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Penny Arcade - Comic - Rocket Measuring

DogDog Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
edited July 2021 in The Penny Arcade Hub
imagePenny Arcade - Comic - Rocket Measuring

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

Read the full story here

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  • LameGamer72LameGamer72 Registered User new member
    Problem is the 'space' they're fucking is Earth.

  • Anon von ZilchAnon von Zilch Registered User regular
    New rule: every time a rich person wants to do something ludicrously extravagant like space tourism, they have to solve world hunger first. And if that's already been done, they have to pay every single human's medical bills. I'm sure there are other things after that.

  • beeftruckbeeftruck Registered User regular
    There's an alt universe where you didn't buy a Playstation and used that money to instead keep at least several actual human children in the Third World from starving to death, but since you're not rich enough to have saved some arbitrarily high number of children, you're completely in the clear. If anything your likely position somewhere above the 90th percentile of global income makes you a downtrodden victim yourself.

    Furthermore, there's totally some actual explainable moral principle involved here that makes playing Ratchet & Clank worth more than even one human life, and it's absolutely not that nobody really gives a shit except when they want to slag on someone they don't like.

  • T-DangerT-Danger Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    New rule: every time a rich person wants to do something ludicrously extravagant like space tourism, they have to solve world hunger first. And if that's already been done, they have to pay every single human's medical bills. I'm sure there are other things after that.

    I'm down with that rule. It really infuriates me how these billionaires will always pay out the nose for extravagant shit for themselves but won't make a dent in their fortunes for things that could benefit society as a whole. You'd think they'd solve big problems like world hunger just for the publicity or to make themselves look good, or to make some profit out of it, but nope.

    T-Danger on
  • ValeroisValerois Registered User regular
    Honestly, I don't expect them to solve world hunger before wasting money. I would consider myself satisfied if they didn't exist in the first place, but that has far less to do with extravagant spending and more with concentration of wealth and all that jazz. Funnily, at least Jeffie doesn't seem to be doing a Muskrat and trying to sell us his misanthropic dreams as some sort of solution to our world's problems.

    And to the Beeftruck guy, while I agree In general with the principle of "some people only remember actual problems when they want to complain about others not solving them", it's still very much true that any of us can personally only hope to either volunteer/give to their immediate community (which is also a more effective expectation than overseas charity), or hope that some intermediary NGO is spending their money wisely to help someone an ocean away. Any one of these megarich could, if they so wished, greatly and (with some wise counseling involved, which they can also afford) more or less permanently improve the living conditions of a small country all by themselves. And all of that without really sacrificing many of the potential joys they can extract from life, unlike the guy who gives up playing Ratchet and Clank, as banal as that may be.

  • MarcinMNMarcinMN Registered User regular
    A brief Google search seems to indicate that Bezos does donate a lot of money to charitable causes. I guess it isn't enough for some though.

    Still, $10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund and $100 million to Feeding America must surely have some positive impact. Even if it is only around 5% of his net worth. Is everyone here donating 5% of their net worth? ;)

    "It's just as I've always said. We are being digested by an amoral universe."

    -Tycho Brahe
  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    MarcinMN wrote: »
    A brief Google search seems to indicate that Bezos does donate a lot of money to charitable causes. I guess it isn't enough for some though.

    Still, $10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund and $100 million to Feeding America must surely have some positive impact. Even if it is only around 5% of his net worth. Is everyone here donating 5% of their net worth? ;)

    https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2020/11/how-jeff-bezos-spending-his-10-billion-earth-fund/616977/

    Seems like that 10 billion somehow became 700 million at some point, because Bezos sensed blood in the water during a global pandemic

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    MarcinMN wrote: »
    A brief Google search seems to indicate that Bezos does donate a lot of money to charitable causes. I guess it isn't enough for some though.

    Still, $10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund and $100 million to Feeding America must surely have some positive impact. Even if it is only around 5% of his net worth. Is everyone here donating 5% of their net worth? ;)

    Lower income households do indeed tend to donate a higher percentage of their income/networth than most billionaires, yes.

    And color me unimpressed about donating 5% when 90% wouldn't have a single effect on his lifestyle but he chooses not to do so.

  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    MarcinMN wrote: »
    A brief Google search seems to indicate that Bezos does donate a lot of money to charitable causes. I guess it isn't enough for some though.

    Still, $10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund and $100 million to Feeding America must surely have some positive impact. Even if it is only around 5% of his net worth. Is everyone here donating 5% of their net worth? ;)

    While I'm not entirely on board with the "they shouldn't be allowed to go into space until they've solved world hunger" rhetoric, there is a crucial difference here. Looking at charitable donations as a percentage of net worth is just useless. Someone like Bezos could donate 95% of their net worth and still live in luxury for the rest of their lives. If any of us donated 50% of our net worth, we'd have to make real, incredibly tough sacrifices that would lower our standard of living significantly.

    Percentages are really only a meaningful comparison between people with approximately the same level of resources, or when showing that someone with less is actually donating a higher percentage than someone with more.


    Personally, I'm leery of depending on billionaires to solve world problems. It provides a non-sustainable, non-repeatable way of tackling problems, often more aligned with the opinions of the donor than the reality of the problem. It also is PR for the billionaire who got that way by underpaying all the people working for them. I don't want to celebrate someone squeezing their workforce for 30 years, then giving away billions and being lauded as an amazing person. I want to see a stronger tax code that prevents them from redistributing that wealth to themselves in the first place.

    I also want a pony.

    dennis on
  • Anon von ZilchAnon von Zilch Registered User regular
    dennis wrote: »
    Personally, I'm leery of depending on billionaires to solve world problems. It provides a non-sustainable, non-repeatable way of tackling problems, often more aligned with the opinions of the donor than the reality of the problem. It also is PR for the billionaire who got that way by underpaying all the people working for them. I don't want to celebrate someone squeezing their workforce for 30 years, then giving away billions and being lauded as an amazing person. I want to see a stronger tax code that prevents them from redistributing that wealth to themselves in the first place.

    I also want a pony.

    To be clear, I absolutely do not trust billionaires to solve any actual problems. I'd prefer if they were taxed until they were no longer billionaires. But I also want to deny them their space trips.

  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    dennis wrote: »
    Personally, I'm leery of depending on billionaires to solve world problems. It provides a non-sustainable, non-repeatable way of tackling problems, often more aligned with the opinions of the donor than the reality of the problem. It also is PR for the billionaire who got that way by underpaying all the people working for them. I don't want to celebrate someone squeezing their workforce for 30 years, then giving away billions and being lauded as an amazing person. I want to see a stronger tax code that prevents them from redistributing that wealth to themselves in the first place.

    I also want a pony.

    To be clear, I absolutely do not trust billionaires to solve any actual problems. I'd prefer if they were taxed until they were no longer billionaires. But I also want to deny them their space trips.

    But following that logic, wouldn't you deny them just about anything? Is a space trip worse than a giant yacht that cruises around the ocean, burning fossil fuels, disrupting wildlife, etc.? Especially when the former is in a fairly small capsule that's probably the smallest space they've shared with another person in the last several decades? At least in the space trip case, there's a lot of ancillary benefit to all the work that's been done in building the rocket technology and such. I think we're already advanced enough when it comes to yacht tech.

    I'm just trying to fully grasp how this is fundamentally different than all the other opulence you get when you're a crazy rich person. What do you do, ban them from living like they had more than a couple of million dollars? Then what happens to their money? If you don't just take it all from them, are they just supposed to keep it locked up in the bank, piling up higher and higher?

    dennis on
  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    Also, for those who didn't realize the thrust of the space dick joke in the comic, this is the actual rocket:

    d3fvrxwdhtdv.png

    dennis on
  • BropocalypseBropocalypse Registered User regular
    Other humans are considered stepping-stones to their personal glory. We need money to survive, they treat it as something as consequential as a video game high score.

  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    dennis wrote: »
    Also, for those who didn't realize the thrust of the space dick joke in the comic, this is the actual rocket:

    d3fvrxwdhtdv.png

    I know that a society run by women would still have come up with the same general ideal shape for getting into space, but did it really need the vein down the side?

    Delzhand on
  • BremenBremen Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    To play devil's advocate, I'm happier (or perhaps the term should be less unhappy) to see billionaires spending their money on a euphemism competition that may actually advance the cause of space exploration than them, say, competing over who has the biggest super yachts. I'd prefer to see major innovations in space travel pushed by the government, but at this point I'm taking what I can get.
    Delzhand wrote: »
    dennis wrote: »
    Also, for those who didn't realize the thrust of the space dick joke in the comic, this is the actual rocket:

    d3fvrxwdhtdv.png

    I know that a society run by women would still have come up with the same general ideal shape for getting into space, but did it really need the vein down the side?

    John Stewart, unsurprisingly, has a great take on this (very NSFW):

    https://twitter.com/jonstewart/status/1417557259886940162

    Bremen on
  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    Just like with literally any money expenditure, there's a spectrum of wise (or unwise) ways of spending money.

    Buying everyone on the entire earth a sandwich might solve a momentary world hunger problem, but it wouldn't be a long term solution. I'm all in favor of these mega-billionaires doing good with their money. But it also needs to be smart good. They need to invest in infrastructure. They need to invest in medicine and science. They need to invest in education. They need to invest in civil engineering. They need to invest in things that will have a lasting impact.

    On the other hand, to play the devil's advocate here, it is their money and they did earn it, and if they want to do something dumb like fly into space on a penis shaped rocketship, that's kinda their prerogative since it's their money.

  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    I wouldn't have a problem with these guys blowing their money to pop off in space if they paid the same % of their money in taxes that I do, they don't so fuck them.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    On the other hand, to play the devil's advocate here, it is their money and they did earn it, and if they want to do something dumb like fly into space on a penis shaped rocketship, that's kinda their prerogative since it's their money.

    Hard disagree on the bolded.

    Otherwise we as a society routinely redistribute wealth. It's their money until we as a society decide a large portion of it isn't.

  • V1mV1m Registered User regular
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    Just like with literally any money expenditure, there's a spectrum of wise (or unwise) ways of spending money.

    Buying everyone on the entire earth a sandwich might solve a momentary world hunger problem, but it wouldn't be a long term solution. I'm all in favor of these mega-billionaires doing good with their money. But it also needs to be smart good. They need to invest in infrastructure. They need to invest in medicine and science. They need to invest in education. They need to invest in civil engineering. They need to invest in things that will have a lasting impact.

    On the other hand, to play the devil's advocate here, it is their money and they did earn it, and if they want to do something dumb like fly into space on a penis shaped rocketship, that's kinda their prerogative since it's their money.

    Elon Musk is an undeniable jerkwank asshole, but if all billionaires were like him with regard to research and industrial projects, the class would have a far better reputation than it does.

    And yes, I realise that's damning with faint praise. I just think it would be nice if they could flex with stuff like "Fuck you, Elon, I cleared the great Pacific garbage patch in 3 years flat" or "nice garbage patch job there Bezos, but my genome project just resurrected 11 mammal species" or "Grats on your 11 whole male white rhinos, Ellison, but I've bought 11 million acres of Brazilian wasteland and restored it to rainforest" and so on

  • CoinageCoinage Heaviside LayerRegistered User regular
    edited July 2021
    Imagine believing in 2021 that billionaires didn't legally steal 99.9999% of their money.

    Coinage on
  • PeriSoftPeriSoft Registered User regular
    In among all of this, there's a fundamental error lots of people make when thinking about the Bezos/Musk/Gates types of the world, which is that they have some kind of big-ass Scrooge McDuck style money bins full of cash. They don't.

