|
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On July 10 2026 00:41 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 00:20 LightSpectra wrote:
In this analogy, the Stephen Miller approach to your friend still being in your house 1 second after asking them to leave is to lock them in your basement indefinitely. Pretty sure Stephen Miller is big on deportation.
There are 50,000 or more immigrants currently in indefinite detention.
Right wingers are not padding illegal immigrant stats with ten million good faith people who only overstayed their visa by one of the world's smallest violin's days and are only late in paying their overstay fine and leaving of their own accord.
If you moved those goalposts any further they'd need a visa.
Obligatory reminder Hitler gamed Germany by renouncing his Austrian citizenship to make himself undeportable.
Gee, it's really weird to be affirmatively quoting him in terms of immigration policy then.
|
On July 09 2026 20:54 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +Zuckerberg and Page did something innovative very early on and most of the money making business that makes their respective companies insanely huge came from acquisitions of other services and websites or from developing of new services within the existing ones, all of that coding and business development was produced by people's labor.
Zuckerberg specifically is really not that good of a coder and his big invention has been stolen from the Winkevi twins.
Some of those people have been handsomely compensated with stock options so they are certainly very rich right now, but they are absolutely nowhere in the neighborhood of $300 billion level rich of those two, and the contributions of those 2 and the value of their labor is not x 1000 or whatever it is as compared to the person who coded Gmail or Youtube.
Also, the whole conversation is not and should not be who deserves how much money, the issue is what do those people use that money and power that comes with it for.
Gates is not perfect but he did help save millions of lives, McKenzie Scott is trying to give away as much of her wealth as she can and she is helping many, and it's an absolute shame that she is out donating people like Page, Musk, Brin, Elison, not only in % of her net worth but also in absolute terms. + Show Spoiler +
These people generated the vast majority of their wealth off of labor of others and by exploiting their customers, creators on their platforms etc., in a just society they would be made to use that money for good, unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions the world has very few just societies, and USA is firmly very close to the bottom of the list of unjust ones.
What is more important than their personal predilections is that NO ONE has donated more than McKenzie Scott has since she divorced Bezos. Despite that, she's got about as much wealth as she did when she started (maybe more, we can't truly know).
That speaks to problems so far beyond wealthy individuals and their charity choices that the typical "good guy vs bad guy" (or rather "evil person vs less evil person") political framing can't address.
|
On July 10 2026 00:48 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 00:41 oBlade wrote:On July 10 2026 00:20 LightSpectra wrote:
In this analogy, the Stephen Miller approach to your friend still being in your house 1 second after asking them to leave is to lock them in your basement indefinitely. Pretty sure Stephen Miller is big on deportation. There are 50,000 or more immigrants currently in indefinite detention.
Cool, these 50,000 immigrants:
1 How long have they been in detention?
2) When is their next hearing or deportation?
Or, if by indefinite you mean they all without fail have no hearing or deportation date yet, otherwise they wouldn't be "indefinite," then importantly:
3) How many immigrants in detention other than indefinite are there? Is it 0, in which case you're just being vaguely critical with a conspicuous lack of honesty?
Like this should be trivial to understand. There are 50,000 in detention? Okay. There are people being deported. When you're deported, you stop being in detention. Meaning the detention ends. Meaning at some point the detention stopped being indefinite because it ended which made it definite. The fact you even think you have a chance of getting this stuff by anyone is laughably perplexing.
On July 10 2026 00:48 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +Right wingers are not padding illegal immigrant stats with ten million good faith people who only overstayed their visa by one of the world's smallest violin's days and are only late in paying their overstay fine and leaving of their own accord. If you moved those goalposts any further they'd need a visa.
Today I learned directly referencing LightSpectra to LightSpectra is moving goalposts:
On July 09 2026 22:13 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2026 15:43 oBlade wrote:On July 09 2026 05:36 LightSpectra wrote:
This is another case of words becoming fuzzy over time because of bad actors intentionally obfuscating them, like "socialism" or "illegal immigrant".
The term "Zionist" originally meant someone who supported a homeland for Jews, but because the most fanatical Israel supporters accuse you of being an antisemite when you ask how blowing up a hospital or allowing settlers to steal people's houses are "counter-terrorism," it now colloquially means anyone who unconditionally supports the Israeli government against whatever real or perceived threat they're facing.
Zohran Mamdani said he supported the existence of a secular Israeli state, that technically makes him a "Zionist" in the classical sense, but you're never going to hear FOX News call him one. Yes the term illegal immigrant, which originally meant someone who immigrates illegally, after years of regressives insisting it is some kind of secret KKK code word meaning brown people, has been obfuscated so much that its meaning has evolved to mean someone who immigrates illegally. So if someone immigrates legally, and then the POTUS cancels their legality or their visa expires, that doesn't retroactively mean they immigrated illegally, which is your definition of what makes someone an "illegal immigrant", right? Weird how right-wingers always count those as part of the number of "illegal immigrants" in the country, though.
You joke.
On July 10 2026 00:48 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +Obligatory reminder Hitler gamed Germany by renouncing his Austrian citizenship to make himself undeportable. Gee, it's really weird to be affirmatively quoting him in terms of immigration policy then.
Would someone who's not gone off the deep end please let me know where and when I quoted Hitler?
|
On July 10 2026 01:02 oBlade wrote:
Would someone who's not gone off the deep end please let me know where and when I quoted Hitler?
Thanks for asking. The person who quoted Adolf Hitler was Donald Trump. I mentioned this to Introvert when he falsely claimed that Trump campaigned on being "moderate" on immigration. You then defended Trump doing so by saying "I don't give a shit about your indignation towards Trump's campaign language."
|
On July 10 2026 00:44 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2026 23:45 Velr wrote:
The issue isn't deporting illegal immigrants.
The issue is doing so whiteout fair trial or following any other actual rules and laws or doing so in cases were people lived basically their entire lifes in the US... I think the fairer version of the post is that you do have an issue deporting illegal immigrants. You don't want them deported if they've been here long enough. To put this plainly, I read this as Show nested quote +On July 09 2026 23:45 Velr wrote:I do have an issue deporting illegal immigrants. It shouldn't be done in cases were people lived basically their entire lifes in the US... + Show Spoiler +[only in cases of violent crimes, or felonies, or recent arrivals] aka only deported in special circumstances The issue is that this is an endorsement of unfettered illegal immigration. The issue is the encouragement to violate the laws of the US, since you're playing a good lottery of staying permanently. The issue is that you condone not "following ... actual rules and laws" when they're immigration laws. This remains an issue even if one political party embraces your position, and the other party is too corrupt, inept, or divided to do anything about it legislatively. I imagine that you would oppose any compromise that strips off ICE masks and long detentions and steeply punishes mistreatment during arrest and detention, but successfully deports hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that aren't guilty of other crimes. That will never stop "being the issue" if everybody knows what will happen once the currently hated Trump admin policies are dead. I call that a free boost to Republicans.
Yes, when you alter words i suddenly say something different. The... are you doing?
When someone can stay in your country for 20 years whiteout a criminal conviction or anything of the sort, he should not be deported, he should be nationalized. Thats just good business.
Afaik is Trump still behind Obama on deportations. All Trump did so far is enacting cruel, inefficient, expensive raids and sieges putting people in camps.
|
On July 10 2026 03:02 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 00:44 dyhb wrote:On July 09 2026 23:45 Velr wrote:
The issue isn't deporting illegal immigrants.
The issue is doing so whiteout fair trial or following any other actual rules and laws or doing so in cases were people lived basically their entire lifes in the US... I think the fairer version of the post is that you do have an issue deporting illegal immigrants. You don't want them deported if they've been here long enough. To put this plainly, I read this as On July 09 2026 23:45 Velr wrote:I do have an issue deporting illegal immigrants. It shouldn't be done in cases were people lived basically their entire lifes in the US... + Show Spoiler +[only in cases of violent crimes, or felonies, or recent arrivals] aka only deported in special circumstances The issue is that this is an endorsement of unfettered illegal immigration. The issue is the encouragement to violate the laws of the US, since you're playing a good lottery of staying permanently. The issue is that you condone not "following ... actual rules and laws" when they're immigration laws. This remains an issue even if one political party embraces your position, and the other party is too corrupt, inept, or divided to do anything about it legislatively. I imagine that you would oppose any compromise that strips off ICE masks and long detentions and steeply punishes mistreatment during arrest and detention, but successfully deports hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that aren't guilty of other crimes. That will never stop "being the issue" if everybody knows what will happen once the currently hated Trump admin policies are dead. I call that a free boost to Republicans. Yes, when you alter words i suddenly say something different. The... are you doing? When someone can stay in your country for 20 years whiteout a criminal conviction or anything of the sort, he should not be deported, he should be nationalized. Thats just good business. Afaik is Trump still behind Obama on deportations. All Trump did so far is enacting cruel, inefficient, expensive raids and sieges putting people in camps. So I think you should change your first post to "The issue is deportations" instead of "The issue is not deportations." You have an issue with them. It isn't linked to any of the rest of the stuff.
Just in case you missed it:
That will never stop "being the issue" if everybody knows what will happen once the currently hated Trump admin policies are dead. And if you have to go back 10 years to Obama ... well I think you're in denial about the issue. You want selective enforcement of the laws, America has seen that, and that's a huge issue and probably "the issue," and one of the big ones hurting Democrats moving forward.
|
On July 10 2026 00:56 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2026 20:54 Jankisa wrote:Zuckerberg and Page did something innovative very early on and most of the money making business that makes their respective companies insanely huge came from acquisitions of other services and websites or from developing of new services within the existing ones, all of that coding and business development was produced by people's labor.
Zuckerberg specifically is really not that good of a coder and his big invention has been stolen from the Winkevi twins.
Some of those people have been handsomely compensated with stock options so they are certainly very rich right now, but they are absolutely nowhere in the neighborhood of $300 billion level rich of those two, and the contributions of those 2 and the value of their labor is not x 1000 or whatever it is as compared to the person who coded Gmail or Youtube.
Also, the whole conversation is not and should not be who deserves how much money, the issue is what do those people use that money and power that comes with it for.
Gates is not perfect but he did help save millions of lives, McKenzie Scott is trying to give away as much of her wealth as she can and she is helping many, and it's an absolute shame that she is out donating people like Page, Musk, Brin, Elison, not only in % of her net worth but also in absolute terms. + Show Spoiler +
These people generated the vast majority of their wealth off of labor of others and by exploiting their customers, creators on their platforms etc., in a just society they would be made to use that money for good, unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions the world has very few just societies, and USA is firmly very close to the bottom of the list of unjust ones.
What is more important than their personal predilections is that NO ONE has donated more than McKenzie Scott has since she divorced Bezos. Despite that, she's got about as much wealth as she did when she started (maybe more, we can't truly know). That speaks to problems so far beyond wealthy individuals and their charity choices that the typical "good guy vs bad guy" (or rather "evil person vs less evil person") political framing can't address.
I personally don't like categorizing people into the "evil" category, just broken. I firmly believe that once you reach a certain threshold of wealth the brain of an average human gets broken in a way where they cease to care about anything other then maximizing their wealth and power.
It's a competition and letting someone have a bigger number then you is the ultimate defeat, to people who believe they are the best and the smartest losing is the biggest fear in their life, losing 5 % of their wealth is catastrophic, especially since more you have the bigger number those 5 % represent, so they just go insane and become these fucked up embodiment of Capitalism,
When some of them reach a threshold where they are so rich they don't know what else to do, like Putin or Trump, they start chasing "history" and we all pay the price for that.
When some of them reach a point where their tweets can move markets and they face no consequences for manipulating them, like Musk, they get addicted to that and they want to change the world into what they think it should be.
There are, of course, notable exceptions, Warren Buffet, to me, by all extents and proposes seems to be a decent bloke, so it's not all of them, or in the case of Gates, not all of them all of the time, but in general, this kind of wealth really, really fucks you up to the point where you join the Epstein class and you never go back.
The most broken ones aren't them, they have been put in extreme circumstances, to me it's their defenders, people who don't really have a lot of adversity in life but have been brainwashed by media and their upbringing into thinking that accumulation of Capital is the ultimate goal of civilization, and as you can see form this thread they are very passionate about defending these other broken individuals because they have been convinced, basically like this:
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/pK8qHXE.png)
|
Northern Ireland27202 Posts
On July 10 2026 03:42 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 00:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 09 2026 20:54 Jankisa wrote:Zuckerberg and Page did something innovative very early on and most of the money making business that makes their respective companies insanely huge came from acquisitions of other services and websites or from developing of new services within the existing ones, all of that coding and business development was produced by people's labor.
Zuckerberg specifically is really not that good of a coder and his big invention has been stolen from the Winkevi twins.
Some of those people have been handsomely compensated with stock options so they are certainly very rich right now, but they are absolutely nowhere in the neighborhood of $300 billion level rich of those two, and the contributions of those 2 and the value of their labor is not x 1000 or whatever it is as compared to the person who coded Gmail or Youtube.
Also, the whole conversation is not and should not be who deserves how much money, the issue is what do those people use that money and power that comes with it for.
Gates is not perfect but he did help save millions of lives, McKenzie Scott is trying to give away as much of her wealth as she can and she is helping many, and it's an absolute shame that she is out donating people like Page, Musk, Brin, Elison, not only in % of her net worth but also in absolute terms. + Show Spoiler +
These people generated the vast majority of their wealth off of labor of others and by exploiting their customers, creators on their platforms etc., in a just society they would be made to use that money for good, unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions the world has very few just societies, and USA is firmly very close to the bottom of the list of unjust ones.
