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[–] 65 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Ruthless mockery.

Probably won't work, but at least you'll get a laugh out of it.

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

    Could work tbh. If you show ppl the mirror of reality of them living in dirt conditions while their favourite billionaire buys their dog a 3rd 100 sqm house, they may wake up.

    Havent seen alot about musks, gates, etc spending sprees. Bezos had that wedding. Zuckerberg is buying up Hawaii. This needs to be way more prominent.

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  • [–] 58 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    I sound like a broken record but, BAN ADVERTISING. Along with all the pretty well established secondary bad effects of advertising, the most basic direct effect of it is lying to people. If people weren't deluged daily with lies about how they should think of this or that company, they wouldn't be so readily deluded into thinking of a company like a person with a positive effect on their world.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    It's so bad that when JC Penny tried to stop deceptive pricing they almost went out of business.

    When I worked in retail, the store had different price label flags for different sales, discounts, etc. One of those was "Every Day Low Price." If something had they price it would never go on sale because they were loss leaders, even big ticket items. The prices on those were below the sale price of competitors.

    Far too many times I had a person ask if something already in their cart was on sale, I'd give them the above spiel and even comparison shop for them, and every single time they'd put it back.

    It was truly frustrating.

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

    only if it's actually banned and not allowing loopholes for "the government" and "public good"

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago*

    im. ok with the government advertising there's an election coming up on date x, or be sure to get your vaccination etc but any political party advertising should be banned , their party policy platform can be on the government website but all commercial advertising should be banned.

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

    But this is kind of circular logic. We need to convince people to stop defending trillionaires in order to be able to ban advertising or make any meaningful change at all.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    You're three bad months away from being homeless.

    You will never be three good months away from being a billionaire.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    I think I could become a billionaire if I started off as a trillionaire

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

    Naaah. If you were a trillionaire, you'd have activated the cheat code to be wealthy for at least 4 generations, and who cares about your great-grandkids really?

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

    You under estimate my ability to buy stupid things

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

    Billionaires do that all the time. Still living the easy life.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    a billion dollars (ignoring the anti-crashing-the-market laws) is an amount someone could spend "reasonably" (look at widebody aircraft, asml euv lithography machines, and aircraft carriers) , a trillion dollars would require quite a bit of innovation to spend.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 months ago

    Platforms like twitter and facebook (and many "news" companies) brainwash their users, mostly by providing multiple different lies. Users pick whichever lie appeals to them the most, and they pretend they have found the truth.

    To combat this, we need to emphasize the importance of thinking critically and verifying claims.

    State the facts. Correct their misconceptions. Emphasize that billionaires are intentionally killing us all; lazy thinkers might reconsider if there is a possibility their life is at stake. I'm not saying threaten them, but we are all threatened by human greed.

    The people you're talking to might not listen, but someone else might. Sometimes it just takes repetition to get through to someone, hearing the same clear message from multiple different sources.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago

    Education. But you can clearly see the defects of the last 40 years of defunding and deriding education.

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

    Advocate for stakeholder socialist policies like worker and consumer coöps that would render billionaires impossible.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    This. Arguing with people online is -- with all due respect -- a complete waste of time if your goal is to change the world.

    Ignore the people who have dumb opinions. It isn't as though if you win 500 arguments Elon Musk donates all his money to Socialism.

    Go join a tenant's union or a mutual aid society. Go build the alternative world that doesn't transfer all our money upward.

    (Also, though, if you do this long enough there will likely be a revolution. But that part comes after you feed and shelter enough people that it begins to become a threat to capital. It's downstream. Either way, don't bother trying to persuade strangers on the internet,)

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

    You have to convince them that they won’t someday be billionaires themselves. And, convince them they don’t want to be billionaires.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago
    [–] 8 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Be vocal about it. Not just online. Word of mouth is much stronger than a thousand online posts.

    Posting about it on the fediverse does jack shit, because we already agree. Posting on Facebook or shitter where the boot lockers are also does jack shit, because the algorithm will sort your opinion out of where it needs to be, and it's cost free for them to post their angry indoctrinated talking points.

    However there's absolutely nothing Zuckerberg or Musk can do to stop you from expressing your opinion to your family and friends in real life.

    I'm fucking done with avoiding topics of politics out of politeness at family gatherings. I have absolutely no desire to cozy up in unspoken agreements of class war or racism or fascism.

    I speak up, and so should you. Keep in mind that you need to repeat a point at least 3 times before they even begin thinking about it themselves. And that's what you want: Them to start thinking. They will come to right conclusion if they just start thinking.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (5 children)

    In-group pressure and trauma are the only things that change minds. Traumatizing people is often rude, and maybe a crime, so it's safer to try to get people to see you as trusted in-group and then work on changing their minds.

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

    I believe that a person can only change their mind when they themselves understand something.

    F.i. You can't teach math. You can provide a pupil the necessary examples to come to the right results, but you cannot force feed knowledge. It only makes sense to the pupil when it makes sense in their own mind.

    I also believe that many casual right wingers only hold their political views because they didn't think about it and didn't generate their own opinion. They caved in to group pressure. Each and every one of them must have at some point been aware of a situation in which they chose to not want to think about the righteousness of it and simply went with the stream of the group that they wanted to be in, even if it didn't necessarily align with anything they'd ever heard or believed before, because they were afraid to challenge the view. Some of them even pretend to have formed this opinion themselves and act proud and superior for going against a more commonly acknowledged opinion. But they're not. Their talking points are the same on a global level.

    In every country in Europe the topics are the same, the false arguments are the same, the talking points are as irrelevant everywhere, yet they keep yelling them as if they had witnessed the second coming of Christ themselves. They're being fed like sheep, and I'll be honest and admit that I don't know how it works that well. It shouldn't but it does.

    Anyway, I do not want to make group pressure, nor do I want to force my own opinion on them in a similar manner. I just to debate them enough and provide them with the necessary examples that they can form their own actual opinion.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    I just to debate them enough and provide them with the necessary examples that they can form their own actual opinion.

    This will be fruitless if they don't trust you. That's another way of saying you're in-group.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah well, I don't stop strangers on the street to have a conversation about politics.

    Most recently the debate where I live has been about agriculture against the environment. The subject came up at my last family gathering and despite the unspoken notion to keep it as civil as possible and just to nod in agreement I decided to stand up for my own opinion and made them think. Nobody dared to speak up for the opposing side, which would otherwise have been the consensus, and by now I'm pretty sure I've got my point across and that they themselves will be exposing this point of view or at least bring up that I'm of that point of view if they ever get into that debate elsewhere.

    I count that as a win. Also the government made a decision yesterday in this favour, and while I obviously can't take any credit for that, at least my family will now understand why the decision was made.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    I think we agree, then? What I was saying is you have to talk to people like your family. You have to have bonds with people, whether that's from being a family or just spending time together.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Absolutely. I read your post assuming it was intended to be in agreement to begin with.

    I like how this is even possible on Lemmy in contrast to other places where disagreement is assumed as the default.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago

    Explain to them exactly how much a billion dollars is, so they understand

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago

    Shame. Cultural norms and taboos are reproduced through shame.

    Look down on them. Call them bootlickers. Be clear that you think you're better than them. Make jokes at their expense. Roll your eyes. Leave them out of things.

    That's how a culture exercises soft power against manners we think are unacceptable.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago

    Education, help your community, try to help people around you getting out of their job thoughts and doing something they actually like, meet new people

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago

    If they're being paid off you can't stop them. You have to stop the billionaires first, then the payoff money stops flowing and all of a sudden the arrogant and petty petit bourgeoisie are on their own desperately trying to convince you that they were on your side all along.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago

    That's the fun part. You don't. It's human nature, at least for neurotypical hominids to submit to confident icons, even when that confidence is unearned and grounded in hubris, not competence. Wealth makes people very confident, even about things they don't actually understand. You're not going to educate them into abandoning millions of years of human instinct. What you can do is make people angry enough at the current crop of billionaires they're ready to put them up against the wall tell them you have a way to keep terrible people from getting that obscenely wealthy again, and then do it... with the knock on effect of making that level of obscene wealth disparity systemically impossible for anyone. That's going to make people angry too though, you're probably going to end up crucified for it, because you know, it's a country of temporarily embarrassed billionaires.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Take control of the media.

    People don't like to admit it and they hate it when you say it usually, but TBH if you put something on blast on the news, most people will go along with it even if it's fairly crazy. Or at least, enough people to get what you want done.

    There's a reason why oligarchs almost always buy some sort of media network once they get to a certain point of wealth.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    you would have to stop all the MSM from airing news in a certain way, like no tabloid/opinion pieces.

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

    It's easy! Simply eliminate all people.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago

    You have to instill class consciousness in them, which is extremely difficult to do, especially in the usa bc our public education system in many places lies and says that this is a meritocracy when it's not. So people believe that if they just work hard and do what they're told then they'll get rich. And when that obviously doesn't happen, the republican party points towards whatever minority group they've selected for that election cycle and says "it's their fault"

    Like I said, actually getting people to understand that they have more in common with the poorest, queerest, immigrant than they do with a white cishet billionaire is really difficult, but the best way to do it is to redirect the conversation from minority groups to the actual problem. For example, if someone complains that immigrants are stealing their jobs then don't start with a denial or disagreeing with them. Say, "you're right. Companies hiring undocumented immigrants for less than or just minimum wage does depress wages for Americans. Companies that do this should be adequately punished and we should streamline our process for getting documents for undocumented immigrants. That way companies can't take advantage of them or depress the wages of americans either." Some people won't listen bc they don't want to learn, but if you keep trying eventually some people will listen and learn

    Also try to get them to understand just how much money a trillion or even a billion dollars is

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago
    [–] 2 points 2 months ago
    1. Stop allowing cuts to education and stop advancing kids who can’t comprehend the material for that grade. The world will always need ditch diggers. Telling a future ditch digger that they’re smart enough to graduate when they can’t read and/or comprehend at their grade level, if at all, is doing that child and society as a whole a disservice. Not only does it set up that child to then become an arrogant adult, but it deprives society of the documentation, or lack thereof, that this person is not, and should not be, considered any sort of authority on anything other than ditch digging.

