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Those puny little ants outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life!
we need to organize. seriously!
what's wrong with a billionaire having $1B worth of yachts, while the rest of us are struggling to feed ourselves? what's wrong with that?? (/s)
The French Revolution was a massive uprising in France from 1789 to 1799, driven by anger over inequality, heavy taxes, and the extravagant lifestyle of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. The monarchy’s indifference to the suffering of ordinary people—while they lived in luxury—sparked outrage.
The revolution began with the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny, and led to radical changes: the monarchy was abolished, the king and queen were executed, and France became a republic. It was a chaotic time, with ideals of liberty and equality clashing against violence and instability.
In short, it was a dramatic lesson in what happens when leaders ignore the needs of their people.
It's gone from can't everyone just pay your fair share of taxes?
To can't we at least tax the rich?
How about just the 1%?
Ok..., how about just the 0.001%?
And then somehow conservatives leaders will convince a voter base to take to the streets with pitchforks and torches, claiming it's tyranny, then once they're elected, the leaders will still tax the fucking voter base.
No comments about the "accept all or reject all and subscribe" really says something about no one ever reading the article. And just to be clear, I'm in full agreement of how fucked this is. It just really stuck out to me. And I highly doubt everyone who commented used some extention, script or service to get past that, I feel pretty confident that almost none did. If most did at least one would have posted a link so everyone else could get the full article.
Guillotines are surprisingly cheap to build.
The implicit song here goes hard
.22lr even cheaper and less assembly required
Would need to be able to penetrate their thick skulls.
Maybe we should use a higher caliber bullet?
It penetrates and ricochets inside instead of exiting, makes for good brain jelly!
I feel like numbers at this point just are pointless. It's like, can we use vocabulary that actually describes the situation instead of updating this every time the decimal point shifts?
Describing it in terms of wealth is kind of dumb. It gives the idea that the systems that caused this (Imperialism, colonialism, capitalism) are the solution. Like, the global South just needs "investment". The numbers are this bad because of a century of western "investment" in its exploitation the global South.
There isn't a number attached to this that somehow fixes the problem when we reach it. This is about what essentially amounts to slavery and subjugation of the majority of this planet. The language of these news articles is so passive. Like it's describing the amount of stars in the galaxy.
Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is poor.
Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists. (G. K. Chesterton)
This seems not conducive to the common wellbeing of humanity I think.
Remind me again how capitalism isn't the problem? lmao
Do you think in feudal times things were better?
People might think that the extremity is a good thing as it will force change, which may be true, but realistically the world will be in for an extended period of conflict/war/suffering first and that period will probably last the rest of our lives.
Boomers hit that sweet spot. Now they get to check out as things are about to get real bad. Not that boomers everywhere in the world had it good. But a lot of them did.
If you aren't straight, white or a man you are already suffering.
Boomers hit that sweet spot.
American boomers, maybe. The 60s/70s was real shit for most of the Third World.
Much of our modern Economic Anxiety driving MAGA and the reactionary insanity of our foreign policy is these same Boomers being forced to live in a world that isn't just the car dealerships in Detroit commanding the global economy.
For the 90s Kids, life outside the US hasn't been this good in a century or more. Whether you're in Bogota, Berlin, Beijing, or Bankok, it's a time of unprecedented plenty.
The fact that America isn't this shining city on a hill anymore is what Trumpsters find so galling.
For the 90s Kids, life outside the US hasn’t been this good in a century or more. Whether you’re in Bogota, Berlin, Beijing, or Bankok, it’s a time of unprecedented plenty.
In some places, like south america, things have not been that great since the start of a wave of right wing governments rising, unfortunately...
The fact is money is relative. $100k USD is a lot of money in New Guinea and is not going to buy as much in London. This is why it is perfectly acceptable for someone like Thiel to assemble a private army with his wealth while people starve because they haven’t worked the grind correctly like Musk, Thiel or the Mountbatten-Windsors have /s.
You had me in the first half...
