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What do we do now that we found out the world is run by a billionaire parasitic class?? (lemmy.org)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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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'??

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[–] 5 points 8 months ago* (6 children)

Claiming any of these things only exist because of billionaires is absurd. They take over and destroy.

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."

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  • [–] -2 points 8 months ago* (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

    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 for everything that came before it. So unless you invent a time machine, you're arguing beside the point.

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  • [–] -2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    No, I'm arguing against direct quotes from you. Unless you yourself are a strawman.

    Post about it on the internet built upon tech enabled by the said class

    Built by academics to share research, expanded by hobbyists and enthusiasts, and taken over by megacorps. Not "enabled" by billionaires.

    , from devices sold to us by the said class

    Technically true, but only in that billionaires own the workers.

    , in our homes with comforts the existence of which wouldn’t be possible without the said class.

    Untrue. People can live in comfort without the existence of billionaires.

    Then go to work using infrastructure and means we wouldn’t have without the said class,

    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.

    likely doing work we wouldn’t have without the said class.

    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.

    Perhaps go buy some food the likes of which we couldn’t dream of having access to without the said class.

    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?

    Maybe indulge in a hobby - a leisurely distraction, the kind that only exists because the said class engineered a world where you have time and resources to waste on frivolity, while they decide what those resources are.

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    You are absolutely correct on all points. Now what do you propose we do about it?

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