"evil" one percent capitalists that you admire?

[untermensche]

Doctors?

They are not in the 1%.

People who merely work for a living are not in the 1%.

You get to be in the 1% by owning assets. A lot of assets. Not by working.

 

[Axulus]

Doctors?

They are not in the 1%.

People who merely work for a living are not in the 1%.

You get to be in the 1% by owning assets. A lot of assets. Not by working.

What a bunch of BS. Household income required to be in the top 1% is $521,411. That can be accomplished by married couples who are both top professionals in their respective fields, such as a surgeon and a defense attorney, or a business executive and a top salesman at a heavy equipment vendor.

 

[RVonse]

In history: Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and especially J.P. Hill. Ford. Coors.

Today: Koch brothers. Jamie Dimon. Steve Wynn.

The Kock brothers??? Weren't they the ones who nearly went to jail for past shady business dealings? And aren't they also the ones who are most behind our government being bought for sale these days? IMO Kochs are on a scum level just barely above Carl Ichan and Frank Lorenzo. And a scum level just below Mit Romney.

Normally I can at least see where you coming Max......but this time you really need to put the crack pipe down and come up for some fresh air!

 

[untermensche]

They are not in the 1%.

People who merely work for a living are not in the 1%.

You get to be in the 1% by owning assets. A lot of assets. Not by working.

What a bunch of BS. Household income required to be in the top 1% is $521,411. That can be accomplished by married couples who are both top professionals in their respective fields, such as a surgeon and a defense attorney, or a business executive and a top salesman at a heavy equipment vendor.

The top 1% is talking about wealth owned, not yearly salary.

Making half a millions dollars does not put you into the top 1%.

 

[RVonse]

One of my favorites is Elon Musk. Notable companies: Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors.

An good talk with him here:

https://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/khan-academy-living-room-chats/v/elon-musk

+1 for elon musk. He is a first class act.

I also greatly admire the late Steve Jobs (computers), George Lucas (movies) and Burt Rutan (aircraft) making their way through talent and hard work as opposed to being lucky, money manipulating, and good at back stabbing.

 

[NobleSavage]

Hate? Why? I like Buffet for all the reasons Axulus noted. You can "create" a company or "invent" a business method.

Buffet did neither. He has not made life better in any way. He is a glorified stock market monkey.

He was a least a good steward of other peoples money. Compared to all the other stock market monkeys he's a saint. I can see not admiring him, but no reason to hate.

 

[NobleSavage]

Patrick Soon-Shiong: wealthiest American in the healthcare industry.

From Wikipedia

In 1993, Soon-Shiong performed the world’s first encapsulated human islet transplant, an experimental Type-1 diabetes treatment, and the first pig to man islet cell transplant. He invented the nation’s first FDA approved protein nanoparticle delivery technology for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, doubling the response rate in patients. He received support from the National Institutes of Health, and the NASA Space Shuttle program. The drug Abraxane is now approved in over 40 countries, and currently in trials for lung, melanoma, gastric, and pancreatic cancer. Soon-Shiong is a co-holder of over 50 issued U.S. patents and has published more than 100 scientific papers. He has developed and sold two multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies, American Pharma Partners (APP) and Abraxis BioScience (ABII). APP was responsible for the only safe supply of Heparin in the United States in 2008, when supplies from other sources were found to be tainted.[5]

Soon-Shiong was on the faculty of UCLA Medical School from 1983 to 1991. He briefly left UCLA in 1991 to start a diabetes and cancer biotechnology firm that eventually became American Pharmaceutical Partners and Abraxis BioScience. Soon-Shiong founded American Pharmaceutical Partners (APP) in 1997. He sold the company to Fresenius SE for $5.6 billion[6] in July 2008. Soon-Shiong sold Abraxis BioScience, maker of his drug Abraxane to Celgene in 2010 in cash-and-stock deal, valued at over $3 billion.[7] He returned to UCLA during 2009 as a professor of microbiology, immunology, molecular genetics, and bioengineering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Soon-Shiong

 

[barbos]

Buffet did neither. He has not made life better in any way. He is a glorified stock market monkey.

He was a least a good steward of other peoples money.

So what?

Compared to all the other stock market monkeys he's a saint. I can see not admiring him, but no reason to hate.

I hate him for his attempts to appear something more than he actually is - old scrooge mcduck.
Had he started to use his money for something good 20 years earlier he might have had some respect from me.
Now he is just buying respect with money.

 

[Bomb#20]

Hate? Why? I like Buffet for all the reasons Axulus noted. You can "create" a company or "invent" a business method.

Buffet did neither. He has not made life better in any way. He is a glorified stock market monkey.

Just because you have a zero-sum-game mentality doesn't mean a stock market monkey isn't making life better in any way. Buffett has spent a lifetime causing investment capital to get redirected to better-run companies, making the whole economy grow a little faster. The American people have a higher standard of living because of Buffett.

 

[NobleSavage]

Let me add to this thread, although I GREATLY admire innovation and new ideas, that is the easy part. Bringing something to market successfully is a bitch. I'm involved with a company that has a patent, proof of concept, and a bunch of ideas for new patents and related products. By almost every measure our product is better, stronger, faster, and less expensive. It's in a non-sexy industry: concrete and construction. We have been busting our ass for years now and it's just starting to look like it's gonna take off.

 

[maxparrish]

Let me add to this thread, although I GREATLY admire innovation and new ideas, that is the easy part. Bringing something to market successfully is a bitch. I'm involved with a company that has a patent, proof of concept, and a bunch of ideas for new patents and related products. By almost every measure our product is better, stronger, faster, and less expensive. It's in a non-sexy industry: concrete and construction. We have been busting our ass for years now and it's just starting to look like it's gonna take off.

