135
all 36 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Utter_Karate@hexbear.net 62 points 10 months ago

We should take their money then. It helps us, and it doesn't hurt the rich since they'll just get it back and then we can take it again. Everybody wins.

[-] readmore@hexbear.net 43 points 10 months ago

Infinite money machine.

[-] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 33 points 10 months ago
[-] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 19 points 10 months ago

we'll just stay in the starting first farming boers

[-] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 61 points 10 months ago

So what you're saying is taking money away from CEOs isn't immoral because they'l just get it all back. Therefore there is no need for stealing from the rich to be illegal, right?

RIGHT?

[-] Rojo27@hexbear.net 59 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Habits of rich that make them rich:

-Getting lucky

-Exploiting the labor of others

dean-smile

[-] RedCat@lemmygrad.ml 41 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Can't forget:

-Being born to rich parents

[-] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 19 points 10 months ago
  • inheriting wealth
[-] motherofmonsters@hexbear.net 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Being born into the beginning of globalization.

You could become a billionaire by going “huh no one is importing X. I guess I’ll import X!”

[-] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 15 points 10 months ago

Getting lucky

When I tell people that rich people get rich because it's 90% luck and 10% "work" they look at you like you're crazy. People really underestimate being in the right place right time and knowing the right people, or just being born to rich parents.

[-] AlkaliMarxist@hexbear.net 59 points 10 months ago

As a Marxist I can think of a simple way to test this hypothesis.

[-] plinky@hexbear.net 35 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The fact that your zip code can better predict your future wealth than the amount of time you worked is not enough for these folks.

They'll sooner start investigating magnetic anomalies in gated communities and attaching magnets to their temples

[-] sooper_dooper_roofer@hexbear.net 34 points 10 months ago

You could take all the CEO's money they'll just earn it back

I wish a cracker would put his money where his mouth is

[-] lorty@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 10 months ago

*Calls his friend and gets a new, high paying "job" instantly.

[-] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 32 points 10 months ago

Habits like “being born to rich parents”

[-] FuckyWucky@hexbear.net 31 points 10 months ago

Ask him if he owns a factory

[-] Lerios@hexbear.net 30 points 10 months ago

no, they're absolutely correct

poor person habit: sell your labour in order to live

rich person habit: own the means of production

try disproving that you dumbshit commies smuglord

[-] WithoutFurtherBelay@hexbear.net 13 points 10 months ago

damn all I need to do is figure out how to get some means of production!

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Pure ideology. The right thing to point out here is that capitalists have a lot of material advantages that go way beyond the liquid balance in their bank account. The ability to access easy, virtually unlimited credit is probably the most relevant here. If we seized all of Elon Musk's liquid assets (sicko-wistful ), he probably would be a centimillionaire again pretty quickly, because there are tons of entities--both institutional and individual--who would be more than happy to hand him free money because of who he is. If people are willing to hand you millions of dollars for free, give you preferential treatment as an investor, and generally bend over backwards to ingratiate themselves to you, it's almost impossible not to end up super rich.

This is part of why "taxing the rich" is a bullshit lib non-solution to the ghoulish system we have now. The problems are structural, and a small number of people have privileged virtually unlimited access to the means of production. If you took away that access, most billionaires would fare significantly worse than ordinary people, because they don't actually have any skills beyond exploiting their privileged access to capital.

[-] raven@hexbear.net 8 points 10 months ago

he probably would be a centimillionaire again pretty quickly, because there are tons of entities--both institutional and individual--who would be more than happy to hand him free money because of who he is.

He'd run a quick grift on people like in the OP and be back on his yacht in a month.

[-] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 28 points 10 months ago

Okay counter proposal: put rich people in a dome with no interaction with anyone else. No help, no working class culture, just a a big Truman Show dome with nothing but Trumans.

[-] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 13 points 10 months ago

Andrew Ryan's Big Wet Dome Program

[-] LaGG_3@hexbear.net 12 points 10 months ago

They can make their own oxygen, too.

[-] blakeus12@hexbear.net 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

sure, if you take their money maybe. but if you take their capital, then it gets a little tough for them (they'd be scraping the bottom of the barrel for bullshit jobs just like the rest of us)

[-] betelgeuse@hexbear.net 24 points 10 months ago

Things are the way they are because of the way they are.

[-] CarbonScored@hexbear.net 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

In fairness, I think there is one behaviour that helps you become a rich fuck, and that's a psychopathic disregard for the welfare of all other humans. I've had opportunities to make more money in life if I were willing to just screw over others, but I couldn't live with making weaponry, price gouging or otherwise wrecking the lives of fellow proles.

Nonetheless, lets take away all the money from all the rich fucks and give it a try, eh? It should be obvious to anyone that capitalism inherently causes capital to accumulate in select few hands either way, but it'd be a nice step one.

[-] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yeah.

We build a society that rewards cunning, dismisses beauty and art as irrelevant, and morality as detrimental to the machine, and then we scratch our heads wondering why there's so much corruption in authority positions?

[-] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 22 points 10 months ago

We have already made such an experiment in 1917, and it had disproved this hypothesis.

[-] zed_proclaimer@hexbear.net 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Even if this were true, never do they ask where habits are formed and why someone has “rich person habits” in the first place. Could it be because they were raised since a young age with ample nutrition, adequate healthcare, private education and lots of family business connections?

Likewise, aren’t the “poor person habits” formed out of a childhood of desperation, sickness, hunger, poor education and no economic mobility?

Shouldn’t the goal be to have everyone on Earth have the “rich person” childhood so that everyone can have good habits? Like even by their own logic they should support socialism so that everyone on Earth can have the beneficial “rich person habits”.

The underlying truth is they don’t think certain people are capable of being smart or successful even with the most privileged upbringing because they are racists. This entire talk of “people of bad habits” is way to sanitize and obfuscate their underlying racist position.

[-] WithoutFurtherBelay@hexbear.net 11 points 10 months ago

Worse, they think everyone who isn’t poor is poor because they’re just lazy and dumb, they think habits are developed out of some sort of ontological void rather than any upbringing or context

[-] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 21 points 10 months ago

It's called "dumb luck" for a reason.

The luckiest people are always the dumbest.

[-] Red_Left_Hand@hexbear.net 21 points 10 months ago

You could take all the CEO's money and they would just ask their friends the bankers for a loan and their bosses, the actual capitalists, for a raise

[-] muddi@hexbear.net 14 points 10 months ago

The problem with induction is it works while it works, but when it doesn't work it doesn't work. It's all circular reasoning.

A hydrated person is hydrated because they hydrate themselves habitually. A dehydrated person is dehydrated because they dehydrate themselves habitually.

The word water doesn't even come up in the above. And no consideration of what happens if you strand a hydrated person in the desert: they can't hydrate, so are they still a hydrated person?

[-] Tychoxii@hexbear.net 14 points 10 months ago

why yes i m for expropiating CEO's wealth yes-sicko

this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
135 points (100.0% liked)

the_dunk_tank

15917 readers
11 users here now

It's the dunk tank.

This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.

Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.

Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.

Rule 3: No sectarianism.

Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome

Rule 5: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)

Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.

Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.

Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this. Posts that do not meet this requirement can be posted to !shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml

Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS