this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
270 points (93.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43963 readers
1252 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Many people do not grasp the sheer size of the disparity between the truly wealthy and everyone else.
They really think billionaires are like them, the only difference is that someone else goes to Walmart for them
Billionaires are like everyone else. That's the reason I don't look up to any. They're just as human as I am. No amount of money can ever make them anything else or anything more. They have access to an absurd degree, and they can afford far, FAR more, but they will never escape their base human nature. Almost anyone can be a billionaire. Some current billionaires prove that every moment they open their mouths.
Everyone poops.
Or they take capitalism as good and freedom as an axiom.
Most people will take "freedom" as an axiom, but how "freedom" is defined varies a lot. In a society where the commons are pretty much fully enclosed and you are homeless, the petite-bourgeois may very well be free, but you really aren't.
I believe your comments is just a paraphrase of: "They are being stupid"
In my opinion this is a very toxic way of thinking and does not try to understand the arguments "the other side" presents.
I don't think it's that bad-faith. I myself still find it positively mind-blowing to comprehend when the data is right in front of me.
Someone might equate wealth to hard work, but it hasn't really hit them, the real literal difference between 1 million dollars, and 1 billion, and then the news is talking about "trillionaires."
There's just no way to earn a billion dollars, to yourself, through honest work and by not exploiting others. And I think a lot of folks really don't realize this. They know that's a lot, but they might change their mind and realize how outrageous it is, when you present them with something like:
"Joe, you could get 3 more promotions and work 80 hours a week for 13 lifetimes and still not earn that much. Do you really think this is just petty jealousy at play?"
They might just change their mind.
But a lot of folks grew up in a time or place where people who ran the company started at the bottom, and it really needs to hit them hard that this just isn't reality anymore.