• Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
    55·
    2 years ago

    It would really fucking help if we stop giving billionaires a god damn microphone. All these news sites and even social media shares. Stop it.

    Oh, climate change issue?

    Let’s see what “self-made” billionaire CEO of Oilerson Oils, Oily Oilerson, grandchild of another billionaire, has to say.

    “With these unprecedented times, we must bond together and move forward, else we move backwards.”

  • zcd@lemmy.ca
    532·
    2 years ago

    Dealing with the billionaire problem should be everyone’s top priority

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
        313·
        2 years ago

        I think reining them in is enough. We can habe billionaires in a green economy.

        I totally agree that billionaires should not exist, but I think climate change is more important and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

        • zcd@lemmy.ca
          13·
          2 years ago

          The average billionaire emits 1 million times more CO2 than the average 90%er. There are about 3000 of them

        • VonCesaw@lemmy.world
          8·
          2 years ago

          You can’t reign them in when the reigns are for purchase You can’t prevent them from purchasing the reigns because when the price tag is big enough, everything is for sale You can’t stop them from purchasing reigns altogether because they’ll go to a different market who can, then force the market to be open to them They will do everything in their power to KEEP their power, and to prevent them from EVER LOSING their power There IS ONLY ONE WAY to stop billionaires from having power and it is to stop them from being billionaires in any way available

  • Leap@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    2 years ago

    It’s so hard to know where to even start. Say one thing and it’s like you have to go right back to the basics of how money, capitalism and society work. Nuanced conversation is Impossible.

    • PugJesus@kbin.social
      10·
      2 years ago

      Me, pulling down a chart when anyone asks me a question about modern society: “Okay, to understand this, we have to go back to early market economics of Mesopotamian city-states…”

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
      94·
      2 years ago

      First, immigration drives up housing prices because everyone needs it, and it can’t be built overnight

      Contrary to what they say on Faux News, caravanfuls of immigrants aren’t let in overnight either. As for undocumented immigrants, the vast majority are Canadians and Europeans overstaying their visas and refugees who aren’t rich enough to complete the legal process, neither of which will suddenly buy a shitload real estate.

      Second, it drives down wages by flooding the labor market with a high supply of people desperate to take whatever is offered to them

      Classic victim blaming and othering. Native born and naturalised citizens lose orders of magnitude more potential wages to wage theft than to exploited immigrants “flooding” anything. Another fallacious talking point, I’m afraid.

      Rent goes up, and wages go down. That’s the fault of the 1%, not immigrants looking to make a better life for themselves.

      Oh good, you DIDN’T mean to victim blame, you just did it accidentally. Let’s see if you can stay away from the right wing talking points for the rest of your comment, then!

      The cherry on top is that were conditioned to respond to anyone who acknowledges this as a racist. If you want to avoid the label, you need to support tla policy that will push high rents higher, and depress low wages even farther.

      Guess it was too much to hope for…

      You don’t come off as racist, you just come off as someone who, in spite of meaning well and knowing who’s actually to blame, has fallen for some of the lies the billionaires and their pr machines use to make the discrimination more palatable to non-racist people.

      The people at the top have a few economic levers they can push around to manipulate society reliably.

      Including the dissemination of gaslighting and other insidious lies to fool even their enemies to help their cause, as you’ve just demonstrated yourself.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
          25·
          2 years ago

          Everything you wrote implies I blamed immigrants, which is entirely a lie.

          Wasn’t my intention. What I meant to say is that, in spite of not blaming the immigrants themselves, you’re blaming things on immigration that simply are not caused by immigration.

          they can increase immigration to weaken the working class

          That’s the crux of it: they can’t. Immigration is a net benefit to the economy as a whole, ESPECIALLY the working class.

          This has been done

          No. They made it up. Immigration doesn’t hurt you.

          Advocating for labor and tenants is not right-wing. Advocating for higher wages is not right-wing. Blaming capital, rather than migrants is not right-wing.

