Don’t be too harsh he’s a cool dude, but he unfortunately has some capitalism good musk good sentiments that I’ve been trying to dismantle for some time now and i thought I’d ask for help with this.

Or you can just dunk.

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Since other people have taken care of the rest...

    It's way better than 1800 - and 1800 was better than 1400, which was better than 600 and so on. And where did those improvements come from? Tearing down social heirarchies. Land reform. More equitable taxation. Creating communal infrastructure. Funding public services. Breaking up monoplies. Expanding voting rights. Expanding civil and human rights. Publicly funded research and technology investment. Almost things the overwhelming majority of the 1% are vocally and demonstratably against and are trying to reverse. Now is better than 1800, so why does he want to go backwards for the profits of billionaires?

    "they have to get their fair share" - the richest people in society have so much money they could never, ever spend it, even if they spent all their time doing it. At least not on themselves, which is what they mostly do aside from hoarding it. That's without even getting into CEO-lowest paid worker ratios etc when we're talking about 'effort' or 'hard work'.

    "The worst get nothing, that's my philosophy" - you're condemning people to death, so which people specfically do you think you should kill? The severely disabled who can't work? What about people in precarious work that can't make rent anyway? If people aren't born equal and the 'worst' get nothing and are left to die how are you qualifying that? Who gets to decide that? What if the 1% decide you're one of them? (spoiler, they already have)

    Edit: This is a rubbish comment I made while drunk, but I'm not taking it down because that's cowardice.

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
      ·
      10 months ago

      It's way better than 1800 - and 1800 was better than 1400, which was better than 600 and so on

      It wasn't, progress isn't chronological at all

      1. Which people? Life for everyone except Europeans got worse over the modern period until just a few decades ago
      2. If we hold place constant: Which era? It's still not chronological, Arabs definitely lived better under their Golden Age than they did in 1930
      3. If we only look at Northwest Eurasia: Why did 10% of their population die in 1945? Why was there a Roman Golden age, and then half the population died from the Black Death, and then another golden age?

      "life was hell because smartphones or electricity didn't exist"
      people had better nutrition 6000 years ago in Pakistan during the neolithic than they've had at any point in the last millennium, including now. We know this because they were significantly taller.

      Progress in human living standards has nothing to do with progress in technology. It has to do with human access to resources. Technology can be a way to attain those resources, but the progress doesn't come from the tech itself. Chinese people don't live better because they have factories, they live better because the wealth generated from the factories is used to trade for cement (for housing) fertilizer (for food) and grain (for animals). And most importantly because the government CHOOSES to distribute these things somewhat equally

      • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
        ·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, this a much better and more accurate answer. I was half cut yesterday and dashed off a pretty sloppy response just because the post content irrationally annoyed me.