Warren Buffett is like Bill Gates. He’s an evil billionaire (all billionaires are evil) who keeps pretending to be a good guy so people won’t despise him.
Nobody earns a billion dollars, we’ve decided as a society that even global leaders, scientists and life saving doctors who do the most important work don’t earn that much. It’s impossible for a human to be valuable enough to earn a billion dollars. Therefore every billionaire is where he is, because he stole the wealth of the people below him who did the actual work. Every billionaire is a wage thief.
, we’ve decided as a society that even global leaders, scientists and life saving doctors who do the most important work don’t earn that much.
The US doesn’t even pay the President $1 million a year salary. Arguably the most powerful person in the world isn’t even considered a millionaire status job. And yet we allow shitfuckers like Elon to scam their way into hundreds of billions. It really says that the majority of Americans are A-OK with scams and cutthroat tactics representing them.
We’re at the point where the Pentagon needs to check with Elon Musk before making decisions because he personally controls 50% of the satellites in orbit and if he feels offended he can prevent the US, and anyone else, from using them. He can single handedly turn the tides of war. He’s undoubtedly more powerful than the US president. He’s unelected and has zero accountability. Why are we all ok with this??
Because these
oilrailroadtech barons have been good for the economy and therefore the growth of the United States, and no one wanted to stop one while there was still more money to be made and now it’s late and gonna be an uphill battle to undo.The fact that the DoD hasn’t seized control of Starlink as a national security asset is insane. They could even pay him a fair market price for the company and keep all the employees on. Just appoint government personnel at the highest levels to ensure it stays online.
That’s not a good solution either. The government seizing assets from private citizens isn’t cool. That’s oppressive. But the government should have built that network with our tax dollars, not given our tax dollars to a private citizen to build and keep all the profits from. I’m not saying he should retain control, but I am saying he should have never been given control.
The government seizing assets from private citizens isn’t cool.
It’s very good and cool.
It would be very good and cool under a socialist state, but not in the US currently and I’ll explain my reasoning. In the US, nationalization represents the transfer of an enterprise from a single capitalist firm to the capitalist class as a whole via the state. Nationalization can bring benefits to both the working and capitalist classes, but ultimately the workers are still being exploited by the state for private profits instead of social ends. When an enterprise is nationalized by a capitalist state, the former owners are usually generously compensated with state bonds bearing a fixed rate of interest; this enables them to continue to exploit the workers involved at a rate of profit now guaranteed by the state. The class struggle continues, but but it is now necessary for the workers to struggle not against a single private management but against the capitalist state in its entirety. This is one of the reasons why Mussolini and Hitler heaped praise on FDR for his New Deal policies. They did a lot of good for people during the depression, but they also were market interventionist in a way that put a lot of corporate control in the hands of the capitalist state.
I won’t nitpick and just say that you’re mostly right. Nationalization within the imperial core has only ever provided small, temporary relief for a labor aristocracy that benefits from imperial super-profits.
Nationalizations outside of the imperial core is a move toward independence from the imperialist states, so it’s much more significant. So significant that the imperial core may try for regime change to claw those resources back.
I wonder if there are already plans to take control of starting in an emergency? The DoD should eat game then it’s there isn’t.
The NSA could probably let them in through one of the back doors.
Just appoint government personnel at the highest levels to ensure it stays online.
So like Chinese government? Socialism? Marx? Stalin? Mao? You damn traitor! Spy!
Why are we all ok with this??
I am not okay with it. I am extra special not okay with it because Musk is a shit heel.
You don’t need to earn a million dollars per year to be a millionaire. The president gets a salary of $400k per year and has literally all of their expenses paid for, including room, board, maid service, butlers, cars, airfare, clothing, medical care, etc. They serve for 4-8 years, and they receive compensation for life. It doesn’t take long to become a millionaire in that scenario. There are no US presidents that aren’t millionaires.
The context of that quote is a little lost, because these days with inflation and housing prices, just owning your own home probably makes you a millionaire.