          True, but you’re still missing my point: even when not blaming the immigrants themselves, you’re helping the right wing when you repeat their bogus talking points. No matter how different your intentions and attitude towards immigrants are.

          Right-wing politics tried to shame people who resist anti-labor, anti-tenant, anti-worker policies.

          And also made up causal relationships, having so much success doing so that even seemingly good people like yourself repeat their lies.

            • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
              23·
              2 years ago

              If we had (…) immigration would not be harmful.

              I’m getting tired of repeating the simple fact that it already isn’t. Stop repeating the propaganda of those we’re fighting against, please.

              Without certain socialist policies in place first, high immigration weakens the leverage workers have.

              First of all: no. That’s simply not true. Second of all, the US has low immigration per capita compared to most countries.

                • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
                  21·
                  2 years ago

                  No, what I’m doing is disabusing you of false notions, that you haven’t provided any proof of yourself.

                  Study showing that immigration depressing wages is close to zero at first and actually INCREASES productivity and wages in the long run.

                  As for property prices, compare this to the fact that net immigration is declining. .

                  I believe in fact-based arguments, not blindly repeating commonly believed lies and complaining about being shamed when others point it out.

    • IHaveTwoCows@lemm.ee
      12·
      2 years ago

      Your rightly said that the 1% are the cause of these problems but continued to blame the vicitms.

      I can tell you as someone in the housing industry that you dont know anything about housing.

  • blazera@kbin.social
    113·
    2 years ago

    Its not hoarded wealth, its spent on things that make them more money. More “ownership” of others work.

    • PugJesus@kbin.social
      10·
      2 years ago

      In the US, it’s a common refrain that exploitation of immigrant workers not only takes jobs from US-born workers, but also allows the rich to increase their wealth in excess of what they could if they were paying American workers.

      Rather than coming to the conclusion, then, that exploitation of workers is bad, they come to the conclusion that immigrant workers are bad.

  • transigence@kbin.social
    329·
    2 years ago

    That’s because “the rich hoarding cash” isn’t causing income and wealth inequality.
    Also, income and wealth inequality is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Income and wealth equality would be far, far worse than what we have now, even as corrupt as it is.
    Effecting income and wealth equality necessitates violating people’s rights to associate freely, trade freely, and own property. That will lead to complete societal collapse, and rather immediately. Nobody would do hard, dirty, or dangerous jobs anymore. We wouldn’t have electricity. We wouldn’t have indoor plumbing. We wouldn’t have medicine.

    • blargerer@kbin.social
      19·
      2 years ago

      You are correct that everyone literally having and making the same amount of income is likely undesirable. But you could do a hell of a lot of motivating of bad jobs, at, say, a 10x max pay differential. But more importantly, remind me, is it the hard, dirty and dangerous jobs that currently make the most money? No. It’s not jobs at all, it’s ownership.

    • too_high_for_this@lemmy.world
      14·
      2 years ago

      Absolutely braindead take.

      I love seeing Christians defend capitalism.

      Leviticus 25:35 ‘Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him’

      Matthew 19:24 ‘Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’

      Proverbs 31:9 ‘Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.’

      2 Corinthians 8:13-14 ‘For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.’

      Luke 3:11 And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”

      Jesus was a brown socialist.

      • transigence@kbin.social
        117·
        2 years ago

        Oh look, a bullet list of out-of-context Biblical verses being used by an atheist who doesn’t understand what any of them means to dunk on people who he assumes has values that he, himself, does not care about.

        • too_high_for_this@lemmy.world
          12·
          2 years ago

          Please provide context that proves me wrong, then.

          And I didn’t assume anything about your values. I literally copied and pasted quotes directly from the Bible. I’m calling out your good old fashioned Christian hypocrisy.

          In fact, you’ve made the only assumptions. Somehow, quoting the Bible and supporting socialism makes me an atheist? And you assume atheists have no values, or at least couldn’t possibly share values with Christians.

          Do you believe morality comes only from God? If so, where are the radical atheist terrorists? Unholy wars? Secular persecution?

