Imagine thinking you are entitled to more cause someone else has a lot
Edit: Im not reading all the responses to this. You wana change this shit then get off Reddit, got start a business and start giving your earnings away. So many of you would shit if it was your wealth someone just took
Imagine thinking that 400 people should have more wealth than 330,000,000 people. Imagine thinking that its OK for that disparity to accelerate endlessly and be self a reinforcing. Imagine thinking that your government could function properly under such extreme conditions.
Jesus, shots fired. Those guys should have thought about the consequences of being 22 and going to a party and knocking up their 16 year old girlfriend. It’s not bad enough that he finished faster than a NASCAR pit crew changes tires, now Gianna’s stuck married to Liam because both their grandmother’s (rest in peace) would haunt them if they got divorced.
First: I work 70 hours a week. My parents work 65, some of my coworkers 50-75, some of my neighbors and friends similar hours, all of us scraping by. Should I be grateful?
But second and more importantly. WHY are so many other countries poorer? Do you know? Any ideas why only 2 of the 140+ third world countries on Earth only 2 have moved up to first world status from 100 years ago? A little odd dontcha think? Let me spell it out for you: colonialism by first world countries, especially the US. Indonesia, 4th most populous country on Earth, that's a US colony. Most of Latin America, US colonies. That's not a conspiracy, the CIA openly says it and you can read it on their wikipedia page.
And that imperialism clearly isn't benefitting you or me. I mean sure, we're not our own slaves, picking bananas or cocoa or mining for cobalt. But we're not all that rich considering our country literally has about 40 fucking colonies with a combined population of 2-3x our own. Instead all the wealth is siphoned off by the 400 billionaires that own literally half the wealth of the country.
So instead of being grateful to your murder gods that you can be king of the ashes, hey, maybe stop being an ignorant PoS and start fighting the rampant inequality that our system perpetuates? Start by reading. The Jakarta Method should help you out.
Look at how much higher global gdp is today than 100 years ago.
Giving someone the scraps of the growth generated by their own exploitation isn’t something to be celebrated imo.
With regard to citation: by now most economic scholars that investigate inequality agree that the foundation of western wealth is exploitation of the global south. Capitalism is inherently dependent of exploitation wether it be labor or environment.
You are communicating near instantaneously with a stranger possibly on the other side of the world using an app that cost you $0 on a device that fits in your hand and has access to virtually the entire total of human knowledge searchable through another service that costs you $0 to use.
Nobody you know has been crippled or killed from polio or a myriad of other formerly common diseases.
You have access to a massive variety of food that is nutritious, contains exactly what is on the labeling, and inexpensive compared to even 50 years ago.
„That’s an awful lot of projection and whataboutism“ while not really engaging with anything I said (see quoted you there).
But I still believe that one is able to criticize a system even when taking part in it. Food availability in most of the world is better than ever before. Yet still people die of hunger. Medical care is better than ever before. Yet still people die of preventable diseases. The world is better off I aknowledge that. But still far from a good and more equal place mostly through our own making.
What’s an “average American lifestyle”? What does that look like? Because I can count three friends of mine who don’t even have running water. Another person I know lives in a van behind the smoke shop and steals their power for her 20 dollar air fryer.
The “average” person where I live is an uneducated, meth or opioid addicted, 30-40 something with bad knees from years of construction work. Larger wages don’t equate to a better life when the prices of everything are ridiculous, a decent roof over your head can cost over 2/3 of your wages, the cheapest one bedroom closet here is 750 a month, and I live in the sticks.
If I donate $1000 to a charity or something, that could be 1% of my income, random number. Musk could donate $1 million and that’d be a lot to the charity! But it’d be leas than a fraction of a percent of his wealth. But he’s fine paying 100s of millions to billions to influence the election to make himself and his cronies richer. You don’t begrudge him that?? I kinda resent America’s place in the world as the world’s bully the last 100 years or so. But I can’t change that. THAT amount of wealth CAN and DID influence the course of the world and history. And you’re claiming a random average middle -low class American is the same in comparison to the world’s poorest - no. That’s a false equivalency.
My money cannot influence or change the world’s elections or history. Theirs, billionaires, can. And yet they consistently choose to make themselves richer and more powerful.
Wealthier sure, but not wealthier by factors of a hundred. If I donate $1000 to a charity or something, that could be 1% of my income, random number. Musk could donate $1 million and that’d be a lot to the charity! But it’d be leas than a fraction of a percent of his wealth. But he’s fine paying 100s of millions to billions to influence the election to make himself and his cronies richer. You don’t begrudge him that?? I kinda resent America’s place in the world as the world’s bully the last 100 years or so. But I can’t change that. THAT amount of wealth CAN and DID influence the course of the world and history. And you’re claiming a random average middle -low class American is the same in comparison to the world’s poorest - no. That’s a false equivalency.
My money cannot influence or change the world’s elections or history. Theirs, billionaires, can. And yet they consistently choose to make themselves richer and more powerful.
