Do you have a billion pounds, Mr. SwagaPenis?
Do you aspire to?
I'm with My Name, except for the self righteous, possibly ironic/double-sarcastic trolling remarks about people doing their best to save the planet. Nobody needs to be rich, nobody deserves to be rich. Wealth inequality creates massive problems for everyone in our made up system. If we get a well implemented UBI, if amassing a personal fortune didn't have such negative effects on the majority of the world, then I'd have no problem with it. As it happens, it does, so I do.
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brb Monkhouse Stampede, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 17:58,
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No, and no.
I have a relatively decent income and thanks to not owning a motor vehicle or having any offspring to endlessly funnel money into, I live a relatively comfortable life. Probably a lot more comfortable than the average individual on a comparable income. That's plenty good enough for me.
Having so much money that I wouldn't need to work would be awful for me. I'd likely end up eating or drinking myself to death within a decade. Plus, I quite like my job. Just not so much that I'd work there for free.
That being said, I hold no ill will towards people who just happen to have loads of money. One of the more affluent roads in my town is populated by massive detached Georgian mansions on frankly ridiculous sized lawns. I absolutely feel a little twang of envy when I pass these properties, but not once do I think it's 'unfair' that these people have vastly more money than me or that they have some kind of responsibility to distribute their wealth among the riff raff.
Some people are just mega wealthy. The vast majority of the time, they've inherited that money. Its not their fault. So it seems a bit bloody weird to hold a grudge against them.
(, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 19:07, Reply)
Well it's been explained to you twice but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.
The problem with our trickle-up economic system is that maintaining personal wealth *requires* a significantly larger number of people held in relative poverty. It's essentially what money is for.
The concept of the politics of envy is a red herring. Right wingers often fall back on the false idea of meritocracy and personal choice for reasons which appear obvious. Let me know if it's not obvious to you and I'll patronise you some more.
I actually believe in some right wing (or liberal) economics too, such as infinite growth. Our infinite sky grants access to that, but also necessarily wrecks the current economic system because there is essentially infinite wealth out there. "16 Psyche," for example, contains enough gold, nickel and iron to make us all multi-billionaires.$10,000 quadrillion worth, it says here. Shouldn't that be 10 quintillion? It's a big fucking number, anyway.
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brb Monkhouse Stampede, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 20:02,
Reply)
Did you know that not having any children
means you are giving a free pass to yourself and more than 10 other people to be able to drive a car, not recycle, eat meat, have transatlantic holidays, and use a tumble drier (and a few other 'green' things). Having a kid is the worst thing you can do to the environment by a very long way. If you have 3 kids, you are forcing over 30 people to be extremely restricted in their lives.
I forget the comedian, but I remember the 'bit' he did where he said that if there were only 10 people on the planet, you could all drive around all day in coal powered steamrollers, ploughing down plants and animals without care, clubbing baby seals as you go, eating McDonalds out of styrofoam containers and just throwing them on the ground, and it wouldn't affect the planet one bit. On the other hand, if you put 25 billion people on the planet, just eating and breathing will fuck everything. Somewhere in-between, there is a population level where you can pretty much do what you like, and the planet will be fine. All we have to do is keep our numbers to that level and the problems we have right now will be solved, but good luck getting people to stop fucking...
Regarding the wealthy people who live near you, they have no obligation to spread their wealth around, even they have almost no money compared to the ultra-rich. The amount of wealth the ultra-rich have is unimaginable. Not just 'never have to work again' money, they have orders of magnitude more than that. Jeff Bezos' daily income (as of 2022) is $0.468 billion. If the posh houses near you are $10 million each, he can buy 46 of them every single day, and still increase his wealth by nearly $70 million a day. One hour of his earnings ($19.52 million) is way more than 'never have to work again'.
I don't hold a grudge, life is too short. I do think though that there is something very wrong with the system we have if it is possible for them to be able to do that and not put a good chunk of that towards feeding, housing and clothing the people at the other end of the wealth scale who do not have food, clothes, or houses to live in.
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My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Tue 20 Jun 2023, 20:02,
Reply)