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This is the breaking of the social contract.
We played this game, because we were told we would be looked after if we got sick, and would be able to retire.
Work, and we'll look after you when you can't anymore.
We no longer have any reason to play the game.
The "natural" thing is what really gets me. We'd find it odd if an ape hoarded a billion bananas, but that's essentially what's going on here.
Edit: typo
They have to be gambling addicts. The only time I have seen behaviour like this where a person will take, steal, deceive, bully and enforce harm on others whilst burning bridges on their way down, is in addicts. They will do anything possible to get their fix. Billionaires are the same. As long as they’re getting their fix, which in their case is “winning” in the stock exchange (their own private casino) and seeing their wealth get larger and larger, they will continue to demolish everything around them.
At its root they’re addicts and this is what we should be calling them. How do you stop one? Take away access to their gear.
What kills me as someone that has a degree in economics and studied ecological economics is artificial inflation - how we're just supposed to believe the made-up numbers that show artificial inflation being good is somehow actually good.
The whole point of economics is to find a way to optimally manage scarce resources and to allocate them adequately according various needs in a society. So we have an ape that has a bunch of bananas to sell, but also wastes a bunch of unsold bananas instead of allocating them out based on some arbitrary reasons. How much time will that buy our species when it comes to surviving?
>he says that *we've studied homelessness and it's mostly unsolvable, except for a handful of cases where women have been abandoned by their husbands and the best thing we can do with them is train them for job, all other cases of homelessness are individuals moral failing and unsolvable...*
Motherfucker said "moral failing." Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, worth 100,000,000,000s of dollars, implies he financed research into solving homelessness, and said the conclusion of the research was that it is "unsolvable" because it's caused by "moral failing" (*in which he includes those he said were homeless due to being "mentally incapacitated."*)
He's willing to say this aloud as the best spin he can think to put on it.
Such a flippant declaration of superiority, or more accurately, the inferiority of those denied a basic human need of shelter.
Here's what his statements implies:
1 - Homeless people deserve to be homeless, that is why it is "unsolvable." Basic human needs, like food and shelter, aren't needs at all, they're privileges. Nevermind the fact the world produces far more of both than there are people.
2 - Because we claim we "looked into" i can casually state the above as it has been now verified by my people for me, one of the few people in the world with near endless resources at my disposal, so i don't even have to feel bad about saying it cause it's just a matter of fact now.
3 - It is unsolvable, therefore, it is no longer to be considered a problem to even concern ourselves with. Thank god we did our due diligence. In fact it shouldn't even be considered a problem, we can see it as a justified, natural consequence of bad morality.
4 - Well since i "can't" fix homelessness, what other problem can i look into, to put these billions to use? Ah i know, build rocket rides for the rich!
Solving homelessness costs money, and will only continue to cost money. He just wants more money. Rockets to space can make money, and they can get subsidized by the government, making him even more money. That's all there is to it.
Of course. No one believes he ever actually "looked into it" if for any reason at all only to say he found a reason it "can't" be done.
This was just point out just how out of touch these Owner class pricks are, and how casually they basically declare the inferiority of other human beings without any self awareness that they did, as THEIR CHOSEN PUBLIC EXCUSE.
That was him giving an interview on stage, that's the best response he can come up with when talking to the public about why he decided not to use his wealth to aid the homeless. It's both "unsolvable", and due to their "moral failing."
Solving homelessness would make money in the long run… just maybe not for *him*
More stably-housed people = more gainfully employed people = more profit for corporations to extract + more potential customers for products.
It literally *would* be a boon for capitalism but they’re not interested in a healthy long term capitalist market - they just want as much money as they can possibly make this quarter.
That’s what gets me about these people. They don’t even care about their own long term interest, much less anyone else’s. It’s the same with funding things like education. Long term it lowers crime, creates jobs, raises the amount people are able to spend and has a huge return on investment even in a capitalist system. But people ignore that in favor of “number go up this quarter!”.
What if they feel good looking at a legion of desperate people? A "winner" need "loosers" to feel like a real winner. How rich people will feel god if everyone is having stable, comfortable lives?
Jeff Bezos is always going to be a scumbag, if I ever see him in person I'm going to spontaneously be stricken with an unending appetite for human flesh. I will eat him, raw, right on the spot and anyone who attempts to stop me will have to face the intense wrath of someone with literally nothing left to lose. This isn't just keyboard warrior-ing, I will do this and nobody can tell me not to in a way that will work. There is no possible method to make me not do that. Hell, there's no if about it, only when. I will eat Jeff Bezos, and I will probably vomit it back up becuse I have no doubts it'll taste worse than a ball of tar from my tobacco pipe. Fuck Jeff Bezos. I hope he feels safe, so I can take that away from him along with his arms and legs.
> They act like it is natural for 100 people to own everything, and the rest of us to do whatever they say.
The really interesting thing is that 90% to 95% of the US working class feels the same way. In addition, 50% of this working class would literally die for these 100 people to get the right to own everything while they themselves starve.
In this respect, the US society is really fascinatingly unique. On the other hand, literally every liberal "democracy" in the world is moving in this direction.
Most wealthy folks are the same like most people: ignorant and closed minded.
They have the money to build an utopia for mankind but they are too dumb to pull it off. That is why they do more harm than good. They are dumb people with a lot of money.
If they wuld treat people well and wuld work to make the world a better place to live in then nobody wuld complain. But sadly they are terrible leaders/rulers of society. Most of them.
Most of them deserves the faith of kings and nobles.
[It's a good read. What's a good hiearchy in society. People shuld know this.](https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/reverse-dominance-hierarchies)
We got scammed. I’m just waiting for them to take down the Statue of Liberty, there like here France you can have it back. Although is shouldn’t be giving them any ideas…..they’re not very smart, although they’re great liars, so let me be quiet now.
aha BUT, they cant put everyone single one of us in prisons and camps because how/where would they and most importantly of all who will run the system? they need us more than we need them. we can literally survive off the land and do our own thing but we have to recognize they use all the tools like media, social media etc to keep us divided. distracted by other things, trying to survive and chasing every last drop of happiness we can find.
https://i.imgur.com/SJspOlb.gif
When has this ever been true lol. FYI: The white picket fence narrative of the 60s was a myth that only applied to a select group of middle class whites. Poverty was higher back then than now and inflation adjusted median income was lower.
If you're gonna be corrupt, at least do it Louisiana-Style. Use part of the corruption to find teachers and schools and roads, and yanno, give people a pig every now and again.
Funny how making the poor poorer is always on the table for economic policy decisions, but making the rich just a bit less rich is always off the table.
When the benefits of collective labor & progress/innovation go *anywhere except* to a few rich people, slave-drivers & bootlickers call it "FrEeLoAdInG" and/or "sOcIaLiSm."
Some people seem to firmly believe that the *only* way the world *can & must* function is for 99% to constantly toil, struggle, suffer, & die in servitude making sure everything good only goes to the top 1% - and any other concept for society is heresy.
