American pig

[lewisnotmiller]

Really trying to understand what you're getting at here.

Just that even in a free country it's possible to measure trends impacting on people's financial independence.

Personal responsibility is vital, I agree, but society impacts as well, and it's possible to see trends in that impact.

 

[PureX]

Yeah, why have hundreds of people that got their wealth by, "shudder", working for it?

Everyone works. No one works 10,000 times harder than anyone else. No one "earns" a billion dollars.

We should go back to dictatorships that have one person (or family) owning all the wealth, and who inherited it. That is the ultimate success of dictatorships.

So you prefer a dictatorship of oligarchs and plutocrats, because they may let you become one of them?

 

[Stanyon]

That's why Stanyon admires them so. He and many others, here. Perhaps they secretly want to be those people. Or they just like seeing their fellow humans exploited and suffering. Who knows?

Exploiting people by giving them billions of dollars? How does that work. Now I can understand attempting to win the hearts and minds to make them favourable but that is a hit and miss proposition as we have seen over and over but at the end of the day bellies get filled, children have schools to go to and farming/agriculture is supported and encouraged for the long term.
.

 

[Akivah]

No one "earns" a billion dollars.

Sure they do. If you invent a product that everyone in the world wants, you will easily EARN a billion dollars.

 

[BSM1]

Exploiting people by giving them billions of dollars? How does that work. Now I can understand attempting to win the hearts and minds to make them favourable but that is a hit and miss proposition as we have seen over and over but at the end of the day bellies get filled, children have schools to go to and farming/agriculture is supported and encouraged for the long term.
.

Where does the line start for that particular exploitation?

 

[Valjean]

Sure they do. If you invent a product that everyone in the world wants, you will easily EARN a billion dollars.

There's more than one sense to the word. Acquire vs deserve.

Would you find anything objectionable to the king of a primitive, grain based economy hoarding huge quantities of grain, more than he and his family could ever use, while many of his farmers were subsisting on a few slices of bread per day?

 

[BSM1]

There's more than one sense to the word. Acquire vs deserve.

Deserve? Really? Who deserves anything?

 

[Akivah]

There's more than one sense to the word. Acquire vs deserve.

Would you find anything objectionable to the king of a primitive, grain based economy hoarding huge quantities of grain, more than he and his family could ever use, while many of his farmers were subsisting on a few slices of bread per day?

These are two completely different examples. In your example, it isn't the king that grows all the grain since there are many farmers. Based on the setup of your premise, the king probably TOOK the produce that the many farmers grew.

In my example of a product that the world wants, each person voluntarily purchased the product.

 

[PureX]

Exploiting people by giving them billions of dollars? How does that work.

I have no idea what this is even about.

Now I can understand attempting to win the hearts and minds to make them favourable but that is a hit and miss proposition as we have seen over and over ...

Again, I have no idea what this is about.

... but at the end of the day bellies get filled, children have schools to go to and farming/agriculture is supported and encouraged for the long term.

You apparently have a very dark and narrow view of the value and purpose of humanity.

 

[PureX]

Sure they do. If you invent a product that everyone in the world wants, you will easily EARN a billion dollars.

That's not earning anything. That's just winning the capitalist lotto. And the winners have brain-washed you into believing that they've "earned" their right to control yours and billions of other people's lives, and exploit them for their own benefit. And you swallowed their BS hook, line, and sinker.

 

[PureX]

In my example of a product that the world wants, each person voluntarily purchased the product.

Ah yes. The BIG LIE of "free market" capitalism: that we can simply refuse to buy if we want, and thereby we control the markets. Except there are no free markets, anymore, except for luxury markets. All the others have become captive markets, meaning that the buyer has to buy from someone, to survive. And that changes the whole dynamic in favor of the seller, and takes it away from the buyer. The old "company store" is back, forcing the workers to pay out exactly what they take in, just to keep on working.

 

[Stanyon]

Sure they do. If you invent a product that everyone in the world wants, you will easily EARN a billion dollars.

And sometimes it doesn't even have to be something anyone actually needs sometimes it just has to be stupid enough to seem a novelty.
Example:
The inventor of the pet rock sold approximately 1.5 million of them for $3.95 each- how much he netted I dont know but it was a rock in a cardboard box with instructions for care.

 

[Stanyon]

Ah yes. The BIG LIE of "free market" capitalism: that we can simply refuse to buy if we want, and thereby we control the markets. Except there are no free markets, anymore, except for luxury markets. All the others have become captive markets, meaning that the buyer has to buy from someone, to survive. And that changes the whole dynamic in favor of the seller, and takes it away from the buyer. The old "company store" is back, forcing the workers to pay out exactly what they take in, just to keep on working.

And support s******* countries!

 

[Valjean]

These are two completely different examples. In your example, it isn't the king that grows all the grain since there are many farmers. Based on the setup of your premise, the king probably TOOK the produce that the many farmers grew.

In my example of a product that the world wants, each person voluntarily purchased the product.

And each person also contributed to its success by creating the milieu or infrastructure in which it could be conceived, manufactured, distributed and sold. It's success is a group effort. Hoarding profits wildly in excess of one's needs; profits which could usefully be put to the benefit of the society that enabled them, is a mean and anti-social act.

We're all in the same boat; all part of the same family. You don't have parasitical, zero-sum competition within healthy families.
Better to be an ordinary man in a happy, prosperous society than a rich man in a third-world country.

 

[PureX]

And each person also contributed to its success by creating the milieu or infrastructure in which it could be conceived, manufactured, distributed and sold. It's success is a group effort. Hoarding profits wildly in excess of one's needs; profits which could usefully be put to the benefit of the society that enabled them, is a mean and anti-social act.

We're all in the same boat; all part of the same family. You don't have parasitical, zero-sum competition within healthy families.
Better to be an ordinary man in a happy, prosperous society than a rich man in a third-world country.

Unless you really just don't like people, much. Which I think is at the heart of a lot of American "piggishness".

We 'consume' each other, now, the way we consume everything else.

 

[Valjean]

Agreed. We've commodified everything -- including ourselves.

 

[Revoltingest]

Agreed. We've commodified everything -- including ourselves.

Says the guy who shills for unhealthy snack foods!

 

[Enoch07]

I was studying globalism and came across this:
The word itself came into widespread usage, first and foremost in the United States, from the early 1940s.[5] This was the period when US global power was at its peak: the country was the greatest economic power the world had ever known, with the greatest military machine in human history.[6]

As George Kennan's Policy Planning Staff put it in February 1948: "[W]e have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population
Globalism - Wikipedia
Makes me feel kinda like a pig *oink oink*. Does America still have about 50% of the world's wealth?
I highly doubt it but thought I'd ask. America is kind of a hog.

50% of the wealth and only 6.3% of the population? That smells like success to me!

 

[Valjean]

Says the guy who shills for unhealthy snack foods!

 

[LionLooking]

50% of the wealth and only 6.3% of the population? That smells like success to me!

It smells of something - not success though.