A recent skirmish over the 1 percent’s feces is currently being worked out by the Florida state legislature.

One of the places that Jeff Bezos lives is a man-made island off the coast of Florida called Indian Creek Village. The island is predominantly populated by other billionaires and is colloquially known as the “Billionaire Bunker.” In fact, if you’re not a billionaire, it’s quite difficult to get in. The bridge from the mainland to the island is closed to the public and protected by armed guards and a sophisticated security system.

However, if the island is almost entirely cut off from the rest of humanity, the island’s inhabitants still seem intent on sharing one thing with members of the outside world: their piss and shit.

Indian Creek doesn’t have the underground infrastructure to deal with its own poop, so the solution it came up with was to funnel it through Surfside into a wider regional sewage system. Unfortunately, Surfside didn’t want the poop unless Indian Creek was willing to contribute $10 million to the community for future sewer system improvements. Indian Creek has referred to this request as “extortion.”

  • Rancor_Tangerine@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    It’s only 1-2 miles off the coast. A fixed wing FPV drone could make it there and back with no issue. Or just there with an issue.

  • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    For reference, $10M is 1% of $1B. Jeff Bezos is worth $225B, so that would be 1/225 of 1% for him to foot the bill. Considering there are many other multi-billionaires living on that island, that brings our fraction of a single percent of their collective wealth closer and closer to effectively zero.

    The greed of billionaires is unfathomable.

    • Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      12 hours ago

      The greed of billionaires is unfathomable.

      And the insane short-sightedness that is inevitably leading us all to climate collapse. Even when they think they’re being smart, they’re just idiots.

      The island is predominantly populated by other billionaires and is colloquially known as the “Billionaire Bunker.”

      Good luck surviving in your bunkers when you don’t even manage your own waste. Whether society collapses or the people finally turn on you, the mainland sewage system isn’t going to keep working for long. It’s yet another example that they don’t actually know what the hell they’re doing.

      • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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        11 hours ago

        They all think by reading Atlas Shrugged they are equipped to live on their own little paradise island from the poors.

        I believed in that book too. For like a year in my 20s, then I actually learned how the world works. These dumb asses never did. They learned how to take advantage of people, thats it.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Unfathomable is right. Especially when you consider that his net worth will continue to soar for the foreseeable future.

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    I work in municipal government in a different enclave for the super-rich (I don’t get to live here, of course). We aren’t 100% billionaire, but we do have several billionaires and 100% are multi-millionares.

    We also don’t have the ability to test our own sewage and instead contract with a neighboring municipality.

    But we pay for it. Anyone connecting has to pay impact fees. So if a sewer treatment plant costs 50 million dollars and a compound uses up 0.1% of its overall capacity had to pay 50 grand up to hook into the system, and any service line expansions required to reach their house must be paid for by the developer.

  • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    15 hours ago

    In an effort to fight this grave injustice, the community’s village council subsequently traveled to Florida’s State Capitol to lobby on behalf of the toilet-related concerns. The Times notes that Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is a member of Indian Creek Village and is on the council.

    The lobbying appears to have worked, as the Times reports that a large transportation bill recently approved by the state legislature now includes a “new legal measure prohibiting municipalities from blocking or charging for the installation of certain sewer lines — like the one Indian Creek wants to build, for example.” The bill now only has to be signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis. Charles Burkett, the mayor of Surfside, told the Times that he was blindsided by the legislative effort to resolve the matter.

    Sometimes I think we need some pirates to attack the island.

  • bloup@lemmy.sdf.org
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    15 hours ago

    When I was a child, I wanted everything. But by the time I had become an adult, I had realized along the way that having lots of things actually means having lots of burdens and the only way to have lots of stuff without it actually making you unhappy is if you find a way to make your problems everybody else’s problems too, and get them to take care of it for you. This is why I think that we need to cultivate a new social norm where anybody who is perceived as being interested in acquiring great wealth is seen as nothing more than a baby-minded individual that wants to turn the entire world into their mommy because they can’t even wipe their own ass

  • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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    16 hours ago

    I have a working theory that billionaires also don’t really understand money and numbers.

    People don’t understand the difference between a million and a billion until they can visaully see the difference. As someone else pointed out, $5 million is 0.5% of their wealth. It’s pocket change for a billionaire. However, billionaires are acting like it’s going to break the bank.

    Or billionaries just love to hoard their wealth to make their imaginary numbers go up.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    16 hours ago

    Soend 100 million yo build your own infrastructure of spend 10 million yo use your neighbor’s. Of course your going to call your neighbors extortionists, even though you’re the billionaire that has all the money and your neighbors just want to be paid for a service.

    This is what the new billionaires are: they think everything should be free for them, because everyone gets everything for free, right? It’s how they can pay their serfs so little money because they too get everything for free, so everyone is happy, right?

    Right?

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      It really is how the dotcomites and techbros see the world. They built everything for a song (and having the luck to be born with access to the materials to build their empires), so obviously the entire world that’s NOT a corporate entity should be handed to them for free.