• @[email protected]
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    142 years ago

    It’s so hard to know where to even start. Say one thing and it’s like you have to go right back to the basics of how money, capitalism and society work. Nuanced conversation is Impossible.

    • PugJesus
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      112 years ago

      Me, pulling down a chart when anyone asks me a question about modern society: “Okay, to understand this, we have to go back to early market economics of Mesopotamian city-states…”

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        I have nothing to add (sorry!) but reading “…back to early market economics of Mesopotamian city-states…” had me rolling, thank you.

      • Ew0
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        72 years ago

        History repeats itself… Except now we have climate change and nukes.

    • Doug Holland
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      432 years ago

      There’s no solving climate change until we’ve solved billionaires.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        Nah, buying a Tesla, a Porsche Taycan or a Volvo XC90 hybrid will solve the climate crisis. Trust me. Some guy on another thread told me.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 years ago

        I think reining them in is enough. We can habe billionaires in a green economy.

        I totally agree that billionaires should not exist, but I think climate change is more important and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

        • @[email protected]
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          122 years ago

          You can’t reign them in when the reigns are for purchase You can’t prevent them from purchasing the reigns because when the price tag is big enough, everything is for sale You can’t stop them from purchasing reigns altogether because they’ll go to a different market who can, then force the market to be open to them They will do everything in their power to KEEP their power, and to prevent them from EVER LOSING their power There IS ONLY ONE WAY to stop billionaires from having power and it is to stop them from being billionaires in any way available

        • @[email protected]
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          212 years ago

          The average billionaire emits 1 million times more CO2 than the average 90%er. There are about 3000 of them

    • no banana
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      182 years ago

      Even the billionaires, really. Less income inequality, more income security.

  • blazera
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    152 years ago

    Its not hoarded wealth, its spent on things that make them more money. More “ownership” of others work.

  • Display Name
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    212 years ago

    I’m not sure if anyone really believes that the rich hoard immigrants.

    • PugJesus
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      172 years ago

      [Saudi Arabia has joined the chat]

      And honestly, a non-zero amount of Western elites as well. It’s just smaller scale.

  • Marxism-Fennekinism
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    2 years ago

    Super simple analogy I like to use:

    You’re a kid and you go to a badly run daycare with nine other kids. Your parents pay for your stay and the person running it gets a daily shipment of food from that money, let’s say, eleven sandwiches [a convenient but not perfect stand-in for workers generating the resources and value for the bourgeoisie]. He should keep one for himself and give ten to the kids, so everyone gets one sandwich, but instead he keeps six and gives all of you five, so you only get half each which is barely just enough. Now, five more kids join, their parents are also paying the daycare owner, and he now gets sixteen sandwiches per day. But he keeps the difference for himself and still gives you all five. Now you each only get a third of a sandwich, barely even a mouthful and you’re hungry all the time. Do you blame the new kids for also being hungry and eating the food, or do you blame the daycare worker for hoarding all the food in the first place?

  • MxM111
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    12 years ago

    Do you really think that rich hoard cash? Under mattress?

      • MxM111
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        12 years ago

        They stay rich by investing it into stocks, or even into CDs. Nobody holds cash in large amounts. At very least you put it into bank (and bank invests it).

          • MxM111
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            12 years ago

            No. You can hoard resources, and resources would stay without action, without helping anyone. You CAN hoard cash as well. But rich do not do that. Invested money are working in economy.

              • MxM111
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                12 years ago

                Nearly all manufacturing and business is created this way. This is what capitalism is. Is the “capital” part of capitalism.

                • Flying Squid
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                  12 years ago

                  Then it’s weird that it happens that way in countries like Cuba. Or did you not realize they also have manufacturing?

  • @[email protected]
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    122 years ago

    I was having a talk with my 73 year old dad the other night and he still swears up and down that it’s the illegal immigrants crossing the border that are stealing all of our money. I asked him where he got this info from, he said he reads things on the internet. I had my laptop out and said “show me” and then of course he said “I don’t know how to search for it!”. I then told him that he was full of shit, he said the same things about the points that I was bringing up. I told him the difference between my points and his is that 95% of my points I can find a source for, his is always a form of “do your research!”.

    He said he never believes online surveys because he’s never been asked to participate in one, so he thinks it’s always a small perfectly chosen group of people in order to sway the results. I read him Pew Research’s surveying methodology and they said that they have all the datasets available. I mentioned that the GOP is almost entirely white people, and he said “How come there were ‘Black People for Trump’ in the last election?”. He wanted to know the results of a particular survey that had to do with politics, but of course wouldn’t look them up himself so I registered for an account, downloaded the datasets and showed it to him. From 2018 until now the GOP has been almost entirely white people, from 88%-92%, it even said that a quarter of them were “males over the age of 65 who identified as Protestant”.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      I asked my mom if she had seen that one Presidential debate where Trump was asked by Chris Wallace to say denounce white supremacy and the man literally contorted his brain into a pretzel to fudge out “stand by and stand back.” It was a 100% crystal clear call to “those type of supporters.” When I told my mom this, her rebuttable was “I didn’t watch it” so for her if she didn’t watch it, then it didn’t happen and even if it did happen, she doesn’t have to believe it. It floors me that white supremacist are emboldened these days, but the ignorance, complacency, and lack of empathy and critical thinking from the Right will probably doom us all in a long enough time line.

  • Flying Squid
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    32 years ago

    Convincing people that transwomen are women and transmen are men is right up there too.

  • @[email protected]
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    32 years ago

    We need to shift away from traditional coporate ownership and move towards worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and/or syndicates. Labor ownership invariably leads to the accumulation of wealth as you make money off a larger and larger percentage of workers.

  • Captain Howdy
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    52 years ago

    Technically they don’t hoard the cash, they loan it out to other rich people with the expectation of a return on their investment. Or theyhoarfd property.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Its not even the loaning out of the cash that is the problem. The real problem is that they spend the cash on ways to prevent other people from having the opportunity they had. This goes for political routes, such as donations to influence tax breaks, goverment backed monopoly, etc. Its also spent buying competitors or losing money to crush conpetition.

  • @[email protected]
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    832 years ago

    It would really fucking help if we stop giving billionaires a god damn microphone. All these news sites and even social media shares. Stop it.

    Oh, climate change issue?

    Let’s see what “self-made” billionaire CEO of Oilerson Oils, Oily Oilerson, grandchild of another billionaire, has to say.

    “With these unprecedented times, we must bond together and move forward, else we move backwards.”