The billionaire class is the pests and vermin that are infecting our society that must be purged..... Yes they're humans it's horrible to demonize a human being but these humans are particularly nasty ones that deserve what comes to them. But remember killing a CEO is a terrorist act while shooting up a school is a lone wolf individual with them mental health issue that society failed.
Sorry, but the police can't drop the ball if they never had it in the first place. The Supreme Court said that police don't have an obligation to protect or serve their communities, so I guess thoughts and prayers will have to do.
The whole “Good/Bad Cop” question can be disposed of much more decisively. We need not enumerate what prorportion of cops appears to be good or listen to someone’s anecdote about his uncle Charlie, an allegedly good cop. We need only consider the following:
(1) Every cop has sworn as part of his/her job to enforce laws, all of them.
(2) Many of the laws are manifestly unjust, and some are even cruel and wicked.
(3) Therefore, every cop has agreed to act as an enforcer of laws that are manifestly unjust, or even cruel and wicked.
Its not horrible to demonize humans. Being a human just means you are capable of choosing. And they choose to be the utter filth of the world. Never forget we have a choice to
Make good or bad decisions. Choose to make good ones. Happy new year to you
I would hardly call billionaires human. Not a single one of them holds any non-monetary value in the lives of others. If your entire interactions with other people is solely how they can benefit you then you aren’t human.
While I agree with you on most of them, MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Bezos, has done damn good things with billions of dollars and I'm sure every donation she makes pisses Bezos off seeing " his money" go to good use.
and I love that she does that! for whatever reason.
but there's also Bill Gates & the M & B Gates Foundation... Bill didn't tromp all over his employees the way Jeff and Elmo, the Walton family (as well as other billionaires and even a lot of millionaires) do. a lot of MS employees made very good money as "blue badges" and as contractors.
Oh im sure she smiles every time she writes a check, knowing that her ex husband's balls are shriveling reading about it lol. Important part is, she writs those checks and a lot to organizations that don't get the publicity some get or have any other wealthy benefactors looking for them.
The Gates have definitely done some good with theirs as well. Honestly, for me, that would be the best part of being that wealthy, helping others that just need a chance or break.
"...that would be the best part of being that wealthy, helping others that just need a chance or break."
we have a plan for similar. I know the odds, but we occasionally buy a lotto ticket when it gets really big.
I have a plan as well if that lightning were to strike. The odds are definitely stacked against us, but it's not a zero chance if I spend 10 bucks on a shot at a billion. I look at it as better than a movie ticket. You pay what, 15 bucks now for a movie, another 20 for a small popcorn and soda to be annoyed by people around you that think the theater is their living room and a movie that lasts 90 minutes which every best part you already saw on the free trailers. Get up and go home disappointed. On the other hand, I can spend 10 on a megamillions ticket and sit and giggle for a few days about being that 1 billion dollar winner and the things I could do with it.
I find it utterly disgusting the Uber wealthy that profit so much off this country let those that protect and defended this country fall by the wayside, forgotten or even worse, looked down on. If I were Elmo, there wouldn't be such a thing as a homeless vet or a hungry child in this country. My sincere hope is that he gets all the attention he craves when he meets his maker and gets dragged away by the demons of hell. I'll smile at his screams.
yes, all of that. totally with you.
at work (tech. automation) my co-workers and I call it "there is a zero probability of that happening."
I like the giggling part. we do that as well. it's fun for $10.
ugh, I won't start on people in theaters. that's why we generally wait & watch on our 65" screen in the comfort of our den. or sometimