You take loans out using your shares as collateral. Why do you think Musk is panicking about Twitter being dogshit ? His shares are on the line. Their worth based on shares, converted to cash is the exact same number. Except that by taking a loan against it, they evade taxes at the same time.
> You take loans out using your shares as collateral.
Think for a second about the context from your previous comment, which is what I'm replying to.
You say if billionaires didn't exist we'd have money to pay for everything. Your latest comment makes no sense in light of this. Who is taking out these loans to pay for everything?
They make these loans to banks. Since they are, according to you, "paper" billionaires, clearly these banks do not have their money, so the money being lended either belongs to you, me or your neighbor, or is part of the money they create out of thin air on the daily (which ends up still being your money, since the state guarantees that this money will exist in the case of a crash). Since it is unlikely that a bank has, say, $40 billion in cash, it is pretty much all created out of thin air, which ends up costing you, and society in general.
Additionally, the focus on "but they don't ackshually have the money" is harmful at best, and a poor misdirection at worst. If I come in at a restaurant with only 3 bucks in my pocket, they're going to laugh me out the door. If Peter Thiel does the same (since he is after all a paper billionaire, he clearly doesn't have that money, right?), suddenly, it miraculously works out. Money is a proxy for influence. Cash is its physical representation, but it doesn't need to physically exist to influence you. If I promise you to wire you a hundred bucks, you'll happily mow my lawn, even though you'll never see a single bill.
Watch out, this is peak bootlicker rethoric.
You take loans out using your shares as collateral. Why do you think Musk is panicking about Twitter being dogshit ? His shares are on the line. Their worth based on shares, converted to cash is the exact same number. Except that by taking a loan against it, they evade taxes at the same time.