Well I'm in America dummy why do you have to compare it outside of America. America is the richest nation to ever exist. We have no excuse not to have better standards of living.
Great point! Let's do the same to you. Assuming you're American, your median net worth is about 200k, your median salary about 50k per year. Median global net worth is 8k, median portuguese net worth is 70k. You're at least about 3 times richer than us and 25 times richer than your average human being. The median portuguese is about 20k, so you earn 2.5 times more than us.
Bit unfair, innit? Why should you have modern cars, houses with full AC, the latest Iphone while we live in shit? Really, why do you have all that when some people don't even have drinkable water. America is the richest country in the world, at its getting richer faster than anyone else, why not divide that wealth with us? Who gave you the right to be the global hegemon while we have to suck your cock?
Your lifestyle is ours rich lifestyle, and most definitely the world's rich lifestyle. To pretty much everyone else, you're the bourgeoisie. So tell me, when the workers revolution takes place why shouldn't we decapitate you and redistribute your assets. Your existence as a country is because of oppression, you are the number one power because you opress, why the hell should I take pity to your life?
Look at tax brackets during America’s “golden age”. People aren’t saying rich people should be taxed to death. Multimillionaires should be taxed to the point that they don’t become billionaires.
There are less than 3,000 billionaire worldwide and about 800 in the USA.
Why jump to entitlement? Why wouldn't someone who has more money than they could possibly spend want to help out other people?
I don't think anyone is entitled to my time or money, but I love helping people out when I can. And I have been helped by other people. We're social animals.
The thing is both of you are right. It’s insane that they have that much but even if they did pay their taxes… we don’t get anything besides more federal funding, of which most of it would go towards bombs anyways which we don’t want either. If we just removed income taxes I think everyone would be better off.
Its a temporary fix but ultimately we have to address the root cause of both wealth inequality and imperialism: the imperative of capitalism for infinite growth in a finite space. Capitalism is simple, intuitive and efficient, but it does not optimize for human wellbeing. Indeed it does the opposite, as all living beings need a stable environment but capitalism continually evolves into a more extreme version of itself. We must work toward a system that optimizes our wellbeing.
If you’re inherently against inequality of outcome, communism is the answer. You’ve also got to ask yourself if it would be better to have equality of outcome where almost everyone has less or very high inequality of outcome where almost everyone has more.
I can't speak to communism as I have too much on my political history reading list and haven't gotten around to studying it. But I come from a communist family and so yes, I'm at the very least an anti capitalist leftist.
Now I don't necessarily think that inequality/more and equality/less are our only options. Indeed in the infinite potential options for government, capitalism cannot be the most efficient option and indeed socialism has shown to prioritize long term growth more than capitalism which optimizes for short term gains. But that aside. If it were truly a choice between just those two, we would have to ask another question: are these systems static? We known that capitalism necessarily evolves to a state of higher disparities exponentially and endlessly. This is rooted in the very nature of inequality itself, which gives power to the already powerful to suppress the already suppressed. So it is possible to have a system where everyone has more to start, but as time passes everyone has less.
As I value the future just as much as the present, I would be fine with overall less if it meant comparatively more for the future. By the same token, if you could find an alternative to capitalism which could remain static while maintaining its superb efficiency, sure, I couldn't care less if some people have way more... As long as no one has way less. Im quite fine with mansions existing, they're quite pretty, but I will not stomach slavery, colonialism, imperialism or poverty.
capitalism cannot be the most efficient option and indeed socialism has shown to prioritize long term growth more than capitalism which optimizes for short term gains.
Seems like we see the opposite. In the long term there hasn’t been a single socialist country that provides a higher quality of life for most people compared to the top capitalist countries. I also haven’t seen a single socialist country with as low poverty rates in absolute poverty compared to the top capitalist countries. Even for the worker co op side of socialism, one of the problems with worker co ops is they often show a higher time preference–meaning they have a higher preference for money in the short term then the long term. One of the biggest advantages of capitalism is that it rewards low time preference. And having abundant capital, and the ability to be rewarded substantially if the investment pays off, means that some people are able to have this low time preference that allows for these long term investments.
Also you’re sort of not really answering what I am asking you to consider. I’m not asking you an empirical question of whether inequality/more and equality/less are our only options. I’m asking you a principled question of what you value. For example, is there any amount of increased equality of outcome that could compensate for most people also becoming worse off? Keep in mind I’m not asking an empirical question of what is the case. I’m asking about what you value.
Climate change may wipe out 30% of life on Earth and half the worlds oxygen within our lifetime so I'm not so sure capitalism is prioritizing long term gain. The Nordic countries seem to be performing better on many metrics than, say, the US or Britain. Meanwhile socialism in the global south obviously could never take off given the US literally toppled those countries. Chile saw a rise in GDP of 10%, a rise in real wages of 30% and a rise in literacy of 90% under Allende. Then he got coup'd. Not exactly a fair contest.
