290B$ with poor investment performance yields 8%, which means he makes 23B$ for simply existing.
“Unacceptable!”
… Except the malleable masses, addled on rage-bait, rightwing ‘news’ and bot-driven social media not only accept it but mindlessly endorse and defend it.
What are you doing to ensure nobody can be a billionaire?
Any recommendations?
Stop giving rich ppl more rich. In as much as you can? Idk I’m asking the same question.
Hear me out, but nobody should become homeless or starve bcz they don’t have a job.
We always frame this in terms of “tHiNk oF aLl tHe jErBs” that will be lost, instead of, why the fuck are we letting these billionaires hoard all the wealth when we already live in a post scarcity society.
People should not be starving when there’s plenty of food to go around.
“But if nobody has to work who will be making the food?” Is what I usually get when I say something like this and tbh I don’t have an answer for that besides me believing that people naturally want to work and lots of people would enjoy doing lots of the jobs. But I have no clear picture of how such world would work, just being naive that people would do these jobs even if they weren’t forced to do them. Like every basic need is free but to get extra stuff you’d still need to work. Then of course what do you qualify as basic need and how someone could twist it.
I hear you and completely agree. I get that response as well: “nobody would work! Society would collapse!”. I don’t think so… I do think many of the jobs people do just to survive would take a huge hit, like McDonald’s employees or Walmart greeters. But I don’t think any job would completely dissappear, just change. I’ve known people who enjoy working fast food, or greeting… I would still do what I do for a living without pay if I could. We would still grow food, and work. The focus on what stuff would be different though. And yeah, there would be people who don’t work… but that is true now as well!
There are people like me who enjoy growing food. If I knew it was benefiting people and not harming the land, I’d be out there as much as I can (…I live in SoCal and have a family history of skin cancer so that might limit it BUT THE WILL IS THERE).
I also enjoy growing cannabis. I already love giving it away for free. I don’t sell it - technically I can’t legally, but in reality no one would care if I did. I prefer giving it away. If I could do that on a huge scale, I would.
Growing or synthesizing psychedelics, and providing free trip sitting services, would make me feel like I was actually fulfilling my life’s calling. I would do that for free for the rest of my life if my basic needs were met, and I would be extremely happy doing so.
There are people like my partner, who enjoy cooking food. She would cook food for people all the time if it made them happier. If they were able to give her something in return, even better, but not necessary. She would also run art classes for free - I know because she already does, but there’s not really the infrastructure to make it consistent and widely promoted.
Instead I’m unemployed with two different STEM degrees because the corporate cannabis industry is shitfuck garbage in a thousand ways, capitalists rigged the permitting processes around me so it’s impossible for me to start my own legal grow even after I saved over 50% of my paycheck for years of work, and I can’t find any other STEM careers that I can be confident don’t serve evil (usually in the form of capitalism) in some capacity. I’m withholding my labor because I do not believe society, as it stands, is working towards anything of value - conversely, as a nature worshipper, I watch it kill divinity every single day.
Another side of it is, being able to get fewer products makes people more self-reliant, which gives “stuff” more value. The wooden chair from IKEA that cost $25 is replaced by a wooden chair hand-carved by you, or your family, or a friend that cost a few days of work. You’ll value it more, it has a story, it’s less disposable and by extension, so are the resources used to make it (at least for people prone to, you know, thought). It is healthy for people to depend on the land on which they live to some extent.
People will still make food because they need to eat. Also people love to cook. None of that stops if jobs go away.
Say I’m a farmer - I work my nipple hairs off for 14 hours a day to put food on my table, and let’s say I enjoy it since it’s honest work. Why in ALL hell would I start handing my crops out to lazy assholes who’d rather just sit on ass all day and stare at the sky doing nothing?
You see similar in any major city these days - you’ll have itty bitty restaurants and takeouts have giant “help wanted” signs and you’ll have borderline a crowd of lazy assholes loitering outside asking for free food instead of getting that damn job.
Try paying rent on that “damn job” and you’ll know why no one is taking it.
A) you almost certainly aren’t a farmer working 14 hours a day.
B) you wouldn’t be giving away your crops out to anybody as social programs would be funded with taxes. Like we do with public schools and fire departments and public works, etc.
What an annoying comment.
What is poat and why do we have its scarcity?
Post-scarcity
The fact that people can’t stop using this shitty ass marketplace is proof we are doomed. Its NOT THAT FUCKING HARD to buy ANYWHERE ELSE . i have not used Walmart or amazon in over a decade. Never really used it before either because I knew their plan. Destroy all other businesses so there is nowhere to go, take over the entire market, then sell shit product for more while being the only employer left. Tale as old as time.