What is more important than their personal predilections is that NO ONE has donated more than McKenzie Scott has since she divorced Bezos. Despite that, she's got about as much wealth as she did when she started (maybe more, we can't truly know). That speaks to problems so far beyond wealthy individuals and their charity choices that the typical "good guy vs bad guy" (or rather "evil person vs less evil person") political framing can't address. I personally don't like categorizing people into the "evil" category, just broken. I firmly believe that once you reach a certain threshold of wealth the brain of an average human gets broken in a way where they cease to care about anything other then maximizing their wealth and power. It's a competition and letting someone have a bigger number then you is the ultimate defeat, to people who believe they are the best and the smartest losing is the biggest fear in their life, losing 5 % of their wealth is catastrophic, especially since more you have the bigger number those 5 % represent, so they just go insane and become these fucked up embodiment of Capitalism, When some of them reach a threshold where they are so rich they don't know what else to do, like Putin or Trump, they start chasing "history" and we all pay the price for that. When some of them reach a point where their tweets can move markets and they face no consequences for manipulating them, like Musk, they get addicted to that and they want to change the world into what they think it should be. There are, of course, notable exceptions, Warren Buffet, to me, by all extents and proposes seems to be a decent bloke, so it's not all of them, or in the case of Gates, not all of them all of the time, but in general, this kind of wealth really, really fucks you up to the point where you join the Epstein class and you never go back. The most broken ones aren't them, they have been put in extreme circumstances, to me it's their defenders, people who don't really have a lot of adversity in life but have been brainwashed by media and their upbringing into thinking that accumulation of Capital is the ultimate goal of civilization, and as you can see form this thread they are very passionate about defending these other broken individuals because they have been convinced, basically like this:
Excellently put
|
The fact that some billionaires have at least something resembling a conscience is not a sufficient argument to not tax them all down to mortal levels. If they're going to spend it all on charity, then let's democratize that wealth (that they needed the rest of civilization to accumulate, I remind you) so we have a say in where it goes. If they're not going to spend it all on charity, they're going to waste it on disgustingly unethical things like sex tourism and political influence.
|
On July 10 2026 03:42 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 00:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 09 2026 20:54 Jankisa wrote:Zuckerberg and Page did something innovative very early on and most of the money making business that makes their respective companies insanely huge came from acquisitions of other services and websites or from developing of new services within the existing ones, all of that coding and business development was produced by people's labor.
Zuckerberg specifically is really not that good of a coder and his big invention has been stolen from the Winkevi twins.
Some of those people have been handsomely compensated with stock options so they are certainly very rich right now, but they are absolutely nowhere in the neighborhood of $300 billion level rich of those two, and the contributions of those 2 and the value of their labor is not x 1000 or whatever it is as compared to the person who coded Gmail or Youtube.
Also, the whole conversation is not and should not be who deserves how much money, the issue is what do those people use that money and power that comes with it for.
Gates is not perfect but he did help save millions of lives, McKenzie Scott is trying to give away as much of her wealth as she can and she is helping many, and it's an absolute shame that she is out donating people like Page, Musk, Brin, Elison, not only in % of her net worth but also in absolute terms. + Show Spoiler +
These people generated the vast majority of their wealth off of labor of others and by exploiting their customers, creators on their platforms etc., in a just society they would be made to use that money for good, unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions the world has very few just societies, and USA is firmly very close to the bottom of the list of unjust ones.
What is more important than their personal predilections is that NO ONE has donated more than McKenzie Scott has since she divorced Bezos. Despite that, she's got about as much wealth as she did when she started (maybe more, we can't truly know). That speaks to problems so far beyond wealthy individuals and their charity choices that the typical "good guy vs bad guy" (or rather "evil person vs less evil person") political framing can't address. I personally don't like categorizing people into the "evil" category, just broken. I firmly believe that once you reach a certain threshold of wealth the brain of an average human gets broken in a way where they cease to care about anything other then maximizing their wealth and power. It's a competition and letting someone have a bigger number then you is the ultimate defeat, to people who believe they are the best and the smartest losing is the biggest fear in their life, losing 5 % of their wealth is catastrophic, especially since more you have the bigger number those 5 % represent, so they just go insane and become these fucked up embodiment of Capitalism, When some of them reach a threshold where they are so rich they don't know what else to do, like Putin or Trump, they start chasing "history" and we all pay the price for that. When some of them reach a point where their tweets can move markets and they face no consequences for manipulating them, like Musk, they get addicted to that and they want to change the world into what they think it should be. There are, of course, notable exceptions, Warren Buffet, to me, by all extents and proposes seems to be a decent bloke, so it's not all of them, or in the case of Gates, not all of them all of the time, but in general, this kind of wealth really, really fucks you up to the point where you join the Epstein class and you never go back. The most broken ones aren't them, they have been put in extreme circumstances, to me it's their defenders, people who don't really have a lot of adversity in life but have been brainwashed by media and their upbringing into thinking that accumulation of Capital is the ultimate goal of civilization, and as you can see form this thread they are very passionate about defending these other broken individuals because they have been convinced, basically like this: The cartoon rich guy manipulating the working class to blame an immigrant certainly makes this post humorous. Is this a satire of Marxist class consciousness, or an actual good-faith proposal? The entire post needs an Orwell caption directly below
Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred—a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacuo hatred—against the exploiters.
|
On July 10 2026 03:02 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 00:44 dyhb wrote:On July 09 2026 23:45 Velr wrote:
The issue isn't deporting illegal immigrants.
The issue is doing so whiteout fair trial or following any other actual rules and laws or doing so in cases were people lived basically their entire lifes in the US... I think the fairer version of the post is that you do have an issue deporting illegal immigrants. You don't want them deported if they've been here long enough. To put this plainly, I read this as On July 09 2026 23:45 Velr wrote:I do have an issue deporting illegal immigrants. It shouldn't be done in cases were people lived basically their entire lifes in the US... + Show Spoiler +[only in cases of violent crimes, or felonies, or recent arrivals] aka only deported in special circumstances The issue is that this is an endorsement of unfettered illegal immigration. The issue is the encouragement to violate the laws of the US, since you're playing a good lottery of staying permanently. The issue is that you condone not "following ... actual rules and laws" when they're immigration laws. This remains an issue even if one political party embraces your position, and the other party is too corrupt, inept, or divided to do anything about it legislatively. I imagine that you would oppose any compromise that strips off ICE masks and long detentions and steeply punishes mistreatment during arrest and detention, but successfully deports hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that aren't guilty of other crimes. That will never stop "being the issue" if everybody knows what will happen once the currently hated Trump admin policies are dead. I call that a free boost to Republicans. Yes, when you alter words i suddenly say something different. The... are you doing? When someone can stay in your country for 20 years whiteout a criminal conviction or anything of the sort, he should not be deported, he should be nationalized. Thats just good business. Afaik is Trump still behind Obama on deportations. All Trump did so far is enacting cruel, inefficient, expensive raids and sieges putting people in camps.
