• LoreleiSankTheShip@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    He’d still have a lot of property to his name, a lot of other assets and stuff that aren’t tied to an arbitrary stock market. Even if you crash it, mansions and luxury cars would still be very valuable. He will never not be a billionaire due to that.

    That is, unless you redistribute his wealth. Then yeah, he wouldn’t be filthy rich anymore.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Very true, but you have to be able to sell those assets to gain from them. If the stock market is erased you can’t sell your yacht to another exploiter because their networth is decimated too and they can no longer borrow off anything but physical assets, and now they also have a massive “income” stream that is now down so borrowing is more risky. We coulda had a bad bitch of a society, instead we let the rich turn us all into Mammon zombies.

    • lordnikon@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      well it’s worse than that becase most of those houses and other assets were bought for the most part from loans taken out at very low interest rates against the stock he has in his company’s and other shares in his portfolio . The stocks on whole give better return than that interest rate. So it’s free money they can spend an they don’t even have to sell their stock and pay taxes on the returns just the dividends at a way lower rate that any working person. the way this is setup it becomes impossible for him to spend money fast enough for him to actually lose more money than he gained.

      • viking@infosec.pub
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        3 months ago

        As long as the loans aren’t paid off though, running the stock into the ground would result in margin calls. An empire built on borrowed money with loans secured only through the value of the empire itself can be a fragile construct.