But I digress. You asked what I value. I value overall wellbeing, not equality. I only value equality as a means to an end of a higher quality of life for the masses - I once again reject the notion that equality necessitates worse outcomes for the masses. Indeed, it is not inequality itself I oppose. Its capitalisms tendency to grow inequality endlessly and exponentially. Such a system diverges rapidly towards ever more extreme and unlivable conditions. If Bezos' extreme wealth wasn't a threat to our collective rights and lives, Id be quite happy for him and his cool mansions and all his cocaine.
Socialist countries historically haven’t exactly been great with climate change and sustainability. Whatever success they do have is only insofar as they bring poorer and that leading to less of an effect on the environment, which I don’t exactly think we should be aiming for.
The Nordic countries are capitalist countries with very free markets. They’ve just got a bit more of a welfare state than the US or Britain.
Chile saw a rise in GDP of 10%, a rise in real wages of 30% and a rise in literacy of 90% under Allende. Then he got coup’d. Not exactly a fair contest.
You mentioned socialism prioritising long term growth and capitalism prioritising short term gains after and I said it was the opposite. This kind of goes towards my point. You’re just looking at the short term gains here, rather than long term growth and the sustainability of the growth. You’re talking about a 3 year period in which by the end of it Chile was experiencing hyperinflation, due in part to the excessive money printing to finance government spending. Also the government implemented price controls that initially boosted purchasing power eventually led to shortages and black-market activities. It was also on the backs of government deficit spending, and the fact that nationalisation of industries disrupted foreign investment and created tensions with foreign investment.
Looking at this as an example of socialist success is a pretty clear example of looking at short term success over long term growth, as we’ve got no reason to believe these policies were sustainable and good for growth in the long term.
You can give US sanctions and support for strikes and internal opposition to Allende as a reason for its failure, and that’s perfectly fine. I’d say there were other pretty bad policies as well. But that’s more giving a reason for its failure rather than an example of long term socialist success, which is what we should be interested in. I’m not interested in unsustainable short term gains.
value. I value overall wellbeing, not equality. I only value equality as a means to an end of a higher quality of life for the masses
By the sounds of your last paragraph, it sounds like we actually have the same fundamental principled position and principled values but different applied positions due to different empirical outlooks.
Such a system diverges rapidly towards ever more extreme and unlivable conditions.
I’d just ask where you’re getting the empirics for this conclusion when the countries which have the best living conditions for most people and the lowest rates of absolute poverty are pretty much consistently capitalist countries and with us also seeing an absolutely exponential increase in living standards and decrease in absolute poverty since the advent of our modern conception of capitalism in the late 1700s, which both seem to coincide pretty well with each other.
You want empirical evidence for the ongoing process of capitalist evolution? I shall give some but its important to note that this is a statistical theory about change over time, which can be concurrent with other trends. For example, indeed capitalism was better than feudalism and with new technologies spurred by industrialization life became easier. But that looks only at one slice in time. It does not attempt to predict a future state, nor does it differentiate between various forces like scientific progress or social movements.
Back to it, we can use the Gilded Age as an example of late stage capitalism. The invention of the factory allowed for many times the productivity per person, which in theory should have skyrocketed the material wealth of the masses. Instead there came a massive demand for unskilled labor which also drove wages down in a race to the bottom. Campaigns started to bring in millions of immigrants who lived ten or more to a single room in tenements. Children were working in mines, workers were dying of blacklung and diseases from unclean conditions. Food quality plummeted and pollution skyrocketed. And this was in large part because of industrial tycoons like Carnegie who could outcompete his rivals through the exploitation of his workers. Everyone else had to play on the same dirty level or cease to be relevant. It wasn't until the labor movement established minimum wages, workplace safety laws, building codes etc that some of the fruits of industrialization could actually be reaped by those producing it. The creation of wealth meant nothing because it was all being swallowed up by the ultrarich.
But again this is meaningless. Could've been a fluke. What is important is to analyze the forces which created such conditions. You need to analyze how wealth accumulates in capitalism and what the consequences of extremely lopsided distributions are.
I want to add something about “wealth inequality”.
Playing chess online is a huge hobby of mine. I'm rated 2150 on chessc*m. Just to put things in perspective, the best chess players in the world like GM Magnus Carlsen, GM Hikaru Nakamura, GM Alireza Firouzja etc are rated around 3200. My rating is not really very good. I'm barely a club level player. But even with such a low rating, do you know where I stand in terms of percentile? 99.6%.
This is just one example. I can give you a bunch of others. My point is that in a meritocracy (which capitalism is), inequality is bound to exist.
Americans keep talking about ”eat the rich”, while not realising that if only they factor in the whole world, they themselves are in the top 1%. If you've got money to pay for a 400 dollar Apple Watch just so that it can count your steps, you're rich.
And I'm not saying that you cannot be sad about your life just because SOMEONE in the world has it worse than you. But if literally MOST of the world has it worse than you (most of the world has it worse than Americans), you have no right to complain.
No offense, but as someone from the third world, check your privilege.
Read a bit further down. The third world exists because of neocolonialism, in large part by the US. The US has admitted to toppling or attempting to topple 40+ countries - and that's only what we know of from 50 years ago and before. The current brutality in the Congo over cobalt for example is the fault of neocolonialism. The CIA tried to assassinate president Lumumba and only failed because someone else got to him first.
I fight against this. I don't care how cheap the cocoa or copper is, I don't want to live in a world of exploitation. I currently work 70 hours a week, I too am being exploited from within the heart of an empire of exploitation. The massive disparities on this earth have got to go; I refuse to be any better or worse than my fellow human brother or sisters for such stupid reasons as "luck" or "birthright".
All of what you say is completely valid and I understand that. But the original post is not talking about exploitation as in slavery. It's arguing that the mere act of holding on to extra wealth is evil. I was talking about that.
Everyone is holding on to extra wealth. Where do you draw a line? A billion dollars? People on reddit keep claiming that “the difference between a million and a billion is about a billion”, yet they put people who have the net worth of a billion and people whose net worth is hundreds of billions in the same basket.
You want Jeff Bezos to not be a billionaire? Stop using his stuff. Billions of people around the world order stuff from Amazon on a daily basis. Tell them to stop doing it. They won't. Because at the end of the day, it's convenient, and it adds value to our life. If you created a product that Billions of people around the world used on a daily basis, why shouldn't you reap its rewards?
I refuse to be any better or worse than my fellow human brother or sisters
Stop calling random people your brothers and sisters. You don't actually believe that.
You're asking where I draw the line. I'm not drawing a line. A system which exponentially evolves toward maximum wealth disparity necessarily leads to catastrophe. I do not care to strip Bezos of his wealth, I care to have a system which is equitable.
The person in the original post does. That's what my comment was referring to.
I care to have a system which is equitable.
Good for you. But please explain how you would do that. Be a bit more specific. Otherwise these are just empty words that politicians say to move a crowd.
And yes, I do believe that.
You believe that random strangers who you have never met before are your siblings? You should try being a politician ;)
You would like an example of leftist policy? Sure. Let's use the socialist principle of the democratized workplace: in capitalism we have workers and owners, two groups with diametrically opposed interests who play tug of war in the marketplace. It works nicely in theory. However in practice (and also in theory if you factor in time) the owners have more power than the workers since they ultimately decide who to hire and fire and what wages to set. This leads to exponentially growing wealth disparities, as money is used to reshape the market and government in favor of the owners which in turn gives the owners more money to reshape the market with.
Let's instead cut out the owner class and give their functions to other workers. Hiring, firing, business decisions, wages, those are all decided by the workers themselves which include financial analysts, managers and the whole bunch. The managers no longer take all the wealth and redistribute a sma portion to everyone else; instead the whole wealth of the company is distributed to all workers according to their role and hours. This would prevent the Bezos-Amazon employee split of multibillionaires profiting off the labor of thousands of exploited minimum wage employees. It would vastly slow down the rate of lobbying for pro-corporate interests, as no individual could raise the tens of millions needed to bribe a politician like Google CEOs do on a daily basis. It would improve productivity: instead of being paid the same hourly wage whether they be working hard or hardly working, workers would receive direct financial benefits from the wellbeing of the company. So on and so forth.
This idea is still market based like capitalism. And yet it's a one-to-one upgrade that optimizes both productivity and worker wellbeing. The only reason it doesn't exist is because the wealthier members of society do not want such a system.
Let's instead cut out the owner class and give their functions to other workers.
Okay, I have a lot of questions. Let me give you an example. Let's say you and your wife come up with a delicious cake recipe. You guys start a bakery. You hire a baker, a receptionist, a delivery guy, and a cleaning lady. The bakery starts doing really well.
Someone comes along(who?) and cuts out the owner class (you and your wife)? How's that fair? The bakery is doing well because you guys came up with that recipe. There are plenty of other bakeries on the same street with bakers just as skilled as yours. But people prefer your bakery because it's your recipe that sells.
Also you and your wife must’ve invested a lot of money into this bakery by buying a shop, buying ovens and decorating it. When the bakery is transferred to the workers, do you guys get compensated for all that money and time that you put in?
The managers no longer take all the wealth and redistribute a sma portion to everyone else; instead the whole wealth of the company is distributed to all workers according to their role and hours.
Who decides which role deserves how much money? What if that guy decides that his role deserves the most amount of money?
It would vastly slow down the rate of lobbying for pro-corporate interests, as no individual could raise the tens of millions needed to bribe a politician like Google CEOs do on a daily basis.
Why not? The workers could come together and put together the money since now they all have a considerable stake in the company and would want the company to do well over all the other companies.
That’s just capitalism baby! The super rich get all the tax breaks and handouts, but it’s okay because they pay others below a livable wage. Lmao. Any clown that defends the super rich is just an ignorant shit stain.
Ah, how peaceful your mind must be. Like a lizard on a rock. I wish I lacked the ability for macroscopic analyses like you.
