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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • My point is that this could work to pierce the programming which makes people unwilling to learn. Two years ago I might have reacted to what you’re saying just the same as Fizz does today. What helped chip away at my programming is the sort of explanations that take what I understood already. Also the audience isn’t Fizz alone but also the multitude who only read the discussions. I’m only saying this because you’re spending a lot of time and effort to talk to people already. Not because I have the right to demand more work. 😄


  • I think you may get better results if you talk about what people understand in their own lives. People understand how utterly undemocratic the private sector of the economy is. They also understand how unrepresentative the reps the dominant parties present for election. They understand who pays for their politics. People also understand how democracy works in non-partisan settings like municipalities, school boards and so on. Often people don’t realize these things and need help to connect the dots and build a complete picture, but they understand what’s going on. Once the picture is in place, they get it. Then from there you could draw parallels between parts of that picture and China to explain in terms people understand. E.g. the political democracy works similar to municipal democracy, no parties, just candidates and elections.










  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.catoMemes@lemmy.mlBatting for Billionaires
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    2 months ago

    If you buy the argument that billionaires have become such by collecting the extra value their employees create above the wage they get paid, then it’s easy to see why many consider them harmful regardless of their personal traits. In that framework, the billionaire that’s the least harmful is the one that has the fewest billions. Luckily, unlike race, there’s an easy way to become a non-billionaire. One option is paying higher wages so that you never become one. Another is lobbying for high taxes and paying them. Yet another is giving enough of money away as to become a millionaire. With race, there are no options to become not-that-race.

    And so we judge billionaires as a group, as a class, because of their function and effect on society, the economy and the political system. Not because we think they’re all bad people that we have to hate. They cannot be billionaires without having these effects.

    Speaking of value employees make above their wages, here’s a fun fact. If you take the average yearly net income (profit after costs) of Google and you divide it by their number of employees, you get a number around half a million per person, per year.




  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.catoMemes@lemmy.mlBatting for Billionaires
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    2 months ago

    The parent is being a bit hyperbolic, which isn’t useful, but that’s not Alex Jones-level tinfoil hattery, even if it appears similar at first glance. Of course you’re right that he was an Epstein bud because he liked to fuck the classmates he couldn’t in school. At the same time it’s also true and provable that uncle Bill spends his money lobbying various domestic and international organizations to further his and by proxy the owner class’es interest. I distinctly remember for example good uncle Bill lobbying the US government and the WHO against IP sharing at the height of the COVID crisis:

    Global health czar Bill Gates had other thoughts. Maintaining his steadfast commitment to intellectual property rights, Gates pushed for a plan that would permit companies to hold exclusive rights to lifesaving medicines, no matter how much they benefited from public funding. Given the enormous influence Gates has in the global public health world, his vision ultimately won out in the Covax program—which enshrines monopoly patent rights and relies on the charitable whims of rich countries and pharmaceutical giants to provide vaccines to most of the world. A chorus of support from pharmaceutical companies and the Trump administration didn’t hurt.

    Source: Wired Magazine

    PS: Being an Epstein bud could help if you want to lobby big names with words and capital. People pay good money to sit at the table and talk to some big shots at various places.


  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.catoMemes@lemmy.mlBatting for Billionaires
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    2 months ago

    Billionaire philanthropy is like doing 100 damage to humanity, then returning 5 health. Then the 5 health gets amplified by information channels and it gets to feel much bigger in the collective consciousness. It gets a further boost when there’s other prominent billionaires that don’t give any hp back making it stand out as the good guy. So you end up in a bizarre position where objectively the philanthropist is the good guy compared to the rest, but the vast majority of us have no hp left.