US billionaires:
“Wait, you mean to say that we can keep our current quality of life, dabble in our little space projects, and that those we employ won’t suffer???”
“Lol naw fuck that.”
Exactly. The cruelty is the point. They enjoy making people suffer.
I feel like it’s a means of creating a further distance between the rich and poor when conventional means have reached their limit, though i imagine there is likely at least some sadistic pleasure they derive from it (and there are very likely some that get a lot)
Here’s a comparison that came to mind for me: when i make dinner, i like to make my wife and i a salad but I’ll go out of my way to make a very nice presentation of the various ingredients on my wife’s salad. I will have the exact same ingredients for mine, but intentionally slop them onto the plate with hasty abandon and even take measures to try to make it look even worse. I like to argue that my wife’s salad is the better of the 2, that there is a hierarchy that’s immediately distinguishable–even though it’s the exact same stuff. That her salad is actually even better than if they both had been presented the same way–that i can make that basic salad even better than previously thought possible by creating a severe inequality in its presentation to the other one. Of course, that’s a very harmless comparison but i think there’s something in it.
I mean, it’s like the rich can only be so pleased with their riches and the luxuries it affords them. Not to mention a lot of that stuff probably becomes trite/commonplace even if it’s a giant yacht or fancy food or living space or whatever. They can only be so happy, and sustaining that happiness is probably not easy when you’ve burned through the conventional happiness-granting activities. It would seem that they find more nuanced, and perhaps even perverted means of pressing the happiness button. I suppose Epstein’s Island really kinda drives home that whole disgusting “someone has to suffer in order for me to be happy” kinda dynamic.
It’s disgusting to think people derive pleasure from making others suffer like this, but it’s not the least surprising to discover. 🫠
Yeah… It’s like the mobile f2p games. The paying players need the f2p players so they can stomp on them.
I honestly don’t think the problem is that Capitalist’s don’t understand that concept; they very much do.
They also understand that the money for raising that floor would likely come from taxes on them; and so keeping the floor low means that they can keep even more profit.
It’s not a lack of understanding. It’s pure unadulterated evil.
The rich capitalists sure, but there are plenty of poor capitalists being fed misinformation, in order to maintain the status quo. And when it is the many vs the powerful few, then the more we have on our side the better
And this is America right now:
Eh, no reason to discard the idea of putting a ceiling on the rich. Even if you took away all of the money people had that was over 1 billion dollars, that wouldn’t cause any of those people to suffer.
1000x the median household income. That should be the cap. It’s a nice round number; people can understand it. And it indexes automatically with inflation.
Moreover, this is about the maximum lifetime fortune achievable by someone who actually works for a living. In a US context, 1000x median household income is about $80 million USD. That’s still an incredible amount of money, though just barely achievable by actually working for wages. It’s the kind of fortune two neurosurgeons could amass if they both worked long careers, lived extremely frugally, and invested everything they made. 1000x median household income is what I consider the largest possible ‘honest’ fortune. In order to earn beyond that level, you have to earn your money not through your labor, but the labor of others. You have to start a business and start sponging off the surplus of your employees. 1000x median income is about as large a pile as you can get without relying on exploiting someone else’s labor. And that seems like a reasonable place to set a cap. Still high enough to provide people plenty of incentive to work hard, get an education, better themselves, etc. But no so high that people amass fortunes that are threats to national security.
Indeed, whilst it’s more difficult to raise a floor, it’s certainly a good idea to have a roof close enough to it to keep the heat where the people exist
What if we just burn the rich as firewood instead?
worth noting how norway is rich off of oil
Worth noting that most of the time oil (newly discovered natural resources really)makes a country poorer than richer. See Venezuela and such.
So good on Norway to not give in to unbridled corruption and out that money on a public fund to make its own citizen wealthy
Well yes, Norway’s leader wasn’t assassinated by the US, followed by sanctions and throwing money and weapons at militant factions. I wonder why…
True and the Nordics have plenty of poverty themselves once people look closer.
(This is just saying it exists, nothing more)
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Not even a successful society is perfect. It certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It’s still better than what most of the rest of the world is doing.
Norway relies on the exploitation of billions in the global south, as all of the western world does.
What does that even mean? For those of us who aren’t in the know like you are, that phrase doesn’t mean anything to us.
And if you’re open to a friendly suggestion, nix the “western world” propaganda; focus on explaining the “exploitation of billions in the global south” part.
Norway doesn’t produce cocoa beans. Norway doesn’t produce cotton, or bananas, or iron ore, or cobalt, or gold, or most basic raw materials you need to run a society. Neither do Spain, or Germany, or France, or the USA. Instead, these countries focus on the production of high value-added goods and services, which they can do because they are historically highly industrialized, developed, and have high levels of education, infrastructure and concentration of productive capital.
In this manner, Germany imports iron ore from poor countries in the global south at low prices, and exports cars at high prices. In the international market, therefore, one hour of German/French/Norwegian work is exchanged often for tens of hours of work from India, or Congo, or Mexico. This is unequal exchange, and is the pillar of neocolonialism.
Through political, economical and military powers, the western world has ensured that the global south remains underdeveloped. IMF predatory loans and neoliberal policy impositions, support for fascists or monarchists, coups, or outright military invasions are some of the most common tools the west uses to maintain these countries underdeveloped and with cheap labor.
In the international market, therefore, one hour of German/French/Norwegian work is exchanged often for tens of hours of work from India, or Congo, or Mexico.
Explain where the exploitation comes from.
- Is the argument here that developed goods are worth more on the market than their raw materials & shouldn’t be?
- Or that a unit of time of more skilled labor to develop those goods from raw materials should earn the same as less skilled labor, so the disparities in their market value is exploitation? If they could earn the same with less skill, then why bother developing skill?
- It’s not like they govern the foreign countries of international businesses they trade with for raw materials. Is your argument that they shouldn’t trade internationally for raw materials?
It’s not like they govern the foreign countries of international businesses they trade with for raw materials
Not directly, perhaps, but that’s how neocolonialism works. 14 countries in Africa use currency whose central bank is in Paris, western nations keep military forces in many African countries and support only the governments that they want, and when a nation rejects complete exploitation by western corporations, they either apply sanctions (with the explicit aim of “creating hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”), or organize coups to democratically elected leaders, or directly bomb the fuck out of them.
More subtle means include IMF loans conditioned to applying neoliberal economic policy. In his 100-page resignation letter from the IMF, former IMF senior economist Davison Budhoo described the extensive and systematic statistical fraud used by the IMF to impose its policies on developing countries, and explained that the consequences of these policies led to massive poverty and starvation. In the letter, Budhoo wrote that the IMF’s policies are made in “utter disregard to local conditions” and lead countries to “self destruct” and “unleash unstoppable economic and social chaos” and also compared the IMF’s structural adjustment policies to a “terrorist attack”. He also stated that the routine policy packages of the IMF “can never serve, under any set of circumstances, the cause of financial balance and economic growth” and that “the ill-gotten, inadvertent power that we revel in wielding over prostrate governments and peoples - can only serve to accentuate world tensions”
Is your argument that they shouldn’t trade internationally for raw materials?
My argument is that these countries aren’t allowed to industrialize in their own terms with their own companies. It’s either western corporations controlling everything and extracting the wealth to Europe and North America, or murder.
