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It isn't how much money but how you make it.
No billionaire ever made their money without necessitating the exploitation that is inherent to being an owning class citizen. Yet, there are also plenty of people of much lesser net worth who exploit workers all the same, just to a smaller extent.
Remember the problem isn't just billionaires but the system that enables their existence and those who willingly choose to perpetuate it.
All the workers are drowning at the bottom of the pool while the billionaires and capitalism stand on them to stay dry.
It would work with “Billionaires” and “Their offspring” as well.
You need to add the skeleton as the unemployed
Me, a contractor, warily eyeing the skeleton next to me:
I didn't think what we have now is even capitalism anymore.
Tesla sales drop on every country except UK, a quarterly report shows losses, stock price? Goes up.
That's not how capitalism works.
Capitalism is simply a system where the ownership of capital is primarily by an investor class using limited liability corporations in a market system.
Given insufficient restraints, the investor class will act in their own interests - that is to say, calcifying their control over capital through the use of clientism and legal force, just as pre-capitalist aristocracies did, up to and including detachment from the market. Capitalist elites do not care about capitalism. Capitalism is the ladder (however unfair and cruel that ladder is, mind you) that they pull up behind them once they achieve success.
Elites always want to become an aristocracy, and given enough time and power, they will become an aristocracy in a society that refuses to confront them, and dismantle capitalism - again, itself not exactly a humane system - to implement an even more oppressive apparatus in its place.
Unfortunately, dismantling capitalism is easier than dismantling an aristocracy. If they succeed, the task of left-wing anticapitalists becomes harder rather than easier.
Thank you for an accurate explanation of capitalism. If you'll allow me to extend that explanation, capitalism is where the ownership class -- who controls the capital and provides little, if any, other value -- "skims" (in quotes, because we're often not talking about just a negligent fraction) from returns that should go to the labor class for the value they add.
No, it's exactly how capitalism works and the narratives like technofeudalism claiming that we live in some post-capitalist neo-feudalism is nonsense.
There's a concept of fictitious capital, which is different from other types of capital in that it doesn't exist yet - it's a claim to income generated in future production. It's nothing new, Marx for example wrote about this in Capital (written in second half of 1800, almost 200 years ago).
Besides, a lot of tech companies do report losses because they put most of their profits in R&D, both to avoid taxes and probably develop new products along the way. It isn't an unfounded investment.
Don't worry my 4'6" friend .... capitalism has made sure to fill the pool to exactly 4'5" ... so that you can stay afloat on your own my just standing on your toes ... if you drown tho, it's your fault
Disgusting you can see them, can the help grab a stick or something?
The workers need to stand up for each other more! However some do not understand the importance of equality.
The two classes: billionaires and workers
The bourgeoisie and the proletariats. Not much has changed.
Yeah, but posts and the recent sudden narrativization of only billionaires being bad or them being "the focus" really tries to divert from the existence of bourgeois as a class.
I agree. Unfortunately, I think it's the best we have right now. The subtleties of who is and isn't the bourgeoisie takes a level of brain power that the average person just does not have today.
On the plus side, most if not all billionaires are the bourgeoisie. And "billionaires are bad" is much better than "billionaires are good" which was the thinking in the 2000s.
The subtleties of who is and isn’t the bourgeoisie takes a level of brain power that the average person just does not have today.
Yeah, the subtleties of "whoever owns a business/land" or "whoever owns capital" or "capitalists and landowners".
The hyperfixation on billionaires shifts the blame from the system and class society to the personal excesses and individual wealth concentration of those at the tippity top. It also completely ignores how billionaires get to where they are (what happens with businesses below 1 billion) and has the implication that they're the "small guys who might be good as opposed to evil billionaires", which normalizes and legitimizes the system. Besides, you can't really focus just on the billionaires via reformism given how they own most of the power and can lobby the shit out of any bourgeois government, leaving anti-billionaire talk just talk.
This narrative should be actively fought against, not accepted given how it aids and reinforces the system.
So we agree?
Idk, I took the "this is the best we got" as some sort of acceptance of it as in the narrative should be used and supported
You mean the "Unfortunately, I think it’s the best we have right now."?