SultanOfSwing

Oh no, he represents some (sadly) very Earthly values, albeit to the extreme.

Shard

Are your views of Bill Gates more charitable ?

SultanOfSwing

Nope.

I don't know how I can make it much clearer. Billionaires shouldn't exist. Cap income/net worth at $100 million, **** it $999 million if we must pander to class traitors, and every penny over that goes directly to ending hunger, poverty, disease and suffering all over the world.

No amount of 'good works' will excuse the fact that they are hoarding wealth generated by exploiting ther labor of others (and in Gates' case most likely stealing code/ideas).

The biggest myth is the one the rich love to perpetuate about there being a 'middle class', intended to divide blue-collar and white-collar working class to cause infighting to distract us, so they can steal our labor. There are workers and owners, and unless the means of production are taken by force, those two groups will always remain distinct.

But yet an office worker making $50k/year has been convinced that the fast food worker asking for $15/hr is the problem, and that he's got more in common with someone worth 12 ****ing figures and believes that person has his best interest at heart instead.

Not me. If you're a billionaire you get two choices: taxes or the guillotine, but either way the working class will dine eventually.

I've only become radicalized harder against these pricks since last we spoke.

Shard

Lol. Yeah, he's no angel, especially when he was at MS, but I do give him some credit for using his wealth in a beneficial way. Should he be permitted to accumulate such wealth when so many others are worked to the bone, probably not.

SultanOfSwing

Why does he get credit for doing what so many of us do (arguably with a larger percentage of our own net worths) every day as a matter of course, with ni fanfare desired? There area handful of people with enough power to end suffering for just about everyone, yet they choose not to. These are people who could be taxed at Eisenhower's famous 92% tax rate and STILL be billionaires. That's obscene and quite frankly, offensive.

Giving of ourselves, either in body, mind and spirit, or in donations, to help others is so fundamentally part of being human, it shouldn't be notable just because some richo does it for clout.

Shard

He puts a lot of work (mental energy, physical travelling etc) I to his Gates Foundation initiatives. He's smart and despite being in his dotage, he applies himself to solve problems in the developing world and on climate. Credit where credit is due.

SultanOfSwing

All tax deductible no doubt. No credit is due for doing that which is the most basic part of being human.

Come on, even the fundamentals who tithe 10% are giving orders of magnitude more of their net worth proportionally than he is.

He's a wealth hoarder and labor exploiter. So he hands off money to engineers, scientists and other people to do the actual work while taking credit for it. Big deal. To call him somehow a good person is morally ambiguous at best when his net worth is over 10-100,000 times more than the richest people the likes of you or I might know. Every day he wakes up with his head still attached to his neck, he should consider himself lucky.

chawkins99

Bezos is worth $200 Billion because he owns a large portion of the company he created. He doesn't have $200 billion sat in a bank somewhere.

What is your solution? Should he sell his shares and give the money away? Those shares wouldn't go to Joe Public, they would be snapped up by other greedy billionaires, making them richer and Bezos poorer less rich.

Shard

Did you have an extra bowl of Cynical Flakes for brekkie today ?! Anyway, I don't agree.

SultanOfSwing

I understand it's not liquid assets, which is why I've always used 'net worth' wherever possible, but let's run with it for a bit of a thought experiment.

Remember, in the 1950s, the Republican president Eisenhower introduced a 92% top tax rate. Let's ignore the fact that it was an income tax, and that while he was fundamentally a good man, he was still an imperialist and those taxes funded many a diplomatic incident, and just look at the raw numbers.

8% of $200 billion is still $16 BILLION dollars. More than any one person might need in a thousand lifetimes. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect these people to put back a chunk of money into the society that they took so much out of.

For all intents and purposes I am a communist. Not in a Soviet/CCP state capitalist, red scare mould, more of a socialism in it's purest form kind of ideological outlook. So I'm going to assume you already knew that, and this isn't a bad faith discussion.

My solution wouldn't be based in neoliberal capitalism, in that I don't think even shares themselves should exist. I'm also not very interested in economics so my ideas are also more ideological than practical. There shouldn't be an opportunity for the other theoretical greedy billionaires to snap up anything. He must either reinvest his money back into the company (by paying the workers more), and be heavily taxed with no loopholes instead of hoarding his net worth off-shore or in an artificially manipulated, numbers-on-paper system that is rigged for the likes of him to win anyway.

I never said people shouldn't be wealthy. I know people who have a 6 figure net worth, we all do. But there's a difference in setting aside money for retirement and sitting on enough wealth to meaningfully change the world for almost everyone.

But if we're going to forced to participate in capitalism, then we should at least try to move it away from feudalism. The shares, if we must have them, should be owned by every employee of the company. The workers must be allowed to sit on the board of directors, and thus have an active part in controlling the means of production.

No, I'm explaining my position. I don't expect you to agree, nor do I expect you to change your mind, but I think it would be an insult to your intelligence for me to just fire off soundbites without backing them up with what my beliefs are and why I believe them.

And spreading class consciousness is praxis, regardless if nobody listens, or cares. I have to hold myself to the same standard I expect of others after all.

Shard

Do you consider yourself a Marxist too?

Why are you so wedded to this ideology when it has failed so consistently in the past century.

How do you square it's ok for some to be extra wealthy with your egalitarian ideals? Some animals are [simply] more equal than others?

SultanOfSwing

I haven't read enough theory to label myself as anything other than far left. But I align most with anarchists, libertarian socialists and various flavors of anarcho-communists when reading the thoughts and beliefs of others on the left.

Please understand I'm not a political scientist, so label me however you want to call someone who is anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. It doesn't matter as long as I'm consistent in my beliefs and how I apply them to my life.

I could ask you why you're so married to an ideology that has resulted in the deaths of many more people than communism (even the broken forms) ever did?

Communism failed in the USSR because Lenin's idea of a vanguard socialist state en route to communism sort of stuck there and turned into state capitalism. Subsequently other Marxist-Leninist states like China ended up in a similar state. But that's also the brand of communism that Western anti-red propaganda focuses on. The lack of left unity doesn't help either.

But, not without their own problems, Cuba exists. Vietnam exists. I have heard that in the 60s, socialist (and not Soviet-aligned) Yugoslavia wasn't as bad to live in as the Warsaw Pact countries. All anecdotal of course.

And when, in reality, has and meaningful attempt to establish even democratic socialism ever been allowed to continue by the American government? Why are neoliberals so scared of such a terrible ideology? What is it about a classless, moneyless society that they find so threatening? Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need".

Labor isn't free. If you have labor to provide (and white collar, so called professional work is labor if you're not an owner), then you deserve to be paid for that labor at a fair market rate.

Access to training for said labor (higher education, trade school, etc) should be free and accessible to all with only merit based restrictions like grades as a barrier (according to his ability). As long as access to education is egalitarian, something of a meritocracy is not incompatible with socialism as long as the gap between the income of those at the top and those at the bottom is not the chasm it is now.

If you don't provide labor, you don't get paid but you will still have a house, healthcare, a UBI, and food (according to his need). Labor just gets you the luxuries.

This, of course being theoretical and my own personal take on what being left wing means to me.

Don't think that I didn't think long and hard about the implications of accepting my promotion, and what direction that will take me. Don't think I didn't have a long talk with myself before committing 3% of my pay into a predatory market to start a 401(k) so I can retire hopefully before I die.

I am still ostensibly working class though, and I feel like enough of a hypocrite (and trust me, my income may now be very good but still very modest) without bad faith 'gotchas' like this seemed to be. Disagree, and even argue. I encourage that, but do it in good faith.

ddsrph

In a pure socialist system is working optional? If so just give me my cut of the various movers and shaker billionaires and I will stay home and watch TV. Many others will join me.

SultanOfSwing

This is a bad faith argument and I'm not going to take the bait.

Don't conflate 'work' and 'labor'. Many people will happily provide their labor for a fair rate of pay in exchange. And when labor owns the means of production, that rate will be fair.

If a person doesn't want to provide their labor, that's fine but they should, and will not be condemned to starvation and homelessness because of the fetishization of 'work' over 'labor'.

Shard

Thanks for elaborating. I see a profit motive and liberty from state planning as a superior system to the failed communist systems of the 20th century. The proof really is in the pudding here, and China's ascent through a limited capitalist experiment is the icing in the cake. Many millions have been spared the poverty and death through the past decades of economic growth that communism denied that country. I don't think you can make the argument that a purer form of communism would result in some kind of utopia. At least you would have to explain why that would be so.

Have you looked into the Effective Alturism movement (William Macaskill) . It might be something up your street.