I think you meant to reply to my other response where I quoted William Jennings Bryan. If so, you’re right, the number has changed. $1M in 1896 is the equivalent of $36.5M today. But it certainly applies to billionaires, and we were talking about them, so I felt that it was relevant.
William Jennings Bryan, who was a three-time Democratic presidential nominee and served as Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, said “No man can earn a million dollars honestly”. He campaigned under the idea that all of the wealthy are corrupt, and the United States needed reform. It’s a sad state of affairs that the majority of our citizens won’t vote for politicians that represent the interests of the working class. Almost all of our politicians support and assist the wealthy, and refuse to acknowledge the issues facing the working class, yet people keep putting them in office.
Historical note: $1million in his time is $36.5m today
Wow, that really put it in perspective. How far we have let greed get the better of ourselves. Where are the guardrails to prevent this?
Inflationary currency needs and expects this. Just how it works.
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lol nowadays a million dollars is like, the bare minimum you need for a comfortable retirement that doesn’t include “dying before 70” as part of the plan.
Inflations a son of a bitch.
Part of it is that people have been sold on the idea that they could be rich one day too.
Every billionaire is a wage thief.
What makes Buffet exceptional is that he agrees with you. He has said our system is perverse in that it rewards him more than teachers who actually work for a living.
But he won’t give the money to the people so… Still evil. He’s just giving it to his kids and calling it charity
I have screenshotted and quoted you to a half dozen people now. Well said.
Bill Gates: No u
Buffet and Gates are just playing from The Gospel of Wealth, by A. Carnegie.
What a read. He really just…up and says it all, doesn’t he.
I disagree. There is ONE billionaire that is not evil.
Wanna know who?
Tell me when you know about one.
Pavel Durov. Owner of Telegram.
For a decade I’m waiting for him to slip on his lies and spill out the billionaire evil. But there’s still no drama, no posing, no yacht, no island, no employee-torturing, no supercars, no castles… Just a guy who happened to get a ton of moneyz and trying to fulfil his vision of a free messenger that won’t cooperate with governments like the others do. There’s a reason it’s banned in many countries and he’s even been deported from his motherland.
Not saying he’s an angel, and billionaires really shouldn’t exist at all. But if i had to choose one of them to get a fair trial instead of the ad-hoc-guillotine, it’d be him.
A dead one? Maybe you mean Bill Gates?
Well, he is still alive physically.
I wasn’t saying bill gates was dead. I was asking if the only good billionaire was a dead billionaire. I was then suggesting you might believe Bill Gates is the one good billionaire. They were separate possible answers I was trying to think of.
I only said he was physically alive. (Spoiler: dead inside)
Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?
Warren Buffet haven’t “earned a billion dollars”. Net worth means the value of all your assets and in his case it’s mostly stocks. Look at the evolution of his net worth and see how it accelerates as he gets older. That’s compounding interests doing what they do.
He could easily get a billion dollars cash whenever he wanted. Look, Musk got $42B in cash within a couple months, immediately lost half of it, and his net worth went up. It doesn’t matter that the majority of their wealth isn’t liquid. They can get cash whenever they want by borrowing it from banks and investors at lower rates than their holdings appreciate.
Defend him however you wish, he and his descendants will never have a need for anything in their lives, and that is because they robbed so many on their way up
Please explain me how this robbing works exactly.
Ownership of Capital is theft from Workers.
This’ll get you upvotes from the people that agree with you but it’s almost like you’re not even trying to change my mind. You’re intentionally being vague and that doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion.
Alright, then please, tell me how familiar you are with the following concepts and we can go from there.
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Marx’s Law of Value
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The M-C-M’ circuit
If you aren’t familiar with either, you’re truly better off reading Marx than getting a second-hand lecture, but I’ll do my best.
I think my question is pretty straight forward. The claim is that Warren Buffet has robbed others so he could become wealthy. I simply asked how does that work exactly. I’m not sure what my knowledge of Marx’s philosophy has to do with you being able to answer my question. If you have a good understanding of it yourself then it shouldn’t be too hard to explain it to an idiot like me.
