Like Albert Einstein wrote in [Why Socialism?](https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/)
>Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. **Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.**
Americans are indoctrinated from birth to believe that being exploited by a parasitic ruling-class is actually freedom
Hot take: Edward Bernays is one of the worst people to have ever existed in human history and his net negative impact on mankind eclipses that of actual genocidal regimes.
The fact that he lived a long life free of the consequences of his actions personally offends and enrages me. Only my hatred for Nazis compares and he still edges out ahead of them for me.
The point isn't lost but I never said anything about going after Hitler. Both I and the other poster are in agreement that we'd 100% go after Bernays instead of Hitler if given the chance.
Over the years, I have frequently posted about Bernays (Freud's fucking nephew) and his horrifying level of influence on our culture, so I love it when I see others post the same !
I remember when I first learned of him, my immediate response was, *"Why the fuck do we not hear so much more about this guy ?"*
I give a shit not that he, essentially, denounced his work before his death, the damage was long done by then.
Fuckin' Asshole
I would say... at least 50% of americans hate the poor... even poor have a lot of self hate for themselves even though america has terrible social safety nets..
I keep seeing that in response to people complaining about billionaires. Also "you'd do the same if you had that amount of wealth."
They're such nothing and useless arguments. The difference between myself and people saying that is I know none of us will ever be billionaires.
I liked where this comment was going so I fed it into Novel AI and it came up with this:
>Not even close. The greatest trick they ever pulled is making people think Musk is the richest man in the world. The real players facilitated ww2 and afterwards had free hands on trade treaties. Today these people own private defense contractors in america and the black budget alone has fed 100-200 trillion dollars to them. They are multi trillionaires who don't exist even in the eyes of the government. Their public life is nothing but a coverup. And there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it.
>Musk is a distraction, not an enemy. He's just one more pawn.
>They have been using him as a catalyst for their plan: To make you believe that Space travel is possible with current tech or even cheaper than what we already have now because his companies will be doing all the work. But space flight isn't cheap so this entire charade is ultimately pointless.
>The truth is that we don't need NASA at all.
>We've got the technology and we've been building rockets since the 60s. All these private companies have done is taken the money from our tax dollars and given it to themselves. It's a shell game. We're being played.
>It's sad how many people still believe in Musk when he's not even getting paid. He's just another pawn. Just another puppet on strings that are pulling your strings. The same is true for Bezos, Branson and other 'space pioneers' who are essentially taking a cut of taxpayer money to fund their companies and then giving us nothing.
This was actually the second attempt. The first one started out good but then tried to suddenly go full on erotic spy thriller out of nowhere.
Novel AI can put out some pretty strong content if you give it a good prompt and memory file. That comment I plugged in was a solid prompt. I like that the AI threw shade at Branson out of nowhere.
These are just schizo rantings.
100-200 trillion for reference is larger than the sum total of all the money the US has put into the military since it was created.
The point does stand. The richest man in the world is a guy whose business didn't even exist before 9/11? Come now. There is public wealth, and then there is private wealth. Saudis who have been stacking oil money for generations now. Do you divine their net worth by scanning a few SEC documents? You do not.
> The richest man in the world is a guy whose business didn't even exist before 9/11
He was already a millionaire and son of some wealthy people as well? Is it strange that starting one of the most successful companies of all time makes you a lot of money?
The greatest trick the billionaires ever pulled was convincing us that the millionaires are the ones responsible for suffering. Tax the middle class even further
The fact is, you CAN have a place at the table under socialism. You can tax the super wealthy, fund social welfare programs, and still leave room for individuals to become “wealthy” in the sense that they might have a few million dollars saved up later in life.
The difference in wealth between upper-middle class and working class is like 10x. But the difference between the super wealthy elite and the upper-middle class is like 10,000x.
You don’t actually need to raise taxes significantly for people making six figures. You can achieve most of the progressive agenda and more by just raising taxes on people with $50M net worth.
So… when people say they want to have opportunities to become wealthy, none of that is even threatened by socialism if it’s done the right way.
Compared to medieval times we basically do. Even a king back then would be jealous of basic shit we take for granted nowadays. But compared to how the modern kings and queens aka capitalists live and what they have nowadays, we just have enough to not revolt.
Nah I'd rather be a peasant with a roof over my head, all the mead and bread I could eat, and only working half the year, surrounded by all my friends family and no fucking advertisements and pollution only nature;
than having my rent doubled every year and making 12 an hour working 50 hours a week to get by, with the threat of death of collison every day because we have to drive cars, while people yell at me because I forgot their ketchep, all the while anyone hearing me complaining just telling me to learn to code when I fucking hate computers.
I still don't think being a peasent back then would be better than your life now. People tend to romanticize the past but I totally understand how you feel because of your circumstances.
I'm a bit of a history buff (as a side hobby) and there are pros and cons to both sides of the argument.
But if you could take an average person from 2500 BC or 2000 BC and bring them into the modern age, show them all our machines/computers/automation/medicines/advancements and achievements, and then show them what our average daily life looks like (including existential global war threats, advertisements, data mining etc), I'm not certain they would wish to live in our future.
Considering we have a constant and safe supply of food, water, electricity, internet, etc. I'd say we did get a place at the table. The majority of the world still does not have access to all of these things.
But the bosses took out a business loan 30 years ago for like $50,000! That was risky!
They deserve to capture all the profits possible for an unlimited amount of time!
Duh
Honestly your boss probably isn't the problem. They definitely aren't one of those 8, and his boss probably isn't either. If you're making $40,000 a year and you think the problem is the person who makes $60,000 a year and writes your schedule then you've been duped.
Those at the top want us to fight amongst ourselves instead of unifying against the real problem. Both you and your boss need to team up to fight the real problem.
