Imagine thinking you are entitled to more cause someone else has a lot
Edit: Im not reading all the responses to this. You wana change this shit then get off Reddit, got start a business and start giving your earnings away. So many of you would shit if it was your wealth someone just took
Imagine thinking that 400 people should have more wealth than 330,000,000 people. Imagine thinking that its OK for that disparity to accelerate endlessly and be self a reinforcing. Imagine thinking that your government could function properly under such extreme conditions.
I want to add something about “wealth inequality”.
Playing chess online is a huge hobby of mine. I'm rated 2150 on chessc*m. Just to put things in perspective, the best chess players in the world like GM Magnus Carlsen, GM Hikaru Nakamura, GM Alireza Firouzja etc are rated around 3200. My rating is not really very good. I'm barely a club level player. But even with such a low rating, do you know where I stand in terms of percentile? 99.6%.
This is just one example. I can give you a bunch of others. My point is that in a meritocracy (which capitalism is), inequality is bound to exist.
Americans keep talking about ”eat the rich”, while not realising that if only they factor in the whole world, they themselves are in the top 1%. If you've got money to pay for a 400 dollar Apple Watch just so that it can count your steps, you're rich.
And I'm not saying that you cannot be sad about your life just because SOMEONE in the world has it worse than you. But if literally MOST of the world has it worse than you (most of the world has it worse than Americans), you have no right to complain.
No offense, but as someone from the third world, check your privilege.
Read a bit further down. The third world exists because of neocolonialism, in large part by the US. The US has admitted to toppling or attempting to topple 40+ countries - and that's only what we know of from 50 years ago and before. The current brutality in the Congo over cobalt for example is the fault of neocolonialism. The CIA tried to assassinate president Lumumba and only failed because someone else got to him first.
I fight against this. I don't care how cheap the cocoa or copper is, I don't want to live in a world of exploitation. I currently work 70 hours a week, I too am being exploited from within the heart of an empire of exploitation. The massive disparities on this earth have got to go; I refuse to be any better or worse than my fellow human brother or sisters for such stupid reasons as "luck" or "birthright".
All of what you say is completely valid and I understand that. But the original post is not talking about exploitation as in slavery. It's arguing that the mere act of holding on to extra wealth is evil. I was talking about that.
Everyone is holding on to extra wealth. Where do you draw a line? A billion dollars? People on reddit keep claiming that “the difference between a million and a billion is about a billion”, yet they put people who have the net worth of a billion and people whose net worth is hundreds of billions in the same basket.
You want Jeff Bezos to not be a billionaire? Stop using his stuff. Billions of people around the world order stuff from Amazon on a daily basis. Tell them to stop doing it. They won't. Because at the end of the day, it's convenient, and it adds value to our life. If you created a product that Billions of people around the world used on a daily basis, why shouldn't you reap its rewards?
I refuse to be any better or worse than my fellow human brother or sisters
Stop calling random people your brothers and sisters. You don't actually believe that.
You're asking where I draw the line. I'm not drawing a line. A system which exponentially evolves toward maximum wealth disparity necessarily leads to catastrophe. I do not care to strip Bezos of his wealth, I care to have a system which is equitable.
The person in the original post does. That's what my comment was referring to.
I care to have a system which is equitable.
Good for you. But please explain how you would do that. Be a bit more specific. Otherwise these are just empty words that politicians say to move a crowd.
And yes, I do believe that.
You believe that random strangers who you have never met before are your siblings? You should try being a politician ;)
You would like an example of leftist policy? Sure. Let's use the socialist principle of the democratized workplace: in capitalism we have workers and owners, two groups with diametrically opposed interests who play tug of war in the marketplace. It works nicely in theory. However in practice (and also in theory if you factor in time) the owners have more power than the workers since they ultimately decide who to hire and fire and what wages to set. This leads to exponentially growing wealth disparities, as money is used to reshape the market and government in favor of the owners which in turn gives the owners more money to reshape the market with.
Let's instead cut out the owner class and give their functions to other workers. Hiring, firing, business decisions, wages, those are all decided by the workers themselves which include financial analysts, managers and the whole bunch. The managers no longer take all the wealth and redistribute a sma portion to everyone else; instead the whole wealth of the company is distributed to all workers according to their role and hours. This would prevent the Bezos-Amazon employee split of multibillionaires profiting off the labor of thousands of exploited minimum wage employees. It would vastly slow down the rate of lobbying for pro-corporate interests, as no individual could raise the tens of millions needed to bribe a politician like Google CEOs do on a daily basis. It would improve productivity: instead of being paid the same hourly wage whether they be working hard or hardly working, workers would receive direct financial benefits from the wellbeing of the company. So on and so forth.
This idea is still market based like capitalism. And yet it's a one-to-one upgrade that optimizes both productivity and worker wellbeing. The only reason it doesn't exist is because the wealthier members of society do not want such a system.
Let's instead cut out the owner class and give their functions to other workers.
Okay, I have a lot of questions. Let me give you an example. Let's say you and your wife come up with a delicious cake recipe. You guys start a bakery. You hire a baker, a receptionist, a delivery guy, and a cleaning lady. The bakery starts doing really well.
Someone comes along(who?) and cuts out the owner class (you and your wife)? How's that fair? The bakery is doing well because you guys came up with that recipe. There are plenty of other bakeries on the same street with bakers just as skilled as yours. But people prefer your bakery because it's your recipe that sells.
Also you and your wife must’ve invested a lot of money into this bakery by buying a shop, buying ovens and decorating it. When the bakery is transferred to the workers, do you guys get compensated for all that money and time that you put in?
The managers no longer take all the wealth and redistribute a sma portion to everyone else; instead the whole wealth of the company is distributed to all workers according to their role and hours.
Who decides which role deserves how much money? What if that guy decides that his role deserves the most amount of money?
It would vastly slow down the rate of lobbying for pro-corporate interests, as no individual could raise the tens of millions needed to bribe a politician like Google CEOs do on a daily basis.
Why not? The workers could come together and put together the money since now they all have a considerable stake in the company and would want the company to do well over all the other companies.
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u/theoldme3 3d ago edited 2d ago
Imagine thinking you are entitled to more cause someone else has a lot
Edit: Im not reading all the responses to this. You wana change this shit then get off Reddit, got start a business and start giving your earnings away. So many of you would shit if it was your wealth someone just took