And Obama did it at a tiny fraction of the cost. If these people were not completely brainwashed but still cared about illegal immigration they would be worshiping Obama and wondering how Trump could spend so much to accomplish so little.
|
On July 10 2026 03:42 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 00:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 09 2026 20:54 Jankisa wrote:Zuckerberg and Page did something innovative very early on and most of the money making business that makes their respective companies insanely huge came from acquisitions of other services and websites or from developing of new services within the existing ones, all of that coding and business development was produced by people's labor.
Zuckerberg specifically is really not that good of a coder and his big invention has been stolen from the Winkevi twins.
Some of those people have been handsomely compensated with stock options so they are certainly very rich right now, but they are absolutely nowhere in the neighborhood of $300 billion level rich of those two, and the contributions of those 2 and the value of their labor is not x 1000 or whatever it is as compared to the person who coded Gmail or Youtube.
Also, the whole conversation is not and should not be who deserves how much money, the issue is what do those people use that money and power that comes with it for.
Gates is not perfect but he did help save millions of lives, McKenzie Scott is trying to give away as much of her wealth as she can and she is helping many, and it's an absolute shame that she is out donating people like Page, Musk, Brin, Elison, not only in % of her net worth but also in absolute terms. + Show Spoiler +
These people generated the vast majority of their wealth off of labor of others and by exploiting their customers, creators on their platforms etc., in a just society they would be made to use that money for good, unfortunately, with a few notable exceptions the world has very few just societies, and USA is firmly very close to the bottom of the list of unjust ones.
What is more important than their personal predilections is that NO ONE has donated more than McKenzie Scott has since she divorced Bezos. Despite that, she's got about as much wealth as she did when she started (maybe more, we can't truly know). That speaks to problems so far beyond wealthy individuals and their charity choices that the typical "good guy vs bad guy" (or rather "evil person vs less evil person") political framing can't address. I personally don't like categorizing people into the "evil" category, just broken. I firmly believe that once you reach a certain threshold of wealth the brain of an average human gets broken in a way where they cease to care about anything other then maximizing their wealth and power. It's a competition and letting someone have a bigger number then you is the ultimate defeat, to people who believe they are the best and the smartest losing is the biggest fear in their life, losing 5 % of their wealth is catastrophic, especially since more you have the bigger number those 5 % represent, so they just go insane and become these fucked up embodiment of Capitalism, When some of them reach a threshold where they are so rich they don't know what else to do, like Putin or Trump, they start chasing "history" and we all pay the price for that. When some of them reach a point where their tweets can move markets and they face no consequences for manipulating them, like Musk, they get addicted to that and they want to change the world into what they think it should be. There are, of course, notable exceptions, Warren Buffet, to me, by all extents and proposes seems to be a decent bloke, so it's not all of them, or in the case of Gates, not all of them all of the time, but in general, this kind of wealth really, really fucks you up to the point where you join the Epstein class and you never go back. The most broken ones aren't them, they have been put in extreme circumstances, to me it's their defenders, people who don't really have a lot of adversity in life but have been brainwashed by media and their upbringing into thinking that accumulation of Capital is the ultimate goal of civilization, and as you can see form this thread they are very passionate about defending these other broken individuals because they have been convinced, basically like this: + Show Spoiler +
On July 10 2026 04:50 LightSpectra wrote:
The fact that some billionaires have at least something resembling a conscience is not a sufficient argument to not tax them all down to mortal levels. If they're going to spend it all on charity, then let's democratize that wealth (that they needed the rest of civilization to accumulate, I remind you) so we have a say in where it goes. If they're not going to spend it all on charity, they're going to waste it on disgustingly unethical things like sex tourism and political influence. I agree on not using "evil". It is pretty reasonably described by antisocial personality disorder and addiction.
Generally, I'm with Light on this one. I believe "decent" and "billionaire" are mutually exclusive concepts, except perhaps in the rare instances mentioned before where a billionaire became not a billionaire.
They could all be Buffet and they'd still all be bad for society. The system rewards a specific type of compulsive resource-hoarding behavior, and then protects the hoarders from the psychological and social consequences of their hoarding and insulation.
As for the lackeys, certainly not a fan, but you can't underestimate the pragmatism of "If you can't beat em, join em"
On July 08 2026 04:19 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2026 03:03 LightSpectra wrote:
I will never understand the mindset that not only should billionaires even exist at all in a world replete with child poverty, especially in our own country, but that their wealth should be magnified and their (already middling) social responsibility vaporized. They need more tax cuts because they don't have enough jumbo jets and giga-yachts than they already do. Then when they're inevitably getting caught committing felonies, they need pardons because the economy would collapse without them.
Bootlicking as a personality should have been obliterated from the human race centuries ago. It's basically "If you can't beat em, join em" If you recognize the power billionaires (there are plenty others that don't show up on the forbes list) have over society, it is very easy to conclude that they're unstoppable and it's better to be their lackey than their enemy. What blows my mind is how people don't realize that encompasses the entire political structure in the US EDIT: Related article: Show nested quote +A Sense of Powerlessness Fosters System Justification: Implications for the Legitimation of Authority, Hierarchy,
and Government
In an attempt to explain the stability of hierarchy, we focus on the perspective of the powerless and how a
subjective sense of dependence leads them to imbue the system and its authorities with legitimacy. In Study 1,
we found in a nationally representative sample of U.S. employees that financial dependence on one’s job was
positively associated with the perceived legitimacy of one’s supervisor. In Study 2, we observed that a general
sense of powerlessness was positively correlated with the perceived legitimacy of the economic system. In
Studies 3 and 4, priming experimental participants with feelings of powerlessness increased their justification
of the social system, even when they were presented with system-challenging explanations for race, class, and
gender disparities. In Study 5, we demonstrated that the experience of powerlessness increased legitimation of
governmental authorities (relative to baseline conditions). The processes we identify are likely to perpetuate
inequality insofar as the powerless justify rather than strive to change the hierarchical structures that disadvantage them https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/justice/document/a_sense_of_powerlessness_fosters_system_justification.pdf
|
On July 09 2026 17:41 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2026 17:12 ETisME wrote:On July 09 2026 16:56 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On July 09 2026 16:39 ETisME wrote:On July 08 2026 09:31 LightSpectra wrote:On July 08 2026 08:45 ETisME wrote:On July 08 2026 02:53 Jankisa wrote:
It's mind boggling to me that people can smugly advocate for individuals having more money and power then whole nations of tens of millions while 5 million children die from consequences of poverty every year and still sleep at night.
