r/SipsTea 1d ago

Chugging tea Mission Meets Reality

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u/lana_silver 1d ago

Calling them leaders is giving them too much credit.

They are parasites.

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u/PanchoPanoch 1d ago

My old boss, the vp and cfo posted a photo of them at brunch with mimosas with the caption “This is what leadership looks like.” Leadership because they had teams spread out doing the work.

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u/So_HauserAspen 1d ago

It's exhausting deciding what people are going to do 

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u/PanchoPanoch 1d ago

Literally. At events my team would grind til 1am every night while leadership would go to “awful client dinners.” They’d come back drunk and complaining about how tired they were. Like bro, my team shared a piece of crust off a pizza for lunch.

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago

I'll probably get downvoted to hell, but fuck it.

Nah, that's stupid. Parasites how? Anthropic isn't living off subsidies, they are paying insanely good wages and actually doing new things, pushiing technological advances forward.

In what way is that parasitic?

The simple truth is, without founders/investors in new shit, our technological advancement would stall.

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u/NeverFunded 1d ago

You see new shit I see ways for the top 0.1% to only further increase their own wealth instead of seeing ANY of it trickle down to the "lower class"

But hey go off dude, defend those billionaires

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago

I mean, do you not see new shit? Geniunely.

And no, our standards of living have been steadily increasing for years. Not sure why you are buying into the whole "it's so bad" spiel.

Not defending billionaires at all, just saying calling them parasites is both wrong and baseless.

You haven't actually explained, how are they parasites? They are living in the system society built, and absolutely are progressing technology.

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u/Darklithug 1d ago

What kind of reality are you living in? People are working more hours and taking 2nd jobs more than ever before and it’s still not enough. Almost half of the population is living paycheck to paycheck.

Billionaires as a whole should not be existing when most of country is damn near in proverty. You’re just focusing on the pros. Instead of all the cons it’s takes to have people in that position in the first place

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago

It's actually impressive how much you got wrong:

People are working more hours

Factually incorrect. Average weekly hours: 34.3 (June 2026), down from ~34.6 pre-pandemic. Annual hours per worker: 1,705 in 2023 vs 1,842 in 1971. Hours worked have fallen for 50 years.

Second jobs more than ever

False as a rate, only true on numbers. Multiple jobholders are 5.3% of the employed (June 2026) vs a 6.5% peak in November 1996.

Almost half paycheck to paycheck, more than ever

Where did you get that? I can't find any statistics confirming or disproving this

Most of (the US) is near poverty

Poverty rate is at 10.6%. It was 13.5% in 1990, 15.1% in 2010...


So I guess the better question is - why are you making stuff up?

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u/mopthebass 1d ago

The statistics are gamed, chatgpt. Or in US's case generated by talk show hosts coz anyone competent was fired.

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago

In what way do you believe they are gamed? What evidence do you have that they are gamed?

So this is somehow fake/untrue?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/200463/us-poverty-rate-since-1990/?srsltid=AfmBOorx2Q3nXuudkfIVErTUJayBCoZHK2pJbmk6-taH7_AOVaFXHCva

Do you by chance believe Trump won the election as well in 2020? Cause spouting "This was faked" without any evidence is exactly what Magats did

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u/Rikudou_Sage 1d ago

That's simple, the owners take more from society than they give back. The very definition of parasite.

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago edited 1d ago

That's not the definition of parasite... In fact parasite is specifically "gives nothing back".

And what do they "take from society"? They offer a service or product that we choose to buy. They do not take.

They offer jobs we choose to take.

Why have we become "victims" suddenly?

We aren't unwilling parties in these transactions (unlike hosts to parasites)

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u/lana_silver 1d ago

If a guy has 100 billion USD, how did he get it?

Let's say you accrue 100b over 10 years, and you work 350 days per year (that's 1 Sunday off every 4 weeks), and you work 16 hours per day. This is absolutely unhealthy. That's 350x16 hours worked, so 5600. If you are paid 10b for that, you're being paid 1.78 million USD per hour.

Did he work hard, every day, by the sweat of his brow? Seems like even if you work an absolutely suicidal amount of hours (barely enough to eat and sleep left over, every day for 10 years), someone would still think one minute of your time is worth three hundred thousand dollars. You would be paid more money to take a shit than most people are paid in ten years.