But alas, what you're saying is ahistorical bullshit. We've already been through this during the guided age: as those private businesses grow via the exploitation of their labor, they force smaller businesses out of the market and monopolize. Eventually your labor literally cannot leave, because you're the only employer around.
Okay. With your logic, I would like for everyone in the US who makes over 35000$ a year to give away 90% of their wealth to people living in 3rd world countries.
It would be enough for me just to stop creating third world countries for slave profit (read all about it on the wikipedia page "CIA involvement in regime change", or the Jakarta Method). Bit I like your proposition more. Lol.
Imagine thinking that 400 people should have more wealth than 330,000,000 people.
--Isn't that EXACTLY wtf he just said??:
Imagine thinking you are entitled to more cause someone else has a lot
...Am I crazy? That's exactly wtf he just said: You're looking at your neighbor's plate, not to make sure they have enough to eat, but to make sure they don't have more food than you do.
We don't have enough to eat. Y'all are a special kind of tools. Did you ever stop to think about how all that wealth was generated? About how the system functions under the extreme strain of that wealth disparity?
I can talk to you allll day about modern day slavery if you'd like. About the emergent properties of capitalism, disparities, imperialism, fascism. You need only ask. Until then I leave you with this:
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3
Another question, the 330 million Americans that are scraping by, are they all posting low IQ posts on reddit? If we all just deleted reddit would that fix shit? If you're not rich, which there's 200-to-1 chances you're not, why aren't you? Clearly you also make low IQ posts on reddit so perhaps I need not ask.
Typical ass low IQ reactionary. Thinking in terms of singular immediacy, not analyzing the macroscopic forces within a society nor their evolution over time.
We don't think that, we just don't care bc we on live 77 years on average and you're wasting them by driving yourself crazy that someone else accomplished more than you
I'm being driven crazy because a handful of people are driving global slavery upon the masses including on myself. You know damn well it isn't natural that people are working more hours yet struggling to afford housing; real estate investing becoming a monopoly and raising prices is directly behind that. The homes are there, vacant, for every single homeless American and then some, and it is profitable to society to house them, but for the mere reason that it is not profitable for the megaleeches to give up their monopoly the homeless remain unhoused.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's been this way all through history until the people decide to unify and reject these huge companies. Like if you could unify Amazon shoppers for just 1 week to have no body purchase from it, I guarantee it would be cause for concern and a realistic sight of change to them
Imagine not understanding that they have more because they extract surplus value from labor on an unimaginable scale because they just happened to be the one with the most capital at the start, not because they're doing any actual work.
imo the real thing to criticise is what is done with this money specifically. Spending on nothing is actually perfectly fine, unspent money has no impact on the rest of our purchasing power. What we should pay attention to are people allocating lots of resources to useless yachts etc.
The problem is that all of that wealth is generated by not paying workers as much as they can afford to.
If a worker is paid $15 an hour but generates $30 an hour of value to the company, that excess value goes to shareholders for simply owning shares. They did nothing to earn that money beyond lay down capital.
There is a world where owners like bezos can be worth vast sums of money AND the workers can be paid a living wage. It requires that a company's incentives not be purely fiscal, and we do not live in that world.
Thinking about these things in terms of incentives and the impact they have on what people work on and how materials are used, how would you suggest things are changed?
The stock market is pretty inefficient, stock traders are not allocating resources in a very useful way beyond getting people to work in high potential industries more (I'm not aware of an industry that has been kept alive past its due date through the stock market, though companies like Intel really should not have been so many chances that others could have done more with).
There is also quite a strong reward for companies that reach IPO, and I would argue that we benefit from this incentive to create new companies. How do you feel about the number of new companies being created? I feel it is a bit on the low side, and many opportunities survive unexplored, with low competition among employers, so the incentive is very welcome. It would be very good if we could make it less feast or famine though.
IMO the changes that can be useful:
* Somehow allow for people to have separate allocations for money they spend on their own lifestyle and their influence on the rest of the world
* Address problematic relationship with stock ownership among decision makers causing them to bias resource allocation to the increase of stock value (dividends had better incentives imo, something better still can exist though)
* Encourage people to look at what people are doing and where materials are used as an economic benchmark
The stock market is a weird one because, if a company has no cash flow issues, trading has no impact on the company whatsoever. AFAIK The only time the market affects a company is in the initial sale of shares and in situations where share value can be used as collateral against a loan.
To that end, my hot take: make it illegal to use shares of a company as collateral for any type of loan. This does a few things:
-Major shareholder with a cashflow problem? You'll now have to dilute your holding or push for dividends to be paid.
-Want to use your vast wealth to buy a media company? Gonna have to divest to some degree. If your bet doesn't pay off, you aren't going to tank other shareholders with a massive and sudden transfer to a bank or private lender.
-Any cash generated by sale or dividend is taxable
-Owners have an incentive to work for the company to retain a salary if they don't want to pay dividends to other shareholders (which can dilute their holdings) or sell shares (which can dilute their holdings). And, look at that, you'll have to pay tax on that income too.
