531
The wealthy are a cancer. If allowed to metastasize, they will inevitably kill their host civilization.
It has been allowed to metastasize.
The other point is that I think this article made a shitty economic argument. If rich people are staying because they're making money, and if you stop them from making money then they'll leave, what's actually happening is that they are stealing our money while they're here. It's not like that money magically showed up, right? It came from somewhere, it came from someone, right? In reality, they're getting a ton of benefits from the taxpayers. So if the claim is that the economy will suffer when they depart, that's an interesting question, and it really depends on the details.
I believe that's called a "boofocracy".
Looting is not governing.
Capitalism is a system that rewards people for antisocial behavior. 20,000 years ago, people engaging in antisocial behavior would have been thrown out of the tribe (or executed) for their selfishness and greed, but today they rule.
We can try to use the power of the state to reign them in and keep them under control, but it's a never-ending struggle. They will try to seize state control, to remove any systems that seek to moderate them. They believe that they are superior human beings, super human even. In their minds, their wealth proves their superiority. They have even convinced large numbers of us that they must be unrestricted, free to pursue maximum profits, otherwise modern civilization will collapse.
Maybe they're right. Maybe capitalism can't survive without sociopaths pursuing profits with relatively few restrictions. All the more reason to abolish capitalism, in my opinion, even if that means returning to a more communal existence.
I think you have a pretty romanticized idea about how society was run 20.000 years ago
According to "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow, if one were in the Americas, it could have been pretty okay. Depending on the tribe, a selfish person could have been exiled and many people's competed to be generous.
Rousseau and the European Enlightenment struggling against the weight of the Catholic Church, may have presented an overly negative view on life long ago. (Source is also "The Dawn of Everything".)
Anyone talking about society 20,000 years ago is bullshitting. We have no records for how these societies operated anything but a superficial level.
This is Jordan Peterson and Evelutionary Psychology levels of scientific rigor.
No written records, but "we" have found bones and pottery.
But yes, it is all extremely unclear and one should not draw many conclusions or generalities from those.
Great book that everyone should read!
How am I romanticizing the stone ages? By pointing out that members of the tribe who acted selfishly were often executed (and sometimes tortured)? Is that idea a romantic one, in your mind?
Selfishness wasn't so harshly punished back then because stone age people were noble savages, who were just more righteous than we are today. No, selfishness was so harshly and violently punished (even if the sentence was banishment, that was often a death sentence) because selfish people were a threat to the survival of the tribe, and thus a threat to the survival of every member of the tribe.
7000 years ago 95% of the male population died off. Based on our discovery of mass graves showing violent deaths from this time, the most likely explanation is that there was a globe spanning slaughter of people - prehistoric people were people too, they had the same flaws that we do now
the most likely explanation is that there was a globe spanning slaughter of people
Last I read, they think it was due to waring between patrilineal tribes. I never argued that there wasn't waring between tribes, only that too much selfishness and greed was not tolerated within the tribe.
prehistoric people were people too, they had the same flaws that we do now
Where did I say otherwise? I would like to point out that wars and mass slaughter did not stop with either the agricultural or industrial revolutions. I am not necessarily offering a solution to war and violence, I am simply pointing out that we evolved to live in tribes. We are tribal, and highly social by our nature. Capitalism is a very antisocial, individualist system. It rewards greed and selfishness and leads to inequality, which breaks down social cohesion. For that, and many other reasons, I think it is unsustainable.
Well for starters, the suggestion that everyone was part of the same tribe. If tribes had differences with eachother, how do you think that played out
The most likely explanation for why 95% of the male population died around 5000BC is because of a mass breakout of war, people forget that prehistory had the same humans that we have today
Also we still have something like 2-4% psychopaths in out gene pools. So they at least lived long enough to reproduce.
I wonder what and when the historical low % of them was.
"Because of capitalists’ colossal structural power, we’re required to stroke the egos and soothe the anxieties of tantrum throwing elites every time we want to improve society. If we want better education, healthcare, and childcare programs, or to fix our own crumbling infrastructure, or to make our own cities affordable to live in, we are structurally compelled to consider the interests and feelings of the ultrarich, to beg permission from the most wantonly unethical and pathologically narcissistic people on earth."
It's frankly ridiculous that despite having more wealth than they know what to do with, they're still obsessed with the fear that someone else might get a little of it.
I think this is inherent to humans. No matter what system, this is the natural end point.