I almost wrote "and feel good about themselves" but the individuals posting this shit here are clearly miserable so that definitely wouldn't work. Not your money, not yours to control or rule how to spend. Should they also stay up because how much job/wealth they have generated then? I find it annoyingly stupid how we keep looking at their wealth like it's some sort of public asset to be spent. Because it is. No billionaire has ever created their wealth ex nihilo. Labor creates wealth and the wealthy take the lion's share because they had preexisting capital to invest. The people who actually create things that advance society, like Albert Einstein, are frequently socialists. you can't be serious. Labour doesn't create wealth, value generation rewarded create wealth. There are plenty of value generation without hard and large amount of labour. "actually create things that advance society", "how do you measure "actual" we measure cost/profit because that's how we can put a medium of exchange value to the equation. There are plenty of innovation in every single business sector, be it in the optimization of factory management to efficient warehousing with automation. These are all extremely powerful better resource allocation for value generation. That's his point, who creates that automation? Who implements it? Do you think the billionaires are sitting down and analysing resource flows, and the merits of existing automation technologies, there are barely any billionaires who are even passably knowledgeable in these fields, let alone experts. The billionaire tells someone in upper/middle management 'I want our warehouse operation to be cheaper/more efficient'. Then this c-suite manager asks an expert (or tells an underling to find some expert) to find, plan then implement it. Eg the actual systems experts and workers who implement it are doing labour. The business owner just profits from it. What do you mean? Mark from Facebook, Larry Page from Google etc are all founders of the companies and very hands on with the company. Automation is part of the entire business; the business service and product are the valuation. Marketing, logistics, financing, HR etc are all part of the business, spearheaded by the CEOs and the board. Valuable employees are rewarded with stock options, which space X showed just how valuable it is, many have been made millionaires now. Many of these automations are part of the business, they are rewarded based on their KPI and promotion. Start your own automation company if it's that valuable. It's not like there's no companies specialised in automation, from software to hardware. Are you going then cry about how CEOs earning the most again? There are plenty of extremely wealthy family, Bernard Arnault, one of the richest man in the world $160Millions, remind me how many startups did he create, how many his children start a few successful companies? What a loser mindset. Zuckerberg, and Page are rare exceptions to the rule, in that they started off as essentially technical 'staff'. Guess what, writing the codebase for facebook, or the google search engine... is labour. This is the same thing that any developer/coder does (yes it was very innovative, but like inventors, the actual work of creating any new system IS labour). Saying that labour doesn't create wealth is insane. It may not be an efficient way to make money, but labour underlies everything big businesses 'sell'. The bags that Louis Vuitton sell? Labour made those bags. Google, Facebook? Labour coded that software, labour installed the servers that keep them running. Management aren't gods, they don't just speak things into existence, someone needs to actually do the work to make these things exist, eg it requires labour. Bernard Arnault didn't design LV bags, he doesn't sew them together, he doesn't do the very successful marketing to allow LV to sell them at a ludicrous premium. If he did not have all that labour working for him, LV/dior/Tiffany & Co would be worth nothing, since they wouldn't be able to sell any of their products that requires labour to manufacture, to market, even to sell. Bernard doesn't make a crapton of money because he creates anything that people pay money (and these days neither do Zuckerberg or Page) for, it's because he owns things (eg companies). Companies that make money, yes, but companies that are full of people who do labour to make that money. Ownership is not labour (it can involve doing some labour), when you rent out a house you own, you are making money from ownership. (if you do your own maintenance, then yes you are doing some labour). But that house was built by labour, if there wasn't the labour to build the house, you wouldn't be able to rent it out.
and bill gate as well? these are just the well-known founders, not that they are rare. they are rare because other CEOs dont make themselves known. Plenty of chinese extremely wealthy owners are self made.
I didn't say labor doesn't generate wealth. Labour is only part of wealth generation, the company as a whole is generating wealth.
Yes Bernard Arnault does not do any of that, because the value generation for the company isn't making bags, it's that he can coordinate the company to sell the product at the premium.
It isn't just marketing or design, it's every part of it.
And who spearhead the company's direction?
You don't agree? Take a look at the risk Elon taken for space X, or UK's jaguar failure. It's not just the labour, and labour were rewarded/punished for the CEO's decisions.
You can argue about the % of wealth rewarded, but let's not pretend the total amount of wealth rewarded isn't upto just a few key irreplaceable persons in the company, and they are always going to be very wealthy.
And it's not your or anyone's money, it's theirs.
|
Northern Ireland27202 Posts
Can’t remember who said it, although it has Kwark vibes, but if some monkey just sat around bossing its peers around, and hoarded all the bananas, the other monkeys would probably end up beating it to death before long.
|
On July 10 2026 07:27 WombaT wrote:
Can’t remember who said it, although it has Kwark vibes, but if some monkey just sat around bossing its peers around, and hoarded all the bananas, the other monkeys would probably end up beating it to death before long.
Gives a different but also accurate visualization for "If you can't beat em, join em".
|
On July 10 2026 07:14 ETisME wrote:
You don't agree? Take a look at the risk Elon taken for space X, or UK's jaguar failure
If SpaceX failed he'd get a bailout courtesy of the taxpayer. Billionaires love socializing their losses and privatizing their gains.
|
Northern Ireland27202 Posts
On July 10 2026 07:42 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 07:14 ETisME wrote:
You don't agree? Take a look at the risk Elon taken for space X, or UK's jaguar failure If SpaceX failed he'd get a bailout courtesy of the taxpayer. Billionaires love socializing their losses and privatizing their gains.
Even purely within the private sector. If the CEO/owner fucks up, well we gotta lay off workers because these are hard times for the company.
It’s pretty damn difficult for people who get into the billionaire strata to face much hardship if they fail.
Elon Musk can blow billions on Twitter and make it actively worse and hey, that’s fine. Zuckerberg can throw billions into an abortive metaverse and hey that’s cool.
I don’t think it’s a level of wealth and thus power that should exist to begin with. But if we are accepting the mythos of meritocracy and being a job creator justifying it for a second, if you resoundingly fail, the consequences should be somewhat comensurate with the rewards when you succeed. Which patently isn’t the case.
On July 10 2026 07:32 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2026 07:27 WombaT wrote:
Can’t remember who said it, although it has Kwark vibes, but if some monkey just sat around bossing its peers around, and hoarded all the bananas, the other monkeys would probably end up beating it to death before long. Gives a different but also accurate visualization for "If you can't beat em, join em".
Haha, indeed!
|
LV's a great example. Can someone explain to me why selling LV bags for $1000 instead of $200 is a net good for society, or for a country, or whatever? No I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to do it, not attempting to argue for/against a free market here.
I'm selfishly asking to be educated.