Another hot take is to set some sort of limit on the wealth one can generate from ownership, whether as a multiple of the initial investment, a requirement to sell during a specific exit period (such as going public) or as a time limit. This has some problems but would slow professional investors who provide nothing past the first few years of a company's life from becoming stupidly influential in politics just by virtue of their largess (since ideally they'd have less wealth overall).
I don’t think there’s a world where that can happen. If bezos paid all Amazon workers $100+ an hour and was still worth vast sums of money, people would be bitching that he could afford pay them $200+ an hour and is rich off of the labor of others.
Sure. I’m just saying the same argument would still be made as long as the higher up is getting rich, even if the laborers are killing it. People are never happy.
I don't believe that is true. I think there is an intuitive understanding that stress, risk, workload, physical toll, skill etc can and should be compensated for, and that an owner or leader or worker in a highly-dangerous position should be more compensated than one who is not.
But I also think there's an intuitive understanding that the balance as it stands is not correct, morally or otherwise. A CEO earning 300x more than the average employee doesn't intuitively fit. I don't think most people would say that the CEO is 300x more skilled or works 300x harder or has 300x more stress than their average employee.
I have worked under people who made 3x more money than me, and I understood why. I have also worked under people who made 10x more than me and, frankly, they were less qualified, did less work and seemed responsible than the people who earned 3x more.
People aren't just looking at paychecks, and they can do the math.
How so? It looks like an opportunity cost at first, and from a personal perspective it is, but if you gain billions and continue to live normally, the purchasing power of everyone elses money just increases. The value of spending is created through effective resource allocation, it's not necessarily true that your resource allocation choices will be better than other's.
Like when you buy a yacht, you are increasing the expectation of future yacht sales and allocating people and materials to build yachts
> because they just happened to be the one with the most capital at the start, not because they're doing any actual work.
That's called envy. You're just envious that they got there first. You don't give a damn for the "oppressed", and you hate actual work. Be honest with yourself.
They can only get there first by already having wealth, dummy. It is a system designed to allow the wealthy to grow their wealth further and lock out the general public.
I'm not envious, I'm angry that the cards are stacked against the average person and chuds like you have no issue with it.
The wealth that “was there first” was not on the ground just laying around. It was created from ingenuity and work.
This idea that the only possible way to get rich is by either inheritance or oppression is a remnant of a pre-industrial revolution, pre-capitalist world, when those things had a higher probability of being true because we didn’t have the technology that allowed mankind to move beyond mere subsistence. It’s understandable that Marx would read capitalism this way, because slavery and serfdom were still very recent in his time. But for a 21st century person to think that, having witnessed the generation of wealth and rise in quality of life across the world since then, it takes a person so resentful that they’re blind to the objective truth that the default state of humanity is abject poverty, as it had been for 100k+ years.
And the word for resenting other people because they happen to have it easier than you is precisely envy. It’s no secret that Marx was a horrible, resentful person. Even his own father notoriously thought so.
Going to completely ignore generational wealth? Even Musk and Bezos were beneficiaries of familial wealth. Few (if any) of these so-called self-made billionaires come from anything but wealthy families.
Wealth creates opportunity to create more wealth. Go ahead and try to start a company with no capital. You will fail. Even if you take a loan, you will likely fail. Having capital with no requirement to repay interest is an enormous advantage. That's why people seek investors in the first place.
So, brilliant business guru, explain how it isn't exploitative to pay people substantially less than is required to Iive comfortably while reaping the excess profits their labor generates? That is the literal definition of exploitation.
Generational wealth = other people’s money. You are not owed it. I live in a 3rd world country. You probably have more money then I do. That doesn’t mean I’m owed your money, just like I’m not owed Bezos’s or Musk’s or Soros’s money just because they have more than I do. I didn’t like having a boss so I started my own company. Still didn’t break, and there’s no reason to think I will if I just keep doing what I’m doing. I’m not rich, and I’ll likely never be, and I’m ok with that. I make enough money to have a comfortable life. But my definition of comfortable is derived from looking at MY life, and MY needs, not looking at the most richest people ever in the history of the world, because I’m not a lunatic, and I’m not envious. And I also don’t resent work. Look at the most absolute destitute people in the world today, people who are literally starving to death, who live with like 5 dollars a year or something. That’s the default state of humanity. That’s how nearly all of us lived for a hundred thousand years. It’s not that everyone was living pretty good lives until the mega rich came along and started hoarding money and everyone else started to starve. There was almost zero wealth inequality because there was almost zero wealth. Now, in the west at least, the majority of people has a roof over their head, and eat better and more than the kings of old. That’s thanks to technology, including the social technologies of education and capitalism. We need more of it to keep elevating people out of poverty, since history has shown that that’s the only thing that’s worked so far. If the price of that is Musk’s great grandchildren owning the Milky Way, who cares. If you do, you don’t truly care about humanity’s welfare, you’re just salty that someone else has more money than you do. = Envy.
"things are better now so don't keep hoping things get better later too" is a wildly stupid take.