The stupidity of humans makes us deserve this honestly. Now pair this with people who won’t get off their ass to vote. To fill in a bubble on paper. 100% doomed, dont even try to fix it.
The stupidity of humans makes us deserve this honestly. Now pair this with people who won’t get off their ass to vote.
They’ve been cutting education in US for past half a century. They’ve been moving income from working class to billionaire class. They’ve propagandized the blame so well that even you blame your peers or poor people instead of the rulingnclass who have planned for this longer than you’ve been alive.
I’m not blaming poor people. If anything they are smarter about what’s happening vs the upper middle class .
I was more complaining about the stupidity of upper white rich class folks listening to fox news and Joe rogan, with zero critical thought, who got us into this shit even worse.
But yes, its 100% the billionaires fault. I see no way to undo their damage unfortunately. As you said, the lack of education and brainwashing has people firmly in their wrong beliefs and they won’t change easily, if ever.
Now we wait until the collapse
You CAN educate and improve the middle and lower classes, but you CANNOT and will not dismantle the game that was planned and set up for centuries. Rules have been there written in black and white with a highlighter, but no one wants to read them.
The fact that people can’t stop using this shitty ass marketplace is proof we are doomed.
“Well, I don’t shop at Amazon for ethical reasons.”
“Oh, you don’t buy any common commercial goods?”
“No no no. I just buy them ethically.”
“Where do you get your ethically sourced consumer goods?”
“Target and Walmart”
🫠
The stupidity of humans makes us deserve this honestly.
Bitch, I just need a mop to mop my floor so its not sticky. Where do I get a new mop? Point me to the place to buy a fucking mop that doesn’t involve some asshole on the internet heckling me over it.
Yeah, when I take an inventory of the businesses I frequent and follow this train of thought, it ultimately boils down into the line “No ethical consumption under capitalism” I’ve read before.
If it’s a company we’ve heard of, it inevitably has an entire collection of rich psychopaths running and owning it. Local small businesses can be better, or they can be run by hateful bigots and/or small-time psychopaths that charge twice as much.
I just try to find the reasonable balance between trying to reduce harm and not support the worst of the worst, while also participating in society.
Point me to the place to buy a fucking mop that doesn’t involve some asshole on the internet heckling me over it.
Aliexpress.
I have only used Amazon once in the last 2 years (it was a very specific tool that was sold literally nowhere else, even eBay, and was only like $20), Walmart a handful of times, and Target only for cat sand.
If you can’t eliminate the harm you contribute to (which, fair, none of us can in America), you are responsible for minimizing it. Triage, sort of. Gotta choose between 3 shit companies? Evaluate which one is the least-shit and go that route.
And that varies for everyone. The people who have a Walmart as their only source of fresh groceries within a 30 mile radius are going to need to shop at Walmart more often than I do, and that’s fine.
Aliexpress.
“You can’t shop at Amazon, that’s unethical”
“Where should I shop?”
“Chinese Amazon”.
Okay, bro.
Correct, China is not currently engaged in a war of expansionism for the benefit of a genocidal apartheid occupation of land rightfully owned by the Palestinian people.
They’re not perfect, but they’re the “lesser evil”. Don’t you liberals love that game?
If nothing else, giving $17 to a corporation is quantifiably half as bad as giving $34. (EDIT: Not surprised at downvotes, I’ve learned Blue MAGA also hates basic math - such as “Holocaust Harris would’ve lost even if she secured every single third-party vote those for RFK Jr”)
They’re not perfect, but they’re the “lesser evil”.
The only people I hear who keep saying “China is a lesser evil” are the same ones insisting we were right to assassinate all those Iranian politicians.
uh ok
I’m not that
If you can’t buy a broom without using amazon, youre gonna have a hard time with life in general.
Also in my comment I stated I don’t use Walmart. Rarely ever go to target.
And yes. All consuming is unethical, a slave made the phone or computer you are using this moment. However, that doesn’t mean we need to use amazon and keep directly enriching billionaire scum. How is that so hard ? Are people lazier or dumber than they used to be now in that they can’t search for 2 seconds to find a broom? How about a damn garage sale ???
Used is far better than new in a massive amount of cases. Americans are addicted to shiny new plastic because they’re brainwashed idiots that think they need new everything.
All consuming is unethical
Okay, but my floor is sticky. What Do?
Used is far better than new in a massive amount of cases.
Who is selling used mops? What kind of business sustains itself on that kind of traffic?
Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
Amazon’s burning approach to unsold and returned products
This is the world we live in. It is crazy to pretend a large, open, accessible forum exists for second-hand goods when brand new shit is thrown in incinerators to keep the bottom from falling out of the retail market.
Who is selling used mops? What kind of business sustains itself on that kind of traffic?
Tons of people on eBay who probably steal them from the corporations or resell from the Chinese companies which manufacture them in the first place, which is way more ethical than buying them from American oligarch-owned resellers.
If I search “mop and bucket set” on Amazon, most results are in the $35 - $45 range, some as high as $60. Comparable mops on eBay (it seems 100% identical except it has a metal ring instead of a red plastic triangle over the mop) are $20 - $35. Then that exact same mop is $17.12 on Aliexpress (with free shipping, from a local warehouse). That’s not “used”, to be fair, but it’s a way smarter way of shopping and doesn’t support Amazon.
Another example is that H2O2 was $8.50 on Amazon at one point, yet like $1 or $2 each at my local Walgreens. Yes, same volume bottle. That was a while ago though, when I was still using Amazon, so I can’t say that’s still the case.
Or if you very literally want “used” for some reason, I did find one guy on Craigslist selling mop and bucket sets for $15 lol. Probably even more people on Facebook Marketplace, including some who might even be giving it away for free.
Unfortunately fb marketplace has a stranglehold on the used market, but damn have I got deals there.
Yeah it’s the only thing I’d still use FB for at this point
Yeah, ive read grapes of wrath! Excellent book.
Your example of a mop is silly though. Like, you can totally get a used mop at a garage sale. Or just dont use amazon for it at least if you must have a new one.
Also, have you not heard of eBay?? Yes, its full of shitty China amazon resellers too, but there’s real items there as well as tons of other sites people sell on.
My main point is, we are addicted and brainwashed to new shit we absolutely don’t need. If people thought about reducing and reusing for 1 second we could topple corporations. But no. Must have new. More oil to make more plastic shit to go to landfills. Throw out the TV when it breaks because nothing is repairable now etc get a new phone yearly etc.
It’s unacceptable that people like Jeff Bezos exist.
If you do actually believe that, then why not do something about it?
Unless you know the OP personally, I think you’re conjuring issues about them to complain about.
Why don’t you do something about it?
I don’t much care about Amazon, or billionaires.
This type of comment just comes off as ball fondling the billionaires and makes you look pathetic.
What part exactly? The ones calling to put words into action?
The insinuation you made was that Bernie fucking Sanders isnt doing enough you insufferable chud
He has accomplished nothing and became the DNC lapdog after they openly rigged an election against him. I have personally donated money to him and I regret it, Bernie is spineless and a liberal Zionist.
You should Google “Bernie Sanders” so that you don’t look quite so ridiculous making absurdly wrong claims in the future. You’re embarrassing yourself.
He grew up in occupied Palestine and still defends the occupation’s right to exist (which inherently requires existing on top of a racial underclass) and brutally repress indigenous anticolonial uprisings. That’s what he’s saying every time he says “of course Israel has a right to defend itself, but…”
I don’t need to Google shit, I’ve followed him for years and I know what he is.
The ball parts. The testicles.
Bros got 4 alts and they all love sweaty billionaire balls as much as he does
Edit: lmfao, hes literally in my post history throwing a fit. What an absolute loser
lol same here. he’s logged into a shitload of alts and has went down my entire history leaving downvotes.
It’s like the saddest thing ever. He’s wasting hours of his finite life to do this. Like does he think anyone gives a shit about votes here?
I saw my post history light up and literally burst out laughing.
This is why you need to know metric. 630 10^6/600 10^3 ≈ 10^3
Go demand fucking better wages if you think it makes a difference to a worker.
What?
The problem isn’t Amazon, which employer millions of people and provides services that people obviously love. In fact, many cottage businesses have found success on Amazon, as well as many authors being able to publish their books with the permission of the publishing industry, and much more. Why should we get rid of all that? None of that is the problem.
The problem is profit. If Amazon employees made double or triple their salaries, treated them respectfully, and had great benefits, nobody would complain about them. They’d probably be lauded as a great company.
What’s causing it is Bezos’ untreated OCD, which manifests as uncontrolled compulsive financial hoarding. He sucks so much profit out of the business, that it severely hurts the employees, and the company’s corporate image. If he could figure out how to live below his means, he’d find out that he really doesn’t need enough money for a million lifetimes, he could share that money with his employees, make his customers more comfortable buying from Amazon, and they’d make even more money than they were.