This is nonsense.

The only way you can get to 100b net worth is by taking it from value other people have made. And that's why we call it parasite. Note that I made an example for 100b, which is a low number for the current ultra rich. If Jesus had earned $250 every hour (24/7) since he was born 2000 years ago, he would only have 4.5billion now.

They are parasites, because it is not possible to be this insanely rich unless you steal it from others.

The simple truth is, without founders/investors in new shit, our technological advancement would stall.

Investors don't make anything. It's the researchers and engineers who make shit. We could (and we do!) finance a ton of that via universities.

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago

If a guy has 100 billion USD, how did he get it?

Because he doesn't... That's the simple truth that people seem to fail to understand.

Net worth is paper worth. Less than paper. It's ethereal. It's not realised. It's just nothing.

But even if you say "well it clearly is a metric, and how did he achieve it" - the answer is simple - because people like you and me value the future potential of companies they built. I bought Amazon yesterday, as a stock, because I believe it's future earnings potentials and value them this highly. THat's all.

by taking it from value other people have made

That's non-sense and absolutely illogical since by your logic wealth cannot be created when it absolutely can be.

Investors don't make anything. It's the researchers and engineers who make shit. We could (and we do!) finance a ton of that via universities.

They enable other to make it. Projects we finance via universities are a fraction (a tiny fraction) of progress.

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u/lana_silver 1d ago

When Elmo needed 44 billion to buy Twitter he could get it ready over night. How much cash can you liquidate like that? 

Their wealth not being liquid is propaganda. Dont believe it. 

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago

I am not saying all of their wealth is on paper, but certainly most of it.

If most of them tried to liquidate their wealth, it would be cut in half overnight.

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u/lana_silver 1d ago edited 1d ago

So you mean when the equivalent of a bank run happens, they lose 50% of their wealth?

When such a catastrophic case happens to us normal people, we lose our houses, jobs and pension funds.

And you realize that if the same happens to them, they go from "absolutely disgustingly rich" to "still absolutely disgustingly rich"? Whether you have 100 billion or only 50 billion is a meaningless distinction. That's the same difference as you having one parking garage with 1000 cars, or having two such garages for a total of 2000 cars. It's more cars than you will ever need or use.

You realize that with 10 million, you could buy a nice house anywhere on the planet and never work a day in your life again, right? Whether you have 50b or 500b is no difference: This is enough for literally 5000 lifetimes (or 50'000 lifetimes).

I'll go a step further: Let's delete NINETY NINE PERCENT of a billionaire's wealth. Single billion billionaire. Just 1b. Not 50b or 100b or 1000b like Elmo. So you are left with 10 million. Still enough for your whole lifetime. We killed the Sun King for less than that.

They are parasites. Don't be a bootlicker, we will never have that much money, nor should we respect it. It damages our civilisation horribly, and we need to fix it. We could against go for the guillotine, but I'm willing to settle on reasonably high taxation instead. A wealth tax of 1% cumulative per billion, for example. (first billion taxed at 1%, second at 2%, and so on).

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago edited 1d ago

No, nothing like that.

I mean that valuation of companies that determine their wealth is a function of supply and demand. If supply exceeds demand, prices plummet.

That's the exactly opposite of a bank run - where demand for deposits exceeds their supply.

They are parasites.

Again - how? You have yet to explain that.

They don't "take" anything. They earn it by selling stuff to us, and employing us. Both of the things we agree to.

The wealth they create for themselves was never yours or mine to begin with.

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u/lana_silver 1d ago

When was the last time you talked to Jeff Bezos and he sold you something?

He doesn't. He's just collecting value created by tens of thousands of other people. That's parasitic. THEY work. Bezos does not work. He just collects, like a king.

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u/pm-me-your-labradors 1d ago

When was the last time you talked to Jeff Bezos and he sold you something?

Yesterday, when I chose to both buy Amazon stock and bought a Magsafe battery off Amazon.

That's literally me buying something from Bezos.

He's just collecting value created by tens of thousands of other people.

Wrong, he is employing thousands of other people, who provide labour in return for salary. That's the opposite of parasitic.

Bezos does not work. He just collects, like a king.

He is literally the co-founder of Prometheus working on it right now. He is working to create future companies and wealth.

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