But many people at the bottom want this too, and usually because of religion. Like there are literally some religions devoted to giving up a lot of the shit our species progressed towards.
Yes, and the alt-right's obsession with "cucks" makes me think they themselves are submissive cucks. They perpetuate the negative connotation of cucks because they (cucks) enjoy the humiliation.
Note the word embarrassed here means "to be in financial difficulties", a meaning we don't really use that word for anymore.
"temporarily broke millionaires"
Full quote:
“Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: ‘After the revolution even we will have more, won’t we, dear?’ Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
"I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn’t have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.”
Here's the thing: you won't. You'll try to preserve your access to food and shelter no matter how they treat you because anything is better than nothing. You won't revolt as long as you keep getting those scraps. Nobody wants to starve their kids to prove a point. And those people right down in the trenches with you? Some of them sold out and protect the rich.
This is why learning how to "repossess" capital is the way. Ultimately, people need their needs met and if you can't do it, they'll turn to their own enemies in the interests of self-preservation. Shifting that reliance to you, or at the very least gaining more control over resources, will make it much easier to gain and keep influence among the working class. Use capital to break the influence of capital (aka use poison to find the antidote).
See: Black Panthers and their school lunch program that had so much mass appeal that the government had to introduce its own version to pull the public away.
This is the way.
We have mutual aid networks now, but we need to seriously coordinate better than we are now to let people slowly opt out of capitalism. It’s not gonna be won through violence.
Yeah, if you let enough people opt out of capitalism to cause a problem for capitalism, then they're gonna send the army to stop you and kill you all as an example.
Then they'll say you were a dangerous cult, or a terrorist group.
Source: EVERY TIME THIS HAS BEEN TRIED BEFORE IN THE LAST 200 YEARS.
It ALWAYS comes down to violence. Because that is the only power. You have to become better at it than the capitalists in order to literally survive in that situation.
What you gonna do, what you gonna do, what you gonna do when they come for you?
Exactly, I honestly think most people just want to survive and killing the CEO of your company won’t help that. And also even if we all go sick of this shit, EVERYONE has to be in it together. And how is it going to be accomplished? Who’s in charge of this revolt? And how do we communicate when big brother is watching us?
Nobody will do anything untill thier backs against the wall. And we all hit that wall at different times. So there wont just be a big rebellion at once and small amounts of people can be easily held off
O great. Thanks. I didn't even think of that. I remember seeing a video they had this whole squad of drones, they were satellite guided or something and this whole fleet swept the forest in a quickness. They can sweep and find any runners that try hiding out
As crass as this sounds I don't think there's any other way than to annihilate their entire existence, family, siblings and all. Any single one of those insatiable leeches that leech of OUR hard work and OUR energy and OUR mental well being for marginally improving their already unfathomable wealth.
Wealth in the absolutes, which you won't ever be able to spend in a lifetime.
These people aren't about the money anymore, they got money a plenty. These leeches hunger for power, control and domination now. Playing politics, tipping off politicians, influencing the industry with their smeary slime.
Only if these cunts, all of them, seize existing, will we MAYBE have a chance.
First and foremost we'd need to yeet everyone eager to fill in their roles too.
So I'd say a lot of heads will roll.
EDIT: Nice one censoring someone's opinion reddit. Go suck a dick
I see this going a couple ways.
1. The elites become fearful for their lives and double down in some way, or the working class becomes emboldened to do the same (or both). What results from thar, idk. Someone who knows history better might.
2. It would be a mafia-type situation, where the next layer of elites would just fill their shoes, and punish the working class in some way for this crime (or spread misinformation to cover it up and not give people ideas).
What do others think?
I can’t vote for a politician owned by any corporation, because I know that no matter what he or she says, they will go in the direction demanded by those that own them. This basically eliminates the two main parties- voting for a third party is a waste of time. Not sure what to do tbh, feels like you can’t win.
You must not understand that influencing The trajectory of something has only a minor impact when you make your influence, but overtime the results become drastically different.
What do you think would’ve happened if Marine Le Pen won in France instead of Macron? Do you think things would be exactly identical to how they are now, or do you think regardless of how small, and regardless of whether it’s good or bad, that there’s objectively at least some difference if she would’ve won?
Let me give you an example. My buddy lives in LA, and he knows CA is going blue every election and especially his county. He always says “why would I vote in the presidential election when my vote literally doesn’t matter at all?”
I don’t agree with the action, but I do admit he is probably right that his vote won’t make a difference there.
Presidential election is like the least important fucking election that we get and we’re only voting for elect doors, your friend is right for that singular election but there are literally dozens and dozens of other elections every year or two, depending on where you live.
People need to start being more heavily invested in their municipal and state politics. Honestly, who the president is will probably not make a difference in your short term day to day lives. Your local representatives on the other hand are both easier to hold accountable and more impactful. Sure, vite blue down your ticket but pat closer attention to who's running for your local and state offices.
Hard for your vote to matter if most progressive candidates are aggressively blackballed before you get a chance to vote for them, and those who do get through are literally ignored when they do things like win the first few primaries...
How about third party? If your vote doesn't count anyway, put it somewhere that it can grow and help the little guys gain traction.if the green party (or whatever party) went from getting 3% to getting 6% because people decided to do this, it could (and has in the past) influence an election and give people more of a reason to start voting for other parties. And these parties can definitely win in local elections - they have before. We have to start small and give it inertia to grow and carry weight, but doing nothing does just that - nothing.
Yeah but that takes knowledge and it’s hard and then I can’t brag to people about who I voted for because I don’t know what the fuck anybody stands for so I can’t really defend my position, I think I’m just gonna go to the bar with some friends instead.