Or America could do what they do with uncontrolled hoarders whose collections start to have a negative affect on those around them - we get them mental help, and give all those cats to new families. That’s what we should do with Bezos. Comfine him a mental hospital until his mania for profit subsides, and give all his neglected money to people who will appreciate it. Or nationalize Amazon, and run it as a government held non-profit, with the proceeds going to fund social programs.
The problem is Amazon. Hope that helps. Throw Bezos in a woodchipper.
Or if you’re willing to take the bitter medicine and view a broader reality, capitalism is the problem and inherently depends on destroying the planet on which we rely on to survive. Bezos is just a particularly severe symptom of the disease of capitalism.
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In fact, many cottage businesses have found success on Amazon
Amazon Let Its Drivers’ Urine Be Sold as an Energy Drink
Love my cottage businesses.
What’s causing it is Bezos’ untreated OCD, which manifests as uncontrolled compulsive financial hoarding.
I think there’s an element of truth to this. But trying to medicalize what is, at the end of the day, just economic autocracy presumes that there’s a person who could do Bezos’s job (such that it ever even existed) “ethically”. I don’t really think this person exists. Once you consolidate an abundance of authority in a few hands, people just behave like this because it yields immense benefits and costs them nothing.
America could do what they do with uncontrolled hoarders whose collections start to have a negative affect on those around them - we get them mental help
This sounds like you’re talking about Trust Busting.
It’s not that hard. All an “Ethical” CEO would have to do is reduce the profits to 25%, and invest the rest into employee pay and benefits. Then market the shit out of that.
That CEO would be an American Hero, and his company would boom, lifting the share price, and keeping the stockholders happy.
But he wouldn’t have multiple yachts, including one he has to sell, because it was “too big.”
All an “Ethical” CEO would have to do is reduce the profits to 25%, and invest the rest into employee pay and benefits.
No, all an ‘ethical’ CEO would have to do is provide workers with the full surplus value produced by their labor. Otherwise he can get put into the woodchipper 75% faster as thanks for him stealing only 25% of my existence.
Valid.
All an “Ethical” CEO would have to do is reduce the profits to 25%, and invest the rest into employee pay and benefits.
That is, at best, a kind of National Socialism (or perhaps, trade unionism) that’s great at benefiting everyone directly below the CEO but not so great at socializing the wealth accrued by the company at-large. I would argue that even above and beyond the immediate miserable labor practices of Amazon as a company, what you have is an “Infinite Paperclip Machine” under the hood. Amazon is an engine of industry that snatches up cheap raw materials and transforms them into expensive finished products without bothering to ask the question “Do we need another box of paperclips?”
Redistributing profit is nice, I guess. But so long as Amazon operates on the principle of maximized profits, it becomes a meat-grinder of primary accumulation.
That CEO would be an American Hero, and his company would boom
He’d be the next Henry Ford, a man famous for really high quality political opinions and a legacy of ecologically friendly public-private partnerships.
The problem isn’t Amazon, which employer millions of people and provides services that people obviously love.
That’s the thing; Amazon didn’t pull out its success out of nowhere; the consumer made it what it became. Want to have a version of Amazon with healthcare and job security? Then build it yourself. That won’t work because of the customer wanting the cheapest stuff possible? Here’s the crux of the problem. There won’t be corporate reform without consumer reform.
You missed my point. The solution isn’t to let them continue to be bad, until someone goes into competition and beat them with a more moral business model. The moral model can’t succeed when they are competing with someone who is exploiting and manipulating the system in bad faith.
The solution is to create a business environment where the moral business succeeds, while the immoral business struggles, and eventually decides to follow the rules in order to succeed, or close.
The solution is to create a business environment where the moral business succeeds
Yes, but it will be up to the consumer to create such an environment, either with their wallets or democratically.
The government will have to take a major role in that. Reconfiguring the entire direction of the business environment cannot be left to the easily manipulated vagaries of the American consumer. It has to be much more deliberate than that, with targeted laws and vigorous enforcement.
In the future, we must make it uncomfortable to be super wealthy, like needing permission to spend their money on a second yacht. If the commission determines that’s an unreasonable request, the money will be confiscated, and steered to Social programs. Obviously that’s too much money for them to handle responsibly.
I think the Universal Ranked Income concept that I put together can address at least some of the issue. The essential idea is that everyone receive basic UBI and benefits, such as free healthcare, generic food or supplies, basic car, basic housing, fuel, and so forth. A job is for earning money, which in turn is used for luxuries and upgrades. In effect, money is a non-essential currency.
Aside from that, each type of job falls into a category of rankings. This rank gives a fixed amount of money, replacing the basic UBI income of $10k for a citizen. Assuming a full year of work after mandated vacations and whatnot, that would be $40k for a basic job like waiter. An astronaut gets the highest ranked job, which brings in $100k. Mix this with an absolute cap on wealth and assets ($100k for each category), and that will limit the power of a person over society, while allowing for a reasonable level of liberty and prosperity for a person. Plus, companies can’t commit wage theft or use bad terms.
However, this doesn’t entirely address companies by themselves. Each worker should have the ability to vote for the leadership and the leader’s paygrade within their own establishment, and also be able to cast such votes for leaders that are above the establishment. Say, WalMart managers - you can vote for your store’s manager, the city’s manger, the state’s manager, and the nation’s manager, ect.
Still not enough. Companies also should have restrictions on how much total wealth and assets they can hold. What I propose: the cap is 50% of the staff payroll, based on each employee. An waiter adds $20k to the company’s capacity, while an astro is 50k. If a company needs capacity without increasing headcount, they can participate in a government lotto program. The lotto gives an annual income to a winner, and each winner only can have one income at a time, which can replace basic UBI. To qualify, they have to be without a job and not have any benefits to draw upon. (Each day worked, gives 1 day of income as retirement benefits.) This allows companies using AI or not needing people, to still contribute to society while improving their fiscal potential.
0000
I know, a long list of stuff. Unfortunately, economics are wooly and there are many, many issues to sort out, if we go down the route of an egalitarian society.
Valid concepts. I like to speculate on the future Utopian Socialist America, too, if we can make it happen.
If I had the money, I would fund an EVE Online spinoff that existed to compare different socio-economic models against each other. Year 1 would have the shards separate, so that each community would develop in isolation and master their respective styles. Year 2, the shards are linked together to that each ‘galaxy’ can visit each other for trade and conquest.
The way I figure, our world is so used to feudalism and capitalism, that things like genuine socialism or communism would be ‘noobs’ when their governments spawn, and thus be killed or corrupted not long after appearing. Giving time to become equals with infrastructure and experience would be useful for evening the playing field of the experiment. Plus, we can look at each society at isolation before mixing in the complications of competing with other models.
To me, it would be preferable to study these models in a virtual environment, before trying them in the real world. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that we will have to fly by the seat of our pants and hope for the best.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Over-accumulation of wealth by an individual should be seen as an indicator that the system is broken.
He’s my favorite example to bust the “smarts and hard work” myth of billionaires. He had parents with good, union jobs that allowed him to go to Princeton, where he dropped out of a physics major (into CS) because it was too difficult. The school’s connections, though, got him a job at a hedge fund, where he was assigned to study the investment potential of e-commerce on the nascent Web. He saw the enormous potential, but was so bad at his job that he couldn’t convince the other executives that they wanted some of that money. So he left the job, got a large loan from his parents, and started Cadabra in a garage he rented in a conscious nod to Silicon Valley mythos. Oh, Cadabra? He was going to call it that, but his lawyer convinced him to go with his second choice of name, because that one sounds too much like cadaver. The company was profitable in a month, and then he used all manner of dirty tricks to run the competition out of the market.
Nothing in his story indicates anything but dumb luck of randomly being the one in the right time and place to succeed. If it was smarts and hard work, there were hundreds of other e-commerce contenders who put in at least as much as he did.
While others put in more work than he, and certainly he didn’t work as hard as most any minimum wager that tends to work the hardest, your example at least showed he put in some effort and acumen, so it wouldn’t be my favorite example to bust the myth.
Musk I think is even better since basically his entire fortune builds upon just luck and conning folks without ever putting in useful work. He had a leg up from rich family, then was so weird about his dot-com that he put a PC in a big plastic thing to make it ‘look like a supercomputer’ and despite how utterly amateur hour it was… It worked on Compaq and he got millions for a site that never got off the ground. Then he took his millions and worked to cofound the first X.com, which was getting beat by a competitive product Paypal. Somehow the owners of Paypal despite winning agreed to a merger and agreed to put Musk in charge. And he boffed it hard and was forced to step down because his incompetence was destroying Paypal. But he still had a huge stake so when eBay came knocking, despite Musk doing nothing but screw up the company, he got the most money from that transaction. To this day some people will describe him as ‘the’ founder of Paypal, despite all this. Then with Tesla, he saw a company doing something cool with electrifying a Lotus and wanted in. Then after being in he threw a hissy fit that he should be a founder, despite the company existing prior to his coming along. Also plenty of word that Elon’s first round of actually getting things designed somewhat the way he wanted was the Cybertruck… and well…
It’s hard to overstate how much Amazon has changed the economy. It has quite possibly the longest and most consequential game of enshittification in play. It’s already taken over a giant chunk of the retail market and destroyed local businesses in ways Wal-Mart and their like could only dream of.
