By now we’ve all seen the ‘files’, if you’re like me you’ve used various AI to cross-reference them with other things like financial crashes, who else might be a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th degree connections, where do they work, etc etc etc and at the end of it you see the web of parasitic elites running our society.
How do we just go back to ‘normal’??
But if they ‘took over,’ then by definition, the things that exist now - including the infrastructure you’re using to complain about them - exist because they allowed it. What you (and !Feyd@programming.dev ) have actually described is a world where billionaires are both all-powerful and completely irrelevant. That’s not a critique. That’s a paradox. And it’s a useful one—because it lets you feel angry without actually taking any concrete action.
After all the Quanon stuff and the general population increasing their awareness of how conspiratorial thinking works, it’s weird to see “my side” use the same rhetorical tactics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Definitions_of_fascism&useskin=vector#Umberto_Eco
“Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.”
There is no paradox. Thing exists. Billionaire takes over thing. Billionaire ruins thing. Billionaire did not cause thing to exist.
You said these things “wouldn’t be possible” and “wouldn’t exist” without billionaires. This is objectively untrue. Without billionaires these things would be significantly better. I specifically pointed out your mention of infrastructure because that one’s so blatantly obvious unless you’ve only ever experienced car-centric infrastructure.
You’re arguing with a straw man. The point isn’t that billionaires are the sole reason these things exist in some abstract sense - it’s that, in the world we actually live in right now, they control the levers that determine whether you have access to them at all. Nothing that we have right now could be possible if not everything that came before it. So unless you invent a time machine, you’re arguing besides the point.
No, I’m arguing against direct quotes from you. Unless you yourself are a strawman.
Built by academics to share research, expanded by hobbyists and enthusiasts, and taken over by megacorps. Not “enabled” by billionaires.
Technically true, but only in that billionaires own the workers.
Untrue. People can live in comfort without the existence of billionaires.
Untrue. This is what your taxes pay for. Transit infrastructure exists without billionaires. Even in the US, notoriously a horrible place to travel, public transit infrastructure was good until billionaires lobbied against good infrastructure so they could sell more cars. Car infrastructure costs you more than public transit.
Possibly true in very specific cases where your work provides value only to billionaires. If your work provides value in any other way (eg providing services or goods), this is likely not true.
I am fully certain you don’t really believe good food only exists because of billionaires. Has there ever been a civilization of any kind which hasn’t had chefs of some description?
Hobbies have always existed. You have time and resources to spare because of unions, not billionaires.
You credited all of these things to billionaires. None of these things exist because of billionaires.
You are absolutely correct on all points. Now what do you propose we do about it?
Easy; don’t give credit to billionaires for things they’ve only made worse.
Noted, you have successfully got me to edit my first post. I await the results of this revolution.
Pretty sure he didn’t read your post beyond the first paragraph to begin with…
Well, that’s exactly why I advocate for small actions on the level of the individual and branch out from there. I can’t make other people do anything. Least of all use their brain beyond their capacity.
No, that’s just the objectionable part because that’s the part pretending billionaires are responsible for everything good.