      • transigence@kbin.social
        219·
        2 years ago

        Jesus was not a socialist, and literally nobody who accepts Him as their savior has ever given 1/3 of a shit what color He is.

        • PugJesus@kbin.social
          10·
          2 years ago

          Jesus was not a socialist

          Uh, considering that he was against the accumulation of wealth that is essential to the functioning of a capitalist or protocapitalist society, like the Roman market economy, and clearly also opposed to the control of traditional regional elites, I’m not sure how you can see him as anything other than a socialist? Or more accurately, a primitive communist.

          , and literally nobody who accepts Him as their savior has ever given 1/3 of a shit what color He is.

          I can give you a long list of Christians, modern and historical, who absolutely give a shit which color he is. Generally they fall pretty heavily on the side of “Of course Jesus was white”

          • transigence@kbin.social
            18·
            2 years ago

            Jesus wasn’t “against the accumulation of wealth,” as you put it, nor “against the control of traditional regional elites” for its own sake. If that’s what you took from it, you aren’t looking, which is expected. Jesus didn’t have a prescription for any particular economic model.

            Perhaps you can come up with a list of people who care or cared what color Jesus was, but it’s an extremely short list compared to the list of people who don’t, and so it’s disingenuous to pretend like the average Christian cares.

            If you go around America saying “Jesus wasn’t white, FYI,” you’ll get a resounding “I don’t care,” the vast majority of the time.
            If you go around Mexico saying “Jesus wasn’t white, FYI,” you’ll get a resounding “I don’t care,” the vast majority of the time.
            If you go around China saying “Jesus wasn’t white, FYI,” you’ll get a resounding “I don’t care,” the vast majority of the time.

            • PugJesus@kbin.social
              10·
              2 years ago

              Jesus wasn’t “against the accumulation of wealth,”

              You, uh, wanna remind me what’s easier than a rich man getting into heaven?

              nor “against the control of traditional regional elites” for its own sake. If that’s what you took from it, you aren’t looking, which is expected.

              I can launch into a lecture about the relation of Iudean sects with the Christian Gospels and how the environment of Roman Iudea of that period influenced the writing of both Christ’s views as expressed in the Gospels and Paul’s epistles if you like. I’m looking plenty. I’ve looked plenty.

              Jesus didn’t have a prescription for any particular economic model.

              … insofar as he wasn’t a polisci philosopher, sure? But the values expressed are pretty unambiguously against the contractual-redistributive method of Iudean elites and against the proto-capitalist accumulation of wealth by Roman elites. This is not abnormal for pre-modern populists, but it is certainly anti-capitalist in the sense that the basic premise that the arguments are founded on are directly and explicitly contrary to the basic ideas of capitalism, due to the fact that such pre-modern populists are generally attempting to address and appeal to an agrarian and deeply communal audience.

              Perhaps you can come up with a list of people who care or cared what color Jesus was, but it’s an extremely short list compared to the list of people who don’t, and so it’s disingenuous to pretend like the average Christian cares.

              You’re fooling yourself, guy. There are a hell of a lot of racists still around, and racists definitely care what color their savior is.

              • transigence@kbin.social
                15·
                2 years ago

                Wealth is a stumbling block for many, and Christ warns of that. That does not set Christ against money, and it doesn’t make the possession of money evil. It doesn’t make money evil.

          • transigence@kbin.social
            23·
            2 years ago

            Megyn Kelly is a ding-dong. I don’t know if you noticed this, but she’s a TV “journalist.” Nothing any of them say should be taken seriously.

        • VonCesaw@lemmy.world
          61·
          2 years ago

          Jesus predates Socialist values, they just happen to overlap so many times that it’s colloquial shorthand

          • PugJesus@kbin.social
            81·
            2 years ago

            The New Testament as a whole espouses a kind of ‘primitive communism’ that has roots in the society of Ancient Israelite tribes. Very social capital, gift economy kind of behavior. I mean, look at the tale of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
      101·
      2 years ago

      No one is suggesting absolute equality except the braindead teenagers. We’re just advocating for less inequality.