It’s brought worker exploitation to Gilded Age levels. And there’s no doubt the ultimate goal is to create a monopoly over retail, so that they will later dictate prices. They’re already redirecting popular products to their own cheap, shittier versions in the searches they control. Their long term goal, like all tech companies that touch real world commerce, is to “disrupt” the system that worked for everyone before them, aka what’s left of competition in late stage capitalism, and replace it with monopoly.
Bezos is a would-be feudalist lord of retail in a technofascist hellscape. Peter Thiel will handle the surveillance. And they’ll all ride out the apocalypse on wherever they relocated Epstein’s island.
When I buy things online these days, much rarer than in previous - I deliberately avoid Amazon. For all the reasons you said, and a handful of others lol!
At least half the time the product comes in an Amazon box anyway. I think you might be understating how successful Amazon has been at reshaping things.
“b-b-but Amazon creates JOBS!! Jeff Bezos DESERVES that money!!!”
- Guy who doesn’t understand that jobs “created” by Amazon are jobs destroyed elsewhere by its monopoly
I get it, but 500M$/600K workers is ~840$/worker. One time
There is a reason his wealth has skyrocketed by billions and billions of dollars over the past decade. He doesn’t pay his workers fair wages. Being a billionaire is unethical… billionaires are the single biggest threat to humanity at the moment.
Or perhaps it’s ALL the lazy morons using his shitty marketplace to get toilet paper delivered…bet workers themselves buy shit off Amazon.
I don’t know, I think it’s a little shitty to call everyone using Amazon lazy morons when it’s often the only viable option for affordable things. Especially if you’re like a parent working at an Amazon warehouse and you have another job and you simply don’t have the time or energy to shop/drive around to get that one particular formula your kid doesn’t get sick off.
Obviously there’s an argument to be made about an average American’s mindless consumption and addiction to convenience, but we don’t have to call people working paycheck to paycheck lazy morons. They’re not the problem here.
If you can afford Amazon toilet paper and shipping, you most certainly aren’t paycheck to paycheck like people who have to feed via Dollar stores frozen garbage - you’re putting yourself into your own predicament.
Having a kid when you can barely afford yourself is another, absolutely moronic hobby to pick up.
That would be fantastic for 600,000 workers, an entire week without worrying about rent.
So… what’s the downside? I don’t see one.
If you don’t think $840 could change someone’s life. Especially in this economy.
Obviously you’ve never been paycheck to paycheck
Also he spends like a billion a year on developing his space program
We could always make it so corporations have a hiring limit of 5,000 employees to make sure no one corporation is ever large. Doing that now would lead to mass firings. But if we had done it all along, we’d have a more competitive market.
The thing that’s unacceptable is not that manual labor gets replaced by robots. That’s a good thing.
The thing that’s unacceptable is that Jeff Bezos can amass such wealth and that you don’t get a basic income and housing without needing to work for it.
Pure capitalism has an implied responsibility after one becomes overwhelmingly successful, they would be inclined to reinvest the excess into society. Donations to schools, social programs, not-for-profits, and so on. And higher wages for the workers who made you immensely successful, better benefits, higher quality of life overall to incentivize people wanting to work for you, and if all successful companies did this, trickle-down economics would be real.
In unregulated corrupted capitalism, however, that excess instead is used to lobby government to make even more successful, shaping laws to shield companies from labor rights, destroy unions, surpress minimum wage, dodge taxes, and deflect hidden production costs like environmental pollution or outsourced slave labor. They use their economic leverage to remove legal responsibilities they have participating in society, while at the same time leaning on society’s resources like roads, police, emergency services, and infrastructure more than any individual ever could. Imagine how successful Bezos would be if taxpayers didn’t provide roads for his deliveries.
It’s all a big game of monopoly to them and at the end of the game, one guy has all the money and everyone else is bankrupt, in poverty, jail, or just trying to collect $200 a week to not starve. And then new generations are born into the game wherever their parents were at on the board, with no game reset. People wonder why the birth rate is dropping.
At the end of the game though our pieces all go into the same box.