    2. Understand that some people are actually evil and don’t deserve to live.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    How much do you want to invest in ammo and a solid backing wall?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago

    Puch them square in the jaw

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

    "Defending" when accused of what? The question is somewhat meaningless without knowing that.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    I just hate the idea of someone defending a billionare or trillion dollar company for any reason. There is no legitamite reason for them to even exist, since there's no way to obtain THAT MUCH ammount of money without unethical deeds. And anytime you criticize them on ANYTHING, people will still do mental gymnastics to defend these evildoers to act like unpaid PR.

    Example: "So what if shipping isn't ACTUALLY free? They HAVE to bake shipping costs into the actual product in order to make a profit!"

    Like, congradulations! You are correct! What did that acomplish for you? Other than the fact that you succesfully defended false advertising and ripping people off and terrible customer service in general. Why even care that they make more profit to begin with?!

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago*

    I just hate the idea of someone defending a billionare or trillion dollar company for any reason.

    Then you have a very simplistic worldview. There are many disputes where different large companies are adversarial to each other, so if you have an opinion about them at all, you need to defend one of them.

    For example occasionally media companies will try to get laws passed in various countries to make social media platforms pay for linking to journalistic articles. A stupid and nonsensical idea for many reasons, but by calling it that, I may have just "defended" Meta?

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

    Don't bother answering a purposely daft question.

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

    You mean OP's?.

    Because it is. Right out of the gate he doesn't define what he means.

    Are we saying defend in the legal sense when accused of a crime? Because damn right I want that person properly defended against government accusations. Otherwise we're just behaving like a mob, and that goes nowhere anyone wants to be.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Okay, since you need a definition for everyhting... try saying something against Elon (e.g. like I recently did in a comment on YT) and you'll have people coming in and justifying what he says and does, like it was good and well and not detrimental to society and the world; the same applies to "billionaires and trillion dollar companies" and that's what OP meant with defending them. If it wasn't obvious enough.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    You can’t because you can’t fix stupid! The people that do are beyond ignorant and don’t want to be informed of the truth!

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Stop letting them participate in society. Shun the fuck out of them.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Explain to them that you can still be a billionaire if you are dead. You can still be a senator if you are dead. Next question.

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  • stop comparing them to people with reasonable retirement savings and actually make good points instead of bullshit "evil" and "facism"

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    when education does not work we build walls.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago
    [–] 1 point 2 months ago (8 children)

    I have not seen this behavior outside of maga politicians and corporate c suite types.

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

    There's a halo of genius around rich people because they're rich. Like the guy that invented the pet rock.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (4 children)

    that like sounds like trump talk. I don't pay taxes cuz im smartz. Many have talent to some degree or another but no man is worth 1000x the least of men.

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

    I'm just saying your social experience doesn't map onto the rest of society. If rich people are dumb, that means poor people can be smart, and that would mean that we do not live in a fair world. So for this to be a just world, rich people have to be smart and if they're really rich they have to be super geniuses. Keep an eye out for articles about rich people giving their opinion about shit they know nothing about; the undergirding assumption is that we should listen to what they have to say because they must be smart if they're rich.

    This is how we got Elon Musk, who, as far as I can tell, is good at some aspects of business, but really masterful at pretending to be smart before extremely guillible audiences.

    I know you don't watch new media, but Angela Collier has more than one video complaining about rich people who claim they could have been physicists. "What's stopping you? You have the money. You can take time off and even run your own research lab and hire the best professors in the world to teach you."

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

    I mean anyone who thinks we live in a just world is kinda dumb.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago

    Guns and ammo. Voting isn't sufficient. Peaceful protest isn't sufficient unless you can organize a national strike - which won't happen.

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  • [+] -1 points 2 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    While technically this solves the problem it doesn't prevent new idiots from being made. That takes much harder, structural changes including education and new policy guard rails.

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

    That takes much harder, structural changes including education and new policy guard rails.

    Tell me how we get there when the people who support Trump are required to go along with this? (Or pick your country's far-right equivalent of Trump)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    Revolution? Civil war? Which I guess brings us back to your original solution.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago*

    Or something similar to apartheid.

    The options here aren't good. When you've got half of the population being taught to never trust anything the 'bad guys' say and those 'bad guys' happen to be the educated folks - what options are you left with other than varying degrees of force?

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  • [–] -5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    You don't. If you can't handle someone having different opinions/ideas than you, you're the fascist.

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