Which is what I noted previously. In prior generations, and in many contemporary traditional industries, the possibility of becoming wealthy at 14 years old, or a billionaire by the time one was 23 was (is) impossible (unless one inherited it). Regardless of how smart, educated, and talented a person was the creation of wealth required the creation of tangible products that required physical resources, vast quantities of labor and capital, and persistent management. Even raw invention, as Edison noted, was 99 percent perspiration with one percent inspiration.

Today, in many technology related industries, it is 99 percent inspiration and 1 percent perspiration. The products are mainly intellectual, organizations and manipulation of data. You can't eat it, make a house out of it, or drive it. Its merely 'cyber' world numbers and text that are represented in ever changing formats .

Even in "soft products" like entertainment and the arts, technology has changed the "perspiration" contribution. In 2014 Lena Dunham went from being a nobody to instantly wealthy on the basis of a year or two of one HBO TV show - something impossible for those in the comedic dramatic arts of 1914.

So no, I don't really find a reason to admire the "wunderkind" who are blessed with a moment of inspiration for an app with a tad of programming. I do admire, as above, those who bust their ass AFTER they have an idea to make something REAL in the REAL world.

 

[arkirk]

What's being missed here is that all these billionaires each have huge environmental footprints. Processes that make things bigger and better also destroy and pollute more of the ecosystem. If your focus is on greatness or large results, you may not clearly see that when a person makes an industrial breakthrough, that new rapidly self replicating process has unintended and often long undetected consequences that end up making it a zero sum game. In the meantime, these billionaires participate in making the wealth distribution inequity larger.

We are a culture of hero worshipers in a world with so much pathos and suffering and a lot of it come from the doings of our "heroes." About ultimate goodness and badness...it ain't over till the fat lady sings. Billionaires become billionaires because they are addicted to accumulating money. The other thing they do are only ancilliary to accumulating money.

 

[NobleSavage]

What's being missed here is that all these billionaires each have huge environmental footprints. Processes that make things bigger and better also destroy and pollute more of the ecosystem. If your focus is on greatness or large results, you may not clearly see that when a person makes an industrial breakthrough, that new rapidly self replicating process has unintended and often long undetected consequences that end up making it a zero sum game. In the meantime, these billionaires participate in making the wealth distribution inequity larger.

We are a culture of hero worshipers in a world with so much pathos and suffering and a lot of it come from the doings of our "heroes." About ultimate goodness and badness...it ain't over till the fat lady sings. Billionaires become billionaires because they are addicted to accumulating money. The other thing they do are only ancilliary to accumulating money.

Dude, this is my "good cop" thread. Why do you insist on fucking it up?

The first one I mentioned IS working on reducing environmental impact. I'll bet you $100 bucks that the market fixes the global warming problem before any politicians do.

 

[untermensche]

I'll bet you $100 bucks that the market fixes the global warming problem before any politicians do.

"The market" created the global warming problem and it is making it is as bad as possible as quickly as possible.

Capitalist markets care about maximizing profits, not people or the environment.

 

[NobleSavage]

I'll bet you $100 bucks that the market fixes the global warming problem before any politicians do.

"The market" created the global warming problem and it is making it is as bad as possible as quickly as possible.

Capitalist markets care about maximizing profits, not people or the environment.

I want to bet, I don't want to argue.

 

[untermensche]

"The market" created the global warming problem and it is making it is as bad as possible as quickly as possible.

Capitalist markets care about maximizing profits, not people or the environment.

I want to bet, I don't want to argue.

That's better than sucking the asses of assholes.

 

[Axulus]

"The market" created the global warming problem and it is making it is as bad as possible as quickly as possible.

Capitalist markets care about maximizing profits, not people or the environment.

I want to bet, I don't want to argue.

Be careful with that bet - if research at a university in any way contributes to the solution, he'll give the government credit for it.

 

[arkirk]

What's being missed here is that all these billionaires each have huge environmental footprints. Processes that make things bigger and better also destroy and pollute more of the ecosystem. If your focus is on greatness or large results, you may not clearly see that when a person makes an industrial breakthrough, that new rapidly self replicating process has unintended and often long undetected consequences that end up making it a zero sum game. In the meantime, these billionaires participate in making the wealth distribution inequity larger.

We are a culture of hero worshipers in a world with so much pathos and suffering and a lot of it come from the doings of our "heroes." About ultimate goodness and badness...it ain't over till the fat lady sings. Billionaires become billionaires because they are addicted to accumulating money. The other thing they do are only ancilliary to accumulating money.

Dude, this is my "good cop" thread. Why do you insist on fucking it up?

The first one I mentioned IS working on reducing environmental impact. I'll bet you $100 bucks that the market fixes the global warming problem before any politicians do.

The "market" doesn't fix a fucking thing, buddy! It is rigged for the rich. Wake up and smell the bullshit! The "market" made the mess in the first place and it is still in the business of making it worse. As long as "growth" is the goal it will continue its sickening effect on our environment even if it minimally ameliorates small problems FOR ITSELF. It has no conscience. Neither do all these wonder men you admire so much.

 

[untermensche]

I want to bet, I don't want to argue.

Be careful with that bet - if research at a university in any way contributes to the solution, he'll give the government credit for it.

Yeah because government funded research is really the free market in action.

 

[NobleSavage]

Be careful with that bet - if research at a university in any way contributes to the solution, he'll give the government credit for it.

Yeah because government funded research is really the free market in action.

Draw up the rules. I'm a fair person.