The thought of running around with a 5 million dollar ring gives me heart palpitations.
The fact that a ring can be worth more then it would cost to provide financial independence for hunderds of people, is kinda jarring.
I know, I know, pretty rock and metal worth paper value notes.
So really that ring is pure loss.
No one owned that gem when it was just sitting in the ground. It took millions of years to create.
Some capitalism claimed it when one of his workers mined it. Calculated how much energy and labor it has costs to obtain it.
Then sold it for a massive markup compared to their own costs.
The machines have spend energy to get it (loss)
The workers spend life time and life energy to get it (loss)
Bezos his works spend their life time and energy to make him the money he now loses on this ring. (Loss)
The planet lost one of its rare gems. (Loss)
No lives are going to be saved using that rock, its not going to be used for breakthrough science, its not in a museum where we the people can admire our planet and learn from the its amazing processes. (No profit)
Instead its to decorate a hand so one person can be perceived as having value. Ironic.
Do you HAVE to be so unromantic? It obviously proved his NEVER-ENDING LOVE for his wife! Does that count for NOTHING?! /s
That's literally every wedding ring regardless of value
All materials obtained just to turn it into jewellery is loss yes.
Mine is a gold alloy rather then pure and i am very fond of it. I derive pleasure from it everyday while the total loss was significantly less than the one in Bezos marriage.
We also had an engagement ring which has an industrial rock because no way where we going to waste our limited money on a real diamond.
All rings combined costs less than having a birth in a US hospital.
Both rings were still a loss to the planet, just like almost every novelty i own and many things i consume. Staying alive is a destructive action and all humans cause loss. That is normal and ok. What is not ok is not being aware/inconsiderate of it.
We should all strive to create the least amount of loss we are aware off and my older self having grown significantly then when i married would love a ring made from recycled computer metals which now often end up on a landfill.
That's enough budget for a whole ass R&D project and team. Can this ring shoot lasers or steer a helicopter or something?
All I ever get asked for by the politicians I vote for (the Democrats) is money.
Maybe I’m subscribed to the wrong things.
I am also weary of Bernie's endless calls to do this or that while not specifying any way of doing it. I certainly don't expect him to do anything more, he's already made a much larger impact than most individuals ever can or will. But that entire tour with AoC kind of felt like only half of a useful thing. We all know it's a problem. We all want to put a stop to it. But nobody knows how, that's what's missing. What do you want us to do, Bernie?!? Vote in the primaries, I guess? Would be nice if the next steps were included in the message to take action. Like an instant macaroni box whose instructions just say "You must make the macaroni!", it feels a bit silly.
I get this feeling when I watch Jon Oliver. Jon's really good at identifying the problem, demonstrating why its a problem, and making you kind of upset about it.
God forbid you ever watched Jon Oliver back to back because you'd go mad with the immediate understanding that you live in bizzaro world.
So, it would be nice if HBO had a second show which was more like myth busters where people championed each of the problems Jon pointed out and left the viewer with a clear understanding what they can do or at the least, what can be done.
He does try to give a solution. It's just that there is little to nothing the average viewer can do to make it happen. Sadly, that is just the way it is. Same with Bernie. We actually can't make the solutions happen. But both are raising public awareness, which "can" impact policy. So I guess watching and listening is what we can do.
Grow your own food, make your own things, slash your expenses. If everyone does this, the enemy loses most of their power
As someone who lives this type of lifestyle, also share and barter within your community. It takes more than one household to manage everything. Meet your neighbors. Share skills and ideas. Support one another.
I feel like Jordan Klepper would be perfect for that, he does great on the street engaging with folks and trying to explain their ignorance slowly
(FYI Jon is the frazzled old mensch, John is the increasingly frustrated Brit)
I do think that "the system" (not any particular person or group of people, but the more abstract social meta-organism) is evolved, all systems are, to integrate and channel possible destabilizing forces into neutralized or even system-reaffirming forces. The system does not "platform" people who would legitimately threaten the system as a general rule. Jon Oliver is a pressure release valve, if he was to propose solutions that threatened to alter the system too much (systems see significant alterations as akin to death), he would be deplatformed organically. Again, I must stress that it is not an actual person or organization explicitly setting out to do this, like some sort of shady Comedy Central Illuminati. It's just the same as how our body has a bunch of independent organs and cells that all work together without exactly trying to or knowing that they're doing so.
Unfortunately Bernie is largely the same sort of thing. We can be assured of this by the fact that he is influential. Almost without exception, the more influential someone wants to be, the more pro-systemic they must be. In Bernie's case he may not even realize how pro-systemic he is, he likely sees himself as more anti-systemic. But he is anti-systemic in the same way as a white blood cell is anti-systemic - that is, not at all, and only in appearance without inspection of the bigger picture. I suspect this is why he ends up not proposing any clear course of action. His role, although again I think he is unaware of this, is to create the sense that establishment dissent exists and is possible, that change and reform is possible. I say this without taking a stance on whether it is actually possible or not. Both in a system where it is possible and in a system where it is not possible, there would still be a flag bearer for that possibility regardless of its actual existence.
What I mean to say is that the system self-selects for the type of people who acknowledge problems but not the type of people who make proposals to fix them. It wants to appear to be investigating the desires of its constituents while not actually doing so - the system only cares about its constituents in so far as its constituents lead to the system's well-being as a whole. The system does not intrinsically care for its constituents well-being. So while systems do indeed evolve and legitimately investigate ways to improve their own well-being, they will only appear to investigate ways to approve the well-being of their constituents, if they can help it.
All just my impressions of course, I hate talking in an authoritative voice about my ideas, but it's better than prefacing every sentence with "I think", "it seems like", etc.
We already know what needs to be done, we just aren't allowed to talk about it.
The Tree of Liberty is thirsty.
If he said what needs to be done, he'd be imprisoned immediately for inciting violence against the president, and for planning a coup. Until he has troops on his side, he can not tell you what actually has to happen.
Someone with power has to say it or nothing will happen.
Then it is doomed to fail. Power has to come from the bottom up. People need to learn how to take power back for themselves and their local community
Good thing they implemented even more tax cuts for the rich, coming soon™...
But obviously not too soon, otherwise they can't blame the dems for it.
Even he knows this won't be fixed by political discourse.
I hope we end it with violence.
There's very little chance it ends otherwise to be fair. Talking and negotiation didn't work, peaceful protest didn't work.
Apathy prevents violence, and will continue to do so until the vast majority of people are in constant pain and fear with absolutely no alternative. When the people have nothing to lose they will act.
Even the most politically aware and ethically minded among us can't drop their daily lives in favor of standing up for the oppressed when standing on the razor edge of working every day to avoid homelessness.
Those who are not on the razor edge have "more to lose" by toppling the system
Newsflash: it already is ending with violence.
We're losing. Handily.
Let's vote for....it.
Well this is awkward
Bernie needs to set up an alt account on Twitter where he pretends to be a Republican but reposts all these same messages.
AFAIK in comparison to the median income the wedding only cost him 18,50$ relatively
So, while I agree with the "vote away Fascism" being bull shit I do still think that working class momentum can be built through wins like Mamdani.
I see so many comments saying "voting won't work", "protesting won't work" etc. Anything that has any visible result, works. Because the majority of people follow the herd to a greater or lesser extent. You need to mobilise that majority in order to make a difference. The more you have a movement, the bigger, louder and more visible that is, the more people will join you. People need to feel which way the wind is blowing.
And when its ended, take ALL the money back that they stole in various inventive ways
BuT hE's A sElF mAdE mAn !
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