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Because even the people who are the most negatively affected by wealth centralization will defend the billionaires that provide them with stuff they like, we'll never escape that system until people realize that there are no good billionaires and that they all exist at the expense of the majority of the population.
Mainly because the wealthy are the ones who co tell the flow of (dis)information and have been making full on attacks against the quality of education we as citizens receive.
When you don’t know any better, and you’re being told the sky is green and the grass is blue long enough, you start to believe it. Them in comes some know-it-all telling you you’re wrong and your belief system has been lying to you, and yeah you’re going to get mad at the know-it-all and cling tighter to your belief system.
Big Scary Man Bad.
It's not the billionaires doing the providing, it's just that the economic engine is locked behind a paywall and so instead of laborers getting the value and credit it's the owning class.
The laborers should be the owning class. This is the core idea of socialism. I don't get why "small government" types are so big on "own me harder daddy" when it comes to the economy. We spend most of our waking hours in dictatorships.
I don't get why "small government" types are so big on "own me harder daddy" when it comes to the economy.
Lots of these people are Petite Bourgeoisie, ie small business owners and the like. Their class interests align with larger Bourgeoisie, but the growth of larger Bourgeoisie pushes the Petite Bourgeoisie into proletarianization.
This is where fascism comes in, actually. The Bourgeoisie and Petite Bourgeoisie unite against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat, along Nationalist lines, as a response to this proletarianization.
They are literally parasites.
But they took the risk. The risk of spending loaned money at minuscule interest rates and offsetting any real losses by petitioning the state for handouts. They took the risk of making guaranteed profits on political donations leading to regulatory capture.
The capitalism that people imagine (which I still wholeheartedly reject) isn't even the capitalism that's real in practice.
Even putting aside the inherent inequality of risk having a significant coefficient applied to it that diminishes when you come from generational wealth and a family with the right connections.
The myth of capitalist meritocracy is the most blatantly false myth that's ever been peddled but it works on so many people. It's mind boggling.
Ironically things like UBI might level the playing field a bit in terms of entrepreneurship becoming more accessible, but for some reason capitalism advocates don't actually want more people to be able to participate in capitalism.
The older I get the more I agree with this.
Like, we won. We did it. We have enough food, we can build enough homes, we can build enough clean energy to fulfill our requirements if we're halfway smart about it. What the fuck are we doing?
What the fuck are we doing?
Making the shareholders rich.
This is what kills me about modern day living. What the fuck are we doing? Innovations (AI) dont fucking help people anymore. All we're doing is chasing profits and letting everything else rot. I feel like I'm living in some FromSoft game before the player comes in to clear out all the ancients holding onto the decay.
We've made farming a capitalist system. It only functions if there's scarcity. A farmer can't feed their family or farm their fields without paying bribes to machine companies.
And politicians vilify "subsidies" to farmers. Our society should be "funding" food production as a basic human right. It would take about 1% of the US military budget to completely socialize food production and feed everyone. It's disgusting.
I don't think capitalism is inherently evil. Just the people in control of the wealth.
Can we? So much of our modern standard of living comes from extractionary industry.
We pollute our waterways with our mining and drilling. We increasingly rely on prison labor for everything from agriculture to fire fighting. We've de-industrialized the Rust Belt so we could exploit low wage workers abroad. Our biggest sectors are Finance (which creates nothing material) and Tech (which increasingly focuses on Crypto and LLMs). Our airline industry is failing. Our semiconductor industry is failing. Our steel industry is being sold off to Japan.
That's before you get into how natural disasters routinely shut down major urban centers for days or weeks at a time. And how flooding is obliterating enormous chunks of our housing stock. And how our roads and bridges are decades past their expiration date.
Idk if we've won. I get the feeling that we're all living on borrowed time, and we've actually lost big relative to what we could have enjoyed.
We increasingly rely on prison labor for everything from agriculture to fire fighting.
Only USA does. The only country that did similar things was USSR. It was. Now USA the only is.
Even EU has better standards of living AND not use slave labour of prisoners.
Our semiconductor industry is failing.
Assuming you are from USA, your semiconductor industry is just fine.
US Democrats are the equivalent to our countries conservatives, and US Republicans are basically our rightwing/neo-nazi party pedant. It is noteworthy here that this Republican-equivalent rightwing party here is under active surveillance by the national security agencies for being a threat to our democracy.
And people still wonder why the US f-ups their people up and down.
Because it’s actually a corporate oligarchy
Capitalism in decay.
I think the most damning thing is that the US is regressing where others are progressing.
DeSantis Signs Anti-Worker Bill Against Heat Regulation in Florida
Work is punishment for original sin.
You mean breaking away from the UK?
No, we meant throwing away good tea.
Can't have a view that matters when you are hungry, stressed, are left with like 1 hour a day to yourself, and with constant other random threats to your existence you get to manage.
The system is working as designed, ppl forget how much work such a system needs to sustain itself actually.
The system is working as designed, ppl forget how much work such a system needs to sustain itself actually.
The problem is that Capitalism, and by extension Imperialism, is unsustainable and constantly decaying.
Propaganda is one hell of a drug
I do not think that the US is a democracy. The electoral college is not in any way democratic.
It is an indirect democracy, rather than a direct one. Its less democratic, but not completely undemocratic.
That being said, I do think the system is broken in another fundamental way.
*60 hours a week
Laughs in European
Right. I work 37.5 hours a week in a job I love and I hate working. I can’t imagine doing almost double.
I know its just a meme and I think you're right to point it out but I feel bad for laughing.
In the UK, as one example, its default unlawful to work more than 45 hours a week. You have to choose to sign this away. Refusal to agree can't be used as a reason to fire you or choose not to hire you, unless its like the police or army or something.
The UK is worse in different places and has this too. So, its not about being superior or any of that BS. But the US is full on, mask-off, you are cattle and the mega rich are your ranchers. You can't even just simply move to a different country to escape paying for gargantuan corporate benefits. They own you and they don't care if you know it.
It's not the standard view because, in America, consumption is inherently tied to your identity.
You are seen as more attractive if you have trendy clothing compared to "outdated" clothing. You are seen as more financially successful if you overpay for "luxury" handbags. You are seen as having "made it" based on how much stuff you have.
Corporations know they can exploit this. They play up the value of purchases to your identity in advertising, then use that to distract you from the fact that your labor is being allocated solely to fuel this seemingly endless (solely monetary) growth, while they continue to siphon off more and more of your wages because, well, they "deserve" it for being the founder of the company, or being the shareholders that are "invested in its success."
The only solution to this problem is degrowth. If we show corporations we don't care about all this excess junk that nobody really needs, the available labor pool remains the same while demand craters. If everyone is working x hours a week, but demand drops to only necessities and minor luxuries, without the products advertised as "needs" holding any demand, suddenly, each individual has to work only, say, half of x hours a week to accomplish the same requirements to sustain society and individual wellbeing.
That, and we need to give the means of production back to the workers too, of course.
Except people are getting squeezed on housing and the basic necessities now, people are having to work long hours just to live. I can't even imagine how my young adult life would play out if I were experiencing it now, paying ridiculous rents and making the shitty wages. Sharing an apartment and affording anything else was hard enough back then, I can't even imagine how people are making it out there nowadays. I got lucky and got into a home when prices were semi-decent, it'd be a severe strain on finances if I had to pay current rates.
Because mEriTocRacY, those wealth ~~thieves~~ ~~hoarders~~ aggregators worked sooooooooooo hard for their money, they totally deserve every penny. If only people would work as hard as them, they wouldn't be hungry or cold!
I have no idea how this isn't the standard view. Technology is often used as a carrot on a stick.
Ah yes, propaganda superspreader, my favorite account to follow on twitter.
My understanding is that issues like universal healthcare and paid leave for parents poll at around 80 percent. The reason the US doesn't have those things is not because the people don't want it. So the representation we elect are center right and don't actually support the will of the people. They represent the will of their donors.
I’m sure the invisible hand will figure it out.
They've been telling us the so-called "invisible hand" will deliver something worthwile for almost 250 years now... so the time must be almost here! I cannot contain my excitement!
I keep telling you, people.
Edit: the answer here is that some jobs are still necessary and the ruling class hasn't found yet a way to motivate people to carry out those necessary jobs, if not by keeping everyone on the edge of starvation. If food and habitation were to become free, people would just stop being the useful tools they are supposed to be. That's why ubi is never going to take off.
Edit 2: Am i been downvoted by the ruling class? Actually, maybe it's because i said i don't think the ubi is going to stick. If that's the reason, I want to clarify that i believe ubi is going to be necessary in the long term, though I also believe it's just a piece of the puzzle. Another piece would be limiting resource usage by accounting for externalities through a system like carbon credits, but with more types of resources (not just co2) and for individuals. It should be a system that lets the normal person live almost normally, but stops the rich from doing the fuck they want just because they have money. At least they would have to buy credits from other people and pay them if they can get them.
I'd like to see someone try a UBI system that was genuinely universal. Literally everyone gets it, employed or not, regardless of income level, but at the same time minimum wage is removed because your living expenses are already ostensibly covered. So if a business can get someone to come in for $1/hour, or even for free, great. All wages just become "gravy" if someone wants luxuries above and beyond basic living expenses.
Under such a system I'd be interested to see how much what are currently minimum wage jobs would need to offer on top of UBI to get people in the door. I could absolutely see things like hobby shops employing people for pennies who'd be happy to be there just due to interest/passion in the subject of their work. Conversely I could see the wages for dreary or abuse prone jobs like gas station attendant or fast food cashier going up because no one in their right mind would want to do it for a pittance if their basic needs are already covered.
Some people have become so ingrained into the system, that they will even fight to defend it.
Billionaires are doing their part to fix this problem! In the next 50 years you wont be able freeze to death with rising global temps. Problem solved!
In fact, I've heard people most likely worked less back in the olden days pf pre-industrial scarcity, or at least took entire seasons off when the crops they grew weren't expected to yield anything.