Yes, but not necessarily the way you put it. You may recall some of the lawsuits against Trump, where he massively (and illegally) elevated value of some of his properties (I think he elevated Mar-a-Lago by an order of a magnitude? might be wrong on that) while devaluing others, it depended on whenever he was supposed to pay taxes on something or leverage something to get better loan. Those billions they “have” are based in valuation that they often had opportunity to tamper with. For example, there are vast expanses of privately owned land that are undervalued - if you were to give that land back to the community and build housing there, its monetary value (and more importantly utility) would dramatically raise, thus leading to getting more out of the guillotine mileage than the original estimation might suggest. Alternatively, billionaire could have their assets valued as such due to having a gallery of modern AI art used to launder drug money, which would be otherwise completely worthless. And that, I think, is even more important point than the repossession of their wealth - we, as society, would benefit tremendously from making sure the rich can not manipulate prices of anything. If a guy with a “art” gallery is able to leverage it to get a massive loan, and then use it to buy a ton of housing, then you need to compete with their unearned billions with nothing else than the results of your honest work and whatever meager loan banks are willing to give you. It’s less important how much stuff is “actually” worth, and more what is the relationship between the purchase power of the rich versus the purchase power of regular folk. If they can outcompete all of us at once and we’re left without healthcare, food, water, housing etc. then they can more easily extort us for greater share of our paycheque (which again, is not exactly related to our actual work because very similar dynamics take place in job market), which makes us more dependent on them and more willing to be exploited in other ways.

tl;dr I agree it’s simplistic, but I think that getting a 1$ out of 1$ of removed billionaire is pessimistic estimation, and we would actually get far more, even if only long term.

That’s not an argument against removing billionaires though, right? You’d rather want to stop the spread of cancer instead of bemoaning the fact that we got sick at all. The best we can do is reposes their frivolously purchased assets and recycle them as much as it’s reasonable, and cast away what remains. It’s not all yachts, some of that wealth is locked in empty flats/houses, and giving those back to community would be very beneficial without needing to transform those assets further.

Good boy.

That’s so irresponsible. Someone could leak those files to the public and use them to smear and accuse good and innocent people that happened to be there. In those files. Tremendous.

I specifically spoke of the USSR before what could be construed as Stalinism, whatever that would mean. I’m also on a fence whenever direct state ownership of the capital could be fairly described as socialism, as it was the case under Stalin from what I understand, but I won’t pretend I know all too much about that part. From what I’ve gathered, that would stand against the idea that the capital is democratically controlled by the workers working it, as it would instead by controlled by the outside force not completly dissimilar to the capitalist investors (in this case, the state, directed individually by some administrators). That always stood out for me when it comes to describing USSR as socialist country.

It’s disingenious to say that USSR achieved communism in 5 years between it’s inception and Stalin taking over. Especially since no one at the time have claimed achieving even socialism. Stalin took over country that attempted to build socialist society and struggled economically, and then led it in very different direction.

Early USSR was ruled by communists, sure, but that’s far from it being communist country, and even further from the country achieving communism.

Calling Trump just a puppet is an overreach. He personally had boosting effect on the entire world right wing parties with his rethoric and charisma. With the personality cult working as the primary motivator for the right wing voters, I doubt that fascists could prop up anyone nearly as effective as Trump for that role. He IS sort of like their messiah that comes once in a century.

I also toy with the thought that if there was any kind of propaganda ruling class would like you to believe and would try hard to influence you into believing, it would be something along the lines of the sentiment that violently removing them would be for some reason ineffectual. As opposed to playing the game THEY designed, mantain and oversee and trying to vote them out or use some sort of peaceful process to limit their power. That’s also contrasted by their insistance that they deserve to rule because they are in some way special, or whatever elitist argument people believing in meritocracy use. I do get the sentiment that removing figureheads might not do anything, as something that is somehow well known and estabilished, but, I mean, french royality sure did eat that cake. That train of thought might be something we’ve been implanted with, since logic doesn’t necessarily follow.

Good 'ol prep time

In Polish, bela could mean shaft or bolt. While not what I’d personally call it, it’s hard to ignore the fact he just had a meeting with Putin. Maybe he taught him some new words.

Not with that attitude

suction cups

I also use dollars instead of integral symbols, I don’t do math though.

Nationalism as a function, to use your terms, doesn’t have to specifically be a result of a desire for cultural identity. It might, but when speaking of it as a function it has a narrower meaning and doesn’t have to carry additional baggage like that, though it may often imply it. When speaking of nationalism as ideology, it definitely fits my definition of evil, by putting artifical values above the wellbeing of people, which nationalism does by definition. Following that logic, nationalism as function isn’t necessarily evil (though it may be if you flavor it with racism or such, like Confederation did), while nationalism as ideology necessarily is. I’m not sure what specifically you were disagreeing with, so I hope I made my point clearer.

Nationalism as a political ideology and nationalism as advocacy for independence of people sharing national identity that isn’t broadly recognized as official nation are two different things sharing the same name. Nationalism as political ideology is inherently evil, as it puts interests of an artifical construct above interests of people, with specific attention put to ingroup and outgroup dynamics. Separatists movements aren’t inherently evil, with the desire of liberation being usually something everyone can stand behind, but if those movements co-opt the nationalist ideology, then they may be classified as evil in my book. Or evil-er. There are no perfect victims and such.

I feel like it’s a meaningful distinction to make.

General strike lets gooo

I’m pretty sure that a bartender that doesn’t stock a specific brand of beer out of disgust for it won’t sell it to you. You’re way overreaching with your criticism of reasonably viable story.

Well, imagine him being broke, homeless, despised by everyone and treated like interacting with him could lead you to the exclusion from the society. Warms your heart, doesn’t it? I don’t want him dead, I wish him worse. I want him thanking bums for pissing on him so he doesn’t lose more fingers to the frostbite and cursing himself for pushing for cutting social safety net.

Sounds like DEI, so I think it’s not going to fly in the current political climate.

I send anything that isn’t plain text or something I requested straight to security to keep those fucks sharp, I wish they summarized emails I sent them instead of complaining that I keep doing it though.

Having principles you stuck to that are helpful to the world is never cringe, it’s a display of feeling of inferiority when someone critiques you for having a virtue. They feel that their comfortable bed of lies is threatened when someone shows that it’s not societaly acceptable to be a dick, while they lived their lives accepting that they may sometimes be allowed certain priviledges if they conform to the “norm”. I hope one day we get the world to the place where virtues are rightly celebrated instead of being called cringe.