI BS that has made it impossible for me to get any reach nowadays. The last year or so has been an absolute nightmare for my career because of all of this.

Thank you all for your continued support! Hopefully I can re-establish my audience here on Tumblr and wherever else I decide to go.

[frownyalfred]

i have no idea what the setup for it would be, but the idea of a fic in which gotham simultaneously learns that BATMAN and NIGHTWING, widely considered two of the most capable people in the world, are college dropouts AND that HARLEY QUINN was batman's classmate (and also that harley knows his identity, apparently? she insists she doesn't but no one is buying that he turned up to classes in the cowl) refused to leave my brain, and seemed like the kind of premise you'd get a kick out of.

This reminds me of the Facebook spam “Mark Zuckerberg was a college drop out!!” Because yeah, technically he was. But there’s a big difference between your buddy dropping out of community college because he didn’t like getting up early and Bruce Wayne, who dropped out of medical school to become a ninja and work through his trauma on a mountain somewhere.

I’m sure there’s a lot of Gothamites who play the “but Batman is a college dropout too!” card with their buddies 😅

[brigid-faye]

James: Hey love what have you been up to

Regulus: Bullying people in anonymous Tumblr asks

James: That’s super attractive. I also love turning the safe haven of fandom into a painful minefield and endlessly dwelling on bad feelings

Remus: Reg, how about sprinkling in the kind of homophobic, body-shaming vitriol we’d cancel anyone else for using?

Sirius: Very demure. Very mindful

[paulic]

happy birdyyyyyyyy to this one <3

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The super-rich got that way through monopolies

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Just in time for Davos, here's 'Taken, not earned: How monopolists drive the world’s power and wealth divide," a report from a coalition of international tax justice and anti-corporate activist groups:

https://www.balancedeconomy.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Davos-Taken-not-Earned-full-Report-2024-FINAL.pdf

The rise of monopolies over the past 40 years came about as the result of specific, deliberate policy choices. As the report documents, the wealthiest people in America funneled a fortune into neutering antitrust enforcement, through the "consumer welfare" doctrine.

This is an economic theory that equates monopolies with efficiency: "If everyone is buying the same things from the same store, that tells you the store is doing something right, not something criminal." 40 years ago, and ever since, the wealthy have funded think-tanks, university programs and even "continuing education" programs for federal judges to push this line:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

They didn't do this for ideological reasons – they were chasing material goals. Monopolies produce vast profits, and those profits produce vast wealth. The rise and rise of the super rich cannot be decoupled from the rise and rise of monopolies.

If you're new to this, you might think that "monopoly" only refers to a sector in which there is only one seller. But that's not what economists mean when they talk about monopolies and monopolization: for them, a monopoly is a company with power. Economists who talk about monopolies mean companies that "can act independently without needing to consider the responses of competitors, customers, workers, or even governments."

One way to measure that power is through markups ("the difference between the selling price of goods or services and their cost"). Very large companies in concentrated industries have very high markups, and they're getting higher. From 2017-22, the 20 largest companies in the world had average markups of 50%. The 100 largest companies average 43%. The smallest half of companies get average markups of 25%.

Those markups rose steeply during the covid lockdowns – and so did the wealth of the billionaires who own them. Tech billionaires – Bezos, Brin and Page, Gates and Ballmer – all made their fortunes from monopolies. Warren Buffet is a proud monopolist who says "the single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power… if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10 percent, then you’ve got a terrible business."

We are living in the age of the monopoly. In the 1930s, the top 0.1% of US companies accounted for less than half of America's GDP. Today, it's 90%. And it's accelerating, with global mergers climbing from 2,676 in 1985 to 62,000 in 2021.

Monopoly's cheerleaders claim that these numbers vindicate them. Monopolies are so efficient that everyone wants to create them. Those efficiencies can be seen in the markups monopolies can charge, and the profits they can make. If a monopoly has a 50% markup, that's just the "efficiency of scale."

But what is the actual shape of this "efficiency?" How is it manifest? The report's authors answer this with one word: power.

Monopolists have the power "to extract wealth from, to restrict the freedoms of, and to manipulate or steer the vastly larger numbers of losers." They establish themselves as gatekeepers and create chokepoints that they can use to raise prices paid by their customers and lower the payout to their suppliers:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

These chokepoints let monopolies usurp "one of the ultimate prerogatives of state power: taxation." Amazon sellers pay a 51% tax to sell on the platform. App Store suppliers pay a 30% tax on every dollar they make with their apps. That translates into higher costs. Consider a good that costs $10 to make: the bottom 50% of companies (by size) would charge $12.50 for that product on average. The largest companies would charge $15. Thus monopolies don't just make their owners richer – they make everyone else poorer, too.

This power to set prices is behind the greedflation (or, more politely, "seller's inflation"). The CEOs of the largest companies in the world keep getting on investor calls and bragging about this:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

The food system is incredibly monopolistic. The Cargill family own the largest commodity trader in the world, which is how they built up a family fortune worth $43b. Cargill is one of the "ABCD" companies ("Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus") that control the world's food supply, and they tripled their profits during the lockdown.

Monopolies gouge everyone – even governments. Pfizer charged the NHS £18-22/shot for vaccines that cost £5/shot to make. They took the British government for £2bn – that's enough to pay last year's pay hike for NHS nurses, six times over,

But monopolies also abuse their suppliers, especially their employees. All over the world, competition authorities are uncovering "wage fixing" and "no poaching" agreements among large firms, who collude to put a cap on what workers in their sector can earn. Unions report workers having their pay determined by algorithms. Bosses lock employees in with noncompetes and huge repayment bills for "training":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Monopolies corrupt our governments. Companies with huge markups can spend some of that money on lobbying. The 20 largest companies in the world spend more than €155m/year lobbying in the US and alone, not counting the money they spend on industry associations and other cutouts that lobby on their behalf. Big Tech leads the pack on lobbying, accounting for 82% of EU lobbying spending and 58% of US lobbying.

One key monopoly lobbying priority is blocking climate action, from Apple lobbying against right-to-repair, which creates vast mountains of e-waste, to energy monopolist lobbying against renewables. And energy companies are getting more monopolistic, with Exxonmobil spending $65b to buy Pioneer and Chevron spending $60b to buy Hess. Many of the world's richest people are fossil fuel monopolists, like Charles and Julia Koch, the 18th and 19th richest people on the Forbes list. They spend fortunes on climate denial.

When people talk about the climate impact of billionaires, they tend to focus on the carbon footprints of their mansions and private jets, but the true environmental cost of the ultra rich comes from the anti-renewables, pro-emissions lobbying they buy with their monopoly winnings.

The good news is that the tide is turning on monopolies. A coalition of "businesses, workers, farmers, consumers and other civil society groups" have created a "remarkably successful anti-monopoly movement." The past three years saw more regulatory action on corporate mergers, price-gouging, predatory pricing, labor abuses and other evils of monopoly than we got in the past 40 years.

The business press – cheerleaders for monopoly – keep running editorials claiming that enforcers like Lina Khan are getting nothing done. Sure, WSJ, Khan's getting nothing done – that's why you ran 80 editorial about her:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

(Khan's winning like crazy. Just last month she killed four megamergers:)

https://www.thesling.org/the-ftc-just-blocked-four-mergers-in-a-month-heres-how-its-latest-win-fits-into-the-broader-campaign-to-revive-antitrust/

The EU and UK are taking actions that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Canada is finally set to get a real competition law, with the Trudeau government promising to add an "abuse of dominance" rule to Canada's antitrust system.

Even more exciting are the moves in the global south. In South Africa, "competition law contains some of the most progressive ideas of all":

It actively seeks to create greater economic participation, particularly for ‘historically disadvantaged persons’ as part of its public interest considerations in merger decisions.

Balzac wrote, "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Chances are, the rapsheet includes an antitrust violation. Getting rid of monopolies won't get rid of all the billionaires, but it'll certainly get rid of a hell of a lot of them.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/monopolies-produce-billionaires/#inequality-corruption-climate-poverty-sweatshops