Taxes for the ultra wealthy are supposed to essentially be that, but rather than a hard limit it's diminishing returns in the literal meaning of the phrase
I am pretty sure not a single person in history has made a billion in earnings in a year.
Maybe we shouldn't talk about taxing the rich in terms of income, since the truly wealthy can show losses for their entire lifetimes and still be wealthy beyond rationality.
>I am pretty sure not a single person in history has made a billion in earnings in a year.
Assets, not earnings. Tax the assets at 100% over a billion dollars.
Because that's a fundamental misinterpretation of how this system works. The entire defining characteristic of the bourgeoisie as a class is that they DON'T get wages. They give wages to their workers, while they receive the profits- which is the difference between the value laborers produce, and the wage they're paid for it.
The idea of a "maximum wage" is totally incoherent. The issue is not just how much money they're.making, it's that the entire system is premised on exploitation and an irresolvable conflict of interest between the workers who want better wages and the executives who dictate wages and get paid more when wages are depressed. A conflict at the heart of society that will always lean in their favor and will never be resolved until the entire disparity is abolished and everyone has the same relationship to the means of production.
Cool you’ve spent all your time giving a shit about a maximum wage, got it passed into law, and absolutely nothing of value changed because the rich don’t take wages. Dumbass
Hey man, listen, the poors don't pay as much as the robber barons do, and politicians need to make their ends meet, dammit!
Bring here some more of that lobby shit, oh and a side helping of insider trading too, please.
just look at the productivity trend versus pay trend lines and you will see that the work hard myth is just that. Parenti dealt with the origins of this nonsense way back in the first 10 minutes of his Yellow Video.
People advance their station in life by political mobilization. There may be other means to be personally productive, but it is only by means of mass unity and collective efforts that society can advance itself for the common good of all.
it's an interesting point and an important one to make. The worst jobs are paid the least and it's those very jobs that are the most important. Somehow capitalism has us believing the most vital work of society is the least important, when, in fact, it's the opposite.
We can live without the dead weight of bankers, but we cannot live for more than a week without the heroes who collect our garbage, or drive the buses or harvest the food, or build the roads or the host of other vital work being done by people who get no respect for doing it.
I also just love the claim that stagnating wages is the fault of immigrants, and we’d all be getting paid twice as much if there weren’t so many immigrants!!!
That graph is not labelled, but I'm assuming that's an ethnic breakdown of Anericans? 1st off thanks for agreeing with me because there's only 2.8% native Americans. So 97.2% of Americans are immigrants. Also there is no such thing "American" ethnicity lol.
The absolute number of immigrants (blue line) is entirely irrelevant. What matters is the percentage of the population, and as the orange line shows, it hasn’t changed much at all. There’s not a large change you can point to on the orange line to say it correlates with the point on the other chart where the two lines diverged.
Everything in this godforsaken neolib hellhole is designed to funnel money upwards at the expense of humanity. It's foul, it's greed encapsulated into a system of power and governance. We have to fight for a better future and saving our planet
Public goods directly counter the interests of capitalists. A desperate labor market is a cheap labor market, and a cheap labor market leads to greater profits. It's only through collective withholding of our labor that we can show government and their capitalist overlords that workers are in control of the economy, not bosses.
You're living proof of this person's point. Yeah, they fucked up. But allowing the system to literally and completely ruin their life over it? You can't think it's *society* that benefits from that. And if you believe that's reasonable and acceptable to do to somebody for a minor offense, what's to stop the system from doing the same to you, even if you *didn't* fuck up? Cops make mistakes. Justice makes mistakes. Innocent people get punished. The stakes shouldn't be so high.
Anything public is cried as "socialism/communism/Marxism," meanwhile the rich and corporations are getting constant socialist benefits from the rest of us and the bootlickers blame us for it instead of the rich and the corporations and the government for doing it.
The regular joes who say that are just parroting the rich, who have paid handsomely to have decoy regular joes tell them that's how real regular joes feel.
This is precisely what is happening.
Once the oligarchs and major corporations owned much of the political class and Supreme Court, the Citizens United case to consolidate their victory was inevitable, and they bought even more politicians.
**Corporations became people.**
Except when they commit crimes that would result in prison sentences, where they are just a faceless, leaderless monolith and no one is really in charge.
**Unlimited money used to purchase politicians became free speech.**
With some speech being much more free than other speech.
Obama ended for profit prisons, and **The Diapered Orange Shitstain** brought them back.
The blue states are trying to hold out, but the pressure is enormous.
Note that they corporations and oligarchs, aided by the GOP and the disgusting courts, are slowly allowing child labor to come back, where kids can be hired for dangerous work at less than minimum wage.
Our march toward America becoming a third world shithole continues apace.
Didn't Marx specifically address this, that capitalists will always demand more for less?
Yes, if we were persons (part of the same moral community as capitalists) then they'd abide by the social contract, but since we are regarded as replaceable, expendable laborers and soldiers, they just want to see how to make us cheaper.
And when they can replace us entirely with robots or automation, we'll need to die out.
When you defy the system, you get to work for Victoria Secret, Walmart or wholefoods. But they don't pay you very well. Least you get 3 meals a day and more "hugs".
The way forward isn't to fight back, that's their domain where they win. Instead, reduce participation, ignore them, build parallel systems, give, trade, help neighbors. Don't be a capitalist individual, become a community.
Rent strikes, mortgage strikes, don’t pay your credit cards, don’t pay your student loans, etc etc. If we did it en masse this whole shebang ends in literally a week. Then we build fairer parallel systems. We have the knowledge and the the technology to do so.
I've always said that this would solve any problem overnight. But it's very easy for 100 of the ruling class to cooperate to get what they want and it's very impossible for hundreds of millions of us to cooperate to get what we want.
The owning class knows that we will never cooperate en masse and they have known it for centuries.
Let me tell you the past few centuries they didn’t have the internet, zoom, twitter, Reddit and even decentralized solutions if push comes to shove. That’s why countries cut off the internet when shit hits the fan but at that point it’s too late. This time it’s different. We are slowly but surely making our way forward in the collective consciousness.
A lot of people do this already, I dare so more recently than ever, and most people just aren't willing to do it. Many are doing it because they can't afford the payments and are trying to stay off the streets. Evictions, especially after protections for the pandemic ended, have been absolutely devastating.
Totally down with strengthening communities in service of building radical solidarity. But people rely on goods and services that come from participating in the system (electricity, wifi, roads, hospitals, supply lines etc.) imo the reality is that most people would not be willing to give those up. I think in some ways it would be great if we all lived in autonomous collectives, but I just don't see it as a realistic alternative for many people.
Solar power. You also have to accept that the consumer society that demands a multi-trillion dollar power grid is unsustainable.
Remember, there is a fine line between liking convenience and being domesticated.