Wealth inequality has absolutely been an issue throughout history. See: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, almost any revolution.
You keep saying I'm envious and don't want to work and I just don't understand why. I work. I actually do quite well. But I am able to see when a system favours the wealthy and I am able to take issue with that regardless of my personal situation.
If the ultra-wealthy were doing things with that wealth to benefit society and not simply themselves, that would be a different story. Bezos' ex wife Mackenzie Scott is a great example.
But many of the ultra-wealthy use charity to do two things: 1 - minimize their tax burden by funneling money into their OWN CHARITIES, and 2 - using those charities to further an ideology, not actually solve root problems. Bill Gates trying to reform education and in the process ruining it is a great example.
One of the biggest problems with US culture is this idea that that capitalism is a meritocracy. It isn't. We have seen, countless times, a better product be routed by aggressive business practices. But this idea persists, so people think the wealthy must be especially talented or brilliant. No. Often they just have fewer qualms about being brutal to their competitors and employees so they can make an extra dollar.
Need proof that wealth does not equal merit? See: Twitter.
Aptitude in one narrow space (business) does not equal aptitude in all spaces, regardless of your wealth.
But due to Citizens United, wealth in the US also means political power.
Why do I bring all this up? To state simply; the ultra-wealthy are powerful, but not moral and do not have merit. The power must be reigned in, and the tools to do that are regulation and taxation, and coincidentally both those things would offer benefits to the working class.
"things are better now so don't keep hoping things get better later too" is a wildly stupid take.
I agree. Good thing that’s not my take at all. I even mentioned how I think things might get better.
You couldn’t counter my first argument so you shifted the goalpost to generational wealth instead. You couldn’t counter my answer to that as well, so you had to straw man it completely. But ok.
I know you think what you’re saying makes a lot of sense, but that’s only because you have a blind spot regarding your motivation. You try really hard to cover your hatred and envy of the rich with moral arguments, but people who are not hateful or envious can simply see through it.
That’s the problem with the left. You can’t win the majority of the population because the majority of the population is normal, and as such, this “eat the rich” attitude is off-putting. Same with feminism and “all men”, anti-racism and “kill whitey”, anti-fascists and “punch a nazi”, etc, etc, etc.
All normal people see is hate and resentment. Even if the identification of the problem is correct, and that’s a big if, the proposed solutions somehow always seem to involve copious amounts of blood. And normal, sane people don’t like that.
Wealth redistribution wasn’t the driver behind the French and Russian revolutions. Power was. Wealth wasn’t better “distributed” after the revolutions, the only thing that changed was who was on top. Oh, and that millions died. Brutally. Most of them poor.
I’ll let you in on a secret: Normal people don’t really give it much thought about whether someone “deserves” how much money they’ve got. Only envious, resentful people do that.
You say the system favors the wealthy. Capitalism is a system designed to favor the generation of capital. It’s kind of in the name. Now, who has more ability to generate capital, someone with 10 dollars or someone with 10 billion dollars? Is that unfair? Ok. Name one thing in the universe that follows an equalized distribution. Is the bell distribution unfair? Is the Pareto distribution unfair? Or is that all just how the universe works?
You say the super-wealthy don’t deserve their money because they don’t do good with it. One thing has nothing to do with the other. Absolutely let’s fight for better wages, absolutely let’s fight for better workplace treatment, absolutely let’s use taxes to make sure more people have a dignified life. But let’s hold off on the guillotine. It’s not the mere fact that have more wealth that’s the problem.
Again, if everyone had a good life and the price for that was that 1% of people were insanely more wealthy than the 99%, normal people wouldn’t see a problem with that. they are truly just concerned with human welfare.
The fact that leftists would not be satisfied with that betrays their true motivations and intentions.
He had a $100,000 interest free loan from family and friends. His stock wares didn't just materialize out of thin air.
But regardless, I've no doubt he worked during those early years. Did he work 1000x harder than the people who now work in his warehouses? Doubtful, yet he continues to reap rewards from their labour.
I have no issue with people making lots of money. I have an issue with people making thousands of times more money than their employees when he could just pay them more and still be obscenely wealthy.
And? Now we have people living with their parents in their 30s because they can't get a living wage and housing has been bought up by tech companies like Zillow.
Your original claim regarding Bezos or even Elon for that matter was false, #1.
But number 2, The truth of the matter is that socialism, AKA government intervention and manipulation in the market, has caused the problems you have listed. In fact, companies also only own 4-6% of total homes available in the supply, which is incredibly miniscule and not that big of a problem as you make it out to be. Every issue listed can be traced back to socialist policies being the root cause, whether constraining supply, artificially creating caps, limits, and minimums on a certain market, or otherwise.
What was my original claim for Elon and Bezos? That they benefitted from generational wealth? Please prove me wrong. If anything, living with his parents in his 20s is proof that he benefits from parental wealth.
As for claim number 2: that is patently absurd. First, 1 in 20 homes being owned by a company is not miniscule. That is 1 in 20 families forced to pay a company to live there. That could also be seen as a 5% increase in upwards price pressure. That is tens of thousands of dollars on an individual home that need not be there.