The reason claims like this rubs me the wrong way is because what Warren Buffet is doing is hardly different from what I’m doing myself aswell. It’s just the scale that’s different. About half of my wealth is tied into stocks. Stocks that I’ve bought with my own money that I have earned with my own labour. I’ll never be able to become rich by working and I’m not going to become rich by investing either but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t leverage the stock market to boost my own finances. The claim I hear you making here is that I’m essentially stealing from workers aswell.
EDIT: I asked chatGPT to steelman your position. This is what it said. Does this represent your view correctly?
When someone says “Ownership of Capital is theft from Workers” in a critical context of capitalism, they are likely expressing a viewpoint rooted in Marxist or socialist ideology. This statement reflects the belief that under capitalism, the ownership and control of capital (such as factories, land, machinery, etc.) by a relatively small group of individuals or entities (capitalists or owners) is inherently unjust because it deprives workers of the full value of their labor.
In Marxist theory, the means of production are considered to be collectively owned by society as a whole, and the capitalist system is seen as a mechanism through which the bourgeoisie (capitalist class) exploits the proletariat (working class) by extracting surplus value from their labor. According to this perspective, workers are only paid a portion of the value they produce, while the remainder is appropriated by the owners as profit.
From this viewpoint, the statement “Ownership of Capital is theft from Workers” suggests that the capitalist system is fundamentally exploitative, as it allows capitalists to profit from the labor of workers without adequately compensating them for their contributions. It highlights the unequal power dynamics inherent in capitalist societies, where a minority of individuals or corporations control the means of production and accumulate wealth at the expense of the majority who rely on selling their labor to survive.
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It’s posts like this that really make me embarrassed to be here on Lemmy. So many people here like to shake their fists at the sky and complain about how the world works. Yes, capitalism leads to major inequality. Other options are out there but also lead to major inequality. Best you can do for you and your family is to try to live well within the system, and vote for the changes you feel will best serve everyone.
Ranting about billionaires not being good people in any case just makes your audience stop listening.
Sounds like it would do you some good to take the advice of the post and read some Marx. It might help you contextualize the analysis that leads people to come to leftist conclusions.
Additionally, voting alone will not bring about positive change. You can’t directly vote on changes in America, just candidates working within the Capitalist system. True change comes from grassroots action, like unionizing and building up parallel structures.
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Yes, capitalism leads to major inequality. Other options are out there but also lead to major inequality.
The problem is that other options are not being explored. In the past 200 years (in the western world), pretty much nothing apart from Capitalism has been tried, very few small-scale experiments or anything but even then its for policies such as UBI.
So yes, if you look at poorer regions of the world which are often the only ones trying new things out, you often do see inequality increase but maybe it has something to do with them being poorer regions and all the baggage that comes with it (say, corruption or coups or authoritarianism)? Maybe this also influences the kind of ideologies that get adopted by the ruling class, and how the countries under the new ideology are being ran?
Also, at least in my opinion, this kind of mindset of “this is how the world works so you shouldn’t care and live life” feels misguided. I do agree that LARPing on the internet about these things is kind of counter-productive as you’re not really achieving any real change, but turning blind eye to injustices happening in your country (or in the world to a lesser extent) is even worse - an ignorance-based call to inaction.
Ranting is just a detail here, focus on the point - it’s a place of discussion. Like a tavern back in some older days. People talk here, come up with ideas, act on some of them, and it’s through this ranting, too, that some people may eventually pursue political or otherwise influential careers, try and bring changes they want to see, exerice their rights.
You can’t just get up and go to vote without having discussion either. This is all part of the process.
Didn’t Bill Gates revolutionize home computing for the average user? I’d consider that important work.
And why is it just billionaires? What about people worth tens of millions? Shouldn’t we also talk about them? Steve Wozniak is estimated to be worth around 140 million. Is he also evil?
Didn’t Bill Gates revolutionize home computing for the average user?
