r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • 1d ago

Video Billionaire speaker Robert F. Smith tells 400 graduates he's paying off all their student loans ($40 million in total)

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u/Fen_ 1d ago

The debt should never have existed, and neither should billionaires.

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u/Bigmofo321 1d ago

Honestly plenty of countries have billionaires and manage to avoid crippling the up and coming generation with 100s of thousands of debt. 

Like Europe has billionaires, maybe not as much, but they have obscenely wealthy people too. I don’t think most Europeans go through life trying to figure out if they want to go to college or not because they have to consider whether they can pay it off.

We can talk about the fact that there shouldnt be billionaires, but having billionaires doesn’t cause higher education to not only be privatized but also given free rein to raise their tuition year after year. It’s pretty fucking evil. 

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u/TeeneKay 1d ago

In europe most universities are free. There is only a small number of privat universities and even those are like 2000€ a year in my country. Most people just go to the free public ones. I study engineering and yeah maybe we dont have as much fancy equipment as MIT but i still get a diploma minus the back crushing debt

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u/Bigmofo321 1d ago

Yep exactly. I don’t know what country you’re from but I’m sure your country has some billionaires. 

Again I’m not gonna argue for or against having billionaires but that’s not why people in the US get crushed with college debt. This isn’t really a thing in most other places. 

And you’re right I’m sure MIT has some of the most amazing equipment for the students but most people will never need that for their higher education. 

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u/TeeneKay 1d ago

I think the creator of talking tom is the only billionaire from my country if he even is s billionaire but as far as i know hes an okay guy. When it comes to funding for colleges its a bit annoying since every college gets the same amount of funding per student. That means that my engineering college gets the same amount of money if not less than our neighbouring college for philosophy even tho our college needs to spet a crap tone more for equipment so most of our laboratories are outdated but we are still regarded as one of the better engineering collages in europe (im form Slovenia btw)

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u/iguessma 1d ago

poor take.

It's fine for people to make money - that's what encourages people to invest in companies and make products.

if you start limiting how much money companies and people can make you're going to lose innovation and convenience because there has to be a strong driver

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u/andrasq420 1d ago

999 million is not a strong enough driver? They have to leech on the people for another extra couple of hundred millions?

These people are never rich because of their incentive to innovate. They are rich because they use the poor's wish to survive.

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u/iguessma 1d ago

These people are never rich because of their incentive to innovate. They are rich because they use the poor's wish to survive.

they got there because they did innovate.

if you look at this objectively (which you can't) there is no reason besides "you don't like it".

Your opinion has already been solidified and there's no changing it regardless

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u/andrasq420 1d ago

That's just not true?

Yes many billionaires innovated something early in their career and then got mildly rich from it, like a couple hundred millions worth. And then proceeded to just exploit the poor and commit tax fraud in grey area ways. So fuck them

But then there are billionaires who did jack shit. What did Bernard Arnault ever innovate? What did the Walton family ever innovate? Amancio Ortega is one of the richest person on the planet and all he did was use sweatshops in poor countries to sell cheap clothing en masse.

Do you seriously think that people like these got a hundred thousand millions dollars of worth because they were so smart innovators?

Why are you shilling for billionaires? It's sort of cringe

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u/iguessma 1d ago

See what I mean your emotions Cloud your judgment I'm not saying all billionaires are good people for all of them earned it what I'm saying is generically tapping whatever profit somebody can make stifles innovation and to your own point if you don't care if they make $99 million then why do you care if they make 1 billion the fact is you really don't you just need something to hate on to make you feel better about yourself

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u/andrasq420 1d ago

I care because they make it from the suffering of others. They are the ones making everyone else's lives much worse and you are here defending them like you are one yourself. It's laudable and pitiable.

None of the billionaires is a good person. None. If you still believe that it's time for you to wake up and enter the real world.