He‘s been hanging out with his friends quite a lot lately I assume. Same brain farts over and over again.
Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
241–250 of 378 posts
Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
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You should understand language before debating vocabulary. I am quite well read on political philosophy and history, and I will continue to call out fascists when I see people talking like fascists. Rhetorically, what you're doing is called the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. I personally don't like calling out things like this when I see them because it's not a logical fallacy as much as bad rhetoric, but in this case I…
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Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#243the why is quite easy, because we are not worthy of having a say in our own governance according to them, so that they may better exploit us
Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fascinating to see how many tech people, as soon as they get rich, turn to extreme. Name them all - they mostly all are very active on X, and each new tweet pushes the limits of what was previously deemed unacceptable. They have the money and power, but tech people in particualr lack the social graces and awareness that previous generations of rich people needed to operate. They think very highly of themselves, but…
The old timey ones were morons in every kind of human way, too. We know what dumb shit they thought and said. They just didn’t all have instantaneous global reach while sitting on the crapper, like Henry Ford with a Twitter account. Even the Hearst type ones usually had time and human machinery between the formation of idiotic notions and it reaching other people.
> The old timey ones were morons in every kind of human way, too. We know what dumb shit they thought and said.
I'm not saying they were great. I'm just saying they probably spent more of their formative years interacting with real people than messing around with machines, so the tech lords are probably even worse.
Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#245Oh boy! Can I play too? My system, which I call an expansion of antitrust, requires all people to keep their net worth under one billion dollars. Anyone approaching that number must give away assets to stay under. If you go over that, you must be broken up, by, say, beheading, or being drawn and quartered. I'm not married to that number, if people think it should be half a billion, or 100 million, or whatever, I'll g…
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Oh yeah, uh, sure it's hate speech. It's wealthism. One of the worst forms of prejudice. The wealthy live in constant fear for something that's not even their fault... they didn't choose to be wealthy, they were just born that way.
If you're seeing this violent sentiment spill over to HN, just imagine how the general population is starting to feel about billionaires.
Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to knock you out of your cloud. In democracy, power comes from demos. In capitalism, power comes from capital. Demos doesn't have concentrated capital. Try starting a new party without capital and backing from people tied to mainstream media. People never had power. Whenever they've thought they have power (revolutions), they fought for one new power hungry scumbag to replace old power hungry scumbag.
> they fought for one new power hungry scumbag to replace old power hungry scumbag. Because, as Plato argued, the best rulers are the ones that don’t want to rule, as ruling is a very heavy duty, if not burden. If you strip corruption, it has no rewards. Instead you have to put up with “scambags” accusing for the things the corruption they would do if they had the power. Why does this sound familiar?
Plato was philosopher.
Not sociopath.
For sociopaths, power over other people is only thing that matters. It's not a burden, money is nice, but it's mostly a tool to have more power.
Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#247Money is power. That is the problem with extreme wealth. It provides unaccountable power outside the democratic process. It is not surprising that an already powerful man wants even more power, but I do not understand why anyone else would go along with this.
> It provides unaccountable power outside the democratic process. Doesn't help when the government isn't maintaining or enforcing guardrails for the ultra wealthy. This is a war on the middle class. Free and fair elections are the last hope that most have to resolve it peacefully, so of course those are under attack. > I do not understand why anyone else would go along with this. I've been asking myself that for 10 y…
They've leveraged the culture wars to the point that a good chunk of the rural, economically disadvantaged voters are cool with a northeastern elite billionaire looting the country.
Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#248TIL about epistemic trespassing:
It occurs when an expert in one field passes judgment or makes confident claims in another field where they lack true competence or formal training.
Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It provides unaccountable power outside the democratic process. Doesn't help when the government isn't maintaining or enforcing guardrails for the ultra wealthy. This is a war on the middle class. Free and fair elections are the last hope that most have to resolve it peacefully, so of course those are under attack. > I do not understand why anyone else would go along with this. I've been asking myself that for 10 y…
They've leveraged the culture wars to the point that a good chunk of the rural, economically disadvantaged voters are cool with a northeastern elite billionaire looting the country.
“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.” — Lyndon B. Johnson, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-wh...
Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
And at level that Gates operates charity of itself is form of power and influence. Not rich people spending money on these things is bad. But sometimes I just question motivations as a whole.
my understanding too was that his (ex)wife told him, basically, "what are young going to do with all of this?" like he has literally everything he needs, and there is this massive number -- do something, anything with it. You have unlimited time, so chose to do something
It's also not uncommon for extravagantly rich people to form family-run charity organizations to distract their nagging wife or family members with a pursuit where they can lord over employees / recipients / organizations without having any profit metrics by which they could be embarrassed by their inferior business chops. This is doubly applicable if you need to distract a nagging hag while you're off banging Russian bridge players.