Elaborate and explain

  • JeSuisUnHombre@lemmy.zip
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    5 months ago

    If we decide money no longer matters it’d be petty easy to eliminate them all. If we continue to let money run our lives then it’ll continue to be pretty easy for the people with money to keep all their power.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      If we decide money no longer matters it’d be petty easy to eliminate them all

      Okay, but then where will I get my passive income? I worked 40 years in the shit and rusty needles mine to build up a big enough nest egg to get passive income. Now I’m too full of staff infections and lacerated limbs and shit lung to work anymore.

      I can’t afford not to make the next guy work himself to death in the shit rust needle mine.

    • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      An individual with a net worth of “just” $1b can afford to spend upwards of $50m per year on privacy and security, all while continuing to live a lavish lifestyle of excess and see their net worth continue to grow.

      That’s more than the annual US household income being spent on a daily basis.

      Now consider that the top 10 billionaires have more than 140x that amount.

      Yes, they are made of flesh & blood, and are susceptible to all of the same maladies as you or I — but especially post Luigi, they are shoring up their defences to the point that even a motivated individual would have just as much chance of becoming a billionaire as they are to getting to one.

      I would hope to be proven wrong, and to see a true working class uprising against them in my lifetime - but alas, I think they are too effective at keeping us arguing against ourselves to ever pose a serious risk to their hegemony.

    • dil@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      they win because they throw money at enough ppl to build a wall of ppl to protect them

        • dil@lemmy.zip
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          5 months ago

          and you assume those 8 billion all fight, id sit on my ass and watch

        • PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          And yet, the poor and stupid people queue up to join the ICE and MAGA organisations.

          They would be as upset as they should be, if they were smarter. They wouldn’t be “poor and stupid” if they were smarter.

          That’s not a koinkidoink. USA has spent a very long time deliberately creating this situation. And by USA I mean those in power.

    • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Its not that. Its the fact that these people hsve entire services dedicated to protecting their lifestyle and security.

      And the public security is also geared to disproportionately protect them as well.

      Short answer. The elite have private security of their own. And they are allied with rich politicians who control the police and military. They’ve got a shitload of guns at their disposal.

      • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yet they can still be taken out by a 3D printed gun on a nice morning walk to the office.

        You’re not wrong, but if Luigi taught us anything its that they’re not as impermeable as they like to appear. It just might take a few martyrs on our end.

  • ekZepp@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Why you think they’re tossing so much money to develope ai and humanoid robots?

    When shit will hit the fan they want their own private army to watch their ass, but at the same time they don’t want highly trained human mercenary inside their golden castel getting strange ideas.

    • Panda@lemmy.today
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      5 months ago

      Is it, though? Because if the billionaires had all that money but only themselves and their billionaire friends on team billionaire, how powerful would they actually be (in comparison to, say, now) if they didn’t have any non billionaires on their side?

      I think they’re this powerful right now because there are a lot of non-billionaires who are dumb enough to do whatever they’re told by them even if it’s not in their own best interest (or the rest of the world’s) at all.

      • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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        5 months ago

        I think they’re this powerful right now because there are a lot of non-billionaires who are dumb enough to do whatever they’re told by them even if it’s not in their own best interest (or the rest of the world’s) at all.

        And they always will be. The thing about one’s own best interest is that it’s self-interest, always at least parochial, if not outright selfish (as in the US). If the people comprising a billionaire’s private security force can obtain a better standard of living, more power, more perks, for themselves and their families than they could by cooperating with the rest of the proles in a (let’s be honest) speculative venture, even if it did pay off? Well, some people will take the billionaire’s offer, at least enough people to comprise a private security force.

  • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It’s not the billionaires but the antisocial, amoral whores who will sell their souls for money and do their bidding that are the problem (police, army, etc.), and those who would quietly acquiesce. And of those there are way too many in some societies for change to be easy/possible.

  • wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    If the people were all invested in taking out the billionaires, then the people would win, hands down.

    But if, as in the current situation, the people have higher priorities, in which 50% do not find billionaires to be an existential threat, and at least 300 million think they are simply temporarily embarrassed billionaires themselves, then the billionaires win, that is, until the Earth inevitably cannot support them any longer.

    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      and at least 300 million think there are simply temporarily embarrassed billionaires

      Technically that should drop down to ~150 million

  • rowinxavier@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    All evidence points to a regime change (in the physics sense, not the political) being the necessary condition for things to go from our current state to something new.

    We currently have people paying poorer people a very small amount of their own net worth to protect the wealthy person’s status and position. This is similar to how kings and queens paid the army and policing forces to control the peasants.

    Before the French Revolution I am sure it seemed impossible that the peasants would revolt, but the years leading up to the revolution things were getting worse and worse for the average peasant. There is a tipping point where the average person does not think the current system is delivering on the promise that of you do what you are told you can have a good life. I think we are approaching that point now.

    If the rich try to hire someone and underpay them for security, stiff contractors for services, flaunt laws and generally behave obnoxiously at some point people will have had enough. Whether that ends with guillotine action or people just divesting from those systems depends on how much freedom people think they have.

    If people thought they could go and homestead, live off the land, and get by without the massive companies these billionaires own then they would have that outlet and choose that peaceful option. The fact that we have taxation creates a pressure to pay in currency which demands earning in that currency. Same with paying rent, you have to earn money simply to live. No amount of growing all of your food gets rid of your financial obligations, so there is no out from the system. If that system is unreasonable it begins to feel less like participation and more like coercive control. Wage slavery is not the same as slavery, but both involve coercion and require the legal system to support them. Both lead to revolutions. Both lead to violence.

    I guess the billionaires have to decide if they really want to paint that big a target on their backs by flaunting their wealth. At this point I think they feel untouchable.

    • Kevo@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The biggest ruse in American history is the modern billionaire convincing the working class Americans that the immigrants, homeless, people of color, and LGBT+ people are the real enemy and the reason you’re unhappy. Capitalism is the only functioning system of government, don’t pay attention to the fact that almost every other developed country has universal healthcare.

  • breecher@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Unfortunately that is not how the figures really are. Way too many of those 8 billions will willingly simp and fight the rest of us in the name of those billionaires.

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The billionaires spend a small fraction to some idiots to betray their fellow non-billionaires. It’s probably about a million people versus the masses.

  • WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org
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    5 months ago

    The billionaires. People dumb AF. Billionaires have money to manipulate people to think they are doing good while they are fucking humanity.

  • Splount@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    If organized, the billionaires lose. It’s really that simple and that difficult.