all billionaire capitalists are harmful

also parasites

Context on what Nominal is ranting about: in a different thread some are arguing that ALL billionaires are inhuman psychopaths -- yes all of them, even Zuckerberg's four year old daughter.

I pointed out that Warren Buffet gave away a third of his net worth, which is pretty impressive; no one forced him to do it. My rhetorical question was "How much of YOUR net worth have you given away?" Unfortunately I was posting on my phone and mistyped "How much of HIS net worth have you given away?"

Nominal has latched on this obvious typo and gone ballistic. He's now claiming that I'm against Martin Luther King (!) because MLK had such a small fraction of Warren Buffet's net worth.

In Nominal's mind, this is a really clinching genius argument, and not a cringey strawman attack on a typo.

No one is responding to your “BUH BUH THUS FOUR YEAR OLD THOUGH” stupidity because it’s just that; stupid. Everyone is talking about adults but your pedantic autism keeps going back to a kid whose insane inheritance is a symptom of a broke system.

It’s a stupid and disingenuous argument you’re pulling out of your ass because you want to win an argument on the internet.

SolRo, writing “BUH BUH” doesn’t make false things true. I gave a dozen adult examples and just one child. You dodged and continue to dodge all of them, offering personal abuse of me instead.

Why all the avoidant behaviour? Because you want to have it both ways. You wang to keep claiming that ALL billionaires sre psychopaths, “unable to grasp that others have feelings”, but when I mention actual billionaires like Oprah or Paul McCartney you lack the conviction to condemn them. So you dodge by calling me an idiot. I don’t think it works.

And the more the cognitive dissonance eats away at you from the inside, the nastier your invective gets.

Sorry, Haze. You're forever enshrined with one of the stupidest statements ever made on this site. That was beyond Cena_Mark intentionally trolling levels of stupid.

Own up to it, buttercup.

And until you donate $1 billion to charity, you're worthless and not worth consideration so fuck you!

I did ‘own up’ to my typo, smart guy.

And I stand by my point. If you haven’t donated even 1% of one year’s income (your whole attitude screams that you haven’t), then don’t condemn the guy who gave away “only” a third of his entire net worth.

I don't think all billionaires are psychopaths. Psychopathy is a mental illness, but REALLY it's just cool slang for 'villain'. Rooting economic problems in personal villainy is childish.

I don't know any billionaires, but I know enough millionaires to know they're not villains. They are people who have way more than they need while others have not nearly enough, and they use the same psychological tools to rationalize that status quo as the rest of us use to justify getting fat while people starve. I suspect the same principle applies all the way up to Bezos. Unfortunately, you don't have to be a psychopath to get used to extreme wealth inequality.

I don't give to charity. There are many worthy charities I would like to give to, but right now my donations constitute 0% of my yearly income. The reason for that is because I can't afford it. I have student debt, house debt, and four mouths to feed on temp contracts. The idea of wasting any money makes me panicky. Judge for yourself if I'm a villain, but please don't compare me with a man who could afford to give away 98% of his wealth and STILL have more than anyone I've met. That's not a fair standard; my percentages mean a lot more to me than his mean to him.

Ohhhh, I am supposed to drop everything and go home. Because a bringing up a four year old (who will blossom into a affluenza teenager showing off her disgusting excess on instagram) is a 'check mate' argument. To hell with her and to hell with Barron or whatever the Cardassians spawned. You wanna hit below the belt but you have a cry when us libs aim for the nuts.

As far as I am concerned Jim Henson's Plutocrat Babies can choke on tide pods. :D

@Two Jar, that's a very thoughtful and personal response, thank you.

I remember debts and unemployment, and it fucking sucks, I hear you. Wishing you the best at getting out from under it, and when you do I'm sure you'll remember the others who still haven't.

Well, I don’t know if we ALL agree on that. My own opinion is rather different.

I think you can grasp the difference in scale between millions and billions (power hint: it’s 1000), you can vehemently oppose structural inequality and abuses of capitalism, you can hate evil motherfuckers like the Koch brothers, and yet STILL acknowledge that billionaires are still human beings.

I refuse to denounce Maxima Chan Zuckerberg. She’s not a monster or a psychopath. She’d not a criminal. She’s not an enemy of the people. She’s s four year old girl. SolRo says this makes me ‘a pedantic moron’, ‘a spineless shill for the oligarchy’. SolRo’s stubborn defence of hate has distorted his mind to the point that he thinks respect for the value of human beings is ‘pedantry’.

I bet you dollars to donuts that I’ve given more time and money to actually HELPING the worse off than he has.

You’re a pedantic moron because you keep screeching about a 4 year old that was made a billionaire by her billionaire parents, which should disgust you.

And you’re a fucking moron because you’re defending the oligarchs en mass because a tiny fraction of them give away a tiny fraction of the wealth they steal.

You’re just an idiot whose going to keep prattling on about how you can only have an opinion about wealth inequality only if you’ve done more charity work or given more money than some asspulled goal.

And if you’re going to do that then you need to shut the fuck up because bill gates gave more money than you will make in your life

(Oops posted my reply further down.)

No one is responding to your “BUH BUH THUS FOUR YEAR OLD THOUGH” stupidity because it’s just that; stupid. Everyone is talking about adults but your pedantic autism keeps going back to a kid whose insane inheritance is a symptom of a broke system.

It’s a stupid and disingenuous argument you’re pulling out of your ass because you want to win an argument on the internet.

SolRo, writing “BUH BUH” doesn’t make false things true. I gave a dozen adult examples and just one child. You dodged and continue to dodge all of them, offering personal abuse of me instead.

Why all the avoidant behaviour? Because you want to have it both ways. You wang to keep claiming that ALL billionaires sre psychopaths, “unable to grasp that others have feelings”, but when I mention actual billionaires like Oprah or Paul McCartney you lack the conviction to condemn them. So you dodge by calling me an idiot. I don’t think it works.

