6 ms·

I don't think it's a stretch to assume malice, billionaires are running the show and they aren't nice people that want to build a better world. If they want a p

by lasc4r 4y ago

I don't think it's a stretch to assume malice, billionaires are running the show and they aren't nice people that want to build a better world. If they want a population of poor, ignorant and unengaged worker drones they're doing great though.

robertlagrant 4y ago
It is a stretch to assume it. Billionaires generally do well in countries of hard-working, educated people. And they aren't running the show, although they might run a little bit of it.
- lasc4r 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    Believing that these agendas exist simply because they are evil people is reductionist. For example, my parents wholly support private schools because they believe that public education will strip students of their cultural identity and religious beliefs. They aren't evil. Devos and R's respond to those fears to get elected. The belief itself is probably based on the fact that college grads are extremely likely to have the "other party's" politics. And, that is true because (partly) the higher education system has become quite uniform and (apparently) seeks to squash dissenting opinions among the teaching ranks. How many professors are conservative or openly religious? I suspect those positions are viewed as defacto disqualifications by most on the left. I recommend everyone read Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. He discusses with nuance and much persuasiveness the importance of returning political representation to higher education. I see it all very differently now.
    - idontpost 4y ago
    - cassepipe 4y ago
      Here is an argument about why academia is relatively more left leaning. Would love to hear rebuttals but that's how I think about it for now. https://youtu.be/LwI25UhTtGo https://youtu.be/LwI25UhTtGo
    - lasc4r 4y ago
      They aren't doing it because they are evil - that's totally silly. They're doing it because they hold what I consider to be bad ideas around supporting the public good and it's simply in their best interest to pay less taxes and have a less educated and more compliant workforce in the process. Betsy Devos is a billionaire private school activist that Trump appointed. The less they need to worry about public opinion the better, it's the same reason they've succeeded so wildly in controlling the Supreme Court. Their strategy with the Federalist Society has been to work around what is popular, no majority would vote to overturn Roe. Public education is definitely on their minds now.
    - cywick 4y ago
      > How many professors are conservative or openly religious? At German universities the answer is actually "quite a number of professors", and being conservative or religious is just as normal and accepted as being on the progressive side. The major difference, however, is that Conservatism there (fortunately) is still very pro-science and you won't find many climate change deniers, creationists, anti-vaxxers, etc. among conservatives, especially not among educated conservatives. Overall, society is also much less scarred by years and years of relentless culture wars, and the majority of the population clusters in the middle of the political spectrum (i.e., in the range "moderate conservative" to "moderate progressive"). In the US, there seems to have been a vicious circle going on for a long time now with conservatives becoming more and more anti-science, because they perceive universities and most scientists as leftists; and scientists becoming more and more hostile to conservatives, because they perceive them to be waging a war on science. I don't know what started this arms race (i.e., whether universities in the US first became hostile to conservatives, or whether conservatives first turned anti-science), but I find this development incredibly depressing and heartbreaking.
    - bb88 4y ago
      > Believing that these agendas exist simply because they are evil people is reductionist. For example, my parents wholly support private schools because they believe that public education will strip students of their cultural identity and religious beliefs. I think the issue is that do we want to inject profit into every aspect of human life. We do this with prisons and schools to some extent already. How about a privatized police force anyone?
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        That's the thin end of the wedge fallacy.
        bb88 4y ago
        Would you prefer the thick end?
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
      > How many professors are conservative or openly religious? Separation of church and state happened a long time ago, so the age of finding out your teacher's religion is generally in the past. It's not because they aren't religious, it's because they'll get punished for discussing it with their students. There is hostility in some education sectors though, which has driven out a lot of conservative and religious teachers.
      - josephcsible 4y ago
        Not every college is "state".
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > Betsy Devos isn't interested in quality public schools, she wants to privatize schools and degrade public education. Who knows what a radical Supreme Court will do next? Republicans have had public education in their crosshairs for decades. Amway Princess gets a lot of flack for pushing all of the same policies that Arne Duncan and his boss pushed before her. Democratic politicians have been positively energetic in undermining and privatizing public education.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    What about all the parents that want private schools vouchers as well, are they billionaires seeking to destroy education too?
- scottLobster 4y ago
  Benign malice is still malice. Billionaires do well in countries of hard-working, educated people the same way parasites do well in a healthier host. They often aren't contributing to said health, merely profiting from it by chance. Don't get me wrong some Billionaires are legitimately moving the ball forward, or at least trying to, but for every Elon Musk (despite the man's many flaws he's at least snapped the space launch and EV markets out of decades of stagnation) there's a few Sacklers who seemingly exist solely to abuse the populace for their own benefit, and are only shaped by how much effective resistance they are met with, resistance they will obsessively attempt to overcome/circumvent until they die. People at that level tend to care about themselves and only about themselves, or at least that's what many of their actions would suggest. They're predators, and even if the wolf can't control what it is you generally want to keep it away from the flock. That said I have nothing actionable to offer. Short of mass collective action it's hard to see how we deal with them, and mass collective action requires lots of mass collective pain for enough people to be motivated in a single direction. I'd imagine most of the billionaires are well aware of this and are betting that the breaking point will occur after their death, or they arrogantly think that they can be insulated from it somehow. Seems they get away with blatant malfeasance time and again. Frankly I'm surprised the Sacklers haven't been shot at yet. If I was a broke West Virginian who's family had been torn apart by opioids and I had nothing to lose, I'd be saving my pennies for a bus ticket and take my hunting rifle to their next public appearance.
  - anothernewdude 4y ago
    Elon Musk does not come out positive.
    - scottLobster 4y ago
      Depends on your priorities I guess. I'd say making reusable rockets a reality, creating a serious market for EVs where none existed previously, and from all appearances about to provide the first real competition to terrestrial internet/cable providers has made the world an objectively better place on a scale most individuals can only dream of. Does that excuse sexual harassment, union-busting, defamation, stock manipulation, and other crimes? Of course not, and he should be punished for all of the above. But the scale of his positive works far outsizes the scale of his negative works IMO, at least so far. Capitalism and Democracy are fundamentally based on (imperfectly) burning assholes for fuel. They're fundamentally cynical systems, that's part of why they're so stable. We give the assholes a relatively safe outlet for their mental conditions while in exchange demanding they provide some good or service for the rest of us. So don't be surprised when the people who do the most good also have some skeletons in their closets, that's how the system works. The people without skeletons tend to be naturally filtered out of the power hierarchy by refusing to compromise their principles past a certain point. Put more bluntly: The obsessive, selfish, narcissistic careerist who puts 80 hours a week into his career, has no real friends and neglects his family and sexually harasses potential partners will generally rise higher in terms of power/wealth than the honest, stable, principled family man who intentionally clocks out after 40 hours so he has time to spend with his kids when he gets home. There are lucky exceptions of course, heirs to fortunes and so on (where likely their mother/father/grandparent was the maladjusted careerist). But the percentages speak for themselves IMO.
- latexr 4y ago
  > Billionaires generally do well in countries of hard-working, educated people. What does that mean? Are you able to provide examples of “countries of lazy[1] people” and how one reaches that conclusion? Which metrics do you use to define who is hard-working, and how do you confidently apply the categorisation to a whole country? [1]: Or however you want to define the antithesis of “hard-working”.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    I'm not implying the inverse. See the comment I replied to for the context.
ospzfmbbzr 4y ago
Its the trillionaires that are the problem -- why don't you know their names? Because they don't want a better world for you just for them and their 'better' world keeps their insanely high living standard at the expense of us the little people getting to exist at all. The only people that believe the very rich want a better world are still watching television.
mdavis6890 4y ago
If Billionaires are running the show, why to they have to keep showing up to congressional subpoenas and kowtowing to government bureaucrats of various types and stripes? Power and money are frequent bedfellows, but power trumps money every single time.
- femiagbabiaka 4y ago
  Congressional subpoenas are pure kayfabe. To win their districts, congress members need money. And the more of it they get the happier they are. So money is power.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Money is power.
- typon 4y ago
  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... Conclusion: "Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Is this just cherrypicking results? > strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy What do those other studies say? Why not quote them?
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  It's more complex then them running the show. But for sure, billionaires run more of the show then non-billionaires. >Power and money are frequent bedfellows, but power trumps money every single time. Power and money are bedfellows? They are synonyms. Power trumps money only because money was involved with the power. Are you a billionaire?
boringg 4y ago
[flagged]
porknubbins 4y ago
Youtube has made it easier than ever to do diy repair. Its massively different than even 5-10 years ago. If the billionaires don’t want people fixing things they are going to lose in the long run.
- bb88 4y ago
  A lot of what Apple has done is to try to discourage DIY and third party repair services with device locked components, screens, and batteries (yes, even batteries) https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-locking-down-iphone-batteries/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-locking-down-iphone-batt...