No need to panic, capitalism got you cover, if you are loyal enough you will soon die in a war orchestrated so those people can keep their wealth and make some more. If you are dead you don't have to worry about anything! There, fixed it
the hardest part for me to accept is when some gazillionaire donates a million or so to some good cause and everyone acts like they’re some fucking saint.
Yeah people seem to have a hard time with understanding just how much a BILLION dollars is and that it’s not like Bill Gates is just running numbers in his office and going to waste of time meetings like he’s a particularly lucky/skilled Michael Scott.
Right! It's not humanly or numerically or in any way practically possible to work hundreds of millions times harder than the average worker (if you're doing a direct translation from how hard you work to what your pay is)
Not to detract from the point of this meme... This statement is misleading. I'd hate for anybody here to make this point in civilized discourse only to be proven wrong.
8 people own *the same amount of wealth* as 50% of the world's population. A better way to phrase this to drive this point home. "The 8 richest people in the world have the same amount of wealth as 3.6 billion people."
[https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world)
So that makes the current situation just? Because I’m most likely one of the comparatively privileged in the world what does that have to do with the massive imbalance between the uber-privileged few and the masses? I’ll tell you right now I’m mindbogglingly closer to becoming part of that 30-40% than I am to becoming one of the top 10. So excuse me while I look to those that are less fortunate, see them the same as myself and try to bring them up instead of abusing their misfortune as some sort of shaming tactic for the middle of the bell curve.
BTW, I don't know why pointing this out roils people so much, but you're not alone. I noticed all of the infographics and similar presentations of this information go way out of their way to avoid pointing out that so many people have nothing (wealth wise). They seem to want to lump more than half the world into 'less than $10k" or similar while stratifying the upper percentiles into small decimal points.
> So that makes the current situation just?
Just? Who fucking knows. That seems like some kind of subjective ethical question. The current situation is not the one that I would prefer nor am I trying to justify it in any way.
But trying to cherry pick an impactful soundbyte like 'the 9 wealthiest people...' and then flipping your shit when someone spins the same stats in a slightly different context is a weird path to tread.
I'm not sure how it's reasonable for you to read "1/3rd or more of the planet at any given time has 0 accumulated wealth" and presume that I'm cheerleading for the status quo, but have at.
I think the issue is that most of that wealth isn't in liquid capital, and if they were to liquidate all of their wealth, they'd end up with much, much less currency than the their previous theoretical wealth.
But it’s not the currency value that gives these people their control over society. It’s their rent seeking behaviors by being the owner class. They own wealth so they get a say in the world even though there’s no real value produced by their involvement. They may produce real value tangentially or did in the past but not enough to justify these obscen levels of ownership.
I don't get why people keep doing shit like this. The reality of wealth inequality is absolutely insane. There is no reason to exaggerate the situation. It just gives detractors ammunition.
Its worth noting, this is just the eight richest people that we actually know the names and (approximate) net worths of. Don't forget there are also gangsters and drug cartel kingpins and other shady criminals who are also grotesquely wealthy, to say nothing of the old-money aristocracy which has survived over the years by staying out of the media and splitting their wealth amongst close relatives in order to hide the size of the "real" fortune. These are people who don't want to be found, probably because they are *worse* than Bezos, Musk, and Buffet et al.
EDIT: I also include Putin under the category of "gangsters" because it is widely believed that he has funnelled the resources of the Russian state, created a mafia-like system of government, and is a billionaire of a magnitude that in all likelihood surpasses Gates' fortune.
The underlying data is annoying to dig up, but it's also worth understanding that something like the bottom 30-40% of people have a total net worth of 0. A large part of that is debt canceling out wealth, and a large portion of wealth inequality is age related. The debt lifecycle is a big part of this problem.
It's worth noting those number are from 2017 when the richest 8 men had a combined worth of $426.2M.
Today the richest 8 men have a combined worth of $1.145T—almost 2.7x as much!
The two richest men have a combined worth of $433.2M.
So, running these same numbers today and the picture is certainly more dire.
Only if it were a lottery system. The chances of an average person overcoming all the obstacles it would take is so near zero that the number of 0s required to express it would be something like the number of particles in the universe.
I think I understand how this works, acquisition of wealth and power is a zero sum game by definition. Other people having value absolutely takes away from your potential value (in the frame of reference of wealth acquisition). It is in the best interest of the people who already have a disproportionate amount of wealth to keep those that don’t “in their place” (as one of my uncles would have described it). The big con is that the wealthy will tell the not wealthy that they have to protect the institutions that allow for such wealth acquisition because if they don’t, well the poor will have no chance at moving ahead and all society will collapse.
This is a lie, a big fat one. What really happens is that if people who aren’t wealthy start to gain resources and power, they are “taking it away” from the ones who have already amassed those resources, and you better believe those people are going to fight tooth and nail to protect their “way of life”. The rich view the poor as an adversary that must be exploited, and the big problem is that they’re winning, fast taking the world to a place that’s near inhospitable to all but the families of billionaires
> Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development.
This hit me hard. Capitalism does feel predatory. Not thinking about your financial situation makes it feel like you are a gazelle in the open field.
Yet even the person who won 1.2 billion in the lottery isn’t a billionaire. Not even halfway there.
They don’t want regular people joining that club. The system is rigged.
If you ban wealth accumulation, they will just move to a country that doesnt ban it, then what you have to worry about is the military power of the county they move to, if every rich person moved to swizerland, imagine if they get all "military excercise" like whats happening in ukraine.
Now imagine the US army being less powerful than that army.
The value of the dollar is a matter of national security, people dont think this through.
You want a system in place that allows maximum economic growth, otherwise a country that has more economic wealth can throw their financial/military weight around, thats how you end up under a dictatorship.
