How should we help the super rich?

[Gorbles]

We didn't start with them, we fought for them. Then they fought back. It's not over.

Fighting for them involved operating outside of the democratic borders of the time, every time. Remember where this tangent started?

 

[Hygro]

Hardly every time, but any reading of class history in the United States validates your overall point. We are kneecapping ourselves, however, when we don't make full use of the ballot. Our own cynicism makes it 10x harder.

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't think that democratic expression is it limited to just the ballot box. But the final implementation of any actual solution, the codification, will definitely require bottom up consensus.

 

[Gorbles]

Hardly every time, but any reading of class history in the United States validates your overall point. We are kneecapping ourselves, however, when we don't make full use of the ballot. Our own cynicism makes it 10x harder.

I feel like this is a useful Twitter thread (just came across it):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1605587653306589186

It's hard to imagine redressing this with the ballot. Candidates are, shall we say, often not aligned with our interests. And there's a barrier of capital (and party interests) to a successful candidate in the first place.

I think the ballot is used almost as much as it can be. The problem there is the intentional disenfranchisement and suppression, but that's another thread. Going back to "how do we 'help' the super rich", their interests are not ours. Our rules they sidestep. Force is therefore required.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I feel like this is a useful Twitter thread (just came across it):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1605587653306589186

It's hard to imagine redressing this with the ballot. Candidates are, shall we say, often not aligned with our interests. And there's a barrier of capital (and party interests) to a successful candidate in the first place.

I think the ballot is used almost as much as it can be. The problem there is the intentional disenfranchisement and suppression, but that's another thread. Going back to "how do we 'help' the super rich", their interests are not ours. Our rules they sidestep. Force is therefore required.

Not always force, but change won't come about by the ballot box and consensus alone. Suffrage, Civil Rights, Labour laws etc . None of them would have changed just relying on "democratic" politics.

 

[Farm Boy]

I knew it was important to cattle ranching, but I wouldn’t think barbed wire would bring in that much money in and of itself.

I can still get tangled up on the stuff from now huge old trees that grew around the old lines. Literally everywhere, at one point.

 

[sophie]

The ballot also resulted in “the good party” using the law to gut precisely the sort of bottom-up class action you’re talking about.

Anyway Lucy Parsons had the right idea for how to help the super rich back in 1884

Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination.

 

[Narz]

Going back to "how do we 'help' the super rich", their interests are not ours. Our rules they sidestep. Force is therefore required.

What does that look like practically?

Anyway Lucy Parsons had the right idea for how to help the super rich back in 1884

That's cute but they got security cameras these days.

Pol Pot had a similar idea. He was really into the idealism & no mercy. Iirc it didn't work out so good.

 

[El_Machinae]

Just like tolerance of billionaire abuse will divide along partisan lines based on whose team the billionaire pretends to be on, any murder of billionaires will begin with partisan crossover. That means that the other side will be objecting to the murder of the billionaire, treating it as some type of evidence that the other team is bad.

It is interesting if you look at a list of billionaires how quickly it is that you don't recognize some of the names.

 

[sophie]

Just like tolerance of billionaire abuse will divide along partisan lines based on whose team the billionaire pretends to be on, any murder of billionaires will begin with partisan crossover. That means that the other side will be objecting to the murder of the billionaire, treating it as some type of evidence that the other team is bad.

It is interesting if you look at a list of billionaires how quickly it is that you don't recognize some of the names.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Killing billionaires does nothing to ease inequity. Their riches just move about within their families.

 

[sophie]

That would be a brilliant insight if you assumed (perhaps in bad faith) that my appeal to kill billionaires wasn’t some contextually obvious synecdoche for a broader programme of wealth expropriation, redistribution, and economic realignment.

Thankfully that assumption is untrue and I am not driven by some random bloodlust for its own sake.

 

[Narz]

That would be a brilliant insight if you assumed (perhaps in bad faith) that my appeal to kill billionaires wasn’t some contextually obvious synecdoche for a broader programme of wealth expropriation, redistribution, and economic realignment.

Thankfully that assumption is untrue and I am not driven by some singular bloodlust for its own sake.

Maybe try saying what you actually mean then instead of going for shock value?

 

[sophie]

Maybe try saying what you actually mean then instead of going for shock value?

I’m sorry but if you can’t gather my position from context and general knowledge about me after twelve years, then at this point I can only conclude that you are being willfully obtuse or you are simply an idiot.

Either way not really worth my time
Moderator Action: Warned for flaming. The_J

 

[Narz]

Good luck w that attitude.

You should talk plainly, no one who's time has value is gonna take the time to dig thru your layers of trauma and snark to decifer your meaning.

 

[r16]

one advantage of Democracy being brought to this country is the ease one gains in sizing up notions . Guess there are a couple of billionaires in this thread who want the mobs screaming to kill billionaries so that they can keep adding billions to their billions .

 

[Gorbles]

Maybe try saying what you actually mean then instead of going for shock value?

You mean like by comparing people to Pol Pot?

Pol Pot had a similar idea. He was really into the idealism & no mercy.

If you want a discussion, you've got to put the work in buddy. Endlessly "just asking questions" isn't a position.

 

[Lexicus]

Good luck w that attitude.

You should talk plainly, no one who's time has value is gonna take the time to dig thru your layers of trauma and snark to decifer your meaning.

 

[sophie]

View attachment 648322

THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

 

[r16]

what if the fight envisaged is not an Hollywood production and she would end up with a broken jaw for starters ?


edit: Crosspost .