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Rich people are a threat for democracy, Oxfam finds
(euobserver.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Not just rich people, also stupidity is a threat to democracy but how to fix it?
The stupidity is happening because it benefits rich people to fill the world with stupid people. Stupid, gullible people are the key to their endlessly growing profits and wealth extraction.
We already know how to solve stupidity. We have always known it. Education has been one of the core pillars of human civilization since antiquity. It wasn't the first man to discover fire who changed everything, it was the person who discovered how to teach the next generation to control fire at least as well if not better than they originally did.
Education has not failed us. Education has been sabotaged and dismantled. By rich and powerful people, for their own purposes.
First we get rid of those rich and powerful people who have set themselves against us, then we rebuild everyone's education and if we're lucky, we might get to move on with our civilization eventually. Nobody promised it's going to be easy. But it is necessary, if we wish the human race to continue, and traditionally we've been pretty stubbornly invested in that.
I'll drink to that! Or anything really.
I'll drink to drinking to anything!
Trust me there are people who even using the best education they stop being stupid is like it is in their genes.
Get that Nazi shit out of your brain. We all have reactionary ideas like this imbedded in us from growing up in western society. So, please, I beg you, purge that "it's in their genes (blood)" and "iq" shit from your brain. It's just a modern version of "blood and soil" even if you didn't mean it that way.
At first I thought they meant it like "nepo babies going to ivy leagues remain stupid and out-of-touch," but on second glance I think you're right. Yikes.
They're on the mgtow instance. All they know is Nazi talking points and misogyny.
While true, they are the minority. That is not an argument against education.
I know people who have intellectual disabilities who are some of the loveliest and most caring people I’ve ever met. Intelligence does not dictate a person’s capacity to be a productive and caring member of society. Empathy, however, is a skill that can be taught to all but a few who are clinically psychopathic. Intelligence is not a marker of a valuable member of society - empathy and compassion are.
One reason that people are stupid is because rich people need slave labor, so they set up a system where people don't learn to think for themselves.
This makes me think, there is some kind of "system creationism" philosophy in the far left that is not unlike the Christian one. Thinking that some all powerfull entity (or group) created/designed the situation by itself rather than thinking it is the result of extremely complex historical chain of events and balance between groups and environments. By extension it leads to thinking that somehow removing the powerful entity magically solves the problem.
What does destroyed mean to you?
Razed to the ground and the ashes salted, to then be rebuilt better.
You're suggesting we burn our respective countries to the ground, full on civil war and complete destruction, fracture of civil society, starvation and economic collapse, with no guarantees about who, when or what will step into that maelstrom of human suffering, other than your assurances that it will be better than what we have now.
Sorry, but I'm skeptical that you have a reasonable way forward.
🤓
Thanks for contributing, guy who wants to abolish democracy.
I can tell you've really thought through this.
The rich are the root of stupidity weaponized against liberal democracy, working people, and the common good.
Fixed by organization, innumerable groups federated on a main forum outside silicon valley's control cooperating on what we agree on in public and private ways as we see fit. With clear moderation rules appealed to a jury of peers to prevent govt, bus groups getting their hooks in and ratfucking it all.
Rich people are a very solvable problem, so let's focus on problems we can solve first okay
ALL the rich people, right? Including pootin and Pooh bear?
What makes you think that Pooh is rich?
Racists like to compare President Xi to a yellow animal.
I was just playing along with their use of language. Irregardless, it doesn't strike me as Xi would be among billionaires.
He doesn’t need private wealth when he controls an entire nation for life.
Actually Xi is probably the richest person on earth.
Why? Because China is the world's 2.5th biggest economy (2nd only to the US when counting countries, but the EU is richer than China and is often counted), and it's the biggest dictatorship (for now, since the US is at risk of dictatorship). Being a dictator, he COULD just sell parts of the country and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be stopped if he tried. And when something can be sold and thus converted to money, it counts as wealth.
It's a good thing then that he uses his power to redistribute wealth, alleviating poverty and building infrastructure.