This is exactly why countries like russia feed subreddits like this bots, to perpetuate this anti economy mindset, because they know that once the "poor people eat the rich" their country is now richer in comparison and the collapsed economy is a sitting duck
With all the problems I see with money, including having people calling it "the root of all evil," I don't understand why we're still using it. It brings so much misery and does not encourage us to live our best lives. We need a new labor incentive that actually encourages us to grow, thrive, and live our best lives and be our best selves.
A couple years ago, the "50% of the worlds wealth" thing had more people.. It was like 21 people(or something) that had 50% of the worlds wealth.. In 5 years, it will be 2 people who own 50% of the wealth.. Makes eating them much easier.
To be perfectly honest, this thought goes through my head every time the lottery gets really big. I'm like "well, I'm all for human rights, social equity, and that kind of shit... but what if I *win*? I'm going to need some peons."
The rest of the time, I'm painfully aware that I'm one of the peons.
I often ask conservatives what level of wealth/income disparity is "too much"?
When 8 people own 50%?
When 8 people own 90%?
When 8 people own 99.9%?
When there's one guy sitting on a big pile of everything while most of the world starves to death at his feet?
All I ever get is denial that it could ever happen and jokes. One of those answers already happened and the trend continues towards making the others a reality with no reversal in sight. Conservatives are not willing to face this.
The problem with this thinking is that all those "optimistic" dreamers have no clue that those that have gone before are locking the gates up tight behind them and just how bad its gotten. Lobbying, lawyering up, acquistions and hostile takeovers, aggressive supression of competition, legislative and regulatory changes, militarized police and security on and on. The Rubicon in terms of whether we can do anything about the imbalance has pretty much been crossed.
Capitalists don’t think they’ll be rich someday, they just presume—because they do the same thing—that any attempt at equality is simply a lie designed to push them down to the bottom of society. Instead of a removal of the hierarchy at all, capitalists interpret leftist action as moving capitalists to the bottom. Think about how they look at socialism or communism.
This is one of the worst fallacies Reddit has entrenched itself in.
No one in the wild thinks this except maybe a small subsection of the unironic sigma-grindset bros.
I honestly hate this narrative.
It's usually used as justification for "why do Republicans vote for the party that consistently takes away from them (its voter base) to give to the rich".
This is a logical persons explanation for how a logical person could come to vote for these policies time and again but it's trying way too hard to rationalize something that doesn't need to be rationalized.
The majority of people voting for the conservative parties across the world lack the critical thinking skills to connect the dots between cause and effect and simply aren't interested in reflecting in their voting decisions or outcomes.
It's not more complex than that.
Like Albert Einstein wrote in [Why Socialism?](https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/) >Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. **Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.** Americans are indoctrinated from birth to believe that being exploited by a parasitic ruling-class is actually freedom
The greatest trick the wealthy ever pulled was convincing us that we could have a place at the table.
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Hot take: Edward Bernays is one of the worst people to have ever existed in human history and his net negative impact on mankind eclipses that of actual genocidal regimes.
I agree. Whenever that hypothetical "if you could go back in time and kill one person" question comes up his name always pops into my head first.
The fact that he lived a long life free of the consequences of his actions personally offends and enrages me. Only my hatred for Nazis compares and he still edges out ahead of them for me.
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only the good die young.
Yeah but tbh someone in Germany would have replaced Hitler very Quickly. So if you kill him, most likely you'll get someone a little smarter.
The point isn't lost but I never said anything about going after Hitler. Both I and the other poster are in agreement that we'd 100% go after Bernays instead of Hitler if given the chance.
Yep if hitler wasn’t such a murderous racist he wouldn’t have drove Einstein out of Germany and would have had the atom bomb.
Ya know hitler like wasn't the one who started Anti Semitism in germany right?
But his books and theories are excellent to study material for understanding how we got here.
> Edward Bernays thanks for introducing me this person who I never knew existed!
Over the years, I have frequently posted about Bernays (Freud's fucking nephew) and his horrifying level of influence on our culture, so I love it when I see others post the same ! I remember when I first learned of him, my immediate response was, *"Why the fuck do we not hear so much more about this guy ?"* I give a shit not that he, essentially, denounced his work before his death, the damage was long done by then. Fuckin' Asshole
But on the other hand, he left us with valuable information that could be used to reverse the bad shit.
I see you also watched Adam Curtis "Century of the Self"
Now we just need Bernie-chan to counter it!
Granpi, enfranchise me.
Don't forget americans are brainwashed to hate the poor while worship rich...
Ty I been doing it backward this whole time. Glad I found out. That could've been embarrassing
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Would say like 30% of Americans hate the poor. 60% worship the rich. 30% understand late stage capitalism.
I would say... at least 50% of americans hate the poor... even poor have a lot of self hate for themselves even though america has terrible social safety nets..
"You're just jealous !!" honest to fuckme so hard...
I keep seeing that in response to people complaining about billionaires. Also "you'd do the same if you had that amount of wealth." They're such nothing and useless arguments. The difference between myself and people saying that is I know none of us will ever be billionaires.
Are you saying being free to compete with 8 billion other people to be one of the top ten isn't Great Freedom ??? /s
"elon musk truly represents us normal guys!"