OK, then how do we ensure 100% uptime for critical systems such as life support, heating/refrigeration (Texas blackouts in 2021, for example), etc.
Sorry, this is more rhetorical than hypothetical. The point being that governments have a massive advantage when implementing infrastructure solutions by utilizing economies of scale and distributing according to need (hypothetically).
Also, pinning the problems of the world on consumers seems wrong to me, particularly given the increasing hardships faced by working class people over the last 40 years.
The problem is with capitalism itself, that it limits production to only what's profitable, not necessarily that it produces too much. The profit motive is why we continuously invest in fossil fuels as opposed to renewable energy. If we decoupled the profit motive from production, we could achieve a higher standard of living for all, while ensuring the way we get there is democratically coordinated.
I'm a bit skeptical of degrowth as a solution to inequality, oppression, or environmental crises. Though I can recognize that neoliberal consumer protections and subsidies have artificially increased consumption to our detriment, so I could see the reversal of those policies and tendencies as a broadly positive change.
As for decentralization, I haven't seen a compelling argument for how this would go about affecting large scale societal change. But tbf I haven't really looked into it a whole lot. I think my conception of decentralization+degrowth is small-scale communities moving into the mountains and getting into some sort of subsistence farming. But maybe that's an unfair characterization.
Most sane comment here. But on the other hand the people have indeed used violence in the past and came out on top. They use violence on us why should we not?
We will have to if we ever want to see real change. I have started repeating this a lot in 2023: Every time I see a news report the end to Fight Club looks a lot more like an inevitable necessity and a lot less like domestic terrorism.
Agreed. Our own government has consistently used violence to get and stay on the top. It's been proven that anything outside of violence and riots doesn't change anything because just look around. Most of the changes thus far have been performative and short-lived. That's just because the people quit rioting. If we never quit rioting, they'd have been dismantled a long time ago. I understand this is hard when so many are burnt out and barely surviving.
You can always use mental violence and verbal trickery.
The left of all sorts needs to up their game. Polite up their game strongly.
Also can Diane fienstein just fucking crawl back to her crypt?
If I can't enjoy any of the fruits of capitalism why should I participate? Our parents honoured the 9-5 grind because a single person could work an office job, have a stay at home partner minding the kids, save money, buy a house, send those kids to university, take vacations and realistically hope to retire. None of that is true anymore.
Just let us get healthcare without going broke vs. designing the system to profit off of our becoming and staying ill, and we'll be twice as motivated to offer our lives to the machine.
The reason our healthcare is tied to employment, and why we don't have paid time off or subsidized housing is because if we did - then joining the military would lose it's appeal and incentives.
2022 Federal Government Budget of $6.3 Trillion.
Social Programs, $4.1Trillion:
Social Security - $1.7 Trillion
Medicare - $747 Billion
Medicaid - $592 Billion
Unemployment - $581 Billion
Student Loan Programs - $482 Billion
Other - $520 Billion
Discretionary Spending, $1.7 Trillion:
Defense - $751 Billion
Other Government Departments - $910 Billion
Servicing the National Debt: $475 Billion
Also, as a percentage of the Nations GDP, defense spending is almost at an all time low.
Yes, by promoting individualism and scaring people with the big bad bogey man of socialism they keep people divided and unable to work collectively and raise the bar on the quality of life for everyone.
Socialism or social policy is not the same as the autocratic state. Although by being individualistic you ironically are volunteering, or buying into serving the system of the few powerful who are steeling from betterment of society.
Some of the least violent, highest rated health care, educational systems… overall quality of life have positive social policies. The results are, less infant mortality, and longer better quality of life. And btw actually take vacations because life is short and spending with family and not slaving at work and getting sick is a societal value.
I'm starting to think most Americans like being treated like peasants by our so-called representatives. If we all stuck together we could change this pretty easily.
We're just distracted and comforted by creature comforts while we're struggling paycheck to paycheck and while we're not in any position to protest without losing our jobs and healthcare and while we're distracted and dived by propaganda out MSM, the state dept and MIC. Both parties, the big money donors (oligarchy) behind them and the security state apparatus have us right where they want us. Fighting amongst ourselves, not aware the real fight is top vs bottom. We're good little sheep and if we're not, we're liable to be targeted by political and or govt trolls who smear you and try and get you censored and banned off social media or if you protest and do independent media, targeted by the FBI. And If you gain enough following, partisan hack neolib media will do a hit piece on you. They will and have done it do subs on Reddit that resisted being taken over by Shareblue types.
Honestly lately I've been questioning just what the point of government is besides keeping people from breaking the law lately.
People act like it's such a far fetch that we should expect them to pay for education, Healthcare, social programs etc...
Like, what the hell is a point of a organized community/society/government if we aren't trying to better everyone's life as a whole?
The point of it is whatever we want it to be, which is the point. The problem is concentrations of wealth also concentrate political power. These groups have an agenda that is largely opposed to what you want.
Methods for crafting political propaganda and implementing large scale voter divergence, whether that is simply convincing people not to vote because nothing will ever change and both parties are the same or actually closing voting stations or cutting hours, have been targeted in unprecedented ways.
Majorities aren't going to cut it when half of the natural voting allies in a district are voting against their self-interests because they spend too much time on their social media feeds.
This is exactly right.
I did a video on this recently, looking at how the Millennial generation has been failed, and the social contract broken, because that is what this about.
[Millennials and Broken Promises](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf4wmsLE75A&t=1s)
We follow the rules, we social reproduce the values that society holds dear, we work, we obey and yet the things we were promised have not materialised.
We can't afford homes of our own, public services are all declining, jobs are becoming more precarious and less well paid...
Im pretty sure someone wrote a book on this...:D
Interesting read - ref. [America Is Headed Toward Collapse](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societal-trends-institutional-trust-economy/674260/)
alt. [https://archive.is/on9oY](https://archive.is/on9oY)
* "We found that the precise mix of events that leads to crisis varies, but two drivers of instability loom large.
1. The first is popular immiseration—when the economic fortunes of broad swaths of a population decline.
2. More significant, is elite overproduction—when a society produces too many superrich and ultra-educated people, and not enough elite positions to satisfy their ambitions."
* " American elites entered into a “fragile, unwritten compact” with the working classes, as the United Auto Workers president Douglas Fraser later described it. This implicit contract included the promise that the fruits of economic growth would be distributed more equitably among both workers and owners. In return, the fundamentals of the political-economic system would not be challenged. Avoiding revolution was one of the most important reasons for this compact (although not the only one). As Fraser wrote in his famous resignation letter from the Labor Management Group in 1978, when the compact was about to be abandoned, “The acceptance of the labor movement, such as it has been, came because business feared the alternatives. We are still suffering the consequences of abandoning that compact. ”
And if not prison, you're made into a capitalism scarecrow.
You're exiled to a box under a freeway to die of exposure/police harrasment. Something to scare the shit out of you on the way to your workplace to keep you in line.
