Look at this clip of Malcolm Offord, who is the leader Of Reform UK Scotland.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ROlWtkVz44c
And now just a brief tangent, but an amusing one. When I read his biography on Wikipedia, where it says, “He was a member of the Conservative Party until December 2025 when he defected to Reform UK.”, I initially misread that as, “when he defecated to Reform UK”.
I think this clip of Offord, who defecated to Reform UK, shows a lot about what is wrong with our planet. Offord boasts that he has six houses, five cars, six boats. He then claims that he’s not boasting, but to me that’s about as believable as an instant denial of responsibility for a fart. Offord, who defecated to Reform UK, then says, “In your Scotland, do you want more people like me, or fewer people like me.”
Now granted, his assertion that his fantastic wealth is anything to be proud of is met with derisive laughter, and Ross Greer responds without hesitation, “I want fewer people like you in Scotland.” So, Offord, who defecated to Reform UK, got his ass handed to him in a debate, and it was amusing and joyful to watch. But, all it offered us, really, was a temporary feeling of amusement. Because Offord still gets to go home to one of his six homes, five cars, six boats, and, a lot of toilets, that he will use to defecate to Reform UK, while there are many, many, many people, who would give anything to be able to afford one home. Not one home, one car, and one boat, but just one home. While Offord’s boastful speech made him a laughing stock, the fact is, we live in a system where he will have access to an insane amount of wealth for the remainder of his life.
I’d say what I’m about to say is the elephant in the room, but the massive societal problem I’m about to discuss is more noticeable than an elephant. This is more like, the tyrannosaurus roaring loudly in the room, (paleontologists will probably ruin my fun by proving conclusively that the tyrannosaurus rex did not actually roar, but anyway.) So, the t-rex in the room, is, people with insane levels of wealth, and in particular, billionaires, should not exist.
The vast wealth of Offord, who defecated to Reform UK, is scandalous in a world where not everyone has a home, not everyone has enough to eat, not everyone can afford to pay for emergency medical care. And, and as far as I can tell, Offord isn’t even a billionaire. So, Offord has enough wealth that it’s an embarrassment for our society that he should even have it, and yet, Offord is “poor”, in comparison to the richest. He’s not a billionaire. And he’s not a centibillionaire. There are only twenty one of those.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_centibillionaires
Imagine, there’s a level of wealth in existence that makes Offord’s six houses, five cars, six boats, and I have to imagine, many toilets, look like absolutely nothing by comparison.
How Much Is A Billion?
I think we have a tendency to think of 100,000 as the one after 10,000, and 1 million as the one after 100,000. So we think of a billion as “the next one up” after a million. But thinking of a billion as “the next one up” doesn’t adequately convey how big it is. I think the number a billion, is in some ways quite alien to our cognition. Perhaps because, for most of human history, a billion didn’t exist. There weren’t a billion people until 1800. And for the vast, vast majority of human history, nobody had a billion of, anything. Perhaps during hunter gatherer times, a really successful hunter might kill fifty animals during a hunt, if they were really, really good at hunting. But do you really think that when they were sitting around the campfire, they told stories of how Colin (why do you assume stone age hunters can’t be called Colin?) in one hunt for the ages, killed a billion animals?
The earliest time in history when we can definitively say that someone had a billion of something, was 1916, when John D. Rockefeller became the world’s first confirmed billionaire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire
One of the best videos I’ve ever seen for illustrating how big a billion is was put out by Tom Scott a few years ago, incidentally he’s back on you tube, hurray!
I remember watching this video a few years ago, and I watched the whole thing, partly because watching someone just driving for a very long time helped to calm down my overactive brain. In the video, Tom Scott walks a length representing a million, this takes him one minute. Then he drives, not walks, drives, on roads where the traffic is moving fairly fast, a length representing a billion, and it takes him approximately an hour and twenty minutes. If it took him an hour twenty to walk that length, a billion would still be huge. If it took him an hour twenty to drive on roads clogged with traffic, a billion would still be huge. But he drives, not walks, on roads where he is able to go pretty much as fast as the UK speed limit allows, and it takes him in or around one hundred minutes.
Or a few days ago, I encountered this web page that illustrates it quite well. It depicts the wealth of Jeff Bezos, where every ten pixels represents 5 million dollars.
https://eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Elon Musk, as of 2020, was worth 790 billion. He’s the richest man in the world, and the quite disgusting term centibillionaire applies to him. Think of the funding we would have to help the homeless, the hungry, the sick, and those who are so poor that they have lost all hope, if we took enough of Musk’s wealth so that he was “merely” a billionaire as opposed to a centibillionaire. And yet, we live in a society that refuses to “downgrade” Musk, Brin, Bezos and all the other centibillionaires even to billionaire. Think about that, even if we were really worried about how poor old Musk would survive without his fabulous wealth, we shouldn’t be worried about that, but if we were worried about that, we could take enough of his money to transform the lives of the poor and still leave him with fabulous wealth. And yet, we live in a world that won’t don’t that!
Is It Even Possible To Earn a Billion Dollars?
How much should everyone be paid for their work? We generally have an assumption that harder work means we should be paid more. As such, we would expect someone who works longer hours to be paid more. That’s intuitive. But we also, and this is where it gets trickier, expect somebody who works harder to be paid more. Is working at a building site harder than working in an office? What if it’s a very stressful office job? What about a job that involves long hours driving? Humans require a lot of stimulation, should doing a fairly monotonous job be considered hard work? It’s a very tough question. It’s not something I have the answer to. But I can answer, with complete confidence, that nobody, can possibly, earn a billion dollars.
