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Money hoarding is obscene. And worshipping money hoarders is gross.
grabs guillotine
MAMA WILL FIX IT. 😡🔥
population control, unconventional but effective, I like it.
It’s so unconventional it’s the convention
And a place to sleep.
More than just a place to sleep; a place to call your own. And every place I’ve rented did not feel like my own; most corporate rental contracts make it very clear that this is their property, don’t you dare make it feel like home, you only get to temporarily reside there by the grace of their good will (and by paying out your nose, ears, eyes, and ass for the privilege).
People can have mega yachts precisely because others don’t get 3 meals a day. That’s how the system is designed to work.
Not because the capital spared from denied meals (or production thereof) are going directly towards yachts, but because the capitalist mode of production requires the threat of starvation to force us into unfavourable compensation for our labour.
Really, we could easily do both at this point (and more), but since greed knows no limits, there is also no limit to what pain the capitalist class will impose on us in order to extract surplus value.
We already produce enough food for a billion more people than what exists, but still around a billion live in starvation to deter the rest of us.
If you’re working 40 hours a week and you STILL can’t afford basics like food, shelter and healthcare, then your economy (and your employer) sucks.
employer == economy
You can’t have an economy if the “consumer class” stops consuming. If people have no confidence in the economy, they stop spending money. An economy only works if people SPEND money, not if a tiny number of people hoard it.
Everybody should have access to clean water. I mean everybody. If I was the President I’d happily enforce that with all powers available.
Then I’d start working my way up the hierarchy of needs…
Elon could single-handedly end world hunger. But he doesn’t.
Well, billionaires should not exist. But ending world hunger takes way more than just money. There is enough food already, it’s just not evenly distributed. And even in areas where we send aid, local power plays and corruption prevent the fair distribution. Ending world hunger is a hugely complex issue, unfortunately. Of course I’m not saying we shouldn’t try or try different approaches. It’s just not as simple as saying “feeding all hungry people costs x money, and some billionaire could pay for that”
Yes, but he’s a genius at business and logistics, and several forms of transportation. It should be easy for him to solve those problems, right? (Some /s in there)
In any case, he could hire people to solve those problems if he wanted to. He’s certainly got the resources. Then again, if he approached it like his other ventures, trying to run things himself, he may only make it worse for everyone whilst doubling his own net worth.
One huge issue are the situations that cause people to remain hungry. They are caused by war and widespread poverty. That’s not something an immature asshole like Musk is going to solve. After all, he is part of the problem.
Elon can’t even save twitter. What makes you think he is single-handedly capable of ending world hunger.
Not with any skills he has – he’s an idiot. I just mean the money he has. He could donate billions and billions to organisations that can, and still be the richest person on the planet.
One yacht? That’s amateur numbers!
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php
Wow, I did not know that. He could definitely drop the percentage he takes from Indy developers. I always thought his 30%, was scummy. Now moreso.
From all developers honestly but just from indies would be great considering they already have it in their contract that the % goes down after X$ of sales (which benefits larger devs).
Valve makes enough money to pay their employees more than the competition while also having surplus to have tons of side projects that will lead to nothing and making the boss a billionaire… I don’t mind the first two, but that last bit means money coming out of our pockets and going towards buying yachts…
(Disclaimer: I hate all billionaires, this applies to all platforms, we overpay for games [and most other things] in general because there’s billionaires at the top of the creation/distribution chain)
Oh yummy! Confusion.
never beileve billionaires when they act like they need more money
Is this true even if a person on an island spends their whole life building a wooden mega yacht for themself?
If someone can manage to build themselves a mega yacht from scratch they can keep it
Phew. I could sense people sharpening their pitch forks. This my yacht and I’m keeping it.
Hmm, so we could say the real problem is when someone has wealth disproportionately larger than what they contributed to the world?
That makes sense to me
Clean water and a freaking shitter too!
And shelter.
Before anyone can have VR or a sports car.
Sports cars are dumb. VR I tried but didn’t care for it.