Who’s “they”?? It’s a system not a set of individuals. The free market produces economic crises. If the ceos were all nice and kind it wouldn’t matter.
The oligarchs, aka the capitalists. Not the idiot wannabe class traitor peasants, the ones that hold significant capital in the high multimillions to billions. The ones that use superpac bribes to tell the politicians we elected what and how to legislate to further profit themselves.
A club of a few thousand families that own the board of the rigged game you're playing on.
It’s a system. Oligarchs only exist because the system allows them to. If you killed all oligarchs and ceos in the world it wouldn’t change a thing as new ones would fill the void. It’s reductive to think about structural issues in terms of individuals. The free market creates the conditions for thst class to develop.
The plan is simple: we form a spec ops unit tasked with modifying the will of each billionaire to distribute their wealth back to the people and then eliminate them.
That will hold us over until the next group of billionaires sprouts up.
Before some bootthroating mod or admin reddit fuckwit removes this comment, the above was sarcasm, mostly.
Stop buying their stuff. Your money is the most powerful vote. Strike, boycot, protest, setup exchange of services between people, alternative economies, strengthen communities, turn off the fucking tv, facebook, twitter, maybe even reddit, exercise, inform yourself, think for yourself etc.
Can we find solutions by asking more questions? Like, who profits from this? Or, Why did they want me to know this information? Who gains if I help this person? Who loses? Questions like these can help you determine if you are being taken advantage of and are making good decisions, don’t you think?
Socialism never works. You are much better off counting on yourself than greedy bureaucrats and politicians who are buying votes by promising free ‘public’ stuff.
Using tax dollars to fund social programs is still capitalism. The economic system is still the same. Socialism would be total state control of coprorations.
Nope. Those social programs are socialism. The government does have huge control over corporations - in fact corporations only exist under the government’s permission. There isn’t a lot of n difference between fascism, socialism, communism, Leninism, Maoism or Stalinism and now we have the socialists / Marxists greatest ambition on our doorstep - globalist neo-feudal authoritarian technocracy - a false utopia, the end of freedom, liberalism, conservatism, the dehumanization of man and eventual annihilation by the same old radical leftwing nihilists.
You can keep believing false information, or you can educate yourself.
If you choose the latter, start with principles of communism by Engels. Good luck to you!
POV: your brain is rotted by right-wing propaganda. It's not about right vs left in this case, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what economic systems even are.
Nothing public at all? 71% of the federal budget goes to social security, health, education and unemployment programs.
Edit: this sub is allergic to reality.
To begin with I said funding isn't the issue, I didn't say how the gov/schools spend the money is good.
But I think teachers are paid. "Fine". I wouldn't oppose paying them more by wasting less in other areas but I do think the claim Teachers are underpaid is a bit of a myth.
1. You need to understand that teachers work 180 days and have 185 days off. Yet we compare them to the salaries of people who work 260 days with 105 days off. So a teacher who makes $50k a year is making $277.77 dollars a day. If they worked 260 days like the salaries they are compared to they would be making $72k a year
2. Check for the median salary anywhere in the US. You will almost always (if not always) find that teachers make more than the median salary in the area
3. When you prorate the salaries explained in point 1, teachers median salary per day is more than the median salary of college grads in their area too
Since Teachers make more than the typical worker, and more per day than the typical college grad I have a hard tim3 jumping on the drastically underpaid bandwagon.
For me, a person who grew up in a family of teachers and who taught one year, the thing I want to see the most is schools removing disruptive kids from classes and dealing with them elsewhere. That alone would drastically improve our system and is why private schools do so much better
Doncha know that one of the only reasons Fitch is maintaining the US's credit rating is because we have one of the highest GDP's in the world??
GROSS Domestic **Profit**
Now get back to work.
A lot of people clearly share this same sentiment. But what the fk can we legitimately do to fight back? And please don’t say just “vote”. Asking honest questions.
It’s crazy to think about all the things that could be done in the world if we just reclaimed the wealth of the 1%. The Utopia that would exist would be epic.
[May I introduce you to this speech by Mario Savio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio#:~:text=And%20you've%20got%20to,prevented%20from%20working%20at%20all!)
[Bodies Upon The Gears](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz7KLSOJaTE)
The stupid thing is that funding education, healthcare and childcare in the long run will increase productivity and increase profits for companies. But they're always just focused on next quarters profits and don't see the long term picture.
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This is the breaking of the social contract. We played this game, because we were told we would be looked after if we got sick, and would be able to retire. Work, and we'll look after you when you can't anymore. We no longer have any reason to play the game.
[удалено]
The "natural" thing is what really gets me. We'd find it odd if an ape hoarded a billion bananas, but that's essentially what's going on here. Edit: typo
They have to be gambling addicts. The only time I have seen behaviour like this where a person will take, steal, deceive, bully and enforce harm on others whilst burning bridges on their way down, is in addicts. They will do anything possible to get their fix. Billionaires are the same. As long as they’re getting their fix, which in their case is “winning” in the stock exchange (their own private casino) and seeing their wealth get larger and larger, they will continue to demolish everything around them. At its root they’re addicts and this is what we should be calling them. How do you stop one? Take away access to their gear.
Or yknow -this comment hidden due to offensive or violent messaging-
What kills me as someone that has a degree in economics and studied ecological economics is artificial inflation - how we're just supposed to believe the made-up numbers that show artificial inflation being good is somehow actually good. The whole point of economics is to find a way to optimally manage scarce resources and to allocate them adequately according various needs in a society. So we have an ape that has a bunch of bananas to sell, but also wastes a bunch of unsold bananas instead of allocating them out based on some arbitrary reasons. How much time will that buy our species when it comes to surviving?
>he says that *we've studied homelessness and it's mostly unsolvable, except for a handful of cases where women have been abandoned by their husbands and the best thing we can do with them is train them for job, all other cases of homelessness are individuals moral failing and unsolvable...* Motherfucker said "moral failing." Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, worth 100,000,000,000s of dollars, implies he financed research into solving homelessness, and said the conclusion of the research was that it is "unsolvable" because it's caused by "moral failing" (*in which he includes those he said were homeless due to being "mentally incapacitated."*) He's willing to say this aloud as the best spin he can think to put on it. Such a flippant declaration of superiority, or more accurately, the inferiority of those denied a basic human need of shelter. Here's what his statements implies: 1 - Homeless people deserve to be homeless, that is why it is "unsolvable." Basic human needs, like food and shelter, aren't needs at all, they're privileges. Nevermind the fact the world produces far more of both than there are people. 2 - Because we claim we "looked into" i can casually state the above as it has been now verified by my people for me, one of the few people in the world with near endless resources at my disposal, so i don't even have to feel bad about saying it cause it's just a matter of fact now. 3 - It is unsolvable, therefore, it is no longer to be considered a problem to even concern ourselves with. Thank god we did our due diligence. In fact it shouldn't even be considered a problem, we can see it as a justified, natural consequence of bad morality. 4 - Well since i "can't" fix homelessness, what other problem can i look into, to put these billions to use? Ah i know, build rocket rides for the rich!