    The only reason Forbes says they "have money" is because other people have bid up the value of stock they own because they're founders of companies that became successful. It's not income. It can't be 'turned down' like a salary can be. And if founders divest themselves of a large portion of their stock, it will tank the stock for everyone else, screw up the companies' ability to continue operating, and possibly break several laws regarding the fiduciary responsibility of executives to not screw things up for investors in their (public) companies.

    People are all up in arms about how Bezos or whoever else "earns too much money" or whatever, but they're not earning money in any real sense. They can access some percentage of that value by selling a tiny bit of their stock, or borrowing (at some risk!) against its likely future value, but they *cannot access X billion in cash*. They don't *have* that much money, any more than if you bought a house in 2002 for $100k and now it's worth $1m you "earned $900,000". You *might* be able to realize those gains, or you might not!

    Do Bezos and Musk and Gates have access to an ungodly amount of financial resources compared to normal people? Absolutely. Is it anything remotely similar to you or I having a checking account with $50 billion in it? No, not in a million years. And I really wish people would stop deliberately misconstruing happenstance stock valuation changes as "income", and wealth as "income", just to make cheap political points. It doesn't do anyone any good, and if your argument is strong you don't need spin to support it.

    Thanks for attending my TED talk.

  • V1mV1m Registered User regular
    Excellent refutation of a claim nobody made. Not one single person here has said that billionaires should instantly spend x amount of cash money all at 9AM one business day.

  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    I've heard that apologia before and I find it unconvincing. He found enough money laying in the couch cushions to go into fucking space. Billionaires are symptomatic of a broken system.

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    We're all aware they don't have literally that much in liquid cash.

    They do have billions in assets and resources they can't spend or use in their own lifetime even if they tried.

    Millions of other people absolutely could. The right thing to do would be to give those resources to them, ideally starting with the most impoverished.

  • DrascinDrascin Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    Quid wrote: »
    Lucascraft wrote: »
    On the other hand, to play the devil's advocate here, it is their money and they did earn it, and if they want to do something dumb like fly into space on a penis shaped rocketship, that's kinda their prerogative since it's their money.

    Hard disagree on the bolded.

    Otherwise we as a society routinely redistribute wealth. It's their money until we as a society decide a large portion of it isn't.

    As I've said before. You can earn a million dollars. Even ten million. With work and good ideas and/or some good old dumb luck, you can absolutely earn yourself a good pile of money.

    You cannot earn billions of dollars. At the point you're talking in billions, the literal only way to get that much money is to cheat. It's like having five aces in your hand while playing cards. You can't get there without shenanigans.

    Drascin on
    Steam ID: Right here.
  • beeftruckbeeftruck Registered User regular
    We should just convince everyone that Amazon isn't actually that valuable. Then Bezos would lose most of his net worth, and that would mean there would be more money for everyone else somehow.

  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    or we could somehow force him and amazon to pay real taxes

  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    beeftruck wrote: »
    We should just convince everyone that Amazon isn't actually that valuable. Then Bezos would lose most of his net worth, and that would mean there would be more money for everyone else somehow.

    That's not really how stocks work. Or economies.

    Though it's probably supposed to be a joke somehow. Hah hah.

    dennis on
  • PeriSoftPeriSoft Registered User regular
    I'm aware that nobody *here* has *specifically* said that Bezos/Gates et. al have literal cash. But saying that they 'legally stole it' is similar - it's a bit like saying that someone whose net worth rises because properties in their neighborhood are in the middle of a bubble also 'stole' their 'money' (that they don't actually have).

