For most people, passive income is a bit of extra pocket change that requires minimal effort to earn to supplement a main source of income. For Steve Ballmer, it’s $1 billion.
ITT: a bunch of people who don't understand how dividends work on stock ownership. He's not collecting a salary, Microsoft is not actively paying him, he's just an investor who owns a shit ton of stock.
Rape already exists. Based on your reasoning here, anyone who says rape shouldn't exist 'already lost.' So I guess we should get rid of those anti-rape laws, right?
It is supposed to be a tool that allows people to support promising ventures that they believe in, and allows them to profit from the venture if it is successful.
Instead it's a race to the bottom, where companies have a feduciary duty to their investors to make them as much profit as possible. This is the ultimate driver of enshittification.
Adam Smith was a smart guy, but he never saw Milton Friedman coming.