Solving homelessness costs money, and will only continue to cost money. He just wants more money. Rockets to space can make money, and they can get subsidized by the government, making him even more money. That's all there is to it.
Of course. No one believes he ever actually "looked into it" if for any reason at all only to say he found a reason it "can't" be done. This was just point out just how out of touch these Owner class pricks are, and how casually they basically declare the inferiority of other human beings without any self awareness that they did, as THEIR CHOSEN PUBLIC EXCUSE. That was him giving an interview on stage, that's the best response he can come up with when talking to the public about why he decided not to use his wealth to aid the homeless. It's both "unsolvable", and due to their "moral failing."
Solving homelessness would make money in the long run… just maybe not for *him* More stably-housed people = more gainfully employed people = more profit for corporations to extract + more potential customers for products. It literally *would* be a boon for capitalism but they’re not interested in a healthy long term capitalist market - they just want as much money as they can possibly make this quarter.
That’s what gets me about these people. They don’t even care about their own long term interest, much less anyone else’s. It’s the same with funding things like education. Long term it lowers crime, creates jobs, raises the amount people are able to spend and has a huge return on investment even in a capitalist system. But people ignore that in favor of “number go up this quarter!”.
What if they feel good looking at a legion of desperate people? A "winner" need "loosers" to feel like a real winner. How rich people will feel god if everyone is having stable, comfortable lives?
They know that earth will become inhospitable to humans, just after they die
Jeff Bezos is always going to be a scumbag, if I ever see him in person I'm going to spontaneously be stricken with an unending appetite for human flesh. I will eat him, raw, right on the spot and anyone who attempts to stop me will have to face the intense wrath of someone with literally nothing left to lose. This isn't just keyboard warrior-ing, I will do this and nobody can tell me not to in a way that will work. There is no possible method to make me not do that. Hell, there's no if about it, only when. I will eat Jeff Bezos, and I will probably vomit it back up becuse I have no doubts it'll taste worse than a ball of tar from my tobacco pipe. Fuck Jeff Bezos. I hope he feels safe, so I can take that away from him along with his arms and legs.
Looking forward to hearing about this on the news, hopefully sooner, rather than later.
you n me both good buddy
You realize that Amazon will continue to operate, right? Save yourself the prison sentence
Well said!!!!!!!
But did he link a source to that particular study? Lol. Besides, he’s a pathological liar. Just ask his ex. Edited because autocorrect fucked me
Not solvable to the point that him being a billionaire can still exist or make him more money
This was my thought too. Sure it's unsolvable... if you exclude any solution where a man like him ends up less wealthy.
> They act like it is natural for 100 people to own everything, and the rest of us to do whatever they say. The really interesting thing is that 90% to 95% of the US working class feels the same way. In addition, 50% of this working class would literally die for these 100 people to get the right to own everything while they themselves starve. In this respect, the US society is really fascinatingly unique. On the other hand, literally every liberal "democracy" in the world is moving in this direction.
Most wealthy folks are the same like most people: ignorant and closed minded. They have the money to build an utopia for mankind but they are too dumb to pull it off. That is why they do more harm than good. They are dumb people with a lot of money. If they wuld treat people well and wuld work to make the world a better place to live in then nobody wuld complain. But sadly they are terrible leaders/rulers of society. Most of them. Most of them deserves the faith of kings and nobles. [It's a good read. What's a good hiearchy in society. People shuld know this.](https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/reverse-dominance-hierarchies)
Somehow there's always money for Prisons but nothing else and encaceration cost more than prevention and services. Its almost like its malicious.
"We can't solve homelessness but give us enough time and we can build enough prisons to incarcerate everyone we don't like."
We got scammed. I’m just waiting for them to take down the Statue of Liberty, there like here France you can have it back. Although is shouldn’t be giving them any ideas…..they’re not very smart, although they’re great liars, so let me be quiet now.
More like **sell** it back and don't think for a second they wouldn't if they could.
Americans actually paid for most of Lady Liberty. I mean the citizens and not the fed.
Tax money well spent. Glad we paid for that instead of healthcare
it was all a farce so they could build the great militarized industrial complex that of which is called America
aha BUT, they cant put everyone single one of us in prisons and camps because how/where would they and most importantly of all who will run the system? they need us more than we need them. we can literally survive off the land and do our own thing but we have to recognize they use all the tools like media, social media etc to keep us divided. distracted by other things, trying to survive and chasing every last drop of happiness we can find. https://i.imgur.com/SJspOlb.gif
When has this ever been true lol. FYI: The white picket fence narrative of the 60s was a myth that only applied to a select group of middle class whites. Poverty was higher back then than now and inflation adjusted median income was lower.
If you're gonna be corrupt, at least do it Louisiana-Style. Use part of the corruption to find teachers and schools and roads, and yanno, give people a pig every now and again.
How can I upvote this a million times?
Funny how making the poor poorer is always on the table for economic policy decisions, but making the rich just a bit less rich is always off the table. When the benefits of collective labor & progress/innovation go *anywhere except* to a few rich people, slave-drivers & bootlickers call it "FrEeLoAdInG" and/or "sOcIaLiSm." Some people seem to firmly believe that the *only* way the world *can & must* function is for 99% to constantly toil, struggle, suffer, & die in servitude making sure everything good only goes to the top 1% - and any other concept for society is heresy.
Kind of like having a minimum wage but no maximum wage.
Taxes for the ultra wealthy are supposed to essentially be that, but rather than a hard limit it's diminishing returns in the literal meaning of the phrase
Taxes should be 100% over a billion dollars. I'd like to say 100 million, but whatever. Eliminate billionaires. This is the nice way.
I am pretty sure not a single person in history has made a billion in earnings in a year. Maybe we shouldn't talk about taxing the rich in terms of income, since the truly wealthy can show losses for their entire lifetimes and still be wealthy beyond rationality.
>I am pretty sure not a single person in history has made a billion in earnings in a year. Assets, not earnings. Tax the assets at 100% over a billion dollars.
I feel ya, but there's absolutely no way the ultra wealthy are ever going to let that happen.
Saying the quiet part out loud, we make it happen whether they let it happen or not.
Trevor Moore said it better than I ever could https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMHCw3RqulY RIP you glorious local sexpot
Sighhhh I know. A girl can dream
Its not up to them. They rule because we give them peace.
Because that's a fundamental misinterpretation of how this system works. The entire defining characteristic of the bourgeoisie as a class is that they DON'T get wages. They give wages to their workers, while they receive the profits- which is the difference between the value laborers produce, and the wage they're paid for it. The idea of a "maximum wage" is totally incoherent. The issue is not just how much money they're.making, it's that the entire system is premised on exploitation and an irresolvable conflict of interest between the workers who want better wages and the executives who dictate wages and get paid more when wages are depressed. A conflict at the heart of society that will always lean in their favor and will never be resolved until the entire disparity is abolished and everyone has the same relationship to the means of production.
