this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
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Work Reform

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[–] wallabra@lemmy.eco.br 9 points 6 days ago

It's not really about having more stuff. It's about having power relative to other human beings. It's the raw pleasure of dominating and subjugating others, of knowing you can bend others to your will. It's the sickness of the mind which draws to itself kings and oligarchs and plutocrats.

Persons like you and I are human; we want to uplift our peers and vice versa. We evolved to collaborate. But not all are like this. Some, by whatever mysterious circumstances there may be, become the opposite, addicted to the feeling of power and influence and control, even when it makes their lives objectively worse.

Unfortunately, there isn't in society the rebellious collective spirit there once was which would summon the energy to defeat them. I love modernity just as much as my neighbor, and to a degree, that's the problem. It is 2026, and I must apologize to Marx in saying that we have too much to lose besides our chains. I don't know how much of each other's suffering we must share until this calculus starts to tip away from inaction. Given that the reaction to impending geoclimate and political doom is, in societal terms, quaint, I'm not very expectant.

[–] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 86 points 1 week ago (9 children)

This is what's really crazy.

A long time ago, I was having a conversation with a workmate. Guy earned as much as me. I asked him what he'd buy with $1 billion that he couldn't buy with $50 million.

He couldn't name one actual experience/object that he'd need the extra money for.

Still insisted that he wanted the billion.

[–] GardenGeek@europe.pub 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Super-yachts.

One of the main reasons these are booming is that a billionaire can spend a sum on them he might actually see on his account. Fine food, cars, even mainsons are so cheap that they earn more through passive income while they're buying these things than they're actually spending. At the same time people, even in tje ver same society, go hungry to bed or are incapable of getting their health condition improved... it's just crazy.

[–] 20cello@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

Evil rather than crazy

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sounds like super yachts need to be sunk.

[–] Bamboodpanda@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Power.

Not a nicer car. Not a better vacation. Not a bigger house.

The ability to buy companies, fund institutions, shape industries, influence politics, and absorb enormous losses without changing your lifestyle.

At a certain point, more money stops buying a better life. It starts buying more control.

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The ability to use money as a weapon

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

For us that just means putting 2 to 5 lbs of loose change in a thick sock. =\

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 week ago (4 children)

If you gave me the choice between 50 million and a billion I'd take a billion too; but if you gave me 50 million no one would hear from me again as I would quit my job, move somewhere quiet, and keep to myself.

[–] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Just for clarity's sake.

The question was 'What can you buy with a billion that you couldn't get with $50 million?'

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[–] Zink@programming.dev 9 points 1 week ago

Still insisted that he wanted the billion.

That demonstrates the underlying problem. When you can quantify something, people can compete over it. To most people money is THE quantifiable thing about humans. We literally call a person's money number their "net worth." It's not "oh that guy with all these relationships and virtues and vices has just seen his net assets exceed one billion." It is "he is now worth one billion."

So with it carrying such cultural weight and such quantifiability... I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes the problem really as is simple as "number go up." Unfortunately, simple problems can still have impossibly complex solutions. How do you change the nature of a person, and then do it en masse? How do you break one feedback loop and get into another? (the people in control would make society more decent if they themselves grew up in a more decent society)

[–] stickyprimer@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Rebuild all the schools in my local district? Set up a permanent endowment for the Freedom from Religion Foundation? Turn as much land into nature preserves as I can possibly afford?

Maybe these aren’t “things” you “buy” but it doesn’t take much creativity to blow a billion. I think I just blew a whole bunch of them.

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[–] AmyAye@nord.pub 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] tomkatt@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

You could step on a LEGO for every step the rest of your life.

[–] mrmisses@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Woah op said billions, not trillions

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[–] Yuccagnocchiyaki@lemmy.world 48 points 1 week ago (4 children)

It's a fight for survival and they will CHOOSE CONCENTRATION CAMPS OVER A SMALL TAX.

No one is going to save us and no one is going to stop them. They need to go away NOW

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[–] RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It’s power.

Not wealth.

He’d rather kids not get healthcare than be told he is a plebe that has to follow rules like the rest of us.

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago

It's hoarding. It's never enough to have a lot of money, they need to have all the money. Being a billionaire is a significant sign of mental illness.

[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 23 points 1 week ago

He should be beaten to a pulp with a sign that reads "Don't be evil"

[–] Fishnoodle@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Hey look, it's another fucking foreigner who came over and stole from Americans and now refuses to pay his fair share

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[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 week ago

Eat the Rich

[–] mrmisses@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We need to bring back tar and feathers

[–] amgine@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

The guillotine

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (4 children)

If the billionaires are paying tk stop it, it's probably worthwhile.

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[–] SalamiDommie@lemmus.org 9 points 1 week ago

You have to cut out such sickness.

Guillotine is the gracious choice to traitors.

[–] jpreston2005@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

He's wrong, greed isn't a sickness, it's a mental handicap. It inhibits the brain from experiencing empathy in people who amass great wealth and power.

It begs the question, why are we letting a bunch of evil, mentally handicapped people steer the course of humanity?

You'd think that if you were a doctor, and had a patient that was amassing a collection of any other thing, and that collection destroyed a part of their patients brain... You'd think the doctor (and society et. large) would want to limit the amount of that thing they were allowed to collect?

Especially if that thing they're collecting could be used to, oh I dunno, I'm just spit-balling here, give everyone universal healthcare, increase public education to include 4 year university, give everyone free childcare, invest massively in green energy and public transportation... you know, instead of just sitting in a Panamanian bank being hoarded by evil, mentally handicapped billionaires?

[–] Polisheocket@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This type of k shape economy is what ends world Powers. Not just that but the sheer decay from the ground up of our economy. Cut education, less educated population. Out source jobs, people can’t afford to live and are now dependent on government assistance. The loss of the middle class, can keep going

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[–] UnityDevice@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago

The dragon disease.

[–] gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

the moment when 3 posts in a row appear in the All feed:

[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Financial obesity is neurotoxic, an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 week ago

There are a few discussions and even some studies about the rapid effects of wealth and political power, because they change how other people interact with you, it essentially gaslights you into thinking you're less fallible than the rest of us.

We can kind of see it between the original Star Wars trilogy (when Lucas still had people able to critique him) and the prequel series (now that ILM was huge and he was ultra-wealthy).

Twenty-first century billionaires become two degrees of separation removed from commoners at all (except the help they hire themselves), and as Paul Krugman notes, lobbyists are better dressed and more well spoken than nerdy economists. It becomes very easy for a rich due to create a self-aggrandizing information silo, in which every rich-dude intuition and conspiracy theory is affirmed.

And the one thing that consistently feels good is seeing their assets and selves getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So yeah, it really is an illness.

[–] RockBottom@feddit.org 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The program works as programmed. The name of the program is capitalism. They are cogs in the machine just like we all are. The difference is, they are rotating in a different position in the machine.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

These people are a danger to the world

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago

These people have OCD, which manifests itself as financial hoarding. If someone had so many cats that it was negatively impacting the neighborhood, and they were STILL actively attracting and breeding MORE cats, making the neighborhood even worse, the authorities would step in, get treatment for the offender, and find new homes for all those cats.

That's what they should do with Sociopathic Oligarchs.

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