„1% of people hoarding 99% of wealth in the world, and most of them have the same skin color and religion like me? It has to be the fault of people with a different skin color and/or religion that I’m not getting richer!“
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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“Have we considered blaming the people who are reviving old religions for our society’s moral failing instead of acknowledging that the political leaders of my country share my religion
Skin color: capitalism
Religion: money
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
The worst hot take of this nature I've personally heard so far, in Canada: "Fuck man this customer service job pays me peanuts when I'm busting my ass! I tell ya, it's those damn Indian immigrants saturating the service industry and driving the wages down!"
Worker saturation does reduce the power of the workers. A small town strike is a huge deal, it can shut the business down with nobody around to easily replace them. As opposed to place they can be easily replaced with low cost workers, the conditions will slowly move towards slavery with every replacement.
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Billionaires are a minority.. something like 1% of the 1% of people
You're still overestimating them 200x over. As of 2021, there were about 3300 billionaires worldwide.
That's 0.00004% of the population, or one for every 2.1 million people.
Wtf I'm a bigot now!
(not disagreeing) And due to capitalism, they and the exploited will always exist, and have the power they have. If the billionaires of today didn't exist, some other people would be in their place, and nothing would have changed. Capitalism is the root.
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I luckily don't hear that much. I mostly hear fellow wage slaves making barely enough to slowly die repeat bullshit news headlines like "no one wants to work anymore" all the while working harder and harder for less and less. It's incredibly depressing.
When I worked at DGX, basically EVERY customer said this in response to seeing me being the only one behind the counter...
No... No, this store just has shit pay, forces EMPLOYEES to pay for parking, and is willing to fire people at the drop of a hat.
Because they would have to take their part of the responsibility for allowing it to continue, and that's hard.
Unregulated lobbied capitalism. I'm okay with capitalism and competing ideas. What I'm not okay with is some of the late stage problems we've encountered as a society. Assuming the US average person lives to be a very low of 50, we are four generations deep. Ive known two generations in my own lineage. That's not very long.
It's okay to make better systems. Even for billionaires its okay because a rising tide floats all the boats. This is something that needs to be taught better to the upper class. If these guys had less complaining workers, people willing to contribute more so in their enterprises, workers who are happy to make their products, it would be fine. Putting the squeeze on the little guy does nothing for these dudes besides some tight margins.
Coupled with a very elderly legislative body we are left with senseless greed in both trade and politics. Portions of the population just consume politics like it's a sitcom. What we're left with is a system in need of refinement.
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Look out, plebs! Those foreign lads are going to steal your crumbs.
We need more general knowledge.
American conservatives: better defund schools and ban books so people don’t catch on to what’s actually happening. Better if they blame the gay, brown, and poor people, not us in power.
In plain view, too. For shame. I honestly didn't think I'd see it in my lifetime. I read about it in other places, but the wool was over my eyes.
in my mind, it's not even capitalism. there are rules against monopolies, and people are supposed to pay their taxes to not become unfathomably rich. these rules are just not enforced, because everyone is arguing about wether trans people deserve to exist or not. politicians need to take their job seriously. and the only way to change that is from within. join a party and do jour job properly. complaining about capitalism isn't making the situation better either.
Capitalism is the problem because it incentivizes these behaviors and allows "capital" (i.e. rich people) to control the political process. The people who are pushing the anti-trans agenda - just like the gay marriage scare of the past - are doing so to manipulate people into voting against their own interests to elect politicians who are loudly subservient to capital. It's not a coincidence that the same people, i.e. Republicans, have been pushing for trickle-down economics and privatizing social security for decades. Democrats aren't much better. In some part because Citizens United (a Republican gift to the rich) declared that money = speech, and so it's hard to compete electorally without caving in to the demands of capital. So, they do dumb shit like propose privatizing the water supply:
And this doesn't even get into the real nasty part of capitalism which is the plunder and exploitation of the global south that has gone on for centuries to build today's capitalist society.
If you have actions you plan to take that will get your elected representatives to stop doing things that makes the ultrawealthy richer and start doing things that improve the lives of everyone else (UBI, universal healthcare, equality for all) under the capitalist system we have, then go ahead and get on it. People pointing out the flaws in capitalism is not the reason you have thus far been unsuccessful. And when you call for everyone to stop criticizing capitalism, as if it is some universal equilibrium that is undeniably correct, you are carrying water for the very people you want to oppose.
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Well the other problem with capitalism is that when the wealth inevitably funnels to a few, those few can then pay scraps to politicians to keep getting richer. If you don't co-operate, well they'll just pay the other party instead. Good luck winning when guess what, they also own the news networks. They own the social media. If you think it can be magically solved by joining a party and doing your job properly then you really don't grasp the reality of the whole situation.
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Tell me you don't understand the first thing about what capitalism is or how it works without saying you don't know the first thing about capitalism or how it works... And yet you clutch to it like a turkey voting for Christmas..
Perhaps consider looking in to the works produced by the minds who dedicated their lives and careers to the subject, rather than your own, clearly uninformed one?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/marx-exploitation-abc-unequal-world/
https://jacobin.com/2022/06/karl-marx-labor-theory-of-value-ga-cohen-economics
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Simple, under this system the more desperate folks undercut him. They don't see the rules of the game are what is causing that. They couldn't imagine a system under other rules, except for Stalinist nightmares. So crushing the people who undermine them is the only option they can imagine (and have been lead to believe by the preachers of hate)
Easy, they're brainwashed, exactly as planned. Watch the news lately?
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