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
I started to feel that’s a mathematical issue, not an economic issue. Since the internet is a thing, a person’s influence and wealth can increase exponentially(benefiting from the networking effect aka power law), while the best tax law can do is still linear.
We need a tax law that grows exponentially. After certain points, it should collect almost 100% of the “controllable assets” (assets you can control, not necessarily owed).
But of course, we will never get it. People who have the will to climb the ladder tend to have less empathy for the masses, and they need to pay back to their stakeholders to help them get on top. It’s another paradox we need to deal with.
TBH the only thing that can fix humanity is extraterrestrial life lol.
I would call it systemic, in fact I'd argue it's the central flaw of capitalism (but one that imo can be mostly fixed with heavy regulation and taxes scaling to near 100% as you say).
When wealth = power, those with wealth will always attract even more wealth.
according to a report that argues global inequality has reached such extremes that ugrgent action ha.cms become essential.
I guarantee you that that 0.001% agrees, there are too many of them, that should be 0.00001% instead
Fuck the rich!
I call for hard limits on personal networth and the worth of companies
No single person should be able to control more than 10M, companies shouldn't be worth over 1 billion
Anything over that, goes to taxes.
It's a single basic rule that requires more rules below for sure to ensure it works well, but this should be codified in a world wide constitution.
This way, nobody gets crazy amounts of money, nobody will have to be poor because the government will have a huge income that it can use for universal healthcare, education, universal basic income, etc...
Crime would go down the drain because nobody NEEDS to be a criminal anymore. There will still be a few anti social elements but good luck finding people wanting that life if they can just have a good, safe, and happy life.
Bribery and corruption? How even, and why take the risk?
There is no logical reason why anyone should have to be allowed to control this much wealth.
Investment companies must all be dismantled and all their funds transferred to independent non profit organisations that, again, won't be able to control more than over a billion. Government can transfer money to these foundations so that loads of people can have investments for startups or whatnot
We'd need similar simple rules for governments too. All governments must be democracies, and all should follow a world constitution where we have a few basic rules that make sure nobody will ever get too much power.
It doesn't require a lot of changes at the top. Basically these three rules, all the rest flows out of those rules. We can keep capitalism and use it's raw power to generate resources for everyone.
What this needs is political will, this needs people to want this, need this.
No single person should be able to control more than 10M
A small family farm earning less than 350k a year could easily need that in land, capital, etc. just to operate.
But I hear you, somewhere between 10 and 50M would be ideal.
It doesn't require a lot of changes
All governments must be democracies
I didn’t know World War Three was the simplest way to world peace
Suck on that 0.999% of the 1%!
In the entire existence of humanity, class struggle still has yet to end.
Does that mean, in a theoretical world where wealth is by all means easily distributed, you’ve got a mere 0.001% that could triple the per-individual wealth of half of the worlds population—if we just took theirs and passed it out?
I’ve heard philosophers say, it’s a figure of authority’s continuous responsibility to justify its existence. Given, wealth is influence and influence is authority, should we not audit cases where wealth is so concentrated and ask ourselves question like ”how is this contributing to the benefit of all?”
I’d.argue, we shouldn’t allow such concentration of wealth in the first place—meaning there should be a preventative plan that Just Works. This can be compatible with whatever else you want, free markets or not. Be it a stronger progressive tax or a cultural change toward worker collectives owning the means to production, there just shouldn’t be such wealthy entities.
The concentration on wealth leads to concentration of influence, meaning politics and media. We’ve had a shrinking number of independent major news organizations since the 1980s. A 1983 analysis showed that about 50 companies “controlled more than half” of U.S. media. Today, there are estimates of a handful of people owning the vast majority. Not to mention, they can apparently choose to purchase massive Social Media platforms (like Twitter) immediately before an election.
Right now, though, we have this problem where such silos already exist. They use their influence, vast as it is, to protect and enrich themselves—PACs, Super PACs, gratuities, lobbying firms, and more recently meme coins. All acting as a conduit to influence politics and legislation. We can’t make progress while these issues continue to stand in our way, can we? So, what do you do?