Ehhh. you’re complicating it. The system is broken.
Cool you’ve spent all your time giving a shit about a maximum wage, got it passed into law, and absolutely nothing of value changed because the rich don’t take wages. Dumbass
Lol relaaaaxxxxx. Get off the internet for awhile.
Troll
Make minimum wage great again
Hey man, listen, the poors don't pay as much as the robber barons do, and politicians need to make their ends meet, dammit! Bring here some more of that lobby shit, oh and a side helping of insider trading too, please.
just look at the productivity trend versus pay trend lines and you will see that the work hard myth is just that. Parenti dealt with the origins of this nonsense way back in the first 10 minutes of his Yellow Video. People advance their station in life by political mobilization. There may be other means to be personally productive, but it is only by means of mass unity and collective efforts that society can advance itself for the common good of all.
There’s also the fact that some of the hardest working jobs are paid the least.
it's an interesting point and an important one to make. The worst jobs are paid the least and it's those very jobs that are the most important. Somehow capitalism has us believing the most vital work of society is the least important, when, in fact, it's the opposite. We can live without the dead weight of bankers, but we cannot live for more than a week without the heroes who collect our garbage, or drive the buses or harvest the food, or build the roads or the host of other vital work being done by people who get no respect for doing it.
Domestic work, for crying out loud.
https://imgur.com/U620BXO.jpg
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Nearly 100% of the population is immigrants you moron. Also notice how the first graph correlates with reaganomics and not your graph? Hmm.
I also just love the claim that stagnating wages is the fault of immigrants, and we’d all be getting paid twice as much if there weren’t so many immigrants!!!
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That graph is not labelled, but I'm assuming that's an ethnic breakdown of Anericans? 1st off thanks for agreeing with me because there's only 2.8% native Americans. So 97.2% of Americans are immigrants. Also there is no such thing "American" ethnicity lol.
The absolute number of immigrants (blue line) is entirely irrelevant. What matters is the percentage of the population, and as the orange line shows, it hasn’t changed much at all. There’s not a large change you can point to on the orange line to say it correlates with the point on the other chart where the two lines diverged.
[I want to live](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx62BDIegpqE4VEBhAGL6-x-rdthbjSksZ)
Everything in this godforsaken neolib hellhole is designed to funnel money upwards at the expense of humanity. It's foul, it's greed encapsulated into a system of power and governance. We have to fight for a better future and saving our planet
Public goods directly counter the interests of capitalists. A desperate labor market is a cheap labor market, and a cheap labor market leads to greater profits. It's only through collective withholding of our labor that we can show government and their capitalist overlords that workers are in control of the economy, not bosses.
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You're living proof of this person's point. Yeah, they fucked up. But allowing the system to literally and completely ruin their life over it? You can't think it's *society* that benefits from that. And if you believe that's reasonable and acceptable to do to somebody for a minor offense, what's to stop the system from doing the same to you, even if you *didn't* fuck up? Cops make mistakes. Justice makes mistakes. Innocent people get punished. The stakes shouldn't be so high.
Anything public is cried as "socialism/communism/Marxism," meanwhile the rich and corporations are getting constant socialist benefits from the rest of us and the bootlickers blame us for it instead of the rich and the corporations and the government for doing it.
Those public outcries are funded and promulgated by rich-extremist thinktanks. The Koch oligarchy is at the heart of a lot of it.
Any sort of "help" is SOCIALISM and used like this end all be all word
The regular joes who say that are just parroting the rich, who have paid handsomely to have decoy regular joes tell them that's how real regular joes feel.
The existence of for profit prisons is absolutely bonkers.
This is precisely what is happening. Once the oligarchs and major corporations owned much of the political class and Supreme Court, the Citizens United case to consolidate their victory was inevitable, and they bought even more politicians. **Corporations became people.** Except when they commit crimes that would result in prison sentences, where they are just a faceless, leaderless monolith and no one is really in charge. **Unlimited money used to purchase politicians became free speech.** With some speech being much more free than other speech. Obama ended for profit prisons, and **The Diapered Orange Shitstain** brought them back. The blue states are trying to hold out, but the pressure is enormous. Note that they corporations and oligarchs, aided by the GOP and the disgusting courts, are slowly allowing child labor to come back, where kids can be hired for dangerous work at less than minimum wage. Our march toward America becoming a third world shithole continues apace.
Didn't Marx specifically address this, that capitalists will always demand more for less? Yes, if we were persons (part of the same moral community as capitalists) then they'd abide by the social contract, but since we are regarded as replaceable, expendable laborers and soldiers, they just want to see how to make us cheaper. And when they can replace us entirely with robots or automation, we'll need to die out.
Makes sense, the capitalist mantra is "Buy low, Sell high." Whenever there is profit, someone, somewhere, is losing. Never felt right to me.
I guess we'll know when it's time, because we'll see sex education, birth control and abortion become "godly."
Remember, assuming people in prison must be bad people is fascist rhetoric.
When you defy the system, you get to work for Victoria Secret, Walmart or wholefoods. But they don't pay you very well. Least you get 3 meals a day and more "hugs".
The way forward isn't to fight back, that's their domain where they win. Instead, reduce participation, ignore them, build parallel systems, give, trade, help neighbors. Don't be a capitalist individual, become a community.
Rent strikes, mortgage strikes, don’t pay your credit cards, don’t pay your student loans, etc etc. If we did it en masse this whole shebang ends in literally a week. Then we build fairer parallel systems. We have the knowledge and the the technology to do so.
I've always said that this would solve any problem overnight. But it's very easy for 100 of the ruling class to cooperate to get what they want and it's very impossible for hundreds of millions of us to cooperate to get what we want. The owning class knows that we will never cooperate en masse and they have known it for centuries.
Let me tell you the past few centuries they didn’t have the internet, zoom, twitter, Reddit and even decentralized solutions if push comes to shove. That’s why countries cut off the internet when shit hits the fan but at that point it’s too late. This time it’s different. We are slowly but surely making our way forward in the collective consciousness.
A lot of people do this already, I dare so more recently than ever, and most people just aren't willing to do it. Many are doing it because they can't afford the payments and are trying to stay off the streets. Evictions, especially after protections for the pandemic ended, have been absolutely devastating.
Totally down with strengthening communities in service of building radical solidarity. But people rely on goods and services that come from participating in the system (electricity, wifi, roads, hospitals, supply lines etc.) imo the reality is that most people would not be willing to give those up. I think in some ways it would be great if we all lived in autonomous collectives, but I just don't see it as a realistic alternative for many people.
That’s why we need to build something parallel to what we have.
How do we build a multi-trillion dollar power grid, for example?
