• ShadowZone@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Can we please stop calling someone “being worth” x amount of money? It’s disgusting on a fundamental level.

    • lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com
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      5 days ago

      In Germany, some people call people on the bottom of the money pyramid “socially weak”…

      Disgusting as well. Whoever has billions and doesn’t help otherd, is socially weak!

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      Yes!

      I guess we can’t exactly say he has more money, but we could say he has more “wealth.”

      But he’s about the most worthless piece of shit on the planet.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Okay lets brainstorm, they are all parasites on society, they are not more worthy than anyone else, but “king” has a sort of good vibe to it for many people so…

      Something along Robber Baron? But again, baron is kind of cool.

      Gangster? Too cool.

      Oligarch is for russians right?

      Child prince, too demeaning.

      Hyper burglar, too complicated.

      Thief sounds good IMO but they steal so much, and in history we’ve always been facinated with oeople being able to do that (kings, dragons, and actual thiefs).

      Bureaucratic parasites? Because they steal the work by shuffling the papers. Also doesn’t sound “cool”.

      Accountant or clerk seems to be what they actually are, cooking the book on the whole society.

      Elon Musk: super clerc.

      Zuccenberg: society accountant.

      Bill Gates: fraudulent clerc.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
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      5 days ago

      i was thinking about this the other day. i know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is disputed but i think there must be something to linguistic relativism. like, in english words describing wealth are all tied to “worthiness”, and we talk about being wealthy as being more good.

      in my language words describing wealth are all tied to effort: the ability and/or will to do something is “förmåga”, and if someone is wealthy they are “förmögen”, which i’m not entirely sure of the conjugation for but intuitively i read it as “has expended effort”. this is a more neutral term, and our class divide has historically been much shallower than the anglophone world. of course this is mostly due to different social systems but… why were they put in place ho begin with?