By literally stealing DR DOS, swapping the drive letters for the hard drive and floppy disk, and rebranding as MS DOS
Also mustve been nice to have a mom on the board of IBM to help get a massive deal for his startup…
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influenced-the-success-of-microsoft.html
It’s always some “started on 3rd base” bullshit with these “self made” billionaires…
Even with “common” people I see this shit and it kills me. I was watching some bullshit “I did x and so can you!” video and this fucker goes on to explain how he had company backing, previous experience, consultants to sit with, and a previous degree…
Yeah guy, I can totally just do that too…
Didn’t Bill Gates revolutionize home computing for the average user? I’d consider that important work.
No, he built a monopoly on top of a stolen product
I might add a monopoly so bad and so illegal that even America at its most fascist was like “yeah, too far dumbass”
This is exactly the kind of economy I would expect out of billionaires who are trying to destroy the middle class and bring back Company Towns. This is what 19th century robber-baron capitalism looks like, not the kind you were taught by Elmer Fudd.
More people should read Marx. Even if you don’t take everything he says, much of what he writes can be directly applied to today and can help people make sense of their current situations.
Id love to see people apply dialectical materialism to their life and society and still think “yeah but there are still good things about capitalists siphoning value out of worker’s labor!”
I mean if you dont disagree with Marx on some stuff you’re not a marxist, but yeah I agree with your reply to the implications
Can you recommend a book to start?
Capital is Marxism, plainly, but I’m obviously not going to recommend that to start. Instead, if you want to be more well-read than 90% of people, read Wage Labor and Capital as well as Value, Price, and Profit. You can find these on the Marxist Internet Archive for free: http://marxists.org/
Thanks, I’ll have a look at that.
No problem! There are a ton of useful works, the Manifesto of the Communist Party is fun and Principles of Communism is a good FAQ too, but VPP and WLaC make up the best 1-2 punch of Marxism you can get.
The Communist Manifesto comes in graphic novel form, everyone!
It’s actually a pretty fantastic adaptation. I’ve read both and they’re both short, easy reads.
Ooh! That sounds great!
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Kinda agree, as Marx’s critique of Liberalism/Capitalism is top-notch. However, the texts are so hard to read and it feels like you need an university degree to even be able to finish or grasp some of them.
He helped build it, he shouldn’t be that surprised.
He isn’t surprised, he’s doing PR.
Man has direct quotes saying you need to figure out how to exploit people or you will be exploited.
there’s certainly no reason to ever give a whit of credit (no pun intended) to anything any financier ever says. The other day there was a muppet on the radio rambling about how if the Canadian government limits interest rates to 35% as they’re discussing doing, banks won’t be able to make enough money to be able to loan it out. Usury is anything above 3%, just in case you didn’t know. Now the entire culture is usurious; usury is the standard, ergo we don’t use the word any more.
I used that word against BoA for a $35 overdraft on half a dunks coffee. It felt apt at the time but I’m pretty sure nobody knew what it meant.
With all due respect it was not so apt as usury is specifically charging interest, not fees.
Interest is just fees with more steps.
Most of the evil in this world comes from stupidity and simplistic thinking. They believe in these simple rules that seem fair and right in some ideal scenario but don’t consider the emergent effects of the laws and rules that capitalist institutions will exploit and erode. They want to believe in some kind of religion.
Late Stage Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, pretty much textbook.
It’s not late stage capitalism or crony capitalism or über capitalsm: it’s capitalism.
That’s what “late stage capitalism” means though. Not some distinct subset of capitalism, just the inevitable result of capitalism + time. The later you get, the more extreme the inherent problems become. Late stage capitalism is a declaration of degree, not type.
Needs a good bottom text: am I a joke to you
I like it better when there was talk of a railroad workers strike and Buffet shut the fuck up because he knew where his moneu comes from and what that would do to this fake image he’s fostered. Who’s gotta strike to make him shut up this time?
Funny cause Henry George keeps hitting the nail on the head from over a century ago.
Textbooks don’t do stuff other than be expensive for no damn reason.
Textbooks compile information about a subject into one cohesive whole for study. They’re super useful, even though they are too expensive typically. Library Genesis is great for obtaining textbooks you can’t afford to purchase.
Textbooks are pretty nice to learn things on your own or as a supplement to classes. If you can find free ones online or at a library, definitely worth it. Full price, not so much.