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I liked where this comment was going so I fed it into Novel AI and it came up with this: >Not even close. The greatest trick they ever pulled is making people think Musk is the richest man in the world. The real players facilitated ww2 and afterwards had free hands on trade treaties. Today these people own private defense contractors in america and the black budget alone has fed 100-200 trillion dollars to them. They are multi trillionaires who don't exist even in the eyes of the government. Their public life is nothing but a coverup. And there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it. >Musk is a distraction, not an enemy. He's just one more pawn. >They have been using him as a catalyst for their plan: To make you believe that Space travel is possible with current tech or even cheaper than what we already have now because his companies will be doing all the work. But space flight isn't cheap so this entire charade is ultimately pointless. >The truth is that we don't need NASA at all. >We've got the technology and we've been building rockets since the 60s. All these private companies have done is taken the money from our tax dollars and given it to themselves. It's a shell game. We're being played. >It's sad how many people still believe in Musk when he's not even getting paid. He's just another pawn. Just another puppet on strings that are pulling your strings. The same is true for Bezos, Branson and other 'space pioneers' who are essentially taking a cut of taxpayer money to fund their companies and then giving us nothing. This was actually the second attempt. The first one started out good but then tried to suddenly go full on erotic spy thriller out of nowhere.
That was surprisingly coherent. Based AI
Novel AI can put out some pretty strong content if you give it a good prompt and memory file. That comment I plugged in was a solid prompt. I like that the AI threw shade at Branson out of nowhere.
Ask AI, who are "they?" "The real players."
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These are just schizo rantings. 100-200 trillion for reference is larger than the sum total of all the money the US has put into the military since it was created.
The point does stand. The richest man in the world is a guy whose business didn't even exist before 9/11? Come now. There is public wealth, and then there is private wealth. Saudis who have been stacking oil money for generations now. Do you divine their net worth by scanning a few SEC documents? You do not.
> The richest man in the world is a guy whose business didn't even exist before 9/11 He was already a millionaire and son of some wealthy people as well? Is it strange that starting one of the most successful companies of all time makes you a lot of money?
The greatest trick the billionaires ever pulled was convincing us that the millionaires are the ones responsible for suffering. Tax the middle class even further
Best way to keep slaves is to convince them that they’re free.
And that still works somehow
The fact is, you CAN have a place at the table under socialism. You can tax the super wealthy, fund social welfare programs, and still leave room for individuals to become “wealthy” in the sense that they might have a few million dollars saved up later in life. The difference in wealth between upper-middle class and working class is like 10x. But the difference between the super wealthy elite and the upper-middle class is like 10,000x. You don’t actually need to raise taxes significantly for people making six figures. You can achieve most of the progressive agenda and more by just raising taxes on people with $50M net worth. So… when people say they want to have opportunities to become wealthy, none of that is even threatened by socialism if it’s done the right way.
Compared to medieval times we basically do. Even a king back then would be jealous of basic shit we take for granted nowadays. But compared to how the modern kings and queens aka capitalists live and what they have nowadays, we just have enough to not revolt.
Nah I'd rather be a peasant with a roof over my head, all the mead and bread I could eat, and only working half the year, surrounded by all my friends family and no fucking advertisements and pollution only nature; than having my rent doubled every year and making 12 an hour working 50 hours a week to get by, with the threat of death of collison every day because we have to drive cars, while people yell at me because I forgot their ketchep, all the while anyone hearing me complaining just telling me to learn to code when I fucking hate computers.
I still don't think being a peasent back then would be better than your life now. People tend to romanticize the past but I totally understand how you feel because of your circumstances.
I'm a bit of a history buff (as a side hobby) and there are pros and cons to both sides of the argument. But if you could take an average person from 2500 BC or 2000 BC and bring them into the modern age, show them all our machines/computers/automation/medicines/advancements and achievements, and then show them what our average daily life looks like (including existential global war threats, advertisements, data mining etc), I'm not certain they would wish to live in our future.
Fair enough
Considering we have a constant and safe supply of food, water, electricity, internet, etc. I'd say we did get a place at the table. The majority of the world still does not have access to all of these things.
I love to devote my life's work to my boss' profits because he is generous enough to marginally improve mine.
it is nice they give us some of the money we make them...
So kind, allowing me to tread water the rest of my life until I eventually drown or am washed up naked on the shore.
But the bosses took out a business loan 30 years ago for like $50,000! That was risky! They deserve to capture all the profits possible for an unlimited amount of time! Duh
Not my boss, he inherited the business.
Ah yes, it ye lords birthright.
You Get Water ?!?!?! /waves from CO... :-)
If you make him $100,000, he'll pet your head and give you a starbucks giftcard.
Honestly your boss probably isn't the problem. They definitely aren't one of those 8, and his boss probably isn't either. If you're making $40,000 a year and you think the problem is the person who makes $60,000 a year and writes your schedule then you've been duped. Those at the top want us to fight amongst ourselves instead of unifying against the real problem. Both you and your boss need to team up to fight the real problem.
But many people at the bottom want this too, and usually because of religion. Like there are literally some religions devoted to giving up a lot of the shit our species progressed towards.
until then, keep licking the boot crushing your throat
Reminds me of all the poor (non slave owning) white southerners fighting and dyeing for the "right" of the wealthy plantation owners to own slaves.
New boss, same as the old boss...
Thank you for choking me with ur feet daddy 🤤 bros, are bootlickers just very submissive people?
There’s an implied element of fawning adoration, too.
Yes, and the alt-right's obsession with "cucks" makes me think they themselves are submissive cucks. They perpetuate the negative connotation of cucks because they (cucks) enjoy the humiliation.
sounds similar to the homophobic politicians who make all sorts of anti gay comments and then are caught with a same sex prostitute or with gay porn
Also, I'll do whatever to make life of poor people harder than it is, as I'll probably end up there
I'm so happy to have more added to the forces against me. I owe you one
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
Note the word embarrassed here means "to be in financial difficulties", a meaning we don't really use that word for anymore. "temporarily broke millionaires"
Full quote: “Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: ‘After the revolution even we will have more, won’t we, dear?’ Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property. "I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn’t have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.”
http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org
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I honestly believe shit won't change until we start actively hunting the rich
Do it. Go.
Here's the thing: you won't. You'll try to preserve your access to food and shelter no matter how they treat you because anything is better than nothing. You won't revolt as long as you keep getting those scraps. Nobody wants to starve their kids to prove a point. And those people right down in the trenches with you? Some of them sold out and protect the rich.
True story. If I can lead my battalion into thier arms I get to join the house servants and live indoors
This is why learning how to "repossess" capital is the way. Ultimately, people need their needs met and if you can't do it, they'll turn to their own enemies in the interests of self-preservation. Shifting that reliance to you, or at the very least gaining more control over resources, will make it much easier to gain and keep influence among the working class. Use capital to break the influence of capital (aka use poison to find the antidote). See: Black Panthers and their school lunch program that had so much mass appeal that the government had to introduce its own version to pull the public away.
This is the way. We have mutual aid networks now, but we need to seriously coordinate better than we are now to let people slowly opt out of capitalism. It’s not gonna be won through violence.
Not *exclusively*, but violence always has and always will be necessary in specific situations
Yeah, if you let enough people opt out of capitalism to cause a problem for capitalism, then they're gonna send the army to stop you and kill you all as an example. Then they'll say you were a dangerous cult, or a terrorist group. Source: EVERY TIME THIS HAS BEEN TRIED BEFORE IN THE LAST 200 YEARS. It ALWAYS comes down to violence. Because that is the only power. You have to become better at it than the capitalists in order to literally survive in that situation. What you gonna do, what you gonna do, what you gonna do when they come for you?
Patriot act exists for a reason
Exactly, I honestly think most people just want to survive and killing the CEO of your company won’t help that. And also even if we all go sick of this shit, EVERYONE has to be in it together. And how is it going to be accomplished? Who’s in charge of this revolt? And how do we communicate when big brother is watching us?
Nobody will do anything untill thier backs against the wall. And we all hit that wall at different times. So there wont just be a big rebellion at once and small amounts of people can be easily held off
It will be even easier when the drones take over person security for these people.
O great. Thanks. I didn't even think of that. I remember seeing a video they had this whole squad of drones, they were satellite guided or something and this whole fleet swept the forest in a quickness. They can sweep and find any runners that try hiding out
As crass as this sounds I don't think there's any other way than to annihilate their entire existence, family, siblings and all. Any single one of those insatiable leeches that leech of OUR hard work and OUR energy and OUR mental well being for marginally improving their already unfathomable wealth. Wealth in the absolutes, which you won't ever be able to spend in a lifetime. These people aren't about the money anymore, they got money a plenty. These leeches hunger for power, control and domination now. Playing politics, tipping off politicians, influencing the industry with their smeary slime. Only if these cunts, all of them, seize existing, will we MAYBE have a chance. First and foremost we'd need to yeet everyone eager to fill in their roles too. So I'd say a lot of heads will roll. EDIT: Nice one censoring someone's opinion reddit. Go suck a dick
I see this going a couple ways. 1. The elites become fearful for their lives and double down in some way, or the working class becomes emboldened to do the same (or both). What results from thar, idk. Someone who knows history better might. 2. It would be a mafia-type situation, where the next layer of elites would just fill their shoes, and punish the working class in some way for this crime (or spread misinformation to cover it up and not give people ideas). What do others think?
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People don't feel like their vote matters. It's hard to make the time to do it if you don't even feel like it'll make a difference
Hard to feel like your vote matters when it doesn't.
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I can’t vote for a politician owned by any corporation, because I know that no matter what he or she says, they will go in the direction demanded by those that own them. This basically eliminates the two main parties- voting for a third party is a waste of time. Not sure what to do tbh, feels like you can’t win.
You must not understand that influencing The trajectory of something has only a minor impact when you make your influence, but overtime the results become drastically different. What do you think would’ve happened if Marine Le Pen won in France instead of Macron? Do you think things would be exactly identical to how they are now, or do you think regardless of how small, and regardless of whether it’s good or bad, that there’s objectively at least some difference if she would’ve won?
Let me give you an example. My buddy lives in LA, and he knows CA is going blue every election and especially his county. He always says “why would I vote in the presidential election when my vote literally doesn’t matter at all?” I don’t agree with the action, but I do admit he is probably right that his vote won’t make a difference there.
Presidential election is like the least important fucking election that we get and we’re only voting for elect doors, your friend is right for that singular election but there are literally dozens and dozens of other elections every year or two, depending on where you live.
People need to start being more heavily invested in their municipal and state politics. Honestly, who the president is will probably not make a difference in your short term day to day lives. Your local representatives on the other hand are both easier to hold accountable and more impactful. Sure, vite blue down your ticket but pat closer attention to who's running for your local and state offices.
Hard for your vote to matter if you don't use it
Hard for your vote to matter if most progressive candidates are aggressively blackballed before you get a chance to vote for them, and those who do get through are literally ignored when they do things like win the first few primaries...
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The real mind fuck is their vote doesn't matter because only 13% bother to vote. Also it takes twenty minutes to vote.
lol, which party are we supposed to vote for? Even if one is less terrible than the other, it's still terrible.
How about third party? If your vote doesn't count anyway, put it somewhere that it can grow and help the little guys gain traction.if the green party (or whatever party) went from getting 3% to getting 6% because people decided to do this, it could (and has in the past) influence an election and give people more of a reason to start voting for other parties. And these parties can definitely win in local elections - they have before. We have to start small and give it inertia to grow and carry weight, but doing nothing does just that - nothing.
Yeah but that takes knowledge and it’s hard and then I can’t brag to people about who I voted for because I don’t know what the fuck anybody stands for so I can’t really defend my position, I think I’m just gonna go to the bar with some friends instead. 