    My point, more broadly, is that in order to address inequality, you need to think about the nature of monetary resources accurately, and most people aren't thinking about it accurately. Lots and lots of people *do* say things like, "There shouldn't be billionaires", but in context, that can't mean "tax income more" because billionaires don't become billionaires via regular income. The only way to stop someone from being a billionaire is to prevent them from owning more than X% of a corporation that's worth more than $Y - except that happens gradually. Do you force founders to divest as companies become successful? Maybe, but in many cases that would be pretty disastrous for individual organizations, since lots of high-profile startups' value is predicated on their being operated by their founders. And then you have other potentially-distorting effects: Maybe founders just split their businesses into lots of multiple units, which could have some positive knock-on effects but would result in their net worths being mostly unchanged and likely in introducing random inefficiencies for no particular benefit.

    In the end, there are really few of these guys, and there are lots and lots of people who do have large regular incomes, and more than enough room in the world to do lots of good and set up a better safety net for lots of people without specifically baying for the blood of half a dozen dudes who particularly piss everyone off. And that was part of the reason for my rant: If we focused, collectively, more on that rather than on being angry at a dozen super-lucky (but, in a national economic sense, relatively inconsequential) dudes, then a lot more net positives could come out of the situation. The 'OMG billionaires' trope is a red herring built on a misunderstanding of value, and IMO it's a distraction from sh*t that actually matters.

  • CoinageCoinage Heaviside LayerRegistered User regular
    PeriSoft wrote: »
    The only way to stop someone from being a billionaire is to prevent them from owning more than X% of a corporation that's worth more than $Y - except that happens gradually. Do you force founders to divest as companies become successful? Maybe, but in many cases that would be pretty disastrous for individual organizations, since lots of high-profile startups' value is predicated on their being operated by their founders. And then you have other potentially-distorting effects: Maybe founders just split their businesses into lots of multiple units, which could have some positive knock-on effects but would result in their net worths being mostly unchanged and likely in introducing random inefficiencies for no particular benefit
    I have some breaking news for you from 2 centuries ago

  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    PeriSoft wrote: »
    I'm aware that nobody *here* has *specifically* said that Bezos/Gates et. al have literal cash. But saying that they 'legally stole it' is similar - it's a bit like saying that someone whose net worth rises because properties in their neighborhood are in the middle of a bubble also 'stole' their 'money' (that they don't actually have).

    I think that analogy falls down when the fortune comes from the value of a company driven by the business tactics it has undertaken at the direction of the person who has a huge net worth from the stock in said company.

    But yeah, saying Bezos shouldn't be worth $200 billion because he should be taxed like crazy is a little misguided, since most of that $200 billion is unrealized gain because he holds stock.

    On the other hand, the company itself should have been taxed much more (or, probably at all) and they should have made a lot less because they should have been compensating their workers much more.

    And that's without even touching the anticompetitive part.

    dennis on
  • beeftruckbeeftruck Registered User regular
    Coinage wrote: »

    Let me guess, this pithy non-response to a thoughtful post is meant to make us think of the usual handful of Scandinavian "capitalism but with more public welfare spending" countries, and not Venezuelans roasting zoo animals over a tire fire, etc.

  • CoinageCoinage Heaviside LayerRegistered User regular
    edited July 2021
    beeftruck wrote: »
    Coinage wrote: »

    Let me guess, this pithy non-response to a thoughtful post is meant to make us think of the usual handful of Scandinavian "capitalism but with more public welfare spending" countries, and not Venezuelans roasting zoo animals over a tire fire, etc.
    If workers own their workplaces you don't need to theorycraft about owners divesting. One person amassing all the wealth their workers create doesn't happen in the first place. So no I don't mean Scandinavia, but I know socialism is when vuvuzela no iphone 200 trillion dead etc.

    Coinage on
  • DjiemDjiem Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    The guy who went to space for the sheer fun of fucking it paid less in taxes than his employee who has to pee in a bottle.

    I will now continue ignoring any argument you have to defend billionaires and their space race, for they are necessarily bad.

    Djiem on
  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    Djiem wrote: »
    The guy who went to space for the sheer fun of fucking it paid less in taxes than his employee who has to pee in a bottle.

