this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024

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Late Stage Capitalism

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455

Here's hoping. (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23667307

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

He, and all the rest of them, could easily do a u-turn, be class-conscious and fair to the workers and all the hate would go away. They'd still be nowhere close to poor or struggling, just less rich. They just don't want to.

It's like Zuck building a bunker in Hawaii that would, at best, buy him 2 or 3 years of relative comfort in the event of a societal collapse. All because he doesn't want to moderate his society-corroding websites.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I reckon there’s some tipping point of wealth/power/privilege that totally transforms a person, any person, into something fundamentally different at heart.

Like, they won’t part with hundreds of lifetimes worth of cash because that would feel like self destruction. To them, they are their wealth. Nothing else remains. The accumulation isn’t pointing at anything other than accumulation.

…. And that’s not a new idea. Fucking st. Basil raged about this in the 300’s.

[–] Justas 1 points 6 days ago

I think that extremes exist and go to both directions. I have known people who lost their mind when their wages tripled after they started working abroad (e.g. my father started having mistresses when his salary went from 800 euros to 2200 in today's money). But I have also known millionaires who live very middle class lives, except they travel more and drive better cars.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

Most of us would stop doing whatever we were doing well before we amassed a billion dollars. That sort of wealth is enough to retire on, live a life of luxury and make sure your progeny won't even need to work either.

These guys just don't know how to stop, they have a hole they just can't fill. And I guess when you reach "richest man in the world" status, you look around and you notice you're still not happy, that probably doesn't make things better for you mentally. And yeah, you stop seeing normal people in your life. You're just surrounded by either other billionaires or people that are on your payroll. You don't have any clue about the struggles of the other 99.9%.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

St. Basil raged about this in the 300’s.

I'll have to look into that! My first thought was Jesus Himself also warning against it.

“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:36

They serve their greed, it becomes their god, and when the billions aren't enough, it becomes about power and influence in world events. It never stops. They basically become the paperclip apocalypse machine for shareholder profits.

Like someone else here who mentioned Tolkien: absolutely "dragon sickness." We watched Thorin Oakenshield forsake his brethren and become a total bastard just to sit on a mountain of coins and stare at a pretty rock.

These guys are the very same, just with their stonks.

Somehow along the way, our societies evolved to serve the dragons, to elevate their madness and sociopathy to virtue. Like the wealth-hoarding, worker-eating monsters of old, they must be brought down.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Tolkien's dragon sickness comes from the whole Nibelungen cycle, in which the dwarf Fafnir turns himself into a dragon to keep the gold hoard. Depending on the version, the gold is created by a ring that Odin and Loki tried to claim but its owner cursed it because fuck those thieving gods. Several of the Germanic variations of the cycle put a lot of focus on greed for that hoard leading to the destruction of the Burgundian kingdom, including Atli (Attila the Hun) trying to get a piece of it, until the gold is tossed into the Rhine so that no one can have it.

Large parts of the same Germanic tales are heavily inspired by the feud between two Frankish queens, Brunhilda and Fredegund, the murder of Brunhilda's husband Siegbert, and the migrations of the Burgundian tribes that ended in the modern French region of the same name. They (or rather their predecessors) were all involved in the defeat of Attila at the battle of the Catalaunian Plains. There's no particular record of gold greed being involved in any of it, but it's curious how that's what the Germans remembered of it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Yea, power corrupts. That's what most of the Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion was about.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

A tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme...

SpongeBob SquarePants - Mr Krabs saying Money

SpongeBob SquarePants - Mr Krabs vacuuming Money

SpongeBob SquarePants - Mr Krabs showering in Money

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There's no way Michael Gusto wasn't immediately banned from Twitter for that, right?

(Yes, I refuse to call it "X".)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Until Leon skum stops dead naming his kid, I will deadname his company

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

meet in the middle: Xitter /ˈʃɪt.ə(ɹ)/

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (3 children)

as much as I want to believe that will happen, if this election cycle has taught me anything, it's that you can be the most abhorrent individual on the face of the planet and the universe will reward you for it. People will cheer you on for it.

You know why most fictional stories have happy endings? Because reality is much more depressing. In most movies, books, TV shows -- the good guys win, the bad guys lose, protag gets the girl, so on and so forth. Some stories subvert this, but most don't -- because they are escapism from the crushing reality of, well, reality.

As it stands, I am quite confident that Elon will live to a ripe old age, along with every other abhorrent piece of shit in the world, while the good die young. The proles will be made to fight against each other over culture, race, religion, and eventually access to clean water and food due to climate change; while the people responsible will sit comfortably by and watch with mild amusement. And as much as I want to believe that will change, it probably won't.

Welcome to the meat grinder. We're the meat.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's sort of ridiculous how the worst people rise to the top in all areas, whether that's politics, business or entertainment. Sometimes it just feels like the rest of us are just being held hostage by a small minority of sociopaths.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not ridiculous. It's that sociopaths are happy to crush other people underfoot to get what they want, and good people aren't. And thus, they get ahead. It is just that simple.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Exactly this. Capitalism rewards sociopathy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

You're all correct for sure!

It might not even be that our society rewards sociopathy directly even, but they have an advantage in a competitive arena, because they're constantly scheming ways to exploit their fellows. Healthy people simply aren't constantly dreaming of how to rob and ruin their neighbors.

It's just like when various anarchist societies would rise up and be off to a good start, but ultimately get steamrolled by their jerk neighbors because they had higher minded priorities than conquest and violence.

The good and decent seem to inherently be at a disadvantage, as we must struggle to maintain our humanity while defending against those who see it as an exploitable design flaw.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

"The weak are meat and the strong do eat"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I think historically we've seen good triumph over evil more often than not, but evil prevails for quite some time before good gets the gumption to tear it down.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Mysterious circumstances: amphetamine, ketamine and hgh abuse.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Anyone else feel like this is a suicide note?

Could you imagine having everything but not a single person that likes you for you, they all pretend to like you for that money... How could you know who is genuine?

I would bet he has horrible depression.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wouldn't be surprised if he consumes copious amounts of stuff. Be it media, food, drugs and experiences just to feel something. If not full-blown depression, anhedonia must be crazy.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Greed and gluttony are symptoms of the same disease

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Christianity? I mean it's sort of like a disease but it's the ones that don't catch it that tend to die, in this case.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I would bet he has horrible depression.

He has limitless resources. The entire world and all its wonders are at his disposal, yet he spends every day arguing with strangers on the internet instead of capturing the joy that is so freely available to him. Of course he has horrible depression!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Guillotine? WTF. Dis 'MURICA.

Bullet.

Y'all said Mo Guns! Let's let everyone conceal carry! Let's not check for any capabilities, or mental issues or anything. So, there's guns all the fuck over the place. Millions of guillotines in millions of pockets every day.

They said " we can't afford bologna sandwiches " And y'all said " Let them eat BBQ".

History rhymes, and dis is 'MURICA

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Username checks out 10,000% here ROFL.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Robespierre intensifies

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

the mystery will be which guillotine

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

It's going to be built out of a Model X gull-wing door. Sharpen the edge and let him take a gamble on whether the software he forced his underpaid and overworked employees to write stops it in time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

capitalism is sick and the guillotine is the cure.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

it really wasn't.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Sic semper tyrannis!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I propose a graphene capsule with a camera(so we can livestream it), and we drop it in the Mariana Trench, Titan style

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Stop, my penis can only get so erect.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

it's been nice knowing ya

I wish I could say the feeling is mutual.