by lasc4r 4y ago

robertlagrant 4y ago

It is a stretch to assume it. Billionaires generally do well in countries of hard-working, educated people. And they aren't running the show, although they might run a little bit of it.

lasc4r 4y ago
[flagged]
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Believing that these agendas exist simply because they are evil people is reductionist. For example, my parents wholly support private schools because they believe that public education will strip students of their cultural identity and religious beliefs. They aren't evil. Devos and R's respond to those fears to get elected. The belief itself is probably based on the fact that college grads are extremely likely to have the "other party's" politics. And, that is true because (partly) the higher education system has become quite uniform and (apparently) seeks to squash dissenting opinions among the teaching ranks. How many professors are conservative or openly religious? I suspect those positions are viewed as defacto disqualifications by most on the left. I recommend everyone read Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. He discusses with nuance and much persuasiveness the importance of returning political representation to higher education. I see it all very differently now.
  - idontpost 4y ago
  - cassepipe 4y ago
    Here is an argument about why academia is relatively more left leaning. Would love to hear rebuttals but that's how I think about it for now. https://youtu.be/LwI25UhTtGo https://youtu.be/LwI25UhTtGo
  - lasc4r 4y ago
    They aren't doing it because they are evil - that's totally silly. They're doing it because they hold what I consider to be bad ideas around supporting the public good and it's simply in their best interest to pay less taxes and have a less educated and more compliant workforce in the process. Betsy Devos is a billionaire private school activist that Trump appointed. The less they need to worry about public opinion the better, it's the same reason they've succeeded so wildly in controlling the Supreme Court. Their strategy with the Federalist Society has been to work around what is popular, no majority would vote to overturn Roe. Public education is definitely on their minds now.
  - cywick 4y ago
    > How many professors are conservative or openly religious? At German universities the answer is actually "quite a number of professors", and being conservative or religious is just as normal and accepted as being on the progressive side. The major difference, however, is that Conservatism there (fortunately) is still very pro-science and you won't find many climate change deniers, creationists, anti-vaxxers, etc. among conservatives, especially not among educated conservatives. Overall, society is also much less scarred by years and years of relentless culture wars, and the majority of the population clusters in the middle of the political spectrum (i.e., in the range "moderate conservative" to "moderate progressive"). In the US, there seems to have been a vicious circle going on for a long time now with conservatives becoming more and more anti-science, because they perceive universities and most scientists as leftists; and scientists becoming more and more hostile to conservatives, because they perceive them to be waging a war on science. I don't know what started this arms race (i.e., whether universities in the US first became hostile to conservatives, or whether conservatives first turned anti-science), but I find this development incredibly depressing and heartbreaking.
  - bb88 4y ago
    > Believing that these agendas exist simply because they are evil people is reductionist. For example, my parents wholly support private schools because they believe that public education will strip students of their cultural identity and religious beliefs. I think the issue is that do we want to inject profit into every aspect of human life. We do this with prisons and schools to some extent already. How about a privatized police force anyone?
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      That's the thin end of the wedge fallacy.
      - bb88 4y ago
        Would you prefer the thick end?
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    > How many professors are conservative or openly religious? Separation of church and state happened a long time ago, so the age of finding out your teacher's religion is generally in the past. It's not because they aren't religious, it's because they'll get punished for discussing it with their students. There is hostility in some education sectors though, which has driven out a lot of conservative and religious teachers.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      Not every college is "state".
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Betsy Devos isn't interested in quality public schools, she wants to privatize schools and degrade public education. Who knows what a radical Supreme Court will do next? Republicans have had public education in their crosshairs for decades. Amway Princess gets a lot of flack for pushing all of the same policies that Arne Duncan and his boss pushed before her. Democratic politicians have been positively energetic in undermining and privatizing public education.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  What about all the parents that want private schools vouchers as well, are they billionaires seeking to destroy education too?
scottLobster 4y ago
Benign malice is still malice. Billionaires do well in countries of hard-working, educated people the same way parasites do well in a healthier host. They often aren't contributing to said health, merely profiting from it by chance. Don't get me wrong some Billionaires are legitimately moving the ball forward, or at least trying to, but for every Elon Musk (despite the man's many flaws he's at least snapped the space launch and EV markets out of decades of stagnation) there's a few Sacklers who seemingly exist solely to abuse the populace for their own benefit, and are only shaped by how much effective resistance they are met with, resistance they will obsessively attempt to overcome/circumvent until they die. People at that level tend to care about themselves and only about themselves, or at least that's what many of their actions would suggest. They're predators, and even if the wolf can't control what it is you generally want to keep it away from the flock. That said I have nothing actionable to offer. Short of mass collective action it's hard to see how we deal with them, and mass collective action requires lots of mass collective pain for enough people to be motivated in a single direction. I'd imagine most of the billionaires are well aware of this and are betting that the breaking point will occur after their death, or they arrogantly think that they can be insulated from it somehow. Seems they get away with blatant malfeasance time and again. Frankly I'm surprised the Sacklers haven't been shot at yet. If I was a broke West Virginian who's family had been torn apart by opioids and I had nothing to lose, I'd be saving my pennies for a bus ticket and take my hunting rifle to their next public appearance.
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  Elon Musk does not come out positive.
  - scottLobster 4y ago
    Depends on your priorities I guess. I'd say making reusable rockets a reality, creating a serious market for EVs where none existed previously, and from all appearances about to provide the first real competition to terrestrial internet/cable providers has made the world an objectively better place on a scale most individuals can only dream of. Does that excuse sexual harassment, union-busting, defamation, stock manipulation, and other crimes? Of course not, and he should be punished for all of the above. But the scale of his positive works far outsizes the scale of his negative works IMO, at least so far. Capitalism and Democracy are fundamentally based on (imperfectly) burning assholes for fuel. They're fundamentally cynical systems, that's part of why they're so stable. We give the assholes a relatively safe outlet for their mental conditions while in exchange demanding they provide some good or service for the rest of us. So don't be surprised when the people who do the most good also have some skeletons in their closets, that's how the system works. The people without skeletons tend to be naturally filtered out of the power hierarchy by refusing to compromise their principles past a certain point. Put more bluntly: The obsessive, selfish, narcissistic careerist who puts 80 hours a week into his career, has no real friends and neglects his family and sexually harasses potential partners will generally rise higher in terms of power/wealth than the honest, stable, principled family man who intentionally clocks out after 40 hours so he has time to spend with his kids when he gets home. There are lucky exceptions of course, heirs to fortunes and so on (where likely their mother/father/grandparent was the maladjusted careerist). But the percentages speak for themselves IMO.
latexr 4y ago
> Billionaires generally do well in countries of hard-working, educated people. What does that mean? Are you able to provide examples of “countries of lazy[1] people” and how one reaches that conclusion? Which metrics do you use to define who is hard-working, and how do you confidently apply the categorisation to a whole country? [1]: Or however you want to define the antithesis of “hard-working”.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I'm not implying the inverse. See the comment I replied to for the context.