    Even though Bezos paid $1.4 billion in taxes over the last 12 years, percentage-wise that's much lower than his employees. It's pretty clear no one on this thread thinks that's a fair percentage.
    I will now continue ignoring any argument you have to defend billionaires and their space race, for they are necessarily bad.

    You'd have to warp people's posts pretty heavily to claim they're "defending" anyone, so I'm not really sure what you're ignoring. Some people are basically just saying going into space isn't somehow special, compared to all the other opulence they spend their money on. Yet it draws people's emotions out more heavily.

    I remember 20 years ago when a bunch of millionaires and billionaires were throwing their money at around-the-world balloon records. People were interested, but they didn't get so outraged. They just rolled their eyes and got on with their life. It's not that they didn't think it was ridiculous, it was just hard to be especially outraged about this one particular thing. Rich people have been doing rich people shit a long time, from eating flamingo tongues to flying first class to Australia. Nobody here is defending it, just saying it's weird to be especially outraged about this one thing.

    Maybe it's just that people are paying more attention now. Maybe it's just that the internet is a thing now (for the masses).

    dennis on
  • supermunchkinsupermunchkin Registered User regular
    there's a fix for all of this its called tax capital gains at the same rate as income. fixes alot of this overnight.

  • DelzhandDelzhand Hard to miss. Registered User regular
    there's a fix for all of this its called tax capital gains at the same rate as income. fixes alot of this overnight.

    Well... sorta. As long as conservatives and moderate dems control budgets, more tax revenue probably doesn't move the needle on a lot of the problems being discussed here like poverty and hunger. The money's never gonna turn into UBI or MFA unless there are political changes.

    Although I guess if we're suddenly able to tax capital gains we're already presupposing a pretty big sea change politically anyway, so maybe I'm just chicken-and-egging

  • dennisdennis aka bingley Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    there's a fix for all of this its called tax capital gains at the same rate as income. fixes alot of this overnight.

    No, it really doesn't. Capital gains is based on actually selling the stock. Most of Bezos' wealth is in held stock. (And is therefore based on speculation and somewhat of a fantasy that liquidating such a huge holding wouldn't also drop the price as it was being sold. In reality, for every seller there must be a buyer, and they are going to want to pay as little as possible.)

    This is the same as the stock investments I have. The gains on those won't be taxed until I sell them, which is a good thing because what's the alternative? That I pay taxes on something now only to have it drop later before I sell it and now I've paid all these taxes on money I never made?

    dennis on
  • V1mV1m Registered User regular
    dennis wrote: »
    Djiem wrote: »
    The guy who went to space for the sheer fun of fucking it paid less in taxes than his employee who has to pee in a bottle.

    Even though Bezos paid $1.4 billion in taxes over the last 12 years, percentage-wise that's much lower than his employees. It's pretty clear no one on this thread thinks that's a fair percentage.
    I will now continue ignoring any argument you have to defend billionaires and their space race, for they are necessarily bad.

    You'd have to warp people's posts pretty heavily to claim they're "defending" anyone, so I'm not really sure what you're ignoring. Some people are basically just saying going into space isn't somehow special, compared to all the other opulence they spend their money on. Yet it draws people's emotions out more heavily.

    I remember 20 years ago when a bunch of millionaires and billionaires were throwing their money at around-the-world balloon records. People were interested, but they didn't get so outraged. They just rolled their eyes and got on with their life. It's not that they didn't think it was ridiculous, it was just hard to be especially outraged about this one particular thing. Rich people have been doing rich people shit a long time, from eating flamingo tongues to flying first class to Australia. Nobody here is defending it, just saying it's weird to be especially outraged about this one thing.

    Maybe it's just that people are paying more attention now. Maybe it's just that the internet is a thing now (for the masses).

    Maybe it's that the world is on fucking fire and the actual biosphere might die back to woodlice and red algae

  • CoinageCoinage Heaviside LayerRegistered User regular

    What a mystery why people hate the rich more now than 20 years ago

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