Gregory's ServerIf the most successful people in your system are the worst of humanity, your system is fundamentally broken.
#elonMusk #peterThiel #marcAndreessen #markZuckerberg #ericSchmidt #rupertMurdoch #jeffBezos #billionaires #capitalism
Aral Balkan
26 comments
Joseph Jude
@aral
David Brookes 🔶🎸
@aral It certainly does but I am a capitalist but also a social liberal. Is the phone to blame for an abusive caller?
Mark
@aral If I could choose between an asshole or a dictator the choice would not be very hard. Looking at the "grean left socialists" we are now headed towards communism at an alarming rate. I would rather have someone in charge who does not care about people than someone who cares about one kind of people and wants to do horrible stuff to the rest...
Aral Balkan
@mark With apologies to George Orwell, “the creatures outside looked from asshole to dictator, and from dictator to asshole, and from asshole to dictator again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” “someone who cares about one kind of people and wants to do horrible stuff to the rest...” ← you just described every scumbag billionaire CEO :)
rick :maybe_verified:
@aral, you might consider revisiting your definition of success if the worst people are the most successful.
The Intolerant Pope :popephil:
@aral could be, or it could be that humanity is fundamentally broken. Since throughout most of history, in many different systems, creeps have tended to rise to the top. 
Ricardo
@aral it is "our system", our system is fundamentally broken yes. Just because one is able to criticize it doesn't mean we're outside of said system. Even if we reject it, even at 100% doesn't make said system disappear, its injustices keep breeding new forms of exploitation. Our only way out is to migrate all values out of said system and build parallel until it becomes the norm without the pitfalls? Is it even doable? Honest question.
scribe ✒️
@rmdes @aral I think humanity is at a crux point. Capitalism rewards the individualism that makes evolution work, to the point where individualism is no longer held sufficiently in check by broader environment - until the environment changes. Yet we all love being individuals, especially all of us in the west. Rich or not, it's the biggest question - can we shake off that innate urge to "do well for ourself", to acquire status, to be alpha humans?
Yal 🦄🎲✏️🏳️🌈
@aral The issue is that some want us to believe (and many of us are more than willing to agree) that those are the most successful people when they're just very rich. There is many other people we could admire and promote as models of success, imho. But we don't put them forward, and those people certainly aren't the kind to push themselves in front of the others.
Aral Balkan
@butterflieshope Oh, even the character limit on my Mastodon instance wouldn’t be enough to list them all :)
Edmund Edgar
@aral What's so bad about Bezos and Schmidt, they don't seem any worse than most people would be if they were suddenly gifted fuck-off money
Edmund Edgar
@aral And there are lots of rich people you don't mention like Warren Buffett, or Bill Gates who seems like a sweety apart from the business with Epstein and the young ladies
Blackout The Conspiracy
@aral It’s definitely a broken system when the top 1% owns 50% of the entire wealth of the world. 
Nika2022 🐶🎶🌞☕️
@aral we all know that the system favors narcissistic traits over empathy....so yes its fugded from the ground up
Franny Dev
@aral No single person is a rockstar by his own account. Ultimately the asshole on top is just a useful idiot for others who benefit from his actions. In capitalism it is “greed” that flaws the system. But in every system “power” is the end goal. And power should be governed, by laws. That’s the trouble with asshole Elon. He is a puppet of those who discovered “Freedom of Speech” as a ticket to power without control. It is time the legal system kicks in, and ends this. 
Riley S. Faelan
@aral: This is a natural outcome of loose marginal tax rates at the high end of income. Levying high taxes on the rich is prosocial, in part, because it gives the zillionaires a motive to re-invest that income, and to spend it in ways that zillionaires are known to like but aren't taxable, such as naming museums after themselves. By taking that motivation out of the equation, the sort of people primarily motivated by hoarding money get a strong advantage at the money-hoarding game. |
Capitalism breeds assholes.
#capitalism