What I want is the basic case for why "wealth generation" is a positive. Not an area I have any serious knowledge in, but I can see off the top of my head arguments that it could be good for a country if that money flows from other countries. I could imagine something about job creation too, but job creation isn't in a vacuum. If we have more successful wealth-generating companies, then we have more money flowing out of the same people's hands that those new jobs are providing them. So is that just good because eek we have tons of people and lots is automated these days so we need to keep finding ways to keep folk busy one way or another? Is it even more benefit to society if your product is targeted at rich people, than at poor people, because of how purchasing it affects general society's bottom lines? I don't see that really talked about much, but I guess it makes sense that, say, sports betting is less good for society than LV bags.
A while back I asked someone why GDP is even a thing to care about, and was told that a small GDP just means your country gets pushed around by others globally. That made some sense to me, but I think I need some more convincing that "shareholder value" maps well to actual societal benefit. Like if Musk fakes autonomous robots by remote-controlling them (again) and Tesla share price goes up, that's... good? For who?
|
On July 10 2026 07:27 WombaT wrote:
Can’t remember who said it, although it has Kwark vibes, but if some monkey just sat around bossing its peers around, and hoarded all the bananas, the other monkeys would probably end up beating it to death before long.
It may be first time when i see someone aspiring to be a monkey... 
On July 08 2026 15:50 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2026 11:36 WombaT wrote:On July 08 2026 10:43 dyhb wrote:On July 08 2026 10:33 WombaT wrote:On July 08 2026 10:00 dyhb wrote:On July 08 2026 09:41 Billyboy wrote:On July 08 2026 09:37 dyhb wrote:On July 08 2026 09:27 Billyboy wrote:On July 08 2026 09:15 dyhb wrote:On July 08 2026 06:48 Billyboy wrote:
He needs to get obliterated at the polls (and not the way he uses the word) as Sim said. On July 08 2026 07:35 Simberto wrote:
But it would require losing the election so hard that it is very obvious and there really is no question that they got demolished. Not just a moderate loss, but a loss so massive that they cannot explain it away. I swear that you all are trying to get pre-mad that an election win wasn't big enough to change everything, instantly, like in a Hollywood movie. The country will still be heavily divided, and that shit predates Trump and will continue after Trump. Accept a narrow victory and focus on stacking the gains 2026->2028. Softcore assassination porn and weird fantasying about avoiding Democracy when you don't like the results is not the way. Your heart's in the right place, but your head is not. Odd strawman from my post arguing against him dying in a video game. I did say softcore porn. Hardcore porn would be saying you think Donald Trump should be assassinated prior to leaving office. Actually, transitioning from a video game to a Hollywood drama about the perfect election victory has a narrative rhyme that I missed the first time around. GH is doing what you said, he’s setting up to quote the posts of Sim and Jan, and claim they need to join his revolution or something. The rest of us are just mixing hope and despair. Small election wins in subsequent elections are the kind of progress we need and can use, and big wins are possible if Iran keeps going the way its going and the tariffs keep killing the economy. I think the morose attitude on what a small win will say about America is puerile. On July 08 2026 09:50 WombaT wrote:On July 08 2026 09:37 dyhb wrote:On July 08 2026 09:27 Billyboy wrote:On July 08 2026 09:15 dyhb wrote:On July 08 2026 06:48 Billyboy wrote:
He needs to get obliterated at the polls (and not the way he uses the word) as Sim said. On July 08 2026 07:35 Simberto wrote:
But it would require losing the election so hard that it is very obvious and there really is no question that they got demolished. Not just a moderate loss, but a loss so massive that they cannot explain it away. I swear that you all are trying to get pre-mad that an election win wasn't big enough to change everything, instantly, like in a Hollywood movie. The country will still be heavily divided, and that shit predates Trump and will continue after Trump. Accept a narrow victory and focus on stacking the gains 2026->2028. Softcore assassination porn and weird fantasying about avoiding Democracy when you don't like the results is not the way. Your heart's in the right place, but your head is not. Odd strawman from my post arguing against him dying in a video game. I did say softcore porn. Hardcore porn would be saying you think Donald Trump should be assassinated prior to leaving office. Actually, transitioning from a video game to a Hollywood drama about the perfect election victory has a narrative rhyme that I missed the first time around. Nonetheless I’m pretty sure Billyboy nor Simberto expressed no such assassination sentiment, so it feels odd to me to throw it out in a direct reply to them. I’ve no such compunctions and I’ll admit to that, the sooner the cunt is out of office the better. Given there are seemingly no limits to what his own party will tolerate, and he’s clearly not going to face censure for his many crimes, death is quite the equaliser, something no person can escape. Would prefer natural causes or a hilarious accident than assassination, which I don’t support. The softcore assassination porn was more directed at you and simberto ("A much better scenario than assassination in minecraft" as an evaluation of degree). To Billy, it appears that his problem with assassination is martyrdom, not assassination. I wholly reject that, I’m in the hardcore assassination porn camp, give me some credit. I don’t think that’s accurate based on Billy’s general posting and what I’ve gleamed from his musing in general. He’s free to speak for himself of course, but contextually I took him to mean ‘assassination is bad, and there may be a martyr effect’, not ‘assassination is bad because there’s a martyr effect’. And to follow your earlier billionaire logic, not sure why it’s bad really. I think the death of a person would be of a benefit for wider society, what’s the problem? If you support any domestic policy or foreign intervention that so much as kills 2 people well, you’re twice as bad as me right off the block. Because you're not the only one on the block with ideas on who in society we should kill in order to make society better off. Perhaps not but my ideas are actually good ones. Facetiousness aside maybe Republicans should have backed impeachment, as they should have if they had any gumption. Instead we’re locked into 4 years of absolutely blatant corruption, with a man who has already skirted his just desserts actively stacking institutions in his favour So I mean you can’t get rid of him via legitimate means, that ain’t happening. So it’s either health issue, assassin or just sitting around watching this certifiable prick fuck around for another few years. I know where my preferences would lie there. Not really sure what the issue is with that really. To steelman dyhb's position, I think the bar being raised to assassinating a sitting president as acceptable political violence, it's important to recognize all the stuff that is beneath that bar which must then also be acceptable political violence. If you're okay with Trump being assassinated, then you'd have to accept Obama being assassinated also. After all, he's just a former president and not the sitting president. I think there's merit to that concern. For myself I'm 'okay with' Trump being assassinated for a reason other than him being a republican president. Someone lost their life savings dumping into trumpcoin and then got rugpulled and wants revenge, or some similar sort of karmic justice for Trump's many moral failings. Less a political assassination, more a personal one. And yeah obviously I'd rather we weren't talking about a sitting president being assassinated, but when he's this brazenly corrupt and the system is powerless to remove him, of course people are gonna talk about other options.
Literally what you saying is we need to find excuse. You also failed to identify what below the bar? Surely if it is okay to assassinate president in the name of political reason, then it should be also okay for sitting president to get rid of people advocating assassinating him, in the name of survival?