Look, I get it. Jeff Bezos will keep hoarding. That makes sense in that selfish, nihilist worldview. What I can’t understand, is why all fucking people are voting against their own fucking self interests to allow this bullshit. If people didn’t just vote against their fucking better interests we would be in a much better situation.
Religion is why people vote the way they do. They vote republican because that is what there are taught. They do it for Jesus, fetuses, and more money for their overlords.
If people didn’t just vote against their fucking better interests we would be in a much better situation.
Red-staters seem perfectly fine with punching themselves in the face if it means they can stumble back and bloody the noses of the durn libburuls standing behind them.
because voting is not issue based, in the US. it’s “sports team” based, us vs them, etc. it is nothing but distractions while capitalists keep getting richer.
Which party can you vote that will redistribute wealth?
Democratic party is much closer to being taken over by a populist socialist. So DNC with emphasis that primaries need to by the real battleground.
And once we’ve won those primaries, then the DNC will be aligned with our fucking self interests.
So you think that if Sanders becomes the leader of the democratic party (he won’t), all of the lobbies and all of the billionaires interests that are behind both Democratic and Republican parties, are gonna suddenly disappear? Unfortunately that’s not how it works.
Voting for the democratic party would alsocbe against your self-interest as member of the working class, just as much as republican. You need to realise the US is a one party system, Democratic and Republican are two branches of the same party.
What’s your strategy? Sanders hasnt become the DNC leader yet, so I reject your premise that it can’t work. We’ve seen how the GOP party can change, for the worse. The billionaires will exist in whatever you’re proposing, right up until they don’t exist, so that’s not any kind of counter argument to improving the DNC.
They are not the same party. Wake the fuck up. Maybe you could say that two years ago, but gestures broadly.
You’re partially incorrect, or at least obfuscating things to support your point. It’s much more complicated than how I believe you’re expressing it.
The human race has an oligarch problem and the U.S. has a two party issue and happens to be were capital has been concentrated for the past ~60 years.
Simply look at past policy decisions, who is repealing precedent, international relations, environmental protections, Supreme Court decisions (and their written opinions) over the last two presidential terms is enough to show the difference between the two parties.
Our problem doesn’t simply lie in our political structure (which is a mathematical guarantee of our government system). There are solutions on the table and the only viable pathway to meaningful change without violence is through voting in the U.S. or you know prolonged violent conflict. My point being the U.S. has a problem with their policymakers and representation for sure.
But let’s be clear here the human race is experiencing oligarchical pressure in so many places more than just the US.
thats because people are temporarily embarrased billionaires thats why.
If leftists didn’t refuse to vote “on principle” we would be in a much better situation.
How many of the people who didn’t vote were leftists not voting on principle?
Same for if neoliberals gave up the delusion that chasing conservative voters is going to get them a higher turnout. But I have no doubt they will continue to try the same thing and punch left when they fail.
I’m sure they will. We shouldn’t vote for them. And if more leftists voted, they wouldn’t win as often.
[edit: looks like I read too much into the comment I was replying to - I’ll leave the below for the sake of honesty, but I was unfair, and I won’t defend my hostility or uncharitable read (at least in this case lol)]
If only we got more of those DNC ghouls in office they could have slowed down some of this a bit!
Couldn’t be that the “other party” just absorbs every complaint, atrocity, demand for real change and delivers none. It’s probably those annoying leftists who are messing up progress!
FWIW I vote as often as I can. It’s not hard for me to tell who is more evil and what levers are available to me at the moment (I also don’t disparage others with thoughtful reasons to do otherwise).
Your take sucks and smells like a real Reddit-ass analysis of why things are going badly.
I never said anything about voting for Democrats. You made a lot of assumptions just to come here and argue with me.
And there are no thoughtful reasons not to vote. Just excuses that try to launder laziness into righteousness.
Okay, I’ve read through your other comments and you’re right, I misunderstood and misrepresented your POV, I apologize.
For the record, just like there is a large contingent of online “leftists” who don’t do much but whine, there’s an accompanying group of folks who also habitually just whine, but they whine in the ways I attacked you for doing, some flavor of “if they’d only have voted (for Harris/Clinton/etc) then we’d all be at brunch!”
But that’s not what you said, and given your other comments, you probably don’t like those folks either. So yeah, I saw what looked like that and had an allergic reaction lol.
Anyway, my bad, cheers.
Ty!
And yeah, I understand how I could have been misconstrued as advocating “blue-no-matter-who”. So to be absolutely clear: fuck Harris, Biden, Obama, both Clintons, and all the other neoliberal asshats who helped suppress actual progressives from having power within the Dem party and in The US more broadly.