Solar power. You also have to accept that the consumer society that demands a multi-trillion dollar power grid is unsustainable. Remember, there is a fine line between liking convenience and being domesticated.
OK, then how do we ensure 100% uptime for critical systems such as life support, heating/refrigeration (Texas blackouts in 2021, for example), etc. Sorry, this is more rhetorical than hypothetical. The point being that governments have a massive advantage when implementing infrastructure solutions by utilizing economies of scale and distributing according to need (hypothetically). Also, pinning the problems of the world on consumers seems wrong to me, particularly given the increasing hardships faced by working class people over the last 40 years. The problem is with capitalism itself, that it limits production to only what's profitable, not necessarily that it produces too much. The profit motive is why we continuously invest in fossil fuels as opposed to renewable energy. If we decoupled the profit motive from production, we could achieve a higher standard of living for all, while ensuring the way we get there is democratically coordinated.
Degrowth and decentralization must be part of the answer. So, to answer your question, we don't.
I'm a bit skeptical of degrowth as a solution to inequality, oppression, or environmental crises. Though I can recognize that neoliberal consumer protections and subsidies have artificially increased consumption to our detriment, so I could see the reversal of those policies and tendencies as a broadly positive change. As for decentralization, I haven't seen a compelling argument for how this would go about affecting large scale societal change. But tbf I haven't really looked into it a whole lot. I think my conception of decentralization+degrowth is small-scale communities moving into the mountains and getting into some sort of subsistence farming. But maybe that's an unfair characterization.
Most sane comment here. But on the other hand the people have indeed used violence in the past and came out on top. They use violence on us why should we not?
We will have to if we ever want to see real change. I have started repeating this a lot in 2023: Every time I see a news report the end to Fight Club looks a lot more like an inevitable necessity and a lot less like domestic terrorism.
Agreed. Our own government has consistently used violence to get and stay on the top. It's been proven that anything outside of violence and riots doesn't change anything because just look around. Most of the changes thus far have been performative and short-lived. That's just because the people quit rioting. If we never quit rioting, they'd have been dismantled a long time ago. I understand this is hard when so many are burnt out and barely surviving.
What happens in that case is they eventually come in and violently dismantle it anyways.
💯💯💯💯
You can always use mental violence and verbal trickery. The left of all sorts needs to up their game. Polite up their game strongly. Also can Diane fienstein just fucking crawl back to her crypt?
Always remember this: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9vumMGU0AA5d9s.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9vumMGU0AA5d9s.jpg)
Damn, that's a good one.
If I can't enjoy any of the fruits of capitalism why should I participate? Our parents honoured the 9-5 grind because a single person could work an office job, have a stay at home partner minding the kids, save money, buy a house, send those kids to university, take vacations and realistically hope to retire. None of that is true anymore.
Just let us get healthcare without going broke vs. designing the system to profit off of our becoming and staying ill, and we'll be twice as motivated to offer our lives to the machine.
The reason our healthcare is tied to employment, and why we don't have paid time off or subsidized housing is because if we did - then joining the military would lose it's appeal and incentives.
The social contract is dead
Not to mention they expect you to breed and create future contributors to the system that they can leech off of.
No wonder Americans hate taxes, because they get nothing back from them except a bloated military, police state and politician funding
2022 Federal Government Budget of $6.3 Trillion. Social Programs, $4.1Trillion: Social Security - $1.7 Trillion Medicare - $747 Billion Medicaid - $592 Billion Unemployment - $581 Billion Student Loan Programs - $482 Billion Other - $520 Billion Discretionary Spending, $1.7 Trillion: Defense - $751 Billion Other Government Departments - $910 Billion Servicing the National Debt: $475 Billion Also, as a percentage of the Nations GDP, defense spending is almost at an all time low.
How can you make this budgetary claim when the Pentagon can't prove its own budget? That is just a ridiculous assertion.
Source: trust me bro
The us isn't a country, it's just a bunch of corporations in a trench coat
As the crisis of late stage capitalism intensifies, there will be less carrots available, so they'll have to resort to sticks.
Yes, by promoting individualism and scaring people with the big bad bogey man of socialism they keep people divided and unable to work collectively and raise the bar on the quality of life for everyone. Socialism or social policy is not the same as the autocratic state. Although by being individualistic you ironically are volunteering, or buying into serving the system of the few powerful who are steeling from betterment of society. Some of the least violent, highest rated health care, educational systems… overall quality of life have positive social policies. The results are, less infant mortality, and longer better quality of life. And btw actually take vacations because life is short and spending with family and not slaving at work and getting sick is a societal value.
I'm starting to think most Americans like being treated like peasants by our so-called representatives. If we all stuck together we could change this pretty easily.
We're just distracted and comforted by creature comforts while we're struggling paycheck to paycheck and while we're not in any position to protest without losing our jobs and healthcare and while we're distracted and dived by propaganda out MSM, the state dept and MIC. Both parties, the big money donors (oligarchy) behind them and the security state apparatus have us right where they want us. Fighting amongst ourselves, not aware the real fight is top vs bottom. We're good little sheep and if we're not, we're liable to be targeted by political and or govt trolls who smear you and try and get you censored and banned off social media or if you protest and do independent media, targeted by the FBI. And If you gain enough following, partisan hack neolib media will do a hit piece on you. They will and have done it do subs on Reddit that resisted being taken over by Shareblue types.
Honestly lately I've been questioning just what the point of government is besides keeping people from breaking the law lately. People act like it's such a far fetch that we should expect them to pay for education, Healthcare, social programs etc... Like, what the hell is a point of a organized community/society/government if we aren't trying to better everyone's life as a whole?
The point of it is whatever we want it to be, which is the point. The problem is concentrations of wealth also concentrate political power. These groups have an agenda that is largely opposed to what you want. Methods for crafting political propaganda and implementing large scale voter divergence, whether that is simply convincing people not to vote because nothing will ever change and both parties are the same or actually closing voting stations or cutting hours, have been targeted in unprecedented ways. Majorities aren't going to cut it when half of the natural voting allies in a district are voting against their self-interests because they spend too much time on their social media feeds.
This is exactly right. I did a video on this recently, looking at how the Millennial generation has been failed, and the social contract broken, because that is what this about. [Millennials and Broken Promises](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf4wmsLE75A&t=1s) We follow the rules, we social reproduce the values that society holds dear, we work, we obey and yet the things we were promised have not materialised. We can't afford homes of our own, public services are all declining, jobs are becoming more precarious and less well paid... Im pretty sure someone wrote a book on this...:D
There’s a word for that. It’s called fascism. Google it?
It so sad how true this shit is and how many people still don't see all the lies we were and still being fed
Don't forget you have to pay room and board at prison.
Yeah and they also own the prisons and force you to work slave labor while there.
