this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
854 points (99.1% liked)

memes

10673 readers
2674 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

'eat the rich' specifically means 'we should eliminate the existence of the rich - by any means.' so taxation works, but more extreme methods are not ruled out. It's entirely up to the rich on how they'd prefer to respond to this motive - and it's then up to the working class extremists on how they respond in kind.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I agree with you; I think you have the meat of it.

There are two problem here: first is that "rich" isn't clearly defined. When the billionaires are all dead, are the millionaires next? Where doors it stop? Maybe that fucker in the house that's bigger than your's deserves to get her bullet too? How about anyone who's rich enough to own a house?

Second, kill the rich and we still have a system that enables consolidation of wealth. We'll just get a new group of 1%ers, only they'll probably be more dedicated to repressing the public to ensure that what happened to their predecessors doesn't happen to them.

Maybe the biggest problem, for me, is that I don't know what's better than what we have. Probably a limited capitalism, maybe modeled after one of the Nordic countries? Semi-socialist? I don't know. I'm pretty sure a huge part of the problem is the stock market (if not specifically, then the economic model that enables it), and laissez-faire economics is a shit-show fantasy that doesn't exist, but which the striving for causes all sorts of issues. But beyond that, I don't know how to limit consolidation of wealth, and outcomes like Citizens United.

So, people can kill all the CEOs they want; I don't expect it to improve anything.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're first point ends up just being a slippery slope fallacy. If we take out the billionaires, it's just a hop and skip until we take out the people in mobile homes! Just using a single data point provided by census.gov is 'Real median household income was $80,610 in 2023'. A person who's a lowly billionaire (i.e. JUST has $1,000,000,000) made 12,405 YEARS worth of money. Someone who's JUST a millionaire ($1,000,000) would have 12 years. Which if you flip that, it's possible for someone to earn a million dollars w/o exploiting people. It's clearly not possible to become a billionaire (using USD as the base) w/o being an immortal being who had a successful career starting in 10,381 BCE. The order of magnitude ends up being overlooked since it's just the next thousand -> million -> billion. And to answer, when would it stop, it would probably stop naturally. Prices keep going up so billionaires can be multi billionaires and now we have one jack-ass gunning for being a trillionaire. And our taxes goes to subsidies these pricks too. If homes became affordable, if food was affordable, if our education system was up to snuff and affordable (K-12 and higher education), our healthcare was up to snuff, our roads were in good shape, our internet wasn't nickle and diming everyone... you'd see a general lack of interest in being pissed off. It would happen organically, just like it has in the past... the wealthy get got, things change, and we peasants get less "eat the rich" motivated.

To you're second point, yes the system is broken. But not everyone who's family of the one in control of the estate, agree with that person. Also, fear is a great motivator. Most people fear homelessness or starvation. The 1% don't fear much. Also, if vigilantes start taking out multiple 1%ers they're either going to hire a lot of security (putting money back into the system, back into the hands of the people) or they're going to start doing something to not be viewed as "dinner". And we literally saw that. UHC gets got... and Blue Cross Blue Shield immediately reverse the change on anesthesia. They claimed it was due to backlash, but they're a for profit company, they don't care. But the CEO being targeted and seeing the people cheer... that sends a message.

I don't think anyone has a clear plan as to what would be better. There's certainly a lot of ideas out there. But so long as the ultra rich control the government, control the means of communication (news outlets, social media) it's difficult/impossible for change that would negatively impact them that would positively impact the rest of society.

And you might not believe in it, but the French of utilized this method to much success. Honestly, we did to way back when if you want to throw in the revolutionary war.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

And you might not believe in it, but the French of utilized this method to much success. Honestly, we did to way back when if you want to throw in the revolutionary war.

There are many more examples of revolutions that did more harm that good, than vice versa. It may be there only viable avenue left, but I think it's grossly ignorant to think it won't sweep up a whole lot of innocents, with a good chance of ending up in a defacto brutal dictatorship for a few decades.

Those are heavy dice to throw. If they're the only dice, then so be it, but I really hope not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The point is that the rich have purchased a system that protects them. If they're scared that people are resorting to other methods, because the system won't go after them, then they can choose to fix the system so people actually see results without murder. As long as they feel safe and cozy, they have no incentive to fix the system they rigged.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well, insofar as violent revolution increasingly appears to be there only tool remaining, but I have more faith that The Rich will be able to successfully manipulate the masses into slaughtering each other, a-la another civil war, than that the masses will be able to accomplish anything lasting. But, then, The Rich are few and control all of the media, and masses are by nature not intelligent constructs. If we're really lucky, we'll just have a limited civil war; if we're not, we may end up with a Khmer Rouge, which won't be fun for anybody.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

True, but I'd rather the fear of doing something not stop us from doing anything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

sigh I can agree with this sentiment.

Ok, you convinced me. I'm in.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yea that's exactly what I'm afraid of.