And the more the cognitive dissonance eats away at you from the inside, the nastier your invective gets.

Billionaires pay people to defend their interests. They don't need you to do it for free.

Dodging.

If Maxima is still a billionaire when she turns 18 and decides not to use those billions to help people instead of keeping it, then she is a psychopath.

She's not a monster. She's just got a mental disability. But the effects of that mental disability cause huge harm to people and the world, really.

That's why we need to tax the ever-living fuck out of the wealthy.

A system that allows a 4-year-old to become a billionaire is broken. We need to fix that shit.

Perhaps you’re using “psychopath” in some special non-psychological sense? You can’t possibly mean that as the clock strikes twelve on her eighteenth birthday little Maxima is doomed to come down with an actual, physical, medical case of psychosis. Or do you? It’s hard to tell with you.

I am confident that if you knew her personally your opinion would abruptly change, just as Brawndo’s insistence that all Muslims are hateful and intolerant will change the day he makes a few Muslim friends.

Most psychopaths can indeed be very charming in person. It's how they become so successful. Their lack of conscience makes it easier for them to blatantly manipulate others since they don't feel guilty about it later.

And if Maxima grows up, sees people suffering and decides to keep all that money for herself instead of using it to help them, she would be a psychopath.

As little money as I have, I still give to causes as often as I can spare it. If I didn't, I would have a lot more money or at least a lot more stuff. As it is, though, I think my money would do better helping someone in need than buying myself some new geegaw or going out to a movie or whatever.

It's what happens when you actually care about other people.

Yeah, no. Binro, you can easily look up the DSM-V's criteria for identifying antisocial personality disorder. "less than X percentage of income donated to charity" is absolutely not one of the symptoms.

The whole idea that antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy) is like a business superpower is pretty flawed. "Superficial charm" and "a lack of empathy" might indeed help someone get hired and promoted up some corporate ladders. But what about...
- "Impulsive and prone to taking risks or engaging in dangerous behavior with little regard to how it may affect others."
- "May display hostile, aggressive behavior, or become violent."
- "Being irresponsible."
- "Inability to maintain healthy relationships."

How is being violent and irresponsible going to help you turn an app into an international business empire? Have you ever operated a business in a field where "inability to maintain healthy relationships" was a superpower? I think if you gave an actual psychopath some investment capital, you'd never see him again and that would be that.

Again, there ARE corporate environments where a psychopath could thrive, especially if the corporate structure already exists so he doesn't have to make long-term plans, form relationships, or be creative within the field. A psychopath's ability to divide and conquer his social peers might get him promoted quickly. I grant that. But every billionaire I'm aware of either built their fortune him or herself, or is the child of someone who did. Building a business takes a degree of responsible planning, good relationships, and resisting the urge to spin ten different lies every day and then unexpectedly disappear for six months. Psychopaths are impulsive takers, they're not great builders. And I'm sorry to say there's more to success in business than gunpoint robbery and shmaltzy charm, Hollywood notwithstanding.

I think what you're really railing against is not psychopaths, but a lack of perceived empathy in those who COULD donate more of their wealth but choose not to. You say the only reasonable explanation is mental illness, but I disagree. I think normal people can become accustomed to a situation where controlling the wealth of a small nation feels appropriate. Given the "right" background, philanthropic works, shortlist of Ayn Rand novels, cynicism about government, and especially an echo chamber of like-minded peers, I bet I could have rationalized being a billionaire too. I'm certainly not a psychopath.

I hate to invoke Nazis, but it's worth remembering that THEY weren't mentally ill; they were ordinary people who became accustomed to a horrifying situation until it felt normal, even worth defending. And we're talking guys who were paid to shoot unarmed citizens in the head, or worse. Billionaires don't do anything like that—their greatest crime against humanity is inaction. It's easy to become blind to missed opportunities, where action could have been taken to help others but wasn't.

And before you say I'm defending billionaires, go back and reread my point. If anything, calling billionaires psychopaths is a defence of wealth inequality: at least mental illness can be excused.

No, wealth seems to be predictive of antisocial behavior and lack of empathy

https://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.short

@OZ, I am sure you understand the difference between "population X has a greater proclivity to disease Y" and "I define EVERYONE in this population I don't like as having this disease."

The one is demographics, the other is raw prejudice.

Your worry is valid and I share it.

One could argue that the main function of government is to prevent revolution. This could be via adapting to the needs of people, or via forcing the people to accept changing situations. This could be done via market mechanisms, education, violence, etc. Government is a tool for societies, and like all tools it can be used for good or evil.

About half of the people in western democracies believe that this tool is inherently unethical, oppressive, or at least ineffective. I don't think all of them genuinely want a revolution, but I think they don't really see the implication of devolving the government.

the elites and their sycophants are savages, they have normalized their looting and institutional fascism perfectly

I seriously doubt they will ever give up their grift and oppression

very unfortunate

In case it wasn't obvious, what I'm saying is there sure is a whole lot of LARPing going on.


Anyway I'm pretty OK with the DSA as far as I can tell (although at least one older, more established local group has basically disbanded because of them and considers them gentrifying, careerist carpetbaggers - but I think the most salty one was Marxist-Leninist, so ya know) but god damn is this ad bad. 100% substance free and would not convince anyone who wasn't already in the DSA of anything.

Reminder that Marlon Brawndo is a racist troll and not worth replying to.

waaaahhhhhhh

waaaahhhhhhh


waaaahhhhhhh


waaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Is this a point for or against, Marlon?

If you had a fraction of the ire for exploitative billionaires as you did for a nobody internet turd who shows up twice a year to shitpost, you might not be such a piece of shit.