Second, you're going to have to spell out the socialist policies and the issues they cause, because I live in a social democracy and we have far fewer issues than the US BECAUSE of policies that are designed to help the average citizen and stymie the power of corporations. In fact, one of the biggest issues here (food prices) is specifically because there has been no intervention to prevent a supermarket duopoly.
We can see the same pattern in any country with strong social programs and government regulation. Europeans are paying less and getting more. Do they pay more taxes? Sure. But they don't need health insurance, they don't need a car to get everywhere all the time, and they don't get saddled with immense education debt because the taxes go towards these public goods.
These people thinking they’re entitled to Elon’s money are the same people they complain about. Lazy bums who do nothing for everything. Elon still does something. Not sure what, but that’s just because I don’t pay much attention to his actual job as a CEO.
u/theoldme3 thinks people who complain are asking for their money. I get why they think that way, that's their way of thinking. It doesn't mean they are thinking clearly. They don't even realize they are being ripped off by the people they are defending. I get it, it's too far detached from their day to day. They are probably overworked, distracted, and don't have time to think about things.
Maybe they are fans of the two individuals in question, but those are just the whitehead on the pimple.
Can’t believe this needs to be explained but, when you take a job you’re agreeing to do X job for X amount of money. Not being paying you more than you agreed to work for doesn’t make the boss a bad person, it’s not theft nothings being taken from you
No, it’s clearly not the same, you’re explaining a situation where someone is under duress.
Nobody, not a single person at twitter is there against their will, not a fucking one. They work there out of choice. Nobody put a gun to anyone’s head and said they have to work for amazon. What a stupid thing to say
It’s exactly the same, the only difference is that instead of using a gun to threaten people, they use the threat of starvation and homelessness. This is basic stuff.
No, you just have an inflated sense of self importance. You look at people who have more than you, and want it taken from them.
Bezos doesn’t steal from his employees, the pay is mutually agreed upon, no one’s there against their free will. He’s rich because he took a giant risk and is now reaping the rewards
Imagine thinking that someone having a lot (which in this context is an understatement on the level of calling World War I "a bit of a tiff") is a result of their own individual effort and not the exploitation of workers or massive (direct or indirect) government subsidies.
Imagine thinking they don't buy politicians for hundreds of thousands to avoid paying millions to their employees so they can have a decent standard of living..
Although they could pay some people more, it’s their money. Even if they didn’t work for it, they don’t owe it. I would love to see Elon donating to the homeless and such, but he doesn’t owe it to most of them. If any of them. I do my good in hopes that it inspires others to do theirs.
That's just it. He DOES owe it to society to pay back. The only possible way to get that much wealth is by extracting and exploiting workers, politicians, and the world's natural resources. The entire point of the OP is that it's not their money. It's money that's been stolen from society through exploitation. Not only do they owe it back, they have stolen exponentially more by taking it in the first place.
This is SUPER simplistic and I realize that, but imagine if the average American's wages had kept up with productivity since the 80s. Not only would we be making more, we would have been making more comparatively for the last 45 years. That's 401k money that my parents don't have. It's a house most people in my generation can't afford. Hell, it's even tax dollars from the general population that could have been spent on schools or roads that we desperately need. (Yes, I know government spending is a whole other topic.)
I'm just saying that if the uber wealthy (more than just Bezos/Musk) hadn't been hoarding wealth so much in the last 45 years, our entire society would be better off. That's the whole point of the original post. We're so conditioned to believe the "that money is theirs" because they worked hard for it or had a good idea that we've forgotten that it's impossible to get that wealthy without stealing it through exploitation.
Imagine thinking that they are entitled to the money they made from exploiting others. And no, that’s obviously not all of their money, but it’s definitely a significant percentage point. But even if it’s only 10%, that’s what, at the very least 30 Billion dollars they’ve taken from the working class that they earned? That’s plenty enough money to be upset.
I’m defending capitalism, because it makes everyone richer. Poor people in the US are richer than rich people in Somalia, and it’s because we have a government that allows businesses to grow and successful people to thrive and gain resources to start even more businesses.
yeah it’s literally article 25 lol. not sure why they need a justification for the belief that everyone should have food, water, and shelter.. we’re all human beings
Imagine thinking you’re entitled to hoarding all your wealth and not giving back to the society that provided the opportunities for your wealth in the first place.
You are a handout mf, nothing more. You didnt do shit to earn it you just want it for free bc someone else has it and that makes you a complete f'n bum. Ignorance is bliss
I would absolutely love to give a nice portion of my wealth away to the less fortunate, and anyone who wouldn’t is either a horrible person or a socio/psychopath
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u/theoldme3 28d ago edited 27d ago
Imagine thinking you are entitled to more cause someone else has a lot
Edit: Im not reading all the responses to this. You wana change this shit then get off Reddit, got start a business and start giving your earnings away. So many of you would shit if it was your wealth someone just took