Billionaires aren’t compatible with life. They are economic black holes who increase scarcity, uncertainty, entropy, and isolation. In a different verbiage, they are demons.
Every federal government candidate has rich sponsor(s) because our political system is a massive cash laundering machine, as it has been since “we” (not the voters) decided that corporations are people and money is free speech.
They will always win, because they have much more money than the voters themselves. These multi-generational constructs control our rotting political system.
There is no legal solution, unfortunately. Our “representatives” aren’t going to wake up tomorrow and say "you know what? I have so much money that I actually feel guilty. Let’s throw a bone to the proles ( i.e. raise minimum wage, universal healthcare, term limits).
With our legal bribery system, there’s no longer any need for backroom cash deals, it’s very efficient. Their only limit is their discretion, for appearances sake.
If someone gets busted for bribery or similar, that only means that they have displeased someone else with a bigger pile of money. That’s it. So we get the appearance of the rule of law without any actual rule of law.
At this point, the only thing that will drag down this decrepit empire is the inevitable economic collapse that is our heritage. The unbridled greed becomes unsustainable.
But please vote, I did! Every good comedy routine needs a “straight man”, the “foil”, and that is our role as voters. Just be in on the joke.
In normal democracies donations are capped to like $100 a year.
In Canada we have conspiracies about wealthy and powerful elites using lots of individuals to max out donations… and even that would only get them 5 figure or low 6 figure donations. lol
I wish that was true.
In the UK we’re trying to convince our government to cap donations, but all they’re interested in doing is limit who can donate. Basically the want to limit the donations to other “bad” parties but not their own donations.
I believe Germany are having similar problems.
Stop getting in their way of “America bad”ing
Flushing 158 million dollars down the toilet for a criminal instead of using it to do something positive for humanity.
Capitalism is not compatible with democracy.
Democracy is equal political action.
A person who can pay someone to do political action for him has twice as much political ability as anyone who can’t afford to do that.
Either you restrict political actions of the wealthy or the amount of political power a person has can be measured by that person’s bank account.
And what a coincidence. In the United States, your political power CAN be measured by your bank account.
And the fact that in the US your political power can be measured by your bank account is EXACTLY why so many people think the definition of many words is literally the opposite of what those words actually mean.
why do billionaires have this need to rule the world. i get that they like money and want more of that. but to ruin other peoples lives for the purpose of money, that i dont understand. i dont understand how poeple can sleep at night doing that day after day.
It’s not a coincidence. People have cause and effect backward.
It’s not that this is a problem unique to billionaires.
It’s just that the impulse to do so much evil is precisely the reason that someone becomes a billionaire in the first place.
Petty theft is murder. Petty murder is illegal. But while the people with resources get people to focus on those small crimes, those people with power put in place ways to murder and rob billions of people on a constant basis, but to do so in such a banal way that each step by itself seems like nothing. They built murder machines to kill people and extract the wealth from their corpses.
And no one has made the murder machines illegal.
Power is addictive. You also get to see how a person truly is when you give them power with no regard to law.
I feel like if you gave Trump or musk the opportunity to rule without any laws they would give Roman Emporer Caligula a run for his money regarding cruelty and debauchery.
Could feed tons of hungry families or cover their healthcare or any number of good things, but no lets use it to bribe some asshole senator that’s not going to accomplish anything anyway.
fElon cannot have government investigating him. Having Republicans in power will assure that his welfare keeps rolling in and he won’t go to prison for what he’s done.
By any standard, he should be in prison already.
I think 158 million sounds about right for the purchase of american politicians. It used to be cheaper but now they are all holding out for that big subscription tech bros money. Sadly, most everyone has a price.
in a very transactional society yes. I’ve never experienced this pressure to get money as the only value a person has as much as Ive seen when visiting america.
A lot of other societies put other things such as family and community over this and will ask such questions as a point of value in life.
I strongly urge you to travel and see how other cultures connect with eachother if your only experience has been american greed which seems to be celebrated in america. there is a reason america attracts the types of people such as elon musk and andrew tate. These types of people dont fit so well in societies that ask other questions about their life and value as a person that isnt money oriented
America isn’t a democracy any more … I think it stopped acting like a democracy for a while now … probably much longer than everyone likes to think.
It’s a Plutocracy … ‘a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income.’
Link to the Princeton study that claims the average person has little to no influence on policymaking: https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc/mode/1up
But all forms of governments have billionaires: Putin, MBS, Jung Un, Xi Jinping, Mansa Musa, Khufu, Darius, William the Conqueror, Ceasar, Alexander, Khan, Hammurabi, etc.
All forms of government…so far
But they are the end goal of capitalism.
Therefore Capitalism isn’t compatible with democracy.
I don’t think they are the “end goal” of capitalism.
A capitalist philosophy holds the concept of competition as being the sign of a healthy market. Monopolies are undesirable because they have no competition to hold them in check.
The hypocrisy of it is that every capitalist believes they should be the exception. The want to be the one that wins the competition, but also that nobody else should be allowed to.
Yep. Oligarchs usually hate competition in the markets, if that means they have to compete.
Anyone that works at a corporation would know that they aren’t democratic in any way.
The second you want. “Business man” in government shows you don’t even understand what government is for. This has been our country since Reagan and people still can’t get it and prefer the WWE like politics. It’s performative, tribal, and theatrical as Putin’s henchmen designed (for their own takeover)
If people haven’t watched Hypernormalization, they should, they do this red/blue shit and fund both sides and steal everything while we play red vs blue
The folks who want to “run government like a business” also want to cut taxes and gut the IRS.
What business ACTIVELY tries to reduce revenue?
Ones helmed by people with golden parachutes, who get to benefit from slaughtering the golden goose.
What a fuking loser!!! Imagine having all the wealth in the world and doing this with it. How fuking lame can you be!!!?
It’s money well spent if it keeps him out of prison and the welfare checks rolling in.
Here:
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You seemed to be running low, and I had some extras I wasn’t using.
He’s genuinely JP from Grandma’s Boy
I’m pretty sure he’s the tops when it comes to the amount of lame constrained in one body.
Richest man in the world: zero friends, zero cool, zero enjoyment
If billionaires must exist, I’m happy at least this one’s a miserable fucking loser
They are all miserable and have to constantly hide behind body guards so we must be doing something right.
And human shields, like the poor boi X Æ A-Xii
I think we pronounce that as “Ash”? iirc
Financial obesity is neurotoxic, 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 trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
If we take the headline that Elon Musk is a trillionaire to be true…
Lets say you are a working professional something and make 100k a year. You are doing well. Not great, but you are getting by.
A 150 million dollar donation from Elon Musk, if we take their trillionaire or even near trillionare status to be true…
That’s equivalent to you donating about 15 bucks. Thats what 150 million represents to Elon Musk.
Actually, you’ve compared earnings vs wealth.
The apples to apples analogy would be:
Imagine if you were lucky enough to have $100,000 in the bank/stocks etc.
Musk giving $150M is like you giving $15
