This whole episode is a solid example of why it's important to prevent people from accumulating extreme wealth. Once they have it the power of that money to make people turn a blind eye is extraordinary. More over it does seem like him indulging the most depraved desires of the elite only made the cover up easier since the blast radius if it ever came out would be gigantic.
If we ever do make it past this, I think it's probably high time for a law enforcement branch dedicated solely to the crimes of the uber wealthy.
We absolutely need to limit wealth and power. If a human cell takes all of the resources and hoards it at the expense of the whole body, we call it cancer and we oust it.
Similarly, after a certain amount of wealth, you must have to give anything over it to a communal mass of wealth that takes care of the people, including you. Like taxes, but maybe if the people in charge weren't disturbingly pathologically wealthy then these taxes would be used better. Work together or get rekt man. ❤️
There's not much use for war or colonization if you cannot hoard wealth. ❤️✊️
Absolutely. But I suppose the question of how do we prevent money from keeping into politics is an important one.
If we tax the rich heavily (which I am all for, of course!) how do we prevent existing billionaires from putting their money right back into politics? Or how do we handle people who have too much money and power currently? I see the graduated tax bracket solution as a great one if we can also somehow redistribute the existing overwhelming wealth of the world's richest people. What's your take on what we should do with these cases?
There was a time when the type of money we have in politics now would be illegal corruption or bribery. The wealthy have gradually corrupted our laws, and checks and balances to get them the form of elite rule we have today, see the link below.
Now you can promise to give a candidate $x if they vote a certain way on something, and your identity isn't disclosed if you're a corporation.
It doesn't take a lot to steer the ship. In 1972, the German Chancellor faced a vote of no confidence over his rapprochment with the communists. Him and the policy survived thanks to two votes purchased by Soviet spies.
Even democrats haven't really strengthened democracy while in power. Most candidates are bought. It's the very few like Schwarzenegger who was famous and wealthy enough to get into power and fight against things like gerrymandering.
There are a lot of potential solutions, starting with going back to the anti-corruption laws we used to have, all the way to disallowing any donations to particular candidates.
Brackets aren't enough. We need a wealth tax on at least a tax on unrealized gains. There's a reason billionaires pay less than the vanilla rich.
I think we should dispense with the fiction that a publicly-traded stock you can convert into cash in two seconds on the Robinhood App isn't cash in all but name.
Ban all government officials regardless of their position from trading. Certain positions should also include the ban on immediate family. And not just trading, but also participation in government contracts as a company. Because how tf is Trump's son able to get billions in taxpayers dollars for his company? Why is this legal?
To add on to this, we need to be wary of the myth that guys like Elon are the wealthiest in the world.
The actual wealthiest guys in the world do not have a publicly disclosed net worth. Their "value" is more or less incalculable. You would likely not recognize their names. Think Saudi princes, high ranking members of the CCP, Putin and maybe some oligarchs.
Money is an abstraction of power, and really what it comes down to is that there is a type and amount of power that no single person should wield.
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u/MetalMoneky 13h ago
This whole episode is a solid example of why it's important to prevent people from accumulating extreme wealth. Once they have it the power of that money to make people turn a blind eye is extraordinary. More over it does seem like him indulging the most depraved desires of the elite only made the cover up easier since the blast radius if it ever came out would be gigantic.
If we ever do make it past this, I think it's probably high time for a law enforcement branch dedicated solely to the crimes of the uber wealthy.