For now
Mostly whiny rich LAZY WHITE people. The Civil War was fought because white people were so lazy they didn’t want to do the work themselves.
Why bring race into it? Poor white people are natural allies in curtailing monied interests are much as anyone else. Driving wedges that aren't along class lines is only to the benefit of the rich.
To be fair, the term “white people” was created by rich landowners to get poor Europeans to turn against the black people they worked alongside in the fields. White isn’t a race.
All human concept of race is just where people decided to draw arbitrary lines.
The fuck they are. They are too stupid to realize they are being played.
I'd say they're too propagandized and too squeezed by living their lives in this system to realize they're being played. It has nothing to do with the color of their skin and could happen to anyone.
You don’t know your history do you? Poor whites have always been the arm of the rich. Any time there is even a chance of solidarity, poor whites are the first to sell out because of the sweet, sweet taste of white privilege.
You know who did most of the lynchings? Poor whites. You who overwhelmingly voted for Trump? Poor whites.
Fuck this “they are mislead” gaslighting bullshit. I’d rather have no allies than a poor white person as an ally because at least I can trust myself.
I understand all that, but class solidarity really is the only way forward.
Fancy words but when humanity is put to the test, they always fail. You’re better off simply focusing on yourself. The rich sure are.
If nobody tries to make anything better, nothing will ever get better for sure. This kind of defeatist attitude also only benefits the rich.
The election showed me history is cyclical and unchanging.
The Battle of Blair Mountain didn’t happen. Got it.
John Brown wasn’t poor and in the end, he didn’t accomplish anything as he was executed.
Ah, so you don’t know what the Battle of Blair Mountain even is.
Spoiler: John Brown wasn’t there.
You’re right. I was thinking of the abolitionist John Brown’s rebellion.
And as for Blair Mountain? Spoilers. Poor white descendants routinely spit on their graves by supporting conservatives.
Stop gaslighting about their usefulness. Poor whites, like poor anyone these days will fall for anything and cripple everything.
Found the American! Do you realize the majority of the world is neither white nor American and this doesn't apply, whereas this article does?
You’re right. How’s AFD, Reform UK, Five Points, Sansieto, and National Rally coming along?
Now as for billionaires, Elon Musk is South African. Peter Thiel is German. Bezos and Zuckerberg are American. Pinchal and Nadella are Indian. Nigel Ferange is British.
Now let’s look at Brexit. The UK had the chance to show that they progressed as well as show that Brexit was a bad idea that would hurt them all, but xenophobia won.
Let’s look at Israel. Now October 7th was an unfortunate catastrophe that no one deserved but rather than demand better from their leaders, Israel has plunged right head first into genocide.
Canada just recently BARELY fought off a right wing resurgence and that was ONLY due to Trump’s threats.
Replace poor whites with poor natives of any country and my point will not have changed. The billionaires have won. They played the long game while we have fucking settled for reality tv, social media, and eroding rights.
"Although women as a whole have historically voted for Democrats, white women have not. Instead, over the last 72 years, a plurality of white women have voted for the Democratic candidate only twice, in 1964 and 1996."
https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#517324be3d78
Just within the top-25 I see Jensen Huang, Mukesh Ambani, Carlos Slim, Changpeng Zhao, Zhong Shanshan.
White people are over-represented in the list, but there's plenty of non-white billionaires that are just as problematic as their white counterparts. The vast, vast majority of white people are not billionaires. Racial division is a distraction that serves the billionaires.
By other white people who found that unacceptable.
Until Lincoln said black people should vote. All those “progressive” northern people all of a sudden became racist.
I think thats just in your head. Supposedly lincoln was about back to africa and the civil war was not about one segment believing in full equality at that point in time. They just felt slavery was wrong and that black people were human. I mean remember women got sufferage after black males. Also we are talking averages. Im 100% sure many individuals recognized equality between humans but the norm changed over time and more importantly the law. This is one reason I find juneteenth as wierd because it was the amendment when it was codified in law and after all the world has slavery still and its been done by individuals in the us in this millenium. The critical thing is that its a crime now to do that.
Came here to say how refreshing it is to read an article about wealthy jerks that talks about reality rather than RACE OR GENDER.
Any rich idiot who could stomach moving to Florida has already done so. Or maintains multiple residences in New York and Florida.
You know, like Trump and Epstein do.
Foreal
They are losing control, they are scared, they will attempt to to divert the attention of the public with war. The aristocracy will be dismantled or we will be annihilated.
You have upset your Ferengi masters!
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
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