“The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”
Utah Phillips
The deaths from climate change related Ice storms, floods, fires, heat waves and droughts are not due to “catastrophes”, or “disasters” they are calculated, premeditated murders for profit.
“These people have physical bodies” - Jreg
Class conflict is a problem for much of human existence.
“most”?
Try “all”. Everything always eventually comes down to someone, somewhere, trying to make more profit for themselves.
That’s why “Follow the money” is the surest way to solve any crime.
More precisely “follow the money” is the surest way to understand why a crime is not being prosecuted
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
They are the symptoms, not the disease. Capitalism will always create them on a long enough timeline. It is streamlined feudalism.
If you have any type of head start under capitalism, for any reason, regardless if everyone profits, those who initially profited a little more will profit exponentially more at an exponential rate as time goes by.
The claim is that under capitalism, everybody is better off. But if they earn 1.1 times as much as you do, as the years turn into decades into centuries, you will have earned a fraction of what they did. That difference matters a lot, especially at scale.
If I get $1 and you get $100, that’s a big difference between us, but not life changing for either.
If I get $1000 and you get $100000, that is a massive difference between us, trivial for me, definitely significant for you.
If I have $100000 and you have $10000000, we might as well live on different planets.
Capitalism doesn’t take this into consideration. Sorry for the somewhat juvenile example, I’m very tired, and am going to have another drink now.
Your example isn’t bad. You could go further. 1,000,000 vs 1,000,000,000. Massive difference.
The problem is when we live in a world when we have millions of people with less than $1,000, and others have more than $300,000,000,000.
Here’s another problematic aspect of the same-
In 1913 there were 435 representatives in Congress. The population of the United States was ~97 million.
In 2026 there are still 435 representatives. The population is about ~335 million.
In 1913 each representative spoke for roughly 223,000 people.
In 2026 each representative speaks for roughly 770,000 people.
In 1789 there were 65 representatives, and about 4 million people, speaking for ~60,500 people each.
Scale matters, a lot.
Why would a wealth tax not fix this?
Because if wealth is power, then wealth will not want to pay taxes, so it would wield its wealth as a weapon so as to assure that it wouldn’t. See? Taxes are laws. Capital is above the law. Can the law be enforced? If so, then yes, it would fix this. Unfortunately, a legal and democratic system cannot withstand the force of capital- which, incidentally, is also an agreement. It’s only as long as we play the game and let us be duped by it that this goes on, that’s why the power remains with the people. If we withdraw, it all collapses.
True human unity and cooperation transcends all arbitrary systems of government, democratic or other.
I think we are on the same page, to be honest.
My point is: the power should be with the people, as you said. Capital creates power. So let’s use a wealth tax to distribute it back to the people (and improve their living standards, drastically, while we are at it).
“the only minority group destroying our country are billionaires” as the bumper sticker on my therapists’s car says… love her
We need a maximum wage
The bourgeoisie do not receive a wage. They receive our wages in the form of profit. If a maximum wage was introduced in the current system it would be made to benefit the bourgeois as they are the ones writing our laws.
We need a wealth tax, is what you want to say. Tax wealth not work.
They don’t get wealth from labor, it’s all about owning the shit that gets them wealth.
And even then, they don’t sell it to buy things, they use it as leverage to spend the banks’ money.
So it’s really about taxing more dividends, and any loans gained from leveraging assets.
Exactly. These creatures ARE our only real problem. More-less everything else, we could solve if they just…
…stopped being alive.
We must take matters into our own hands.
Oh dont worry, the earth will still spin. Life will go on.
Humans are fucking this up for themselves and wont be missed. [Beep boop, im not a robot]
Money. We need a new system of commerce. The quest for even more money is the longest problem we refuse to look at in human history. Excessive greed should be punished not aspired to. All we seem to do is turn to rich people for answers like they’ve figured out the world, when in fact they ignore the world and supplant a system called “the economy” over actual reality. We make goods and send them there to buy back their goods from over there to make people in the middle rich for doing nothing. Completely ignoring health, safety, the environment in the process, things that are real in the real world that we all experience and affect us. Make it make sense to me.
It is a little weird that this had never occurred to you until it popped into your head during a shower, but better late than never!
Power, not just money, power in too few hands. Getting there also tends to require extreme selfishness, which only makes it worse for everyone else when the most selfish acquire said power. Democracy was supposed to disperse power across the community to explicitly prevent concentrations of power.
Money results in having power, wether you use it or not/Privilege (SP?) given people with more money over people with less money .
Power is owned by Capital. Capital is owned by Violence.
Power is owned by Capital. Capital is owned by Violence.
Yes, power is owned Capital/wealth, But no one has power in Capitalist system without wealth/money, just a fact. So no way is Wealth/money owned by violence. Perfect example is the political history of The 1st World, especially USA & even happening with ‘The Crazy Don’s ‘Mob Enforcers’. Violence is owned by all, but Privileged, like government forces with authorities, get away with violence.
It is. Capitalism requires a significantly capable system of violence to enforce physical property rights or capitalism can’t exist, violence is a foundation for capitalism. We don’t see it much because the legal system has been so effective we rarely encounter it, except for violent offenses, but laws and rules are backed by threat of force. Financial and business crimes are rarely prosecuted, so the violence of the law doesn’t get used much in that sphere. That privelege has been intentionally lobbied for over decades in an attempt to disempower the state from effectively governing business through it use of violence. But the person with the gun who can take your buildings and your machines and your data centers and your gold, ultimately determines who controls the things of value that wealth consists of. Capital requires violence used on its behalf to gain and maintain wealth. Violence is the basis of it all.
You mean you & others do not see it much.
I agree with everything you posted, except the very last sentence. Moving money-resources into Rich-Super Rich Economic Classes/Owners control is the foundation/final reason to everything Capitalism. Just as moving money-resources into The Royal Families’ control is the foundation/final reason to everything Feudalism.
Consolidating control of everything is the motive and goal, but the mechanism for it being possible is the use of force to maintain physical control of things, even in feudalism.
I agree, but you have to sell it, to be able to do what you are talking about.
Violence is the instrument, that is used by those that have Rich-Super Rich Economic Classes/Owners/The Royal Families, thus violence is not needed without Capitalism/Feudalism trying to move money-resources to them.
BINGO, SUMMED-UP The World on Capitalism!
The wealthy existed long before capitalism.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
One could argue that the currency system itself legitimizes the amassing of enormous wealth into the hands of a tiny minority.
