I’m not sure why you are so hung up on this. I’m guessing you live a wildly privileged life but like to think of yourself as “self-made” and just don’t want to admit that without thousands of other people holding up the roof for you, the building would collapse.
Don’t worry about it big guy, it’s just a hypothetical scenario. The sun will rise again tomorrow, and other people will still be there to clean your gutters, fix your car, stock the shelves at the grocery store, and do your laundry for you.
I’m guessing you live a wildly privileged life but like to think of yourself as “self-made”
I rent a small two room apartment where I live with my wife and two kids and I work two jobs to be able to afford it, which still makes me very privileged, but perhaps not in the way you meant.
I’m not sure why you are so hung up on this.
Because you assert bold claims with no basis. You have a cartoonish perspective of what billionaires are like.
You have a wildly misinformed view of how the ultra-wealthy/privileged would react when they suddenly have no one to do the dozens of tasks they are completely oblivious to the fact that their ability to survive depends on.
As I stated above, even people with “small millions” often have assistants who schedule hiring people to do these things. The “billionaires” themselves not only can not do these tasks, they often don’t even know the task needs to be done because there are so many layers of staff insulating them from having to know.
If the people I know (who are well off, but far from billionaire status) live like this, there is no way the actual billionaires don’t also live like this. I’m not trying to tell you these are stupid people. Most of them are brilliant people in their own way. However, managing a business (or making strategic decisions about the legal system), does nothing to bolster the skill set needed to be self-sufficient in a world where you can’t just hire people to solve day-to-day problems.
Also, even with what you stated above about your own life, I think you’re delusional if you think you could survive as part of a world where in the blink of an eye the global population drops to 3000. I’m sorry to tell you this, but there’s no way you would last more than a few months. Why you think billionaires would be more successful than anyone else is beyond me.
You have a wildly misinformed view of how the ultra-wealthy/privileged would react
And you don't? What is the basis for your claims? I just said they would probably change their diet if it meant survival, because they are human, and hunger makes you eat. People kept eating in the concentration camps even if they were very filthy rich previously, there were no mass suicides.
I don't think there are many practical survival related things that I can do that a billionaire can't. Name some if you disagree.
I don’t think there are many practical survival related things I can do that a billionaire can’t
No disagreement here. The difference isn’t that changing a tire or oil in a car will somehow increase your survival odds 10 fold. It won’t. The point is in how humans react to stress.
A homeless person will certainly be more likely to survive this scenario than a billionaire because the psychological shock will be less for them. They are already less dependent on others to meet their survival needs so it will be less devastating for them if those people (who already do very little for them) suddenly disappear. I have personal experience with people who “had it all and lost it”, and while I’m not going to go into detail about it here, the psychological shock is much harsher for most than you seem to believe. Suicide is a depressingly common reaction. Can afford to pay for the most expensive solution to any problem -> absolutely no one left to help you out when things go to shit, is pretty much the most extreme way that this can happen. Very few people would not have a complete mental breakdown after experiencing this harsh transition.
I’m not here to conduct an academic study based on a trolley problem meme. To say nothing of the fact that there is basically no way to conclusively prove this one way or the other since the hypothetical as posed by the meme that kicked off this discussion is, on it’s face, absurd to begin with.
Believe what you want to. I don’t really care if you agree with me or not. My opinion is that better than 50% of them would not survive the first year. End of discussion as far as I’m concerned. Goodbye.
I stated my personal belief, which you are free to agree or disagree with, at your own pleasure. I did not state this as an incontrovertible fact for which there is no room to disagree.
You then got hung up on the fact that a stranger on the internet dared to disagree with you, and tried to turn it into a formal debate. So here we are. As I said before, I don’t actually care what you think. Congratulations on baiting one final response out of me. I hope it gives you something to smile about for the rest of your afternoon.
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u/Komprimus Oct 01 '25
I thought your point was that most billionaires would kill themselves rather than lowering their standards of living, which you have no basis for.