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A billionaire does things for many reasons. None of those are in your interests unless you also happen to be a billionaire.
The sooner you learn this, the sooner we can start doing something about it.
Since a couple of you asked what’s the something we can start doing about billionaires, it’s simple:
Whatever you can to make them socially unacceptable. Make being a billionaire the equivalent of wearing fur.
Don’t feed them if you can help it (easier said than done). If you must feed them, make sure people know you’re not happy about it. If there are alternatives, fund, promote, and use them. But at the very least don’t praise and glorify them and stop giving them “the benefit of the doubt.”
I bet they are pretty shitty to each other too.
@CartyBoston @aral I was gonna say—none of those things are in your interest unless you’re THAT billionaire.
And watching musk melon do his thing, maybe not even that.
@aral a billionaire IS a #billionaire by fucking you and your people over
@aral
Soooo true!!
@aral
I don't mind wealth but I do think billionaires and trillionaires shouldn't exist. That excessive wealth should be a badge of shame
@aral ...Welcome to the economic infrastructure of Capitalism. It's a sure-fire method of total destruction of Earth for the sake of GREED. A very sorry state of affairs, indeed.
@aral "Small club and you ain't in it" perhaps...
@aral
We need to build a new democracy where the billionaires cannot game for their benefit.
#
Honestly? I cannot believe working or middle class people in the United States "donate" money to a $billionaire presidential candidate and brag about it like they just did something quite smart.
@aral sounds kind of like an AI.
@aral honestly don't understand why they go out of thier way to make our lives worse even if it gives them zero benefit
Unfortunately, they don’t care about your comments and don’t take anything personal. They know that chaos is good for business aka their platform so they keep a tight control over their ‘angry teenage’ developers so those developers can’t block your instance because your opinion differs from theirs. They are unfortunately ‘mature’ compared to some people who are running instance here in the Fediverse.
5 people I loved following here are now regularly posting back to the bird site. Some are also showing off their invite code for Bluesky. Why? They don’t like it here and are tired. Simple as that.
PS: Like you, I’m not a fan of billionaires trying to control everything either.
@aral also all celebs or 'famous' people because they are usually at least millionaires. celeb worship is just gross.
@aral Especially when that "doubt" doesn't exist. When you have a billionaire whose track record shows they "do the right thing" exactly 0% of the time, it's deliberately misleading to suggest this time will be different.
@aral Good ideas.
And as it’s May 1st: **Join a union!**
@aral Heck yeah. I insist on the framing that billionaires are bad people. Even the ones with great PR, fundamentally they aren't doing enough.
The biggest consolation social media gives me is when someone like Bezos is on twitter caught up in small drama though. Like, go buy an island dude. Consistent proof money doesn't buy personality or happiness.
I don’t think the problem is billionaires but the fact that economic power easily become political power and grows in a positive feedback loop. Billionaires are a symptom but the problem is a pathological social system.
And a big part of this is people seeking for wealth, social status, visibility etc even at the lowest possible level of the pyramid.
I think a better advice is giving less importance to the narrative that everyone creates about themselves and give it to the really important things in life, including being morally upright and principled, even if no one will ever know, even if no one appreciates you, even if that means sacrificing wealth.
@aral I find the hardest part to be the tough conversations with people whose bubble im bursting or even going against someone they look up too. Had a few awkward conversations with relatives or at a wedding. I don’t want to be the one ruining the mood but I also don’t want to just smile when a dude says that Space Karen could be “the modern equivalent to Jesus”… I think I t requires good conversation skills and good knowledge of the topic to bring the right words at the right time?
@aral The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed. - Balzac
@aral *nodds in agreement*
In terms of not feeding the beasts, I noticed that most sellers like ALTERNATE undercut Amazon in pricing even if I add shipping on top.
Which says more about Amazon's greed than their competitor's willingness to accept shitty profit margins...
@aral
I am still hung up on: "eat the rich". It is a sacrifice but much faster results
@aral
Don’t work for them
@aral @Mastopoet Buy your books in lokal bookstores.
Agreed don’t do business with Tesla, google Facebook Microsoft, or a few others, and certainly don’t work for them and help them earn more billions
And if you’re a writer, don’t sell your books through Amazon
Virtually no billionaires on earth became so by providing good and services to people for fair compensation. Pretty much every one has links to overgrown states who have either directly paid them or created an uneven playing field that can only have one result.
Rail Barons got special monopolies granted by the state giving them unique powers to build through other people's land. Same with phone and power companies who got special access to people's yards to build their power lines. The Internet is one of the most government funded things in the history of the world. Banks get so much special legislation and government backing that it's absurd once you start looking into it. Elon Musk's entire fortune is entirely contingent on various US government programs.
It's actually already unfashionable to be super-rich, which is why fancy clothes and fast cars are no longer considered status symbols, and we get a proliferation of "luxury beliefs" where the rich and powerful express opinions that are as beautiful as diamonds and just as impractical. Such beliefs if acted upon by the poor would lead to destruction, but not if you're so rich it doesn't matter.