The fact that most people will reflexively reject and wilt at the idea of a wealth cap, or at least enforceablely taxing every dollar made above a certain amount at 99%, is a testament to the many decades of often-subtle propaganda that makes people think that modern western capitalism is the only way. As well as the continuing de-funding of public education and making colleges less accessible.

I want to add on some quick math. Some people will look at this and scoff, saying that actors are millionaires and are more similar to these billionaire leeches than to us. A billion isn't a number you can easily wrap your head around -- I have trouble putting it into the correct perspective and scale, and I'm an engineer. It's really difficult. So to try and show exactly how much money we're talking here, I'm going to use time:

• 35k seconds, 9.7 hours
• 70k seconds, 19.4 hours
• 100k seconds, 1.16 days
• 250k seconds, 2.9 days
• 1m seconds, 11.6 days
• 10m seconds, 115.7 days
• 100m seconds, 3.2 years
• 1b seconds, 31.7 years

I haven't even lived for 1 billion seconds yet, and I'm 28! Even an actor who's racked up $100m over a successful career is closer to $0 than they are to $1b. Now arguably I'd say $100m is at the point where it needs to be treated similarly to $1b, but even so. The average working adult is closer to an actor in terms of wealth than these disgusting hoarders.

In reality, every dollar isn't equal, and what this analysis doesn't take into account is the amount leftover after all necessities are paid for, which is the reason why someone making $35k is not living like a millionaire. The point here is, a billion is incredibly big. It's unfathomable. Unless the person protesting is a billionaire, they're on your side against the leeches and absurdly wealthy.

(I suspect this is why actors tend liberal and billionaires tend conservative.)

We need enough people to agree on both a vehicle and a direction.

• There are a lot of people dissatisfied with the current government(s) but don't agree how to create change; be it through the current system, major modifications to the current system, or even more severe changes.

• There are a lot of people who don't want wide spread poverty/suffering, but don't agree on how that problem should be dealt with; be it through universal income, massive public projects, or wealth taxation and better competition regulations.

IMO we need a new digital/decentralized/open-source/transparent 'social media platform' that can replace the current easily manipulated electoral systems.

We need ideas & policies to be independently actionable from the partisan politics that afaic specifically exist to mitigate change and maintain the influence of money in policy.

What's it going to take to do something about these ultra rich assholes

Let's be honest the only answer is [redacted], they effectively own the government in the US and it's not much better in Europe

Robin Hood Rebellion. Start taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

The moment you start talking about the rich being the cause of our problems, there’s a section of society that starts tuning you out.

That's because this is an insane claim.

If we actually get to the point of agreeing that excessive wealth is inherently misanthropic and should be a crime in and of itself

This is a massive "If." I could probably never be convinced that one person's wealth is inherently detrimental to someone else's well-being.

These are very extreme views. I support the Hollywood strike, my buddy is a union leader (as were both my parents), and I'm a reliably Democrat voter, and I couldn't disagree more with what you've said above.

That's a really good question. Part of the problem, of course, is that the game is rigged: consider how difficult it is to buy food that doesn't feed the Nestle war chest.

As a society, I think there are moves in the right direction - I just stumbled across something called Community Wealth Building, which is very cool, for example.

But as a private individual? That's harder. I'd love it if there were an Amazon equivalent out there that sourced exclusively from worker owned co-ops, or at least unionized businesses, but as it is, I'm coming up dry...