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!
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.
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.
Capitalism is a threat to democracy.
But thanks for getting on nearly the same page, Oxfam.
Well let's get on it folks
chop chop
I believe Plato pointed this out in The Republic.
He thought the richest citizen needed to have no more then 5x the wealth of the poorest citizen or you would inevitably slide into oligarchy.
How strange that some Texas university was recently banning a professor from teaching Plato to students because it had too much "equality" in it.
We crossed that threshold so long ago that you can make 5x the poverty level and still not be able to afford a house.
Well 5x0 is 0 so yeah. This sounds like a good system though. Desperate for that Billion clout? Make sure everyone else has 200mil first.
0 isn't real, it is a social construct created by big math.
You add by 0 and its still the same... what?
You subtract by 0 and its still the same... why?
You multiply by 0 and you BECOME 0, the heck?
You divide by 0 and its... big not even a number just a concept.... sure buddy!
No shit!
Most of the words ultra-wealthy are verifiably sociopathic. Capitalism literally rewards those who posses the least empathy, the most.
It's more than that. It's a feedback loop. Having distance from the consequences of your actions encourages sociopathic behavior. Power such as wealth is the easiest way to create that distance, even if you don't want to
I suspect the only time the US got close to representative government was the New Deal era. Most people just live their lives and don't think in ideological terms. The ones that do are considered "too into politics" and usually believe in reform because it requires less of them than the alternative. Anyways, how about that bread and circuses?
No shit bro for real?
Screw Idiocracy. People reference it not understanding there were positives in the negatives. This is "Don't Look Up", that nailed our current corrupt leadership and techno-corporate lunacy, as well as ignoring what is right in front of us because shiny things are more interesting.
Rich people are also delicious with BBQ sauce.
😱🤯
i think some german said this 100 years ago already
You mean letting a small group of people consolidate power under themselves is a danger to a system designed to evenly distribute power? No way!
It's good science to challenge assumptions or previously accepted findings.
Usually these studies examine multiple factors for whatever context, then draw an overall conclusion based on the cumulative findings. This is then simplified by media, which then gets a bunch of "well duh" comments by people who don't read the news article or the research report.
So tired of this tbh - I just don't understand how anyone thinks wealth consolidation to few could be a good thing.
Even if you ignore ethics and assume the billionaires are benevolent - it's just a bad investment to invest majority of resources to a small number of investments. Does any successful large project hold 99% of their investments in few projects? It's absurd.
It makes absolutely zero sense no matter how you look at it unless you're truly full in on delusion that benevolent dictators exist and are impossible to corrupt or overtake.
Recent high-profile acquisitions include Jeff Bezos purchasing the Washington Post, Elon Musk buying Twitter (now X), and Patrick Soon-Shiong acquiring the Los Angeles Times. A billionaire consortium also bought significant stakes in The Economist.
In France, far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré has transformed CNews into what critics call the French equivalent of Fox News. In the United Kingdom, three-quarters of newspaper circulation is controlled by just four wealthy families.
This is amazing. News and communication in the internet age was supposed to be democratised publication and agency to the voice of the average person, and it is to a small extent, but for the most part society was just like
We’ve been pointing this out ever since the concept of currency became a thing, but I’m sure we will learn our lesson this time and stop doing it. This can’t just be how it will always be until we drive ourselves to extinction stuck on this miserable rock, Right?
Structural issues make egalitarian economic systems difficult. Wealth and social influence compound once another in a virtuous cycle. Wealth has a strong hereditary bias, even in socialist economic models. And violence is historically a powerful tool for accruing wealth. Very difficult to establish universal deterrence against violence.
This isn't a question of people being smart or stupid. It's an elaborate balancing act that becomes exponentially more difficult as population size expands.
As a very wise Irishman once so eloquently said it: “People. What a bunch’a bastards.”
So when are we going tondo what about this?
This. Has. To. Stop.
We cannot allow a single person or family to control a single news organization, let alone multiple. Anyone who thought that was a good or even okay idea has been, and continues to be, delusional.
It's not that they are rich, we've always had rich people. The problem is that we now have rich people with enough wealth to compete with nations, and they are getting even stronger. They are now starting to cut their own deals with nations that benefit them personally, with no regard to the nations, and millions of people that could be harmed by that policy. We've already seen Musk manipulate Starlink to steer a war in his direction, and unleash his hacking squad to rig an American election, just so he could use the opportunity to cripple all the government agencies that were investigating his crimes.
And it will only get worse. They are approaching Trillionaire status, and will be even more powerful. How long before multiple trillionaires form an alliance, and build their own personal military?
Eventually we will reach a point where it will become impossible to reign them in, and then we will all wonder why someone didn't do something about them when it was still possible, like NOW.
There already are private military. Black Water and alike are absolutely private armies. But that could be expensive, even for trillionaires. It's a much better strategy to privatize the existing military and get it paid by the government. Watch it, it's going to happen!
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