Edit: I know this post is about economics textbooks though, so I can’t speak on those. However, I do think textbooks in general are a great resource that tends to get underappreciated.
You think economics picture books would be a better idea?
What exactly did Marx predict that is true today? Was it something like the rise of subscription services or more like general increasing inequality under capitalism?
We are truly on the cusp of socialist revolution just like Marx said. If we extrapolate the lemmygrad instance to the rest of the world, that means it’s only a couple years max until we behead those pesky billionaires starting with wrren bffet. It’s simple math if you read this philosophers textbook " Das Kapital."
Not really sure what the point of your comment is, it comes off as anti-Marx but doesn’t really address any of the observations Marx made. It’s like a soyjack in comment form.
OK I’ll be serious for a second. The comment was ant-Marx. I think that the idea that capitalism would inevitably lead to a socialist revolution is not a real thing. I’m looking at all the capitalist western countries and see that there is no real need or even desire for people to overhaul the whole financial and governmental systems. Although socialists are becoming more prominent over the years especially on the internet, I believe that this is only relegated to the internet. The only thing close to socialism that we have is Bernie Sanders and he’s not really a powerful politician so others would probably not emulate him in the future.
You can think that this is a cope or a soyjack-like post all you want, but at least I live in the real world where we’re not waiting for a fantasy revolution that would make us work in socialist utopias where everyone is a farmer in a small garden or a hair stylist or whatever the fuck people thing it’s gonna be like. I know the issues that would plague something like socialism or communism and know that capitalism solves all the problems there. Just look at the USSR in their last years and how much the US was outpacing them in terms of technology and production. The quality of life in capitalist countries was and still is leagues above any socialist or communist countries.
I can understand when people criticize the current system we have since it’s 100% not perfect. But to just call for a socialist revolution instead of better methods of regulation and closing loops as we discover them is just stupid.
And lastly, the post is pretty stupid on another level since the “woes of capitalism” are there because of events that mess up global trade like the pandemic or the current Houthi attacks on the red sea, when you know for a fact that any country that’s not extremely closed off and protectionist would be just as impacted.
Yea, I was right, you genuinely don’t understand Marx nor what Marxists are talking about. If you did, you’d be making coherent points and not randomly attacking strawmen you’ve created.
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The collapse of Capitalism doesn’t necessitate Socialist revolution. It’s up to Socialists to try to push for that, but Capitalism collapsing doesn’t necessitate Socialism’s rise.
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There remains to be an increasing need for Socialism as exploitation rises, both in developed countries and the global south. Competition drives increased exploitation of Workers, and we observe this in increased disparity.
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Socialism is rising in popularity not just online, but in real life, if polls are to be believed.
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Nobody thinks Socialism would look like what you’re describing, it’s not going to be a bunch of dissonant communes. Worker councils running things and democratically deciding production without a Capitalist doesn’t mean things take the form of hippie Communes.
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What problems come from Socialism and how does Capitalism solve them? You made this point without actually elaborating on it.
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The USSR, during its time, was a developing country. That’s like comparing America to Brazil and saying quality of life is better in America. No shit, America is a developed country. I don’t even think the USSR is a good example of what Socialists want, this point is just terrible.
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Correct, developed countries have better quality of life than developing countries. Can you tie this to mode of production, or is this just a non-sequitor?
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What makes regulations and closing loopholes better than restructuring society to be more democratic and remove rent-seeking?
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The woes of Capitalism include inherent structural flaws like the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, rising disparity, and exploitation of Workers at the hands of Capitalists. Additionally, Capitalism is fundamentally anti-democratic.
That’s what I mean, this is just a soyjack. You don’t have any actual points, just a field of strawmen and no understanding of Marx or Marxism. You’d do well to read Marx like the meme suggests.
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Yea and mr marx did a REAL great job of predicting how his system would turn out…
Well he died in 1883. A little bit before modern economics. But he did do a decent job predicting and observing how private wealth and capital accumulation drives inequality.
Unironically yes
Sending assassins after someone is generally a good indicator that you’re not following their ideas anymore
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