I would hope we all understand that nurses provide an invaluable service, saving lives, helping to alleviate pain, and making people with horrific ailments as comfortable as possible. The average wage for a nurse in the United States is 47 dollars an hour.
Are we really saying that a nurse deserves to earn considerably less than the short walk in the Tom Scott video, representing a million dollars, but Bezos and Musk deserve to earn considerably more than the 100 minute drive representing a billion dollars?
I believe nothing a human being can ever do can earn them a billion dollars. Let’s say they’re able to function without sleep, food, or rest of any kind. If you were to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in an office, in a restaurant, in a hospital, you still wouldn’t be a multi-millionaire, based on the hourly wages of those jobs, let alone a billionaire, let alone a centibillionaire. Bezos, Musk, Ellison, and all the other centibillionaires, did not earn their wealth, because it’s not possible to earn that much wealth.
Another argument someone might make, is that it’s not really about the hard work they put in, but about the amount of good they have done. Okay, let’s take Bezos. Did Bezos do good in the world by essentially destroying a rival baby supplies company?
Amazon offered to buy Quidzi, a company that sold nappies (or diapers as they’re called overseas), and Quidzi refused. Amazon then lowered the price of its nappies until Quidzi couldn’t compete, then Quidzi quite reluctantly allowed itself to be bought out by Amazon. Its competitor destroyed, Amazon then raised the price of nappies again.
Is Bezos doing so much good that he deserves to be, not just a little more wealthy, but, astronomically more wealthy, than a nurse, or a teacher, or a farmer? So, why is Bezos so wealthy?
It’s simple. It’s not that he works hard, it’s not that he does good, it’s simply that he won at the game of capitalism. Just like a king or queen wins at feudalism by, you know, being born.
The Greatest Trick Those In Power Ever Played On You
Let me tell you a story. The story is bullshit, but stories like this will help illustrate how those in power, keep their power.
A black woman, who is an asylum seeker (her race is not incidental, but essential to how this kind of story works), in Cork, or Dublin, or Limerick, or Waterford, it doesn’t much matter, is getting on a bus, with her baby in a pram. The bus driver says, “I’m sorry, the bus is full, would you be able to wait for the next bus?” Unconcerned, the woman removes the baby from her pram and takes her in her arms, and simply leaves the pram at the bus stop. Confused, one of the passengers says, “That’s an expensive pram, I don’t think you want to just leave it there.” And the woman, with baby in arms, simply replies, “It’s okay, the state will just give me another pram.”
This urban legend has been going around for a decade or more. I heard it the other day in fact. For the past twenty years I have heard, over and over again, completely unsubstantiated rumours that immigrants and asylum seekers, particularly if they are people of colour, are showered with “free stuff.”
But let’s say it was true. Let’s say, that as soon as the government sees an asylum seeker of colour, Simon Harris rushes over to them and presents them with a brand new pram. I mean, even if that was what really happened, so? And I mean that, so what? Let me tweek this urban legend a bit, so that it’s, just a wee bit more realistic.
Jeff Bezos is getting on a bus (okay, a slight flight of fancy with Jeff Bezos needing to use a bus), holding a briefcase that contains 9 million dollars. The bus driver says, “I’m sorry, the bus is full, and there is no room for your briefcase, would you mind waiting for the next bus?” Unconcerned, Bezos simply leaves the briefcase at the bus stop. Confused, one of the passengers says, “That looks like an expensive briefcase, I don’t think you should just leave that there”, to which Bezos replies, “It’s okay, it only contains 9 million dollars, I’ll earn that back in an hour.”
https://www.thebusinesstitan.com/blogs/how-much-money-does-jeff-bezos-make/
Do you see the trick that those in power have played on us? They’ve convinced us, not to hate those who are far, far, far, better off than us, but those who are worse off than us. Bezos, Musk, Brin, and all the other centibillionaires, are laughing their asses off. I’m not joking, they are laughing so hard they will need ass replacement surgery. Because instead of hating the most wealthy, the most powerful, the people who have done the most to fuck up our lives, we are hating people who escaped war torn countries, and convincing ourselves that they are given out free prams. Free prams? Good Lord, that’s the injustice of the century isn’t it? And it’s not even true, stop listening to your friend Kevin, you know everything Kevin says is bullshit!
If you honestly believe asylum seekers are given free prams, then, where is your hatred for a guy who got to the point where he could afford a billion prams if he wanted, and he got there in part by destroying a baby supplies company? Instead of sending our hatred upwards, at the powerful, we are sending it downwards, at people who are worse off than ourselves. Musk and Bezos have contempt for us, and they convince us to have contempt for asylum seekers from war torn countries. Maybe they’ve convinced people who are on the point of death because they only have a slice of bread, to hate those who have only a half a slice of bread. As long as you are hating someone who’s “beneath” you, then you’re not hating somebody who’s above you, more powerful than you, who’s actually making your life miserable. Do not fall for it.
So next time you hear propaganda about immigrants, trans people, or whichever marginalized group is the boogie man this week, just remember this is nothing but a distraction from the fact that Malcolm Offord has six houses, five cars, six boats, and a hell of a lot of toilets, so that he can continue to defecate to Reform UK.
Ponderings Of An Autist 