The billionaires are already winning, with no signs of that changing.
That’s because—for many reasons—there are way too many non-billionaires on team billionaire.
I worked with a guy that proudly proclaimed that he voted for the right because they looked after the rich.
He was not rich, but he purchased lottery tickets weekly and stated he'd rather get screwed while poor than pay more tax if he, some day, became rich.
And that was the day I realised that we're fucked.
Ah, see, what you should have done was.....stabbed him in the eye.
Just remember, when we go vote, his is worth just as much as yours.
Hey, don't look at me. I'm on team "unexpected astroid hitting the earth to end it all".
I was devastated when my candidate never showed up again and again...
They will just cook the planet killing us all
This is happening right now and the billionaires are winning.
Is it, though? Because if the billionaires had all that money but only themselves and their billionaire friends on team billionaire, how powerful would they actually be (in comparison to, say, now) if they didn't have any non billionaires on their side?
I think they're this powerful right now because there are a lot of non-billionaires who are dumb enough to do whatever they're told by them even if it's not in their own best interest (or the rest of the world's) at all.
All evidence points to a regime change (in the physics sense, not the political) being the necessary condition for things to go from our current state to something new.
We currently have people paying poorer people a very small amount of their own net worth to protect the wealthy person's status and position. This is similar to how kings and queens paid the army and policing forces to control the peasants.
Before the French Revolution I am sure it seemed impossible that the peasants would revolt, but the years leading up to the revolution things were getting worse and worse for the average peasant. There is a tipping point where the average person does not think the current system is delivering on the promise that of you do what you are told you can have a good life. I think we are approaching that point now.
If the rich try to hire someone and underpay them for security, stiff contractors for services, flaunt laws and generally behave obnoxiously at some point people will have had enough. Whether that ends with guillotine action or people just divesting from those systems depends on how much freedom people think they have.
If people thought they could go and homestead, live off the land, and get by without the massive companies these billionaires own then they would have that outlet and choose that peaceful option. The fact that we have taxation creates a pressure to pay in currency which demands earning in that currency. Same with paying rent, you have to earn money simply to live. No amount of growing all of your food gets rid of your financial obligations, so there is no out from the system. If that system is unreasonable it begins to feel less like participation and more like coercive control. Wage slavery is not the same as slavery, but both involve coercion and require the legal system to support them. Both lead to revolutions. Both lead to violence.
I guess the billionaires have to decide if they really want to paint that big a target on their backs by flaunting their wealth. At this point I think they feel untouchable.
If we decide money no longer matters it'd be petty easy to eliminate them all. If we continue to let money run our lives then it'll continue to be pretty easy for the people with money to keep all their power.
If we decide money no longer matters it’d be petty easy to eliminate them all
Okay, but then where will I get my passive income? I worked 40 years in the shit and rusty needles mine to build up a big enough nest egg to get passive income. Now I'm too full of staff infections and lacerated limbs and shit lung to work anymore.
I can't afford not to make the next guy work himself to death in the shit rust needle mine.
*Staph.
His people are infected. I think he might be a billionaire in disguise.
No one needs to work in a shit rust needle mine. Without money you would have community helping & taking care of you based on your needs & listening to your ideas. You would take as much as you need but as little as you can to live happily & work to contribute back.
I mean... money does matter. It matters to the individual because it is how they pay their bills, and it matters to all of humanity because it is how we are able to take coordinated action despite the lack of any central organizer.
Taking money out of the picture would also take bills out of the picture. And humanity absolutely has the ability to coordinate action without money at least as well (if not better) than how it is now, the only difference is it would be harder for individuals to be the sole coordinator. Money, and who has it, is our current central organizer and will continue to burn the planet if we fail to take away its power.
humanity absolutely has the ability to coordinate action without money at least as well (if not better) than how it is now
That's a huge claim, you need to support that.
Not that huge of a claim, especially when now is so chaotic and dysfunctional. Here's a nonexhaustive list of moneyless economies (obviously with varying degrees of feasibility)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monetary_economy
~edit: wording~
The huge claim is the present tense, "has the ability". It's not a huge claim to say that humanity has the potential to one day transcend money, but that wasn't the claim. Humanity has a long road before that's possible, it does not presently have the ability to continue to function if we just snapped our fingers tomorrow and eliminated money.
An "ability" is not a vague notion bolstered by historical curiosities. An "ability" involves a detailed, immediately actionable plan that can be implemented in the modern economic landscape without destroying crucial productivity.
Resources have to be allocated. People need to accept the resource allocation method in order to contribute their labor to do things that must be done. Money is an imperfect solution. Eliminating money leads to reinventing it (e.g. "energy credits"), reverting to less efficient models (e.g. barter), developing a central planning body that replaces wealth corruption with administrative corruption, or widespread social loafing where nothing gets done.
Without an actual plan of implementation that gains the trust of the workers, there is no "ability", merely aspiration.
The billionaires. People dumb AF. Billionaires have money to manipulate people to think they are doing good while they are fucking humanity.
The billionaires spend a small fraction to some idiots to betray their fellow non-billionaires. It's probably about a million people versus the masses.
Why you think they're tossing so much money to develope ai and humanoid robots?
When shit will hit the fan they want their own private army to watch their ass, but at the same time they don't want highly trained human mercenary inside their golden castel getting strange ideas.
