4 ms·

Isn't that the ultimate reason to be rich? Isn't the ultimate incentive? The rich have built roads, infrastructure, done research and improve QoL for everyone.

by qsera 4mo ago

Isn't that the ultimate reason to be rich? Isn't the ultimate incentive? The rich have built roads, infrastructure, done research and improve QoL for everyone. We payed them and they grew even more rich. And when the judgement day come, you are going to deny everything you have paid them? That was the whole contract! I get that we can't help but be dumb and consume and enable some entities to be so rich. But then we should not blame the rich!

Y-bar 4mo ago
> The rich have built roads No, the working class built the roads. > infrastructure No, the workers built the infrastructure. > done research No, the academics and researchers did that. > improve QoL for everyone Explain how Putin (Russia's riches man) improves the QoL of everyone. Explain how rich people like Epstein improves the QoL of everyone. Explain how Trump and Jared Kushner improves the QoL of everyone. Explain how the Koch family improves the QoL of everyone. Explain how Imelda Marcos, Pablo Escobar, Rupert Murdoch, Kim Jon Un, Bernie Madoff, Al Capone, Robert Mugabe, Silvio Berlusconi, Rodrigo Duerte, Peul Manafort, Viktor Bout, Hosni Mubarak, Mohammed bin Salman, Prince Andrew, Albert Thys ... Are these rich people improving the quality of life of everyone?
- qsera 4mo ago
  > No, the working class built the roads. Are you serious? That is pretty naive! >Explain how Putin (Russia's riches man).. Look at the money in your pocket. Do you know how it got there? There is one and only one way to get it. Do some service for the society. Either you did it, or someone else who did gave it to you. Either way society owes you. Same goes for the rich.
  - Y-bar 4mo ago
    > Are you serious? That is pretty naive! Strange. I only see working class people building roads here. Show me a picture of a billionaire building a road.
    - qsera 4mo ago
      Show me a picture of working class people building roads on their own initiative without a billionaire paying them.
      - frank_nitti 4mo ago
        When billionaires make the decisions about what roads get built, they build roads that help them more efficiently exploit the world around them. This has been observed in many developing countries when their industrialization is driven by private capitalist interests: roads emerge from the plantations to the refineries, to the factories and distribution centers. Roads for the local populations are built to get them to/from these places because capital needs them for labor; roads are not built for them to get to and from their e.g. churches or places of recreation where there is no direct value to be extracted by capital. When roads are built for the common good, it’s only when government acts on behalf of the working class to compel taxpayers to fund it; it must coerce the billionaires to contribute under the implicit threat of force. I’d love to believe that humans become generally more collectivist when they amass great wealth - and much credit to those who do - but they are much too few and far between for us to rely this as a society
        qsera 4mo ago
        Sure, but that is missing the bigger point. The point is that the rich has become rich by serving the society enormously (It does not matter if someone become rich by serving ad, and thus not serving in the ideal sense, yet some member of the society paid them to do it). If every service needed (real or made up, does not matter) by common men were provided by government, then these billionaires would not have existed. No one has the right to deny the rich, if they want to use what society owes them, to save themselves from catastrophe!
        frank_nitti 4mo ago
        Perhaps you’re considering a very select subset of the rich for whom you can argue their wealth was entirely earned through value they delivered to society. Your statement, as written, ignores that much wealth, power, privilege is inherited from ill-gotten gains like savage conquest, slavery, oppression, corruption, etc. and most great wealth is held by people who had extreme advantages from those endowments being born into those circumstances. In most cases, it’s very hard to argue that society “owes them” anything. I would say that debt would be much more appropriate for people like Nikola Tesla who wanted his inventions shared with the world at no cost, or the inventors of insulin who sold the patent for $1 to benefit the common good. Not for the telecom and pharma CEOs who become billionaires by extracting the maximum value from exploiting others’ ingenuity!

by qsera 4mo ago

Y-bar 4mo ago

> The rich have built roads No, the working class built the roads. > infrastructure No, the workers built the infrastructure. > done research No, the academics and researchers did that. > improve QoL for everyone Explain how Putin (Russia's riches man) improves the QoL of everyone. Explain how rich people like Epstein improves the QoL of everyone. Explain how Trump and Jared Kushner improves the QoL of everyone. Explain how the Koch family improves the QoL of everyone. Explain how Imelda Marcos, Pablo Escobar, Rupert Murdoch, Kim Jon Un, Bernie Madoff, Al Capone, Robert Mugabe, Silvio Berlusconi, Rodrigo Duerte, Peul Manafort, Viktor Bout, Hosni Mubarak, Mohammed bin Salman, Prince Andrew, Albert Thys ... Are these rich people improving the quality of life of everyone?

qsera 4mo ago
> No, the working class built the roads. Are you serious? That is pretty naive! >Explain how Putin (Russia's riches man).. Look at the money in your pocket. Do you know how it got there? There is one and only one way to get it. Do some service for the society. Either you did it, or someone else who did gave it to you. Either way society owes you. Same goes for the rich.
- Y-bar 4mo ago
  > Are you serious? That is pretty naive! Strange. I only see working class people building roads here. Show me a picture of a billionaire building a road.
  - qsera 4mo ago
    Show me a picture of working class people building roads on their own initiative without a billionaire paying them.
    - frank_nitti 4mo ago
      When billionaires make the decisions about what roads get built, they build roads that help them more efficiently exploit the world around them. This has been observed in many developing countries when their industrialization is driven by private capitalist interests: roads emerge from the plantations to the refineries, to the factories and distribution centers. Roads for the local populations are built to get them to/from these places because capital needs them for labor; roads are not built for them to get to and from their e.g. churches or places of recreation where there is no direct value to be extracted by capital. When roads are built for the common good, it’s only when government acts on behalf of the working class to compel taxpayers to fund it; it must coerce the billionaires to contribute under the implicit threat of force. I’d love to believe that humans become generally more collectivist when they amass great wealth - and much credit to those who do - but they are much too few and far between for us to rely this as a society
      - qsera 4mo ago
        Sure, but that is missing the bigger point. The point is that the rich has become rich by serving the society enormously (It does not matter if someone become rich by serving ad, and thus not serving in the ideal sense, yet some member of the society paid them to do it). If every service needed (real or made up, does not matter) by common men were provided by government, then these billionaires would not have existed. No one has the right to deny the rich, if they want to use what society owes them, to save themselves from catastrophe!
        frank_nitti 4mo ago
        Perhaps you’re considering a very select subset of the rich for whom you can argue their wealth was entirely earned through value they delivered to society. Your statement, as written, ignores that much wealth, power, privilege is inherited from ill-gotten gains like savage conquest, slavery, oppression, corruption, etc. and most great wealth is held by people who had extreme advantages from those endowments being born into those circumstances. In most cases, it’s very hard to argue that society “owes them” anything. I would say that debt would be much more appropriate for people like Nikola Tesla who wanted his inventions shared with the world at no cost, or the inventors of insulin who sold the patent for $1 to benefit the common good. Not for the telecom and pharma CEOs who become billionaires by extracting the maximum value from exploiting others’ ingenuity!