this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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Almost every problem in the world would be dealt with meaningfully if we outlawed billionaires. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by ininewcrow@lemmy.ca to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Everytime I look at small problems or big global problems, if you follow the money trail, it all leads to some billionaire who is either working towards increasing their wealth or protecting their wealth from decreasing.

Everything from politics, climate change, workers rights, democratic government, technology, land rights, human rights can all be rendered down to people fighting another group of people who defend the rights of a billionaire to keep their wealth or to expand their control.

If humanity got rid of or outlawed the notion of any one individual owning far too much money than they could ever possibly spend in a lifetime, we could free up so much wealth and energy to do other things like save ourselves from climate change.

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[–] mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

The thing keeping us from eliminating the billionaires isn’t the billionaires. It’s the ~40% of society that are convinced we have to have billionaires to survive.

I call this set the "idiot army", the activated dunces. It's propaganda, this 40% is not inherently bad people, it's guillible, low-education, low-information people that have been activated by malicious propaganda to promote the interests of the billionaire class.

The solution lies not in eliminating or dominating this group, it lies in de-activating them. The typical person in this group, if not being actively directed is too busy in their own world to destroy society.

The first step towards any sort of revolution (violent or not) or real change our world needs has to start by destroying all for-profit news. As long as for-profit news controlled by the billionaires exists, the idiot army cannot be deactivated, and any acts of heroism will be called acts of terrorism.

Edit: But how to destroy the news? Law, as long as we exist in a state, use the available tools. Focus on ranked choice voting, increasing voter turnout, and running for office to collaborate with others to make laws that prevent the news from being so toxic and so profitable. What kinds of laws? Just throwing out ideas

  • Change the First amendment (bill of rights) so that it applies only to individuals. A news business or organization does not have the right to free speech or press.

    • Make the news unprofitable and risky for a business
    • This would probably have a ton of other beneficial effects as businesses could then lose the right to lie

  • Any company that produces news content may not operate in another other industries, and may have no executives or board members currently in any other company or married or have children in other companies.

    • Make it difficult for the bad people to be in charge of the news
[–] sudo42@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Agreed. A good first step was taking Fox to court. While we work to change the Constitution, we need private citizens suing enough that it stops being profitable to lie.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It's propaganda, this 40% is not inherently bad people, it's guillible, low-education, low-information people

There are plenty of highly educated people who are gullible and easily manipulated. Hell man, every fanatical Trumper I know has at least a bachelor's degree.

[–] mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There are definitely smarter and more educated Trump supporters, but I don't count them in this group, I feel like those people more consciously and intentionally feel like Trump will help them exploit and oppress others (e.g business types, police, etc).

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Notice that I said highly educated, and not intelligent. Most of the people I know in this category aren't people that I consider to be very intelligent. They just stuck with it long enough to graduate, and most of them had parents taking care of them while they were in school, which is one of the major hurdles to obtaining a college education.

[–] mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Ah, gotcha. I was actually gonna write something similar to this.