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I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

by N_Lens 18d ago

datsci_est_2015 18d ago
And yet they still hold immense power to make our lives shittier. It is far easier to destroy a functioning system than it is to build one from the ground up
- throwitaway222 18d ago
  And yet the lives of everyone on this board has never been this comfortable in the past.
  - ux266478 18d ago
    Do we live in different worlds? I can't think of a single meaningful way my comfort has increased in the past 25 years. In fact, with the rise of the homeless and mental health crises, the encroachment of more and more people who have no business touching computers into cyberspace, the increased relevance of flash mob power on the internet, I would say my comfort has been actively degraded on a fundamental and significant level. On a broader timescale, we can take a look at the fact that goods which were designed to be affordable and mass-produced have been elevated to refined luxury goods, like the Herman-Miller Eames, as an indicator that material standards have fallen very far. Not the least of which because of an ever-dwindling labor share of capital (beginning in the 1970s), which silently impoverishes working households and degrades their comfort while being completely invisible to an uncareful eye on paper. Much of the major boons of comfort were established prior to the transition to shareholder capitalism. Things like e-commerce, IoT, online banking, these are for the birds. Meaningful advances are things like HVAC and refrigeration, ubiquitous motorized transport, electrical lighting.
    - godelski 18d ago
      I believe the parent is implying that we sit uncomfortably at home, silently, rather than uncomfortably marching through the streets, demanding. Yet, I say that while uncomfortably sitting in my home, typing on a screen
      - ux266478 18d ago
        Mass demonstrations are common and frequent, more than ever. The thing is that these are mild pressures at best. What came from Occupy Wallstreet? The George Floyd protests? The No Kings marches? Anti-ICE demonstrations? They're not nothing and we should continue to have them and participate in them, but we have to recognize them as what they are: background radiation. On their own, they don't affect change or bring about course correction. We clearly need something more, people inside of these institutions, sharks who are going to fight and win against the entrenched powers on their home turf. There's a very limited pool of people who are capable of doing that.
        godelski 18d ago
        Plenty has come from all those things. But it's those in power who want you to feel like those are fruitless endeavors. That's why their strategy is to overwhelm. Good news takes time to be received and by then your focus will be on something else. But I promise you if you look them up you'll find real progress. It may not be as much as you want, but that's a different thing. Progress is made by small and successive steps. So the strategy to upend progress is to interrupt those steps and make them feel as small as possible. Don't fall for the trap > We clearly need ... sharks I am afraid of sharks, just as I am scorpions. It is in their nature to draw blood. Bloodshed should be the last resort. By putting sharks in power is the problem with the current administration. Replacing with a different shark doesn't reduce attacks, it just changes targets. If sharks must be used, they must be well contained.
        bethekidyouwant 18d ago
        There are not more mass protests these days at all… (to ops point)
  - AngryData 18d ago
    There are plenty of people on this board that aren't $200K+ software engineers. The median pay for my local area in the US is $35K at best, assuming it has risen the last few years.
paulryanrogers 18d ago
> The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands. But only within their minds. They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped. Plenty of people make the choice to stop acquiring, stop increasing their wealth, and stop having more everything (kids, houses, cars, pets, hobbies, etc). It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires. These people also have much more leverage to change the world in substantial, albeit often short lived ways. My family has been hurt by the DOGE cuts. Hopefully it's not a permanent injury. Yet it's very real.
- GarnetFloride 18d ago
  Isn't it like that old story about catching monkeys. You hollow out a gourd with a small hole, tack it to the ground and put a nut in it. The monkey can get its hand in but not out with the nut in their fist. The human can walk over and leisurely whack the monkey because the monkey can't let go. They act just like drug addicts. More's the pity. They can change but they don't seem to understand that rock bottom is a tough place to be.
  - FlowingRiver 18d ago
    The Monkey trap is a very powerful analogy. It is looking like we are venturing into harder times these new few years for various reasons, as such one has to wonder what things you are still clinging to that can be let go and what is still worth handing on to. Hopefully we don't have to make those choices but it is always handy to keep in mind.
- MentalM 18d ago
  > It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires. If we talk about US, your statement is outrageous hypocrisy. Median income world-wide is less than 50 cents per hour. Average American person "who have no choice" could start working for like 30+ times more at any moment they want and choose any US government they want. And how much money from this 30+ times more they have "donated or paid enough taxes" that their several dollars per hour "would be distributed far and wide"? Zero. So we are talking about insatiable appetite of Americans, not Billionaires. Because average American person has literally the same choice you are talking about, and literally choosing "having more everything" instead of "distribute far and wide".