On July 08 2026 03:53 Falling wrote:Even if you are for cutting USAID, can you at least acknowledge that the way it was cut led to unnecessary death and suffering? If there is a support infrastructure that people are reliant upon. And then you suddenly yank it away without a transition period that's the absolutely the best way to destroy lives and the worst way to end a program. Right? And they did it while wasting food that had already been ear-marked for aid. That's was also really, really bad. Right? Unconscionable even? https://www.reuters.com/world/us-aid-cuts-leave-food-millions-mouldering-storage-2025-05-16/
That was never point of contest, although many desperately trying to do so. What was contested, was the idea that stopping helping someone makes you murderer. It seems that for quite few people here it is impossible to detach discussion about idea from discussion about a person.
On July 08 2026 06:17 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2026 05:26 Simberto wrote:On July 08 2026 05:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:It looks like we're back to trying to steal Greenland, this time threatening to not help allies militarily. (In the past, Trump has also threatened to take Greenland by military force, as well as threatened to impose additional tariffs on our allies.) Trump reignites call for US to control Greenland at NATO summit
President Donald Trump reignited his call for the United States to control Greenland, threatening to remove American soldiers from European nations over the issue, as the 2026 NATO summit got underway in Ankara on July 7. ... Referring to Greenland, Trump added: "That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark."
Trump took NATO to the brink of disaster in January before he eventually ruled out military action to acquire Greenland and pulled back threats to impose tariffs on European allies. Tensions deescalated after Trump announced the "framework of a future deal" with NATO, Denmark and the Arctic region on security matters.
Trump's Greenland talks died down over the following months, yet Trump introduced a new threat at the NATO summit in Turkey: removing U.S. soldiers from Europe over the continent's opposition. "With all the money we spend to help them with Russia ‒ and we don't have to spend any money ‒ we could remove all of our soldiers out of Europe, because, as you probably noticed, Europe's a very different place than it was 20 years ago, a lot different, much different. ...
The United States has about 68,000 active-duty military personnel stationed in European countries. In May, the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of 5,000 US. troops from Germany in an apparent response to Chancellor Friedrich Merz's criticism of the U.S. war in Iran.
"It is a well-known position of the United States that it wants to own and take over Greenland. I hope that it is equally well-known everywhere that this is not going to happen," Frederiksen said, adding that Denmark has no plans to discuss Arctic or Greenland issues in Ankara. Greenland's government has also repeatedly said the territory is not for sale. Múte Egede, Greenland's foreign minister, in a statement said Greenland's future should be decided by its people. "That's how it has always been. And that's how it always will be," he said. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/07/07/trump-us-greenland-control-nato-summit/90836515007/ Just one week without stupid bullshit is apparently too much to ask. Your fucking manbaby just can't handle not being the center of attention for even three seconds. If that guy didn't control the worlds biggest military and has proven to make incredibly stupid and idiotic calls that hurt everyone, we could just mute him. But sadly we can't. US, get your shit together. I am so fucking tired of it. Someone could shoot Trump (in a video game), might help.
et tu brute? Not even mad, just disappointed
On July 08 2026 09:31 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2026 08:45 ETisME wrote:On July 08 2026 02:53 Jankisa wrote:
It's mind boggling to me that people can smugly advocate for individuals having more money and power then whole nations of tens of millions while 5 million children die from consequences of poverty every year and still sleep at night.
I almost wrote "and feel good about themselves" but the individuals posting this shit here are clearly miserable so that definitely wouldn't work. Not your money, not yours to control or rule how to spend. Should they also stay up because how much job/wealth they have generated then? I find it annoyingly stupid how we keep looking at their wealth like it's some sort of public asset to be spent. Because it is. No billionaire has ever created their wealth ex nihilo. Labor creates wealth and the wealthy take the lion's share because they had preexisting capital to invest. The people who actually create things that advance society, like Albert Einstein, are frequently socialists.
No one ever created anything ex nihilo dude, thats just not possible.
On July 08 2026 01:00 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2026 22:37 WombaT wrote:On July 07 2026 22:30 Jankisa wrote:
I'm shocked that Razyda "all socialists should be killed" is on the side of "let people die from preventable diseases so Musk can add another 0 to his net worth".
I'm even more shocked that language police GH is siding with actual fascist who love cutting off aid from starving children because they are arguing with people who hurt their feelings.
oBlade comparing Bush admin who was hunting for imaginary nukes in Iraq under similar pretenses that they are doing in Iran now and was thus too busy to prevent Kim dynasty from getting their own in order to "make a point" is absolutely hilarious.
This episode has sent a huge signal to the whole world that the only way to be safe is to have nukes, it made it more likely, rather then less that Iran and any other country gets one, there are no serious geopolitical analyst or military analysts who think otherwise, but oBlade would much rather take the word of his daddy Trump and his daddy Bibi then use his brain for a change. Did Razyda actually express that sentiment? If so I must have missed it, but just to clarify. Show nested quote +On May 22 2026 05:02 Razyda wrote:
Quite frankly, anyone advocating tax on unrealised gains, or wealth tax, for private individuals, should be either imprisoned, executed or put in mental asylum, because there is no helping such a person. Well, sorry, my bad. I misremembered how he qualified who should be killed / imprisoned, so it's not all socialists but basically anyone who wants to tax the rich, to me, socialists fit in that bucket so that's where my brain put it.
Yeah... I am glad that you recommend reading history books to others, have you tried reading yourself? I assure it is very rewarding experience. I was very specific about which taxes, and haven't said anything about "the rich".
bolded - what you saying is, there was 0 thinking involved, merely instinct? like an animal, basically?
|
doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1334 Posts
On July 10 2026 07:14 ETisME wrote:
I didn't say labor doesn't generate wealth. Labour is only part of wealth generation, the company as a whole is generating wealth.
You literally did.
On July 09 2026 16:39 ETisME wrote:
you can't be serious.
Labour doesn't create wealth, value generation rewarded create wealth.
There are plenty of value generation without hard and large amount of labour.
On July 10 2026 07:14 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2026 17:41 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On July 09 2026 17:12 ETisME wrote:On July 09 2026 16:56 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On July 09 2026 16:39 ETisME wrote:On July 08 2026 09:31 LightSpectra wrote:On July 08 2026 08:45 ETisME wrote:On July 08 2026 02:53 Jankisa wrote:
It's mind boggling to me that people can smugly advocate for individuals having more money and power then whole nations of tens of millions while 5 million children die from consequences of poverty every year and still sleep at night.