Omg you are right on this. They see most of as disposable once they're able to consistently get away with it.
Which is now. They just need something safe to keep "that" up in the eventuality that civilization/economy collapse.
If the people were all invested in taking out the billionaires, then the people would win, hands down.
But if, as in the current situation, the people have higher priorities, in which 50% do not find billionaires to be an existential threat, and at least 300 million think they are simply temporarily embarrassed billionaires themselves, then the billionaires win, that is, until the Earth inevitably cannot support them any longer.
It's not the billionaires but the antisocial, amoral whores who will sell their souls for money and do their bidding that are the problem (police, army, etc.), and those who would quietly acquiesce. And of those there are way too many in some societies for change to be easy/possible.
If organized, the billionaires lose. It's really that simple and that difficult.
Okay, then go start organizing?
Don't tell me what to do!
Their divide and conquer strategy is busting our asses.
Huh, it's up to 3000 now.
If it's actually defined as a fight with two sides, 8 billion people. IRL it's not really they're just kind of the visible tip of a giant inequality iceberg.
Over 1 million Russians killed and how many tens of thousands in Gaza. 3000 would be quite easy compared to the innocent.
Yes markets would be in shit but so what, take their wealth and distribute it. The entire financial system is made out of thin air now, everyone will be all worried to justify why not to do it but we need to do it for our civilization to grow beyond having the Poor's do all the work for the greedy pigs.
The entire system needs to change and they won't go easy, it will be tough and bloody.
I chose to believe that the working class will eventuall prevail, that people will no longer have nationalism, and work together towards a common future.
It may take years, it may take decades, perhaps even a century, but we will get there. We must get there. Life is too short, life is too miserable. We cannot give up on trying to build a better future.
Because the moment I lose that last bit of hope, I will literally kill myself. So I cannt give up on humanity. I have to have faith that there are good people out there trying to fix problems, because that's what gives me he motivation to live.
Humans have been living under absolute monarchies, communities have been destroyed by imperialism and colonialism, slavery was rampart, the concept of human rights didnt even exist. But we have come so far, humanity have come so far, a lot of the problems we faced in the past had been fixed or at leased inproved. And yes we eill face a lot more problems in the future, and eventually we will find those solutions just as we did for the past problems; we cannot give up now.
Yes, climate change will destroy so many thing, lives and livelihood, but we must find the strength to perservere. Because life is a miracle, Earth even being capable of sustaining life is a miracle.
I remember there was a kid in class that asked: "If humans mess up the Earth, why don't we just move to Mars?", the teacher who's field is related to environment (can't remember the exact subject), told the class that, humans can use up all the fossil fuels and melt all polar ice caps, and Earth would still be 100 times more habitable than Mars.
Because no matter how bad it gets, its still still the most habitable planet that we know of.
Do not give up. (I know I'm being a hypocrite since I subconsciously always tell myself to give up, but don't do that, fight those thoughts)
Billionaires win. They are winning in this world — imagine the world as an arena...
They first reach out to those primed to defect. The ones who think they are defending their own interests because, one day after much bootstrapping, they'll be rich too. That's 10% of the non-billionaire population and a large group of the young, able-bodied, entitled predominantly male population.
Another 10% opt to not fight. They'll wait and see who comes out on top or opt for pacifism — supporting those who fight without fighting themselves.
The next 20% are those who want a compromise — not having the foresight to admit they'll be screwed in the end by the shrewd and wily billionaire class.
That still leaves 4.8 billion people.
Well, another 10% of the planet is malnourished, living in extreme poverty, or are infirm and unable to fight. Take another 10% who lack the capacity to fight effectively, are children, or are exceedingly advanced in age.
We're down to 3.2 billion people.
Of those who remain, each billionaire will need to kill 1 000 000 people in order to win the day. This is achieved by a combination of attacks — nuclear, chemical, biological, conventional, and systemic. Supply lines are cut early, communication lines are jammed, and every possible similarity that could bind 3.2 billion people together is spun into a wedge to divide them. The billionaires are unified behind their purchasing power. Each victorious serves as a message to the remaining people of the fresh horrors to come.
After five or six days, there are 2700 remaining billionaires, who somehow got richer and only 1 billion fighters. Demoralized, decimated, defeated, the non-billionaires give in.
The one strategy that would — nay, could — turn the tables is to upend the tables. Make money worthless. In some minds, this is the Purge. This is the antithesis.
Instead, as a thesis: truly valuing life and living things, the fragile interdependence of ecology within an economic, social, and anthropological order would negate any power that the death-driven cult of profiteering offers. I'm not talking about sitting in a circle and singing kumbaya into eternity. I am talking about doing the work of eternity — stewardship for a planet we understand (not just its commodities) and community for all participants (not just the economically viable). We can learn from one another and grow with one another without exploiting or reinforcing one another's weaknesses.
Takers like to quote Adam Smith, Sun Tzu, or the 48 Laws of Power. The battles we do not fight will feed us. The fields we do not raze will house us. The oceans we do not destroy will connect us. The planet we treat like a home instead of a hole in the ground will support us.
I mean... Look around? Maybe billionaire is a new thing, but it is just modern royalty. We still have kings, they just got better PR.
While arriving for the competition, all 8 billion got wedged into the doors of the arena Three Stooges style and were unable to compete.
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