Preach!
Shut up you bigot!
If they voted for Copmala Iranian schools and hospitals could’ve been bombed by trans people and immigrants.
You have denied them of equal opportunities!
what principal do you mean? asking harris to say genocide is bad? asking the dem party to cut the horseshit with primaries? asking biden to leave a year before he did?
anyone who voted third party is not why trump is in office, their numbers plus harris’ would still have lost to trump. sadly.
but cut the thick shit pushing horseshit rhetoric like your reply. grow up. stop supporting genocide too.
You made so many incorrect assumptions in your reply I don’t even know where to start.
I never said to vote for corporate Dems, let alone stan for them.
I never said not to vote 3rd party. I do it all the time.
I never said that if leftists voted just in the 2024 presidential race that all would be fixed.
And you seem to have forgotten that we get to vote for more than just president.
If leftists voted en masse, my city would have a a very different local government from the one it has today - one that would create a base of power and solidarity to bring change to higher levels of government, and one that would actually take measure to protect us from federal goons.
So maybe engage with my actual point instead of the baseless image of me that you have in your head.
they weren’t assumptions but additional points and in addition you never answer my question.
Additional points that were irrelevant, because they didn’t counter any of my actual beliefs.
And as to your question… what I usually hear from the leftists in my town is that any participation in the electoral process makes you a sellout liberal NPC genocide supporter. Or it’s “validating the current system” or some other such nonsense.
The simple fact is that local elections in my city are usually won by a few hundred to few thousand votes. Voter turnout is extremely low, even by American standards, there is almost always an actual progressive (and often even socialists) on the ballot, and they almost always come in second place. If even half of the leftist nonvoters came out and voted, these people would win, and even the soulless corporate shills competing against them would have to shift to the left to stay relevant.
It wouldn’t be THE fix to ALL our problems, but it would fucking help a lot of desperate people.
you went local when the larger convo is national.
as a leftist myself i push hard on local elections, and my usual comment to the folks running is, and i’ve actually said this, “local is most important because we know where you live”
national is horseshit and voting there does “legitimize” the exploitation and capitalist system we’ll never vote our way out of.
but locally, if i can get the town of 14k people to spend its money better and treat renters like they matter instead of the businesses on main st… that’s a local win.
Larger convo was about voting generally, not about the federal elections.
And my point was that voting can make an impact. To expand on that point, the impact is cumulative. If this year a bunch of leftists who normally didn’t vote decide to vote, we’ll get better local governments across the country. In the next cycle, the Overton Window will have shifted left and more elections, perhaps at the state or even congressional level will result in candidates who aren’t completely beholden to the bourgeoisie . The cycle after that, maybe we get a 3rd party candidate winning the electoral votes for a state. Or maybe enough states have shifted to the left that we get a critical mass on the National Popular Vote Pact and functionally do away with the electoral college.
It’s clear I’m not talking about you, since you actually vote. But I know for a fact that among the American left the idea of voting at all is considered cringe. And I believe these people are at best misguided and at worst finding a righteous-sounding excuse for not wanting to bother.
Also, my city is more like half a million than 14 thousand. And it’s got soooooooo many leftists. We would easily be the biggest voting block in the city if more of us actually bothered, because most of the rest of the population doesn’t.
Finally, this:
national is horseshit and voting there does “legitimize” the exploitation and capitalist system we’ll never vote our way out of
is nonsense. Not voting doesn’t register nationally as opposition or disapproval or dissatisfaction. It registers as apathy, and apathy legitimizes the status quo. If you want to make a statement in a national election, vote 3rd party. Write in a candidate. Do anything other than not vote.
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It’s amazing how easy it is to “win” an argument that exists only in your imagination
I’m so fucking glad that I don’t live in 'Murica.
I don’t know what argument you’re responding to. Talk about projection.
Anyway, you probably just saw my username and assumed I’m “one of them”. So let me say this real clear for all the bigots on Lemmy: we don’t get to decide where we are born, and we are not inherently responsible for the actions of our governments. Get it through your thick dumb skulls.
Your opinion on “leftists” is telling
That’s why I think you’re stupid.
Yes Amazon didn’t exist before Trump and they didn’t pay the other side of your duopoly.
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/bezos-greases-way-into-dem-establishment-with-100-million-obama-donation/If americans weren’t such losers endlessly voting for one of those you would be in a much better situation.
But I see you’re another one of those campist clowns.
You’re all pathetic and a lost cause, so keep crying.
You deserve it