I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

by N_Lens 18d ago

I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

datsci_est_2015 18d ago

And yet they still hold immense power to make our lives shittier. It is far easier to destroy a functioning system than it is to build one from the ground up

throwitaway222 18d ago
And yet the lives of everyone on this board has never been this comfortable in the past.
- ux266478 18d ago
  Do we live in different worlds? I can't think of a single meaningful way my comfort has increased in the past 25 years. In fact, with the rise of the homeless and mental health crises, the encroachment of more and more people who have no business touching computers into cyberspace, the increased relevance of flash mob power on the internet, I would say my comfort has been actively degraded on a fundamental and significant level. On a broader timescale, we can take a look at the fact that goods which were designed to be affordable and mass-produced have been elevated to refined luxury goods, like the Herman-Miller Eames, as an indicator that material standards have fallen very far. Not the least of which because of an ever-dwindling labor share of capital (beginning in the 1970s), which silently impoverishes working households and degrades their comfort while being completely invisible to an uncareful eye on paper. Much of the major boons of comfort were established prior to the transition to shareholder capitalism. Things like e-commerce, IoT, online banking, these are for the birds. Meaningful advances are things like HVAC and refrigeration, ubiquitous motorized transport, electrical lighting.
  - godelski 18d ago
    I believe the parent is implying that we sit uncomfortably at home, silently, rather than uncomfortably marching through the streets, demanding. Yet, I say that while uncomfortably sitting in my home, typing on a screen
    - ux266478 18d ago
      Mass demonstrations are common and frequent, more than ever. The thing is that these are mild pressures at best. What came from Occupy Wallstreet? The George Floyd protests? The No Kings marches? Anti-ICE demonstrations? They're not nothing and we should continue to have them and participate in them, but we have to recognize them as what they are: background radiation. On their own, they don't affect change or bring about course correction. We clearly need something more, people inside of these institutions, sharks who are going to fight and win against the entrenched powers on their home turf. There's a very limited pool of people who are capable of doing that.
      - godelski 18d ago
        Plenty has come from all those things. But it's those in power who want you to feel like those are fruitless endeavors. That's why their strategy is to overwhelm. Good news takes time to be received and by then your focus will be on something else. But I promise you if you look them up you'll find real progress. It may not be as much as you want, but that's a different thing. Progress is made by small and successive steps. So the strategy to upend progress is to interrupt those steps and make them feel as small as possible. Don't fall for the trap > We clearly need ... sharks I am afraid of sharks, just as I am scorpions. It is in their nature to draw blood. Bloodshed should be the last resort. By putting sharks in power is the problem with the current administration. Replacing with a different shark doesn't reduce attacks, it just changes targets. If sharks must be used, they must be well contained.
      - bethekidyouwant 18d ago
        There are not more mass protests these days at all… (to ops point)
- AngryData 18d ago
  There are plenty of people on this board that aren't $200K+ software engineers. The median pay for my local area in the US is $35K at best, assuming it has risen the last few years.

paulryanrogers 18d ago

> The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands. But only within their minds. They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped. Plenty of people make the choice to stop acquiring, stop increasing their wealth, and stop having more everything (kids, houses, cars, pets, hobbies, etc). It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires. These people also have much more leverage to change the world in substantial, albeit often short lived ways. My family has been hurt by the DOGE cuts. Hopefully it's not a permanent injury. Yet it's very real.

GarnetFloride 18d ago
Isn't it like that old story about catching monkeys. You hollow out a gourd with a small hole, tack it to the ground and put a nut in it. The monkey can get its hand in but not out with the nut in their fist. The human can walk over and leisurely whack the monkey because the monkey can't let go. They act just like drug addicts. More's the pity. They can change but they don't seem to understand that rock bottom is a tough place to be.
- FlowingRiver 18d ago
  The Monkey trap is a very powerful analogy. It is looking like we are venturing into harder times these new few years for various reasons, as such one has to wonder what things you are still clinging to that can be let go and what is still worth handing on to. Hopefully we don't have to make those choices but it is always handy to keep in mind.
MentalM 18d ago
> It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires. If we talk about US, your statement is outrageous hypocrisy. Median income world-wide is less than 50 cents per hour. Average American person "who have no choice" could start working for like 30+ times more at any moment they want and choose any US government they want. And how much money from this 30+ times more they have "donated or paid enough taxes" that their several dollars per hour "would be distributed far and wide"? Zero. So we are talking about insatiable appetite of Americans, not Billionaires. Because average American person has literally the same choice you are talking about, and literally choosing "having more everything" instead of "distribute far and wide".