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Are we demonizing the rich or are just critical of them and the system they created?
- Thread starter Exile20
- Start date
Not only do they control the game, but change and create the rules of the game at a whim to even further dig in on their lofty positions and further enrich themselves at direct and often deadly cost to everyone else. Fuck the game.
If you walking around worth a billion, get washed.
Human history repeats itself, when it comes to economic inequality. Keep pushing it to it's breaking point and they'll see. How quick those walls close in, when people start zeroing in.
But on the flip side, a lot of these dudes are nihilistic as fuck and sociopaths. So i have no doubts, that they would love a safe place for themselves in a heart beat and ship off.
While the world burns.
Human history repeats itself, when it comes to economic inequality. Keep pushing it to it's breaking point and they'll see. How quick those walls close in, when people start zeroing in.
But on the flip side, a lot of these dudes are nihilistic as fuck and sociopaths. So i have no doubts, that they would love a safe place for themselves in a heart beat and ship off.
While the world burns.
Individuals can be good, but the rich, as a whole, should be demonised for the system they have created and allowed to continue while doing nothing to change it because of how it will impact them.
It's completely fair to be critical of someone benefiting from a corrupt system with absolutely no desire to improve it.
It's completely fair to be critical of someone benefiting from a corrupt system with absolutely no desire to improve it.
What 3 people "deserve" more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country? Or another question: people defending the rich with talk of how dare we "punish" them for being rich. The flip side of punishment is reward. What the hell kind of sick reward is enough wealth to stabilize a significant percentage of the population? Personally I'd feel sick to my stomach with such a grotesque "reward" while people starve and lack for medical care.
This, my friends, is what we call anarchy. Adopt the enemies rhetoric, go to political extremes, refuse to hold your own accountable for crossing lines and emulate the worst traits of their enemies - in this case, the wealthy. Despite coming from opposite spectrums, both sure like the same destructive mindset and dehumanising their opponents for political points.
Personally, I was never into emulating the Joker as a political ideology.
Which is amusing, as there are various anarchists who believe in their own systems and don't let their emotions control their actions. But this all gets ignored by internet anarchists who are more into hot takes than fixing the system that accomplishes punishing the wealthy.
Personally, I was never into emulating the Joker as a political ideology.
Which is amusing, as there are various anarchists who believe in their own systems and don't let their emotions control their actions. But this all gets ignored by internet anarchists who are more into hot takes than fixing the system that accomplishes punishing the wealthy.
Every single rich person got rich mostly through luck. Without exception.
A perfect example. Dehumanising isn't an issue in itself, just the targets. Replace "rich" with "poor" or "black" and this may as well be said by the wealthy elite they despise. This is just cathartic rage.
An fucking over lots of people or just straight up stealing back in the day.
Yeah that as well. Basically no one 'deserves' to be rich. It's them/their ancestors being lucky arseholes.
You don't think being extremely wealthy carries any sort of moral implication that makes it different from a person's ethnicity?
The united states was more successful for all when the rich paid their fair share. This has declined severely since the 70's and now almost everyone is suffering because of it. The rich have rigged the system, it's broken and needs to be fixed. There's no demonizing when it's what has been done and just calling them out on it.
This isn't a United States problem it's a world problem. The sociopathic, amoral, repulsive, genocidal, ultra wealthy neo-bourgeoisie deserve far worse than demonization for their systematic plundering and destruction of both people's lives and the worlds natural resources.
It does, of course. But dehumanisation isn't solely about what justification is about, those are excuses. What gets me is that just because being wealthy might not be a choice, or they might be born into it - it's that, like with those ridiculous charges against people who can't choose their ethnicity, dehumanising someone for X isn't a good thing in itself. They're still wanting to make them not human and wanting to hurt them for it, this is not a moral good in any circumstance. By focusing on simply having X amount of money it becomes a thin excuse as money is an amoral object. It's a thing. What you do with it matters. There are logical reasons to want revenge (if which there are plenty as occasionally talked about here), but in the end if you become the enemy wth their methods it seems like the wealthy won, anyway. They took what good you had inside you and turned you into a monster who wanted to take humanity away from others when we should be trying to get justice and defeat them so they don't harm society anymore. Instead it's just First Testament blood for blood eye for an eye revenge, no thinking just feelings. Many people forget what happened after the French Revolution, assuming its transitioned into a peaceful democratic society over night when it didn't. No, it gave control of France to Maximilien Robespierre, who created what's known as the Reign of Terror which was so bad he got arrested and executed for what he did and once the Revolution was over Napoleon Bonapart became emperor.
