• ceenote@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    He, and all the rest of them, could easily do a u-turn, be class-conscious and fair to the workers and all the hate would go away. They’d still be nowhere close to poor or struggling, just less rich. They just don’t want to.

    It’s like Zuck building a bunker in Hawaii that would, at best, buy him 2 or 3 years of relative comfort in the event of a societal collapse. All because he doesn’t want to moderate his society-corroding websites.

    • Norin@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I reckon there’s some tipping point of wealth/power/privilege that totally transforms a person, any person, into something fundamentally different at heart.

      Like, they won’t part with hundreds of lifetimes worth of cash because that would feel like self destruction. To them, they are their wealth. Nothing else remains. The accumulation isn’t pointing at anything other than accumulation.

      …. And that’s not a new idea. Fucking st. Basil raged about this in the 300’s.

      • jonne@infosec.pub
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        6 days ago

        Most of us would stop doing whatever we were doing well before we amassed a billion dollars. That sort of wealth is enough to retire on, live a life of luxury and make sure your progeny won’t even need to work either.

        These guys just don’t know how to stop, they have a hole they just can’t fill. And I guess when you reach “richest man in the world” status, you look around and you notice you’re still not happy, that probably doesn’t make things better for you mentally. And yeah, you stop seeing normal people in your life. You’re just surrounded by either other billionaires or people that are on your payroll. You don’t have any clue about the struggles of the other 99.9%.

      • Justas🇱🇹@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        I think that extremes exist and go to both directions. I have known people who lost their mind when their wages tripled after they started working abroad (e.g. my father started having mistresses when his salary went from 800 euros to 2200 in today’s money). But I have also known millionaires who live very middle class lives, except they travel more and drive better cars.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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        6 days ago

        St. Basil raged about this in the 300’s.

        I’ll have to look into that! My first thought was Jesus Himself also warning against it.

        “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:36

        They serve their greed, it becomes their god, and when the billions aren’t enough, it becomes about power and influence in world events. It never stops. They basically become the paperclip apocalypse machine for shareholder profits.

        Like someone else here who mentioned Tolkien: absolutely “dragon sickness.” We watched Thorin Oakenshield forsake his brethren and become a total bastard just to sit on a mountain of coins and stare at a pretty rock.

        These guys are the very same, just with their stonks.

        Somehow along the way, our societies evolved to serve the dragons, to elevate their madness and sociopathy to virtue. Like the wealth-hoarding, worker-eating monsters of old, they must be brought down.

  • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    There’s no way Michael Gusto wasn’t immediately banned from Twitter for that, right?

    (Yes, I refuse to call it “X”.)

  • archonet@lemy.lol
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    6 days ago

    as much as I want to believe that will happen, if this election cycle has taught me anything, it’s that you can be the most abhorrent individual on the face of the planet and the universe will reward you for it. People will cheer you on for it.

    You know why most fictional stories have happy endings? Because reality is much more depressing. In most movies, books, TV shows – the good guys win, the bad guys lose, protag gets the girl, so on and so forth. Some stories subvert this, but most don’t – because they are escapism from the crushing reality of, well, reality.

    As it stands, I am quite confident that Elon will live to a ripe old age, along with every other abhorrent piece of shit in the world, while the good die young. The proles will be made to fight against each other over culture, race, religion, and eventually access to clean water and food due to climate change; while the people responsible will sit comfortably by and watch with mild amusement. And as much as I want to believe that will change, it probably won’t.

    Welcome to the meat grinder. We’re the meat.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      6 days ago

      It’s sort of ridiculous how the worst people rise to the top in all areas, whether that’s politics, business or entertainment. Sometimes it just feels like the rest of us are just being held hostage by a small minority of sociopaths.

      • archonet@lemy.lol
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        6 days ago

        It’s not ridiculous. It’s that sociopaths are happy to crush other people underfoot to get what they want, and good people aren’t. And thus, they get ahead. It is just that simple.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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            6 days ago

            You’re all correct for sure!

            It might not even be that our society rewards sociopathy directly even, but they have an advantage in a competitive arena, because they’re constantly scheming ways to exploit their fellows. Healthy people simply aren’t constantly dreaming of how to rob and ruin their neighbors.

            It’s just like when various anarchist societies would rise up and be off to a good start, but ultimately get steamrolled by their jerk neighbors because they had higher minded priorities than conquest and violence.

            The good and decent seem to inherently be at a disadvantage, as we must struggle to maintain our humanity while defending against those who see it as an exploitable design flaw.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I think historically we’ve seen good triumph over evil more often than not, but evil prevails for quite some time before good gets the gumption to tear it down.

  • Yewb@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Anyone else feel like this is a suicide note?

    Could you imagine having everything but not a single person that likes you for you, they all pretend to like you for that money… How could you know who is genuine?

    I would bet he has horrible depression.

    • Akagigahara@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I wouldn’t be surprised if he consumes copious amounts of stuff. Be it media, food, drugs and experiences just to feel something. If not full-blown depression, anhedonia must be crazy.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I would bet he has horrible depression.

      He has limitless resources. The entire world and all its wonders are at his disposal, yet he spends every day arguing with strangers on the internet instead of capturing the joy that is so freely available to him. Of course he has horrible depression!

  • MechanicalJester@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    Guillotine? WTF. Dis 'MURICA.

    Bullet.

    Y’all said Mo Guns! Let’s let everyone conceal carry! Let’s not check for any capabilities, or mental issues or anything. So, there’s guns all the fuck over the place. Millions of guillotines in millions of pockets every day.

    They said " we can’t afford bologna sandwiches " And y’all said " Let them eat BBQ".

    History rhymes, and dis is 'MURICA

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      6 days ago

      It’s going to be built out of a Model X gull-wing door. Sharpen the edge and let him take a gamble on whether the software he forced his underpaid and overworked employees to write stops it in time.

  • tht@social.pwned.page
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    6 days ago

    I propose a graphene capsule with a camera(so we can livestream it), and we drop it in the Mariana Trench, Titan style