• Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    The hatred towards rich and succesful people is one of the harder to grasp concepts I’ve been dealing with in reddit. I don’t get it. I do but I don’t.

    • adderaline@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      you learn enough about the victims of capital, you start to hate the people who own it. killing them wouldn’t solve anything, but i’d still throw a party if they beefed it.

          • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            Wealth tells nothing about what one is like as a person. If you hate someone just because they’re wealthy while knowing nothing else about them then you’re no different from one that hates people because of the color of their skin. You don’t hate them because of what they do but because of who they are.

            • adderaline@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              No, because wealth isn’t who you are, it is what you do. You own a business, you run a company, you are an investor, you are a politician. Every method of acquiring or keeping personal wealth beyond the physical things in your house, the physical possessions you bought with your money and the money itself, relies on your ability to own something that other people use. You inherit a company, you rent out property, you become an investor. All these things rely on you maintaining ownership over information, property, and systems. That isn’t a passive choice. That is supporting the enrichment and maintenance of systems which currently represent the largest danger to living things on this earth in the last few thousand years, ecocidal and homocidal systems of oppression which represent a grave threat to countless species on earth, and contribute to the death and illness of millions of human beings. Being as wealthy as a billionare represents the hoarding of such a massive quantity of resources that actual human beings are starving to death or living in desolate poverty in the modern era. The failure to put our vast resources towards alleviating human suffering, ending poverty, ending disease, ending hunger, ending war, ending climate change, are the direct result of a system like this, which concentrates so much wealth in the hands of so few. No. Wealth tells me a lot about who somebody is as a person. A wealth like Elon Mush or Jeff Bezos is the direct result of horrific exploitation, bigotry, and cruelty whose impact can be felt on the scale of nations. Billions are diverted into the pockets of individual men, instead of towards the common good. People starve as Jeff Bezos flies a dildo into space. People die of preventable illness while Elon Musk buys a piece of the internet millions of people use to talk to each other. And they own enough of the world that they can steer public policy.

              Even if you don’t agree with me here, this is why people want Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to die, because they are the beneficiaries of a system which grants them massive undemocratic influence on the fate of billions of people. We all have to care about this fuckers, because the infrastructure they control shapes the course of our lives. Tell me, who would you trust with that amount of power? Why should any of us tolerate this kind of control over our lives? How are we served by systems which fail to prevent the deterioration of our biosphere, the health and safety of our loved ones, and the privacy of our lives? Maybe you don’t believe that men like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are this way, or you believe that there is no other way for the world to work, but others think differently. Who believe that wealth on the scale of a billionaire is itself a danger to our lives, that such power should belong to nobody. That if we are faced with the opportunity to save lives, make people happier, healthier, and safer, refusing to put our resources towards that goal is by itself an injustice. Naw, fuck Jeff Bezos. Fuck Elon Musk. The world would literally be better off without people like them.

              • Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
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                1 year ago

                Wealth is a vague term. If we’re speaking about billionaires then I agree that there’s probably not many who have aquired their wealth without oppressing anyone else but the hate towards all wealthy people including millionaires is narrow sighted. You can be wealthy and a genuinely good person at the same time; Keanu Reeves for example. That’s why I disagree with such black and white blanket statements. It’s much more nuanced than that. You need more metrics than just wealth.

                • adderaline@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  we aren’t talking about millionaires? at least i’m not. this whole thread is about billionaires why would you think we were talking about random celebrities? like maybe this argument would be relevant somewhere else but i’m genuinely confused, we’re talking about Bezos and Musk here, not actors?

    • leptirica@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t say it’s about how rich and successful they are, it’s more that they benefit from a system that brutalizes so many. And they’re not just participating in it, they’re actively enabling it. Hell, i don’t know about musk, but bezos had his part in shaping it.