Okay cool you can just stop the post right there then because none of that other shit after this sentence is coherent.
We don't know how to run a society and we just properly fucked it. Accumulation of wealth feels like the number one thing to stop to create a fair society, but also basing economic wealth predominantly on making shit made of crap dug up out of the ground that poisons the atmosphere is a bad idea too.
Really? You don't think whether acknowledging dehumanising is a morally bad concept or that implications of doing what the French revolution did wasn't pertinent? It seems like you'd be ok if the US got our own Napoleon and/or Robespierre as long as the right people went to the guillotines. This response confirms what I was saying, you want vindication, not reflection.
I have listened, I simply disagreed with their solution, yet that courtesy was not offered in the other direction.
As I said upthread there are anarchists who do want to think deeper on issues like this, but they're not participating in this discussion.
I want us to live under a more equitable system and I don't see the need to treat the people who control, perpetuate, and disproportionately benefit from of our current one with kid gloves. They know what they're doing and absolutely deserve to be condemned for it.
There is so much I can agree with here. Where we disagree is the one is crossed to get there. I'd throw the in jail or make what they did with destroying lives illegal - not kill them for being wealthy. I definitely agree they know what they're doing.
The latter. It depends on how much responsibility you think a person has. We live in a society where we put a lot of emphasis on beating and recgonised as individuals. That a persons freedom to choose to do whatever is a primary concern. However this goes counter to scale of responsibility and inaction that correlates to the amount of wealth they have. Money by itself is not power, but money does attract power. The most powerful people in this world tend to the best most wealthy. If we agree to this then at some point do they not hold some responsibility for their inaction, for even inaction is still an action.
If a cop is walking down the street and chooses not to stop a crime, in some way that cop is responsible for the crime just as much as the criminal. However there is an important distinction and this is where the grey area exists, a cop takes a moral and legal responsibility to stop the crime, through their chosen profession. A rich person has no requirement on them, so going by a purely legal sense they have no moral responsibility to respond to issues that aren't their business. However, there does exist the idea of group responsibility and we all have it to some degree. Living in a society is an agreement, whether consciously or otherwise made to accept some sort of group responsibility to maintain it. Unless you go full anarchist, you've already agreed to this. That's why you have arguments that as Humans, we should do what we can to help other humans, if we are in a position to do so. Following this train of thought you can see why people argue for the rich to do more in society. They have a moral responsibility to do so. However as we value personal freedoms, we don't really have any way to enforce this without a moral dilemma. Morally a rich person should give, but human nature has proven that when not forced, they won't. Some do, but most don't.
The compromise we have is taxation. A forced redistribution of wealth that allows us to address inequality continued the maintenance of our society.
I don't demonize the rich, because that's just a label and it's wrong. A lot of rich people do give to charity. I demonise the likes of Trump, Bezzos & Murdock, because they have actively worked towards fucking up the system to a point where they no longer have to contribute to society.
If a cop is walking down the street and chooses not to stop a crime, in some way that cop is responsible for the crime just as much as the criminal. However there is an important distinction and this is where the grey area exists, a cop takes a moral and legal responsibility to stop the crime, through their chosen profession. A rich person has no requirement on them, so going by a purely legal sense they have no moral responsibility to respond to issues that aren't their business. However, there does exist the idea of group responsibility and we all have it to some degree. Living in a society is an agreement, whether consciously or otherwise made to accept some sort of group responsibility to maintain it. Unless you go full anarchist, you've already agreed to this. That's why you have arguments that as Humans, we should do what we can to help other humans, if we are in a position to do so. Following this train of thought you can see why people argue for the rich to do more in society. They have a moral responsibility to do so. However as we value personal freedoms, we don't really have any way to enforce this without a moral dilemma. Morally a rich person should give, but human nature has proven that when not forced, they won't. Some do, but most don't.