Honestly I don’t think sports cars should be legal, they’re so inefficient.
I’ll take your word for it. In all honesty whenever I see some douchebag with a sports car who makes the engine roar all I can think of is that this is the mating cry of a man with a tiny penis.
Zuckerfuck: But in the meta verse, you can poop, pee, and sleep anywhere your heart desires!
As far as you can afford it *
Don’t forget healthcare as well!
Does this also apply to say, smartphones?
There’s quite a chasm between a $100 million boat and a $100 device…
Somehow, all these pleas on behalf of the downtrodden never include us actually making any sacrifices or change, just the rich.
Weird how it’s easy to agitate for change when it involves zero sacrifice on your part.
Ok… if i give up my phone, i feed a family for a week. If bezo gives up a yacht, he feeds 1,000 familes for life. See the problem here?
Except there are many more non billionaires than billionaires. There are some 750ish billionaires in the US.
Median American has a net worth of about 200k. So, 5,000 median Americans gets you about a billion.
Divide the American population (~333 million) and lo and behold, worth about 66,666 billionaires.
So, in other words, blaming billionaires is easy but really…
Yes, which is why step taxation was implemented… the richer you are the more you’re expected to return back to society.
Yes and the billionaires, while still having loopholes, still give back way more to society than we do.
Unsure what point you’re trying to make.
What they give back is miniscule in what they take.
What is the point you’re trying to make?
That’s bullshit. Same argument corporations try to push on us about climate change. Fish rots from the head down. Obviously there will be sacrifices we have to make. But to preach “what will YOU be giving up, huh??” when megacorps and gazillionaires hoard literal mountains of wealth to the detriment of the planet and all others while they purposely stand in the way of any progress or change that might affect their bottom line? Bootlicking at worst, misguided liberal soapbox bullshit at best.
Lol, I love “bootlicking” on Lemmy, as far as I can tell it’s used the same way trump uses rigged, that is to say “I don’t like it!”
I mean, on climate change, farming is one of the biggest contributors and as fat as the fat cats are, the 333 million non billionaire Americans eat a boatload more beef than the 750ish billionaires. Meanwhile, in terms of say, children losing their limbs mining the cobalt for our phones, the 333 million are way more responsible. Same story for sweatshops. Same for air travel, oil consumption etc.
But man, actual change on our part would be hard. Way easier to rail about billionaires online and feel snugly superior rather than actually doing the work.
Why are Americans eating so much beef?
Advertising, paid for by the rich.
Subsidization, this would have been lobbied for by the rich.
Health advice. Being British, if I told my doctor I ate beef daily they’d strongly advice against my daily beef eating. In America health care is a for profit system, its not profitable to have healthy citizens.There’s probably a bunch more but case and point the issue is out of the hands of most working class American’s.
Way easier to rail about billionaires online and feel snugly superior rather than actually doing the work.
did you try abstaining from beef? the meat industry grows every year. did you try abstaining from smartphones? sweatshops? air travel? your decisions made no difference.
I do abstain from beef. Which is difficult as hell as I rock weights at the gym and beef is incredibly protein efficient. But it’s the least I can do. So I eat a boatload of chickpeas and chicken.
My smartphone is a shitty ancieng refurbished one as that’s the most ethical I could find.
I haven’t bought sweatshop clothes in years. So yeah, my fashion sucks as it’s mostly thrift shop but I dont feel evil. (Though, my boxers are falling apart and it’s getting kind of desperate. Sadly, because other people don’t give a shit there are very few ethical underwear options.) Similarly, every piece of non electric furniture in my place is second hand, except for my bed frame.
Gave up on cars more than a decade ago. Finally got a second hand one but bike, bus and train almost everywhere.
I’ve taken a 30 - 40% pay cut to work in the non profit sector. Which makes it unlikely I’ll ever buy a house but my work helps put kids through school.
My individual decisions don’t make a difference but it’s like voting. If others lived similarly, the world would be significantly better. We can all do better, it’s just harder than whining about billionaires online.
whining about billionaires online
is just as effective. if you want to change things that are wrong, you need to go to where they are and stop them.
You think that there aren’t people who might need a Smartphone for work or medical emergencies? That is a non-zero number, so no. However should we have everyone’s base needs met before others get past a certain point before luxury goods? Yes. Should we be able to do that now AND have luxury goods? Also Yes. Is it alright for people to have a Billion Dollars before that? Definitely No.
Weird gotcha. What is this the early 2000s when smartphones were rich people toys?
Globally, they still are. Almost half the world doesn’t have one. And children still lose their limbs mining the cobalt etc.
I guess the question could be better phrased as “and what are you personally giving up to ensure that as many people as possible are fed?”
Yea I assumed that your main point was some kind of sacrifice, not the smartphones themselves. If it weren’t for the smartphones you’d be phrasing your gotcha around TVs, or washing machines, or fridges, or indoor plumbing. I’ve seen this very conservative argument before.
Progressivism and leftism aren’t some kind of ascetic christianity and nobody needs a morality preacher. Social progress is not about individual morality. And it’s not a zero sum game either.
There is enough food production and wealth in the world to eliminate hunger and extreme poverty already. I could be a selfish asshole not willing to part with my sneaker collection and that would still be the case.
Maybe there is a future where carrying around a smartphone isn’t necessary because we’ve rebuilt human connection in communities. The damn things are addictive misery machines under capitalism anyway. But that’s very different from going around wagging the finger at people that say “we could feed the hungry”.
Or any matter of things on a global scale instead of national.
I’m a citizen of the Earth before I’m the citizen of any Nation, but it’s hard to remember that.
This probably does apply to smart phones, TV, consumer computers. Its hard to look at socialism and answer the question of what would it look like but at a guess: planned obsolescence would be out the window. No one is upgrading to an ai powered refrigerator because their old one is broke. No one is buying the newest smart phone because they’re older model died(Hyperbole), Yet we live in a system of yearly releases of similar tech that we mindlessly consume. This consumption is a by product of the capitalist system. Purely manufactured to make money.
So in my imagined full communist world. We have phone. Phones that last longer, they are geared to be easily upgraded, dissembleable and actually future proofed unlike what we have now.
So long as I can still choose to skip breakfast when I want.
Did they fucking stutter? Now chow down that breakfast
But what about second breakfast?
My man.
nah we should let the poors die then sell their body parts
what!? There’s no way. This reads like an elongated onion post, whats up?
Cooking Mama has an ideal outcome - Great
Cooking Mama’s idea of getting there was whatever the fuck the USSR was doing… - Not Great
Just Tax the rich while maintaining a strong democracy, it’s not hard.
you don’t get to communism through “social democracy” XD
any concessions given by the rich in bourgeois “democracies” are funded by outsourcing some of the exploitation to the imperial periphery/global south
You definitely don’t get to a public owned means of production and redistribution of goods through Autocracy for vwry obvious reasons.
The rich need not make concessions when the poor can help write the laws.
1st of all, great whataboutism 👍
but I will indulge you:
Autocracy?! That’s not what that word means. Tsarism was autocracy, Chiang Kai-shek was basically an autocrat.
What you are talking about is a revisionist degenerated workers state (or bourgeois state of a new type in the case of contemporary China) in which the bureaucracy grew too strong to a quasi caste-like status above the rest of the population. There were attempts to correct this in both the USSR (workers/left/united opposition) and in the PRC (Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) but both were crushed
So it’s definitely smth we should learn from, to not repeat those mistakes. But that does not mean turning to the snake oil that is social democracy/democratic socialism which believe that somehow we can magically convince the ruling classes of systemic change and that they will give up power voluntarily. (And even if you manage somehow to wrestle significant concessions, they will either be rolled back after 30yrs or you’ll get the bullet in a fascist coup)
EDIT: Even under bureaucratic state socialism, there still was collective rule. Yes cults of personality were established around key figures (e.g. Stalin and Mao) but you can look up CIA documents where they dismiss that Stalin had abolished collective leadership (though ofc he still was the figurehead of the bureaucracy and the dominant force). Mao had an even stronger cult of personality, but a far “weaker” position than Stalin and the leadership was far more collective (just an fyi: this is why Mao called for a cultural revolution, which was a grassroots movement btw. The capitalist roaders (party bureaucrats who wanted to get back to capitalism but keep their privileged party posts) where gaining more and more power and he was not in a dictatorial position to stop them at will. So he had to organize a mass students and youth movement. Ofc there were excesses and errors there as well)
And despite the corrupt character AES brought forth massive progress in all fields of society. Free education up to university for everyone who didn’t slack at school. Millions of emancipated people learned to read for the first time ever. Massive scientific progress. Access to culture for millions. Making things like theatre, operas, ballet, cinema and chess accessible (and affordable !) for the masses. Making sure everyone had a place to work, sleep, smth to eat and clean water. Giving women the right to work, vote, choose whom or even if to marry, to go through life unveiled and just generally choose their own lives.(but this is one of the errors again. Patriarchal social structures were still kept and social conservatism took hold, which is why women rarely if ever had the rly high positions and were barred from the military f.e.) Making sure every child had a place at a crib or kindergarten. Making good quality healthcare accessible to all free of charge. Including vaccinating even the furthest regions, that had never even seen a doctor before.
This might not seem all that impressive to the priviliged liberal, but you have to look at the state the regions where in before: semi-feudalism at best (and/or bombed into the 3rd world after WW2)
Ofc there were excesses and mistakes, as already stated. But that does not negate their achievements.
TL;DR: dismissing state socialism as “something that didn’t work for the people” is disingenuous and disregards the fact that it did work and that, despite its flaws, it worked for hundreds of millions of people. We should not demonize previous socialist experiments, neither should we glorify them, but constructively learn from their mistakes when striving for a class-, state-, and moneyless society (aka communism, which is materially possible in todays world and not an idealist utopia, but a historic necessity if humanity is to progress as a species and not devolve into barbarism/fascism)
good short clips of Parenti talking if anyone’s interested (he put it rly well imo)
https://youtu.be/JSpVB_XXXBQ?si=NdbBBRJfhglQo1ez
https://youtu.be/npkeecCErQc?si=oAh8jj_WYCAtoUKB
https://youtu.be/BeVs6t3vdjQ?si=1obub_-e-vLi9ubG
and also a rly good Parentiwave edit https://youtu.be/3-PHYj1vb-w?si=0WTNxg43xIAdnFck
Wow we get it, you would suck a dictator’s cock. Say more with less, dictator cocksucker.
You know ‘dictator’ has a different meaning in socialist rhetoric. The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is tongue-in-cheek, as in, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the reverse of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is the system we live under. A CIA document even mentioned the misconception of the Western world in regards to the USSR’s dictatorship.
👍
👋 bye, toxic and close-minded bad faith .world lib
apparently nuance is smth those ppl can’t fathom
The core issue is that it actually is impossible to maintain full democracy under capitalism. Even under perfect direct democracy with no lobbies and full representation those with the means to promote their voice louder will do so.
And if you have big money (which some will, because the more money you already have, the easier it becomes to hoard even more), you can fund projects that will have to promote you in return, skewing the voting process.
In reality though, political lobbying, corruption, etc. are omnipresent, and extremely hard to combat, because it’s in the logic of capitalism to accumulate wealth at all costs, legal or otherwise.
Now, I’m not saying socialist societies are totally devoid of corruption and self-interest, but they at least have mechanisms in place to curb it.
Capitalism is not aimed at increasing people’s wellbeing, it’s aimed at pursuing profit, and people’s wellbeing is fundamentally secondary. If putting people in worse conditions increases profits, this will eventually be done. Socialism, on the other hand, declares people’s equality and wellbeing as the core priorities. Resources should be spent in a way that benefits most people.
Makes sense. But what about couples and families?