ospzfmbbzr 4y ago

Its the trillionaires that are the problem -- why don't you know their names? Because they don't want a better world for you just for them and their 'better' world keeps their insanely high living standard at the expense of us the little people getting to exist at all. The only people that believe the very rich want a better world are still watching television.

mdavis6890 4y ago

If Billionaires are running the show, why to they have to keep showing up to congressional subpoenas and kowtowing to government bureaucrats of various types and stripes? Power and money are frequent bedfellows, but power trumps money every single time.

femiagbabiaka 4y ago
Congressional subpoenas are pure kayfabe. To win their districts, congress members need money. And the more of it they get the happier they are. So money is power.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Money is power.
typon 4y ago
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... Conclusion: "Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Is this just cherrypicking results? > strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy What do those other studies say? Why not quote them?
deltaonefour 4y ago
It's more complex then them running the show. But for sure, billionaires run more of the show then non-billionaires. >Power and money are frequent bedfellows, but power trumps money every single time. Power and money are bedfellows? They are synonyms. Power trumps money only because money was involved with the power. Are you a billionaire?

boringg 4y ago

[flagged]

porknubbins 4y ago

Youtube has made it easier than ever to do diy repair. Its massively different than even 5-10 years ago. If the billionaires don’t want people fixing things they are going to lose in the long run.

bb88 4y ago
A lot of what Apple has done is to try to discourage DIY and third party repair services with device locked components, screens, and batteries (yes, even batteries) https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-locking-down-iphone-batteries/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-locking-down-iphone-batt...