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[–] 45 points 6 months ago (32 children)

We really do have to purge the wealthy to make a better world.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago (11 children)

    Cap on how much they can own and control. Say, $100 million? Tough cookies if you think you deserve more.

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  • [–] 20 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    It absolutely staggers me that there are people out here trying to find out a way to make capitalism work. There is no "one neat trick". If you can accumulate wealth, then you accumulate power, and democracy under capitalism just puts the power of the state up for auction to the highest bidder.

    Capitalism does not work. It can never work. It makes fascism inevitable. Capitalism needs to be completely left in the ashes of the past.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah, even the concept of money needs to be abandoned. We don't need it.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (4 children)

    If we don't need it, why does practically every civilization invent it?

    What's your alternative? Barter?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    "we" don't need it. Despite every large civilisation inventing it, small civilisation (150 person village) just doesn't. And can thrive quite happily without it.

    It's when civilisation gets larger that we "need" money. You can't build the LHC or Artemis 2 without some form of intermediary currency. The problem is, to do that you end up with the issues of power imbalances.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    So... "we" do "need" it.

    ("We" in this case being everyone who lives in something larger than a 150-person village, which is the overwhelming majority of us)

    ("Need" meaning very accommodating for trade, which seems to be important to the vast majority of all societies ever)

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    There is one way how capitalism can work, and it did work for a while:

    Worker action, from voting to unionisation, strikes up to revolution are all things that happen under the umbrella of capitalism, and as much as capitalists want to ban that, it's all just part of the same coin.

    If capitalists play nice and fair, pay good wages and make sure the workers have a decent live, then the system is stable and as a reward they get stability to make business.

    If they get too greedy and squeeze the workers too hard, workers push back. They form unions, vote left, start striking, and in the worst case they destroy equipment and start a revolution. This is the kind of power that the people have.

    In theory.

    Due to clever manipulaton, the capitalists managed to divide the working class and pit them against each other. This worked fine for a few decades, but it's wearing thin. It will take maybe 5-15 years until it all comes to a head and explodes.

    And OP is right. Back in the day you had to get the military to shoot their own people. With automated weapon systems and AI/robots performing more and more of the productivity, this balance shifts rapidly, and it will likely lead to a total system breakdown with unforeseeable results.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Due to clever manipulaton, the capitalists managed to divide the working class and pit them against each other. This worked fine for a few decades, but it’s wearing thin. It will take maybe 5-15 years until it all comes to a head and explodes.

    Trump was successful in lying to industrial sector unionized that he'd bring back manufacturing to the US. His direct harm to that, and agricultural, sector shouldn't take that long to break the disillusionment. ie midterms. Q4 GDP, despite massive AI/datacenter investment cycle, grew at under 1%, with real economy contracting. The 45 year GOP plan of trickle down oligarchist/corporatist supremacism should be attacked more strongly for the lie that it is.

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  • [–] 7 points 6 months ago*

    $50 million.

    If anyone is going to put money toward politics, it needs to either be not enough to affect outcomes significantly or it needs to be a large enough part of their wealth to hurt.

    If you've ever wondered what billionaires spend money on, politicians.

    They spend it on buying politicians.

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  • [+] 6 points 6 months ago (19 children)
  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (16 children)

    What do you mean by lottery option?

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  • [+] 5 points 6 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Does that mean that she thinks anyone who qualifies to be a candidate is automatically qualified to win?

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (10 children)

    Randomly selecting from a pool of available candidates?

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (9 children)

    Maybe if you don't choose it's a vote for a lottery to pick. If half the population doesn't vote then the winner is a random person. So if the authorities manage to prevent people from voting then they can't seize the system with their own pick

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    Random? I'd hope they were at least qualified. Believe me, I wouldn't want most of the people I know in charge of anything. I wouldn't even trust myself with a town budget.

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  • [+] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)
  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Kinda sounds similar to Jury Duty. I don't know why you'd ban PhDs though.

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  • [+] 1 point 6 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago*

    One of the first thing authoritarians do is eliminate or crush intellectuals. The Soviets murdered all of the Polish intellectuals. The Khmer Rouge did the same thing. Even wearing glasses made you "guilty". They don't want anyone who can talk back.

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    The word and system you're looking for is the ancient Greek democracy, especially from Athens.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

    Ancient Greeks believed that government and positions of power must be randomly selected by a machine from a pool of candidates, and that elections are NOT democratic. That elections are always going to be corrupted by the oligarchy.

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