Everytime I look at small problems or big global problems, if you follow the money trail, it all leads to some billionaire who is either working towards increasing their wealth or protecting their wealth from decreasing.
Everything from politics, climate change, workers rights, democratic government, technology, land rights, human rights can all be rendered down to people fighting another group of people who defend the rights of a billionaire to keep their wealth or to expand their control.
If humanity got rid of or outlawed the notion of any one individual owning far too much money than they could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, we could free up so much wealth and energy to do other things like save ourselves from climate change.
The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive. Those people always come up with unending lists of reasons why we just can’t survive without people of unimaginable wealth and power.
It’s not the billionaires. It’s the enablers.
Great point and one I often circle back eventually when I have these discussions with my friends.
I’m starting to think that it is another one of ingrained human traits … we always want a world with protectors, leaders, figure heads … it’s like being children and wanting to be comforted by a parent, a mother or father.
Except it’s a twisted kind of need that we outgrew a long time ago because we are all becoming very capable, knowledgable and intelligent enough to exist on our own. Modern technology, the internet and mass communication is making us more aware of the world and each other and we are realizing that we don’t need figureheads any more.
We’re all made to think that we don’t, won’t or can’t possibly think like this. We’re made to believe that the world and humanity is one big dumb mob that would crumble without a leader.
I believe the opposite is true … it’s our supposed leaders, figureheads, strong men and billionaires that have all the incentive to keep the world as it is because it would mean they would lose most of their power and wealth … and with it their positions as leaders and figureheads.
The Emperors are strutting about the world completely naked … and we have to keep up the pretense that they are wearing the most beautiful fashions imaginable.
I’m starting to think that it is another one of ingrained human traits … we always want a world with protectors, leaders, figure heads … it’s like being children and wanting to be comforted by a parent, a mother or father.
A subset of humanity does, check out https://theauthoritarians.org/
If the billionaires can activate this subset in their interests, they can protect their positions.
That is one of many aspects, absolutely. The most liberal person I know has said and done many things to show me the way. But when asked about putting Trump on trial (He despises Trump) he says we should not because (basically) it would “look bad to children when they read about a US president being tried for crimes” in the history books.
I’m like, dude, if we don’t punish this MoFo, the next one is going to be writing the history books for us.
I’m pretty sure @unreasonabro@lemmy.world was being sarcastic.
It’s like every group of people in the world regardless if they are American or not … this only applies to the billionaires who are only a very small minority of the global population.
Just look around you and anyone you have remotely interacted with in your life … are they a billionaire? If yes then they are affected … if not, nothing changes.
All this talk about billionaires would only affect a few hundred people across the eight billion people on the planet.
Either we shift our thinking to getting rid of billionaires … or we continue to stand aside and let them rule the world to our collective detriment.
The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive.
I call this set the “idiot army”, the activated dunces. It’s propaganda, this 40% is not inherently bad people, it’s guillible, low-education, low-information people that have been activated by malicious propaganda to promote the interests of the billionaire class.
The solution lies not in eliminating or dominating this group, it lies in de-activating them. The typical person in this group, if not being actively directed is too busy in their own world to destroy society.
The first step towards any sort of revolution (violent or not) or real change our world needs has to start by destroying all for-profit news. As long as for-profit news controlled by the billionaires exists, the idiot army cannot be deactivated, and any acts of heroism will be called acts of terrorism.
Edit: But how to destroy the news? Law, as long as we exist in a state, use the available tools. Focus on ranked choice voting, increasing voter turnout, and running for office to collaborate with others to make laws that prevent the news from being so toxic and so profitable. What kinds of laws? Just throwing out ideas
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Change the First amendment (bill of rights) so that it applies only to individuals. A news business or organization does not have the right to free speech or press.
- Make the news unprofitable and risky for a business
- This would probably have a ton of other beneficial effects as businesses could then lose the right to lie
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Any company that produces news content may not operate in another other industries, and may have no executives or board members currently in any other company or married or have children in other companies.
- Make it difficult for the bad people to be in charge of the news
Agreed. A good first step was taking Fox to court. While we work to change the Constitution, we need private citizens suing enough that it stops being profitable to lie.
It’s propaganda, this 40% is not inherently bad people, it’s guillible, low-education, low-information people
There are plenty of highly educated people who are gullible and easily manipulated. Hell man, every fanatical Trumper I know has at least a bachelor’s degree.
There are definitely smarter and more educated Trump supporters, but I don’t count them in this group, I feel like those people more consciously and intentionally feel like Trump will help them exploit and oppress others (e.g business types, police, etc).