I almost wrote "and feel good about themselves" but the individuals posting this shit here are clearly miserable so that definitely wouldn't work. Not your money, not yours to control or rule how to spend. Should they also stay up because how much job/wealth they have generated then? I find it annoyingly stupid how we keep looking at their wealth like it's some sort of public asset to be spent. Because it is. No billionaire has ever created their wealth ex nihilo. Labor creates wealth and the wealthy take the lion's share because they had preexisting capital to invest. The people who actually create things that advance society, like Albert Einstein, are frequently socialists. you can't be serious. Labour doesn't create wealth, value generation rewarded create wealth. There are plenty of value generation without hard and large amount of labour. "actually create things that advance society", "how do you measure "actual" we measure cost/profit because that's how we can put a medium of exchange value to the equation. There are plenty of innovation in every single business sector, be it in the optimization of factory management to efficient warehousing with automation. These are all extremely powerful better resource allocation for value generation. That's his point, who creates that automation? Who implements it? Do you think the billionaires are sitting down and analysing resource flows, and the merits of existing automation technologies, there are barely any billionaires who are even passably knowledgeable in these fields, let alone experts. The billionaire tells someone in upper/middle management 'I want our warehouse operation to be cheaper/more efficient'. Then this c-suite manager asks an expert (or tells an underling to find some expert) to find, plan then implement it. Eg the actual systems experts and workers who implement it are doing labour. The business owner just profits from it. What do you mean? Mark from Facebook, Larry Page from Google etc are all founders of the companies and very hands on with the company. Automation is part of the entire business; the business service and product are the valuation. Marketing, logistics, financing, HR etc are all part of the business, spearheaded by the CEOs and the board. Valuable employees are rewarded with stock options, which space X showed just how valuable it is, many have been made millionaires now. Many of these automations are part of the business, they are rewarded based on their KPI and promotion. Start your own automation company if it's that valuable. It's not like there's no companies specialised in automation, from software to hardware. Are you going then cry about how CEOs earning the most again? There are plenty of extremely wealthy family, Bernard Arnault, one of the richest man in the world $160Millions, remind me how many startups did he create, how many his children start a few successful companies? What a loser mindset. Zuckerberg, and Page are rare exceptions to the rule, in that they started off as essentially technical 'staff'. Guess what, writing the codebase for facebook, or the google search engine... is labour. This is the same thing that any developer/coder does (yes it was very innovative, but like inventors, the actual work of creating any new system IS labour). Saying that labour doesn't create wealth is insane. It may not be an efficient way to make money, but labour underlies everything big businesses 'sell'. The bags that Louis Vuitton sell? Labour made those bags. Google, Facebook? Labour coded that software, labour installed the servers that keep them running. Management aren't gods, they don't just speak things into existence, someone needs to actually do the work to make these things exist, eg it requires labour. Bernard Arnault didn't design LV bags, he doesn't sew them together, he doesn't do the very successful marketing to allow LV to sell them at a ludicrous premium. If he did not have all that labour working for him, LV/dior/Tiffany & Co would be worth nothing, since they wouldn't be able to sell any of their products that requires labour to manufacture, to market, even to sell. Bernard doesn't make a crapton of money because he creates anything that people pay money (and these days neither do Zuckerberg or Page) for, it's because he owns things (eg companies). Companies that make money, yes, but companies that are full of people who do labour to make that money. Ownership is not labour (it can involve doing some labour), when you rent out a house you own, you are making money from ownership. (if you do your own maintenance, then yes you are doing some labour). But that house was built by labour, if there wasn't the labour to build the house, you wouldn't be able to rent it out. and bill gate as well? these are just the well-known founders, not that they are rare. they are rare because other CEOs dont make themselves known. Plenty of chinese extremely wealthy owners are self made. I didn't say labor doesn't generate wealth. Labour is only part of wealth generation, the company as a whole is generating wealth. Yes Bernard Arnault does not do any of that, because the value generation for the company isn't making bags, it's that he can coordinate the company to sell the product at the premium. It isn't just marketing or design, it's every part of it. And who spearhead the company's direction? You don't agree? Take a look at the risk Elon taken for space X, or UK's jaguar failure. It's not just the labour, and labour were rewarded/punished for the CEO's decisions. You can argue about the % of wealth rewarded, but let's not pretend the total amount of wealth rewarded isn't upto just a few key irreplaceable persons in the company, and they are always going to be very wealthy. And it's not your or anyone's money, it's theirs.
I didn't say extremely wealthy people can't be self made. I certainly didn't say they can't engage in labour themselves (eg writing the original code, performing process/industrial optimisation if they are capable of it etc).
What I am saying is you don't become extremely wealthy through that labour, to do so requires utilizing other people's labour. Larry Page is not rich because the code and idea for the google search engine is so good that people paying for use of it has generated him billions of dollars worth of income. He's rich because he owned a large percentage of Google, now Alphabet, a company which employs well over a hundred thousand people performing labour.
Alphabet doesn't make (or is worth) what it does today because of what Page/Brin created. It's worth what it's worth now almost entirely from the rewriting/expanding of the codebase, extra services since created/bought, finding advertisers, marketing etc. Eg it makes it's profit almost entirely off the work (eg labour) of it's employees. This is not to belittle the labour that Page/Brin did, just pointing out that it's absurd to look at Alphabet/Google as a model where the founders/owners created/create most of the value, whereas the people who do most of the everyday work for the company have somehow collectively done very little in comparison. Especially, when it's clear they are not indispensable, given that neither have worked at Google for a long time, yet the company continues to be (and increasingly) very profitable.
In Arnault's case, it's even more obvious. LV was already a luxury brand before he bought it. They already sold bags at a premium, that's their business model. He did hire very talented artistic directors and backed their (sometimes contraversial/risky) ideas, but this is more a case of owners getting out of the way of very talented labour than anything else, which is very often what owners of big businesses need to do.
Credit to him for seeing the talent, and backing them... but again who's doing all the value creation him or the Artistic directors, and all the people actually making, marketing, and selling the bags?
And ol' Elon Musk, the founder who didn't actually found Tesla, stapled a bunch of AI businesses that don't really exist to SpaceX, a small but legitimately profitable business to inflate its evaluation. I'm not going to comment on SpaceX as we genuinely don't know where it's going considering it's stock price volatility (and it's 'value''s dependency on said stock price).
He's the classic example of owners not getting out of the way of the experts at Tesla. He complained of 'production hell' for years while he personally tried to optimize the factory/assembly lines at Tesla, something he has no expertise at. Once he steps away, the problem goes away in a few months, because, guess what, manufacturing engineering is an actual field of engineering with experts, which Tesla probably already employed, setting up a factory is not that novel of a thing to do and there are professionals who are good at that sort of thing.
On July 10 2026 07:14 ETisME wrote:
You can argue about the % of wealth rewarded, but let's not pretend the total amount of wealth rewarded isn't up to just a few key irreplaceable persons in the company, and they are always going to be very wealthy.
I'm not worried about the wealth rewarded (well i'm not arguing about it here at least), I'm talking about wealth/value created.
If your point was that labour isn't (well) compensated, I don't think too many people would disagree with you (maybe big employers might). You are saying that labour doesn't CREATE value, which is absurdly wrong.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