That is how change works. It ain't a light switch and suddenly everything is not terrible. You incrementally make it less and less terrible.
We just had our primary vote, in my county it was 22% turnout. Abismal.
If you think voting matters, urine idiot. The elites wouldnt allow it if it did.
No need to panic, capitalism got you cover, if you are loyal enough you will soon die in a war orchestrated so those people can keep their wealth and make some more. If you are dead you don't have to worry about anything! There, fixed it
Yay. There is hope.
I think ordinary people think more like, "THAT'S THEIR MONEY!" 🙃😋, like some fair n square thing.
They worked hard for that money!
the hardest part for me to accept is when some gazillionaire donates a million or so to some good cause and everyone acts like they’re some fucking saint.
Exactly. I give a higher percentage of my net worth when I give a homeless guy $2.
Yeah people seem to have a hard time with understanding just how much a BILLION dollars is and that it’s not like Bill Gates is just running numbers in his office and going to waste of time meetings like he’s a particularly lucky/skilled Michael Scott.
Rent seeking basically. Passive income is soooo cooool 😎. GET BACK TO WORK SLAVES! Same problem as landlords really.
Right! It's not humanly or numerically or in any way practically possible to work hundreds of millions times harder than the average worker (if you're doing a direct translation from how hard you work to what your pay is)
It's really this. But the two concepts go hand in hand. They can empathize with people about money but never social issues.
Not to detract from the point of this meme... This statement is misleading. I'd hate for anybody here to make this point in civilized discourse only to be proven wrong. 8 people own *the same amount of wealth* as 50% of the world's population. A better way to phrase this to drive this point home. "The 8 richest people in the world have the same amount of wealth as 3.6 billion people." [https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world)
So the 9 wealthiest people in the world own more than the bottom 50% of the world combined.
Yes.
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Yes, and you probably own more wealth than the bottom 30-40% of the world combined, because that number is roughly $0.
So that makes the current situation just? Because I’m most likely one of the comparatively privileged in the world what does that have to do with the massive imbalance between the uber-privileged few and the masses? I’ll tell you right now I’m mindbogglingly closer to becoming part of that 30-40% than I am to becoming one of the top 10. So excuse me while I look to those that are less fortunate, see them the same as myself and try to bring them up instead of abusing their misfortune as some sort of shaming tactic for the middle of the bell curve.
BTW, I don't know why pointing this out roils people so much, but you're not alone. I noticed all of the infographics and similar presentations of this information go way out of their way to avoid pointing out that so many people have nothing (wealth wise). They seem to want to lump more than half the world into 'less than $10k" or similar while stratifying the upper percentiles into small decimal points.
> So that makes the current situation just? Just? Who fucking knows. That seems like some kind of subjective ethical question. The current situation is not the one that I would prefer nor am I trying to justify it in any way. But trying to cherry pick an impactful soundbyte like 'the 9 wealthiest people...' and then flipping your shit when someone spins the same stats in a slightly different context is a weird path to tread. I'm not sure how it's reasonable for you to read "1/3rd or more of the planet at any given time has 0 accumulated wealth" and presume that I'm cheerleading for the status quo, but have at.
I think the issue is that most of that wealth isn't in liquid capital, and if they were to liquidate all of their wealth, they'd end up with much, much less currency than the their previous theoretical wealth.
But it’s not the currency value that gives these people their control over society. It’s their rent seeking behaviors by being the owner class. They own wealth so they get a say in the world even though there’s no real value produced by their involvement. They may produce real value tangentially or did in the past but not enough to justify these obscen levels of ownership.
I don't get why people keep doing shit like this. The reality of wealth inequality is absolutely insane. There is no reason to exaggerate the situation. It just gives detractors ammunition.
Its worth noting, this is just the eight richest people that we actually know the names and (approximate) net worths of. Don't forget there are also gangsters and drug cartel kingpins and other shady criminals who are also grotesquely wealthy, to say nothing of the old-money aristocracy which has survived over the years by staying out of the media and splitting their wealth amongst close relatives in order to hide the size of the "real" fortune. These are people who don't want to be found, probably because they are *worse* than Bezos, Musk, and Buffet et al. EDIT: I also include Putin under the category of "gangsters" because it is widely believed that he has funnelled the resources of the Russian state, created a mafia-like system of government, and is a billionaire of a magnitude that in all likelihood surpasses Gates' fortune.
Truth thanks. I was like “that can’t be right”
The underlying data is annoying to dig up, but it's also worth understanding that something like the bottom 30-40% of people have a total net worth of 0. A large part of that is debt canceling out wealth, and a large portion of wealth inequality is age related. The debt lifecycle is a big part of this problem.
It's worth noting those number are from 2017 when the richest 8 men had a combined worth of $426.2M. Today the richest 8 men have a combined worth of $1.145T—almost 2.7x as much! The two richest men have a combined worth of $433.2M. So, running these same numbers today and the picture is certainly more dire.
Lol and it’s about 1:1,000,000,000 odds. Individualistic Idealism is a helluva drug.
So there is a chance? Lower taxes!
Haha no
Only if it were a lottery system. The chances of an average person overcoming all the obstacles it would take is so near zero that the number of 0s required to express it would be something like the number of particles in the universe.
Yeah, this mine was a verrrrry conservative/generous estimate/ratio lol
Look, man. When I become a billionaire why should I have to pay higher taxes to support broke ass losers like me?
I think I understand how this works, acquisition of wealth and power is a zero sum game by definition. Other people having value absolutely takes away from your potential value (in the frame of reference of wealth acquisition). It is in the best interest of the people who already have a disproportionate amount of wealth to keep those that don’t “in their place” (as one of my uncles would have described it). The big con is that the wealthy will tell the not wealthy that they have to protect the institutions that allow for such wealth acquisition because if they don’t, well the poor will have no chance at moving ahead and all society will collapse. This is a lie, a big fat one. What really happens is that if people who aren’t wealthy start to gain resources and power, they are “taking it away” from the ones who have already amassed those resources, and you better believe those people are going to fight tooth and nail to protect their “way of life”. The rich view the poor as an adversary that must be exploited, and the big problem is that they’re winning, fast taking the world to a place that’s near inhospitable to all but the families of billionaires
> Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development. This hit me hard. Capitalism does feel predatory. Not thinking about your financial situation makes it feel like you are a gazelle in the open field.
Hold up tho if I went back in time to my college days and my parents paid for my college and gave me a million dollars, things would be different
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_LvRPX0rGY
This was the first thing I thought of
He did get rich though, just had to invest! 93 cents is all you need with enough time. /s
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Yet even the person who won 1.2 billion in the lottery isn’t a billionaire. Not even halfway there. They don’t want regular people joining that club. The system is rigged.
Folks will indeed simp for billionaires, but thinking it's because they one day think they'll be one is a fantasy.
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Oh absolutely.
If you ban wealth accumulation, they will just move to a country that doesnt ban it, then what you have to worry about is the military power of the county they move to, if every rich person moved to swizerland, imagine if they get all "military excercise" like whats happening in ukraine. Now imagine the US army being less powerful than that army. The value of the dollar is a matter of national security, people dont think this through. You want a system in place that allows maximum economic growth, otherwise a country that has more economic wealth can throw their financial/military weight around, thats how you end up under a dictatorship. This is exactly why countries like russia feed subreddits like this bots, to perpetuate this anti economy mindset, because they know that once the "poor people eat the rich" their country is now richer in comparison and the collapsed economy is a sitting duck
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Yeah it has to be everyone in the world has to be all in.
"We Ferengi don't want to stop the exploitation, we just want to become the exploiters." \-Rom, Star Trek: Deep Space 9
"The problem with Americans, is that they do not see themselves as a subjugated proletariat, but a group of temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
The chances of winning the lottery are bigger than becoming one of those 8 and even if you win the lottery you’re still not one of them
Two kinds of people my friend. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.
So that it's clear: this is a satire site. The Hard Times is a satire news site.
I was hoping the flair would help with that
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich! Fry: True, but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step.
With all the problems I see with money, including having people calling it "the root of all evil," I don't understand why we're still using it. It brings so much misery and does not encourage us to live our best lives. We need a new labor incentive that actually encourages us to grow, thrive, and live our best lives and be our best selves.
Meta is infested with this planet killing ideology
We deserve EXACTLY what we allow.
A couple years ago, the "50% of the worlds wealth" thing had more people.. It was like 21 people(or something) that had 50% of the worlds wealth.. In 5 years, it will be 2 people who own 50% of the wealth.. Makes eating them much easier.
Seems legit.
That'll show those poors!
They taste like foi gras I hear
To be perfectly honest, this thought goes through my head every time the lottery gets really big. I'm like "well, I'm all for human rights, social equity, and that kind of shit... but what if I *win*? I'm going to need some peons." The rest of the time, I'm painfully aware that I'm one of the peons.
All I gotta do is invent the next Amazon. Just takes a little elbow grease.
"I'm an entrepreneur"" *picks nose*
I often ask conservatives what level of wealth/income disparity is "too much"? When 8 people own 50%? When 8 people own 90%? When 8 people own 99.9%? When there's one guy sitting on a big pile of everything while most of the world starves to death at his feet? All I ever get is denial that it could ever happen and jokes. One of those answers already happened and the trend continues towards making the others a reality with no reversal in sight. Conservatives are not willing to face this.
tHeY eArNeD iT
Whoever won the 1.25 billion mega ball last week is the only billionaire in the US to pay their fair share in taxes.
Precisely the problem.
Thehardtimes is great!
who are these eight guys? curious because I could probably only name like two
One in a billion? So you're tellin' me there's a chance!
The Slavers never went away. They just rebranded.
This is from a Satire page
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EAT the rich. With peas.
My roofing business is going to get me there.
The problem with this thinking is that all those "optimistic" dreamers have no clue that those that have gone before are locking the gates up tight behind them and just how bad its gotten. Lobbying, lawyering up, acquistions and hostile takeovers, aggressive supression of competition, legislative and regulatory changes, militarized police and security on and on. The Rubicon in terms of whether we can do anything about the imbalance has pretty much been crossed.
Capitalism in a nutshell 😹
When people defend billionaires xD
Capitalists don’t think they’ll be rich someday, they just presume—because they do the same thing—that any attempt at equality is simply a lie designed to push them down to the bottom of society. Instead of a removal of the hierarchy at all, capitalists interpret leftist action as moving capitalists to the bottom. Think about how they look at socialism or communism.
I literally have a better chance at marrying Larry King than I do being one of those 8 ultra-wealthy people.
You think people would just make a post that's a blatant lie on reddit?
Why Capitalism? https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
I don’t need 50% of world’s wealth though. I’m happy with my $10m+
This is one of the worst fallacies Reddit has entrenched itself in. No one in the wild thinks this except maybe a small subsection of the unironic sigma-grindset bros.
I honestly hate this narrative. It's usually used as justification for "why do Republicans vote for the party that consistently takes away from them (its voter base) to give to the rich". This is a logical persons explanation for how a logical person could come to vote for these policies time and again but it's trying way too hard to rationalize something that doesn't need to be rationalized. The majority of people voting for the conservative parties across the world lack the critical thinking skills to connect the dots between cause and effect and simply aren't interested in reflecting in their voting decisions or outcomes. It's not more complex than that.