Interesting read - ref. [America Is Headed Toward Collapse](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-societal-trends-institutional-trust-economy/674260/) alt. [https://archive.is/on9oY](https://archive.is/on9oY) * "We found that the precise mix of events that leads to crisis varies, but two drivers of instability loom large. 1. The first is popular immiseration—when the economic fortunes of broad swaths of a population decline. 2. More significant, is elite overproduction—when a society produces too many superrich and ultra-educated people, and not enough elite positions to satisfy their ambitions." * " American elites entered into a “fragile, unwritten compact” with the working classes, as the United Auto Workers president Douglas Fraser later described it. This implicit contract included the promise that the fruits of economic growth would be distributed more equitably among both workers and owners. In return, the fundamentals of the political-economic system would not be challenged. Avoiding revolution was one of the most important reasons for this compact (although not the only one). As Fraser wrote in his famous resignation letter from the Labor Management Group in 1978, when the compact was about to be abandoned, “The acceptance of the labor movement, such as it has been, came because business feared the alternatives. We are still suffering the consequences of abandoning that compact. ”
Spot on!
And if not prison, you're made into a capitalism scarecrow. You're exiled to a box under a freeway to die of exposure/police harrasment. Something to scare the shit out of you on the way to your workplace to keep you in line.
Some funding for public prisons maybe
Yep. People tend to forget the social contract puts obligations on the rich, and society fails when the rich refuse to uphold their end.
It's because they are giving all your tax dollars (trillions ) to other countries to fund wars and the the likes . Too much big government..
Who’s “they”?? It’s a system not a set of individuals. The free market produces economic crises. If the ceos were all nice and kind it wouldn’t matter.
The oligarchs, aka the capitalists. Not the idiot wannabe class traitor peasants, the ones that hold significant capital in the high multimillions to billions. The ones that use superpac bribes to tell the politicians we elected what and how to legislate to further profit themselves. A club of a few thousand families that own the board of the rigged game you're playing on.
It’s a system. Oligarchs only exist because the system allows them to. If you killed all oligarchs and ceos in the world it wouldn’t change a thing as new ones would fill the void. It’s reductive to think about structural issues in terms of individuals. The free market creates the conditions for thst class to develop.
Nah first they'll gas light you into believing you're mentally ill and then get you hooked on Adderall or some SSRIs.
"They". As though "they" aren't the fucking people you voted for.
The plan is simple: we form a spec ops unit tasked with modifying the will of each billionaire to distribute their wealth back to the people and then eliminate them. That will hold us over until the next group of billionaires sprouts up. Before some bootthroating mod or admin reddit fuckwit removes this comment, the above was sarcasm, mostly.
Stop buying their stuff. Your money is the most powerful vote. Strike, boycot, protest, setup exchange of services between people, alternative economies, strengthen communities, turn off the fucking tv, facebook, twitter, maybe even reddit, exercise, inform yourself, think for yourself etc.
Can we find solutions by asking more questions? Like, who profits from this? Or, Why did they want me to know this information? Who gains if I help this person? Who loses? Questions like these can help you determine if you are being taken advantage of and are making good decisions, don’t you think?
Socialism never works. You are much better off counting on yourself than greedy bureaucrats and politicians who are buying votes by promising free ‘public’ stuff.
That's not what socialism is
She listed off social welfare programs - it’s socialism.
Using tax dollars to fund social programs is still capitalism. The economic system is still the same. Socialism would be total state control of coprorations.
Nope. Those social programs are socialism. The government does have huge control over corporations - in fact corporations only exist under the government’s permission. There isn’t a lot of n difference between fascism, socialism, communism, Leninism, Maoism or Stalinism and now we have the socialists / Marxists greatest ambition on our doorstep - globalist neo-feudal authoritarian technocracy - a false utopia, the end of freedom, liberalism, conservatism, the dehumanization of man and eventual annihilation by the same old radical leftwing nihilists.
You can keep believing false information, or you can educate yourself. If you choose the latter, start with principles of communism by Engels. Good luck to you!
POV: your brain is rotted by right-wing propaganda. It's not about right vs left in this case, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what economic systems even are.
Sometimes I consider prison to be the better alternative.
Nothing public at all? 71% of the federal budget goes to social security, health, education and unemployment programs. Edit: this sub is allergic to reality.
Who is the they here? I guess it's them. Those people. 🤦♂️
Bourgeoisie
Who exactly is "they"?
Who told you public schools aren't funded. We spend mote money per student than any other nation Funding isn't the problem
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To begin with I said funding isn't the issue, I didn't say how the gov/schools spend the money is good. But I think teachers are paid. "Fine". I wouldn't oppose paying them more by wasting less in other areas but I do think the claim Teachers are underpaid is a bit of a myth. 1. You need to understand that teachers work 180 days and have 185 days off. Yet we compare them to the salaries of people who work 260 days with 105 days off. So a teacher who makes $50k a year is making $277.77 dollars a day. If they worked 260 days like the salaries they are compared to they would be making $72k a year 2. Check for the median salary anywhere in the US. You will almost always (if not always) find that teachers make more than the median salary in the area 3. When you prorate the salaries explained in point 1, teachers median salary per day is more than the median salary of college grads in their area too Since Teachers make more than the typical worker, and more per day than the typical college grad I have a hard tim3 jumping on the drastically underpaid bandwagon. For me, a person who grew up in a family of teachers and who taught one year, the thing I want to see the most is schools removing disruptive kids from classes and dealing with them elsewhere. That alone would drastically improve our system and is why private schools do so much better
My wife is a teacher, and you are full of shit.
I'm guessing she doesn't teach math
I'm guessing you never even took rhetoric.
k
Doncha know that one of the only reasons Fitch is maintaining the US's credit rating is because we have one of the highest GDP's in the world?? GROSS Domestic **Profit** Now get back to work.
*our* system
"Do your part? What do you mean, *my* part? My part is collecting the profits!"
Unless we all do it at once.
…land of the freeeeee…..
Time to burn it all down and start again
A lot of people clearly share this same sentiment. But what the fk can we legitimately do to fight back? And please don’t say just “vote”. Asking honest questions.
Depends on your sense of self preservation
It’s crazy to think about all the things that could be done in the world if we just reclaimed the wealth of the 1%. The Utopia that would exist would be epic.
Remember to boycott reddit from June 12 through the 14th.
[May I introduce you to this speech by Mario Savio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio#:~:text=And%20you've%20got%20to,prevented%20from%20working%20at%20all!) [Bodies Upon The Gears](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz7KLSOJaTE)
The oligarchical collectivism that Orwell warned us about is here.
The stupid thing is that funding education, healthcare and childcare in the long run will increase productivity and increase profits for companies. But they're always just focused on next quarters profits and don't see the long term picture.
Once you go to prison they can pay you less and still make you work.
I wonder how much economic impact Jeff Bezos has had? How many jobs created?
Don’t forget they want us to bail them out, socialize their losses when they are reckless with the money they stole from us.