The compromise we have is taxation. A forced redistribution of wealth that allows us to address inequality continued the maintenance of our society.
I don't demonize the rich, because that's just a label and it's wrong. A lot of rich people do give to charity. I demonise the likes of Trump, Bezzos & Murdock, because they have actively worked towards fucking up the system to a point where they no longer have to contribute to society.
I'm not saying that I insist on any particular course of action on rich people, just that we should be completely frank about their role in all this when it comes to rhetoric.
Rich people use loopholes not to pay taxes. A bunch of their supposed charitable giving is just setting up foundations for exactly that purpose.
... yes, actually. It is exactly like mana from heaven. You know what money is right? It's a made up thing that we agree upon holds a certain value. Exactly like every game with a currency out there...
Seriously, for a gaming forum, there's a real lack of insight into the game of life here. How we structure our society is however we want to do it. It's an elaborate and complex game that a lot of lives depend on. So let's not assume that the current ruleset we more or less tripped into is somehow so good that we shouldn't even think 'outside of the box'. The entire fear of change and flexibility is actually the biggest problem in our history.
People never never look at the game itself, only their own shit, and they never want to change their own situation, so we end up sticking with the same shitty game mechanics for ages, then the people who promise to protect your status quo end up becoming dictators and make them the default winners of everything, and then we need to take power ourselves again and we make some minor improvements. Bleh
The structural violence inherent in capitalism outweighs any issue of "dehumanizing" it's greatest perpetrators supposedly undergo (it's hardly a substantiated issue). The view the working class holds of capitalists is not arbitrarily thrust upon them by the working class, but is an observation of their actions by the working class. This observation being: "When faced with the decision to do the humanitarian thing of helping end the suffering of those whose wealth you have stolen, by giving it back to them, you choose not to. And that is an inhumane decision."
This thread comes just as Amazon doubles profits in comparison to last year and instead of paying taxes on them they get a rebate. It's definitely not demonising.
Yeah lets not be naive a hell here, a lot of these foundations are tax fronts and heavens. Not every single one of them but they serve duel functions.
I mean someone find me a truly holistic millionaire or billionaire and i'll believe that the world is flat.
Let me preface by saying that I agree with you, but I'm going to ask how much do you think someone is worth if they spearhead a company that gives employment to a lot of people.
For example, last year Tim Cook earned around $16m (3m Salaray, 13ish in bonuses). Apple employs around 130k people. What are your thoughts on that? Too much, little, about right?
Obviously its not just as clear cut as "I employ a lot of people so I should get megabux", but just as a general thought, do you feel that's outlandish? (Obviously far short of billions)
Yeah, can't get with the "hate the game not the playa" thing. The Super Bowl winners don't get to change the rules to increase the chance of winning again next year. In capitalism, the super rich get to do exactly that. They build pools of wealth and then kick the ladder out from underneath them.
And we are expected to not only be content with the crumbs they throw us, but thankful as well, as if the wealth is purely the output of their isolated endeavours, and not the sweat of the labor that was also in the equation.
And we are expected to not only be content with the crumbs they throw us, but thankful as well, as if the wealth is purely the output of their isolated endeavours, and not the sweat of the labor that was also in the equation.
Tim Cook has received 650 million dollars worth of stock in in 7 years.
Over 700 million in compensation since he became ceo.
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That's not exclusive to capitalism. Wealth and influence does that in every economic system - it may as well be a part of the human condition. Those at the top manipulate and hoard the luxuries, the rest at the bottom get the scraps. A tale as old as time, long before capitalism was invented.
Which I agree, is bullshit.
Very true. In capitalism the "rule changes" are bought and sold behind closed doors. In other politics systems that come via a boot on your throat.
The end game of any unfettered ideology is basically the same.
And this is precisely why I think we need to all change how we talk about money and wealth. The median income for my city is ~$77k which I wouldn't define as rich if that's the median of the population.
I was just going on yearly earnings using him as an example as Apple employs a lot of people. The question is what do you (as in, anyone reading) feel is fair compensation for someone who is responsible for a company employing a huge number of people?
But it can be ended (or at least heavily heavily mitigated) if you end private property.
I believe it requires a fair bit more nuance than "the company he leads employs a large number of people". His (and the company's) goal is not to employ people. That's a byproduct - they need those people to do everything involved with developing, producing, marketing, selling, and supporting their products. If they could do all that without employing anybody, they would. Wherever there's an opportunity to shed people, they can and will, without a thought.
You don't congratulate farmers for employing cattle.
Nothing you'd respect, I imagine, as private property has never been abolished in a technologically advanced society. The only examples that exist are the very brief communes in Spain and Ukraine that lasted months before being invaded, as well as various small tribes across the world. Neither of which can really be compared to the size of modern society.
Just logically though, if there is no legal recognition of someone's claim to property, they can't really hoard it now can they?
I agree we should tax the rich more and fairly but are we going to lose this energy when America gets 'better'? People say it's immoral to be a billionaire in a world with poverty. But say you rid 'first world countries' of economic disparities, will these slogans die?
Achieve universal healthcare, a rise in unions in every industry, the middle class comes back and swells, defeat educational crisis, etc.
But how moral is it to be American and middle class when there is abject poverty in other nations? Two cars and food we waste when people don't have water?
Sure, the rich are to blame for a lot of the ills of the world. And that includes us. Upset over your 800 dollar phone? Doesn't that make our lives immoral? Using the system to get ahead? To make it hard on others to get ahead (our government)?
Like, outside of billionaires and millionaires, is there a moral argument against us? I just don't see this idea moving past our borders. Like, the shit sandwich has hit our front doors and we don't like it but it's a little hollow. I suspect it will be hollow. Our nature is to grab and keep grabbing, at all levels.
I'd love to be wrong but I suspect if we wanted people to succeed and base it on the morality of wealth, that argument will stop at our borders.
I'm thinking Caribbean nations, the Indian continent, South East Asia are not going to hear much about the morality of wealth.
Achieve universal healthcare, a rise in unions in every industry, the middle class comes back and swells, defeat educational crisis, etc.
But how moral is it to be American and middle class when there is abject poverty in other nations? Two cars and food we waste when people don't have water?
Sure, the rich are to blame for a lot of the ills of the world. And that includes us. Upset over your 800 dollar phone? Doesn't that make our lives immoral? Using the system to get ahead? To make it hard on others to get ahead (our government)?
Like, outside of billionaires and millionaires, is there a moral argument against us? I just don't see this idea moving past our borders. Like, the shit sandwich has hit our front doors and we don't like it but it's a little hollow. I suspect it will be hollow. Our nature is to grab and keep grabbing, at all levels.
I'd love to be wrong but I suspect if we wanted people to succeed and base it on the morality of wealth, that argument will stop at our borders.
I'm thinking Caribbean nations, the Indian continent, South East Asia are not going to hear much about the morality of wealth.
OP
OP
Would people stop posting this shit? If people think that 100k is insane doesn't that speak more of their situation then if they are just crying because people are better off than them?
People are in extremely bad places when it comes to money. Don't just brush them off as being jealous or something.
I'm fine with demonizing the rich but it doesn't really get us anywhere.
Yes, thanks to unconstrained capitalism they are able to rig our politics and screw everyone over, I think we cann all agree there. But why aren't other classes voting out thecorrupt politicians that play into this corrupt system? A large part of it is that they've convinced the majority of white Americans to vote against their interests by invoking black and brown boogeymen trying to take the few scraps they are allowed to have.
It's easy, and understandable, to point fingers at the rich. But our conservative white brothers and sisters are the ones really fucking us all over in a misguided attempt at preserving white privilege. Let's call it like it is.
Yes, thanks to unconstrained capitalism they are able to rig our politics and screw everyone over, I think we cann all agree there. But why aren't other classes voting out thecorrupt politicians that play into this corrupt system? A large part of it is that they've convinced the majority of white Americans to vote against their interests by invoking black and brown boogeymen trying to take the few scraps they are allowed to have.
It's easy, and understandable, to point fingers at the rich. But our conservative white brothers and sisters are the ones really fucking us all over in a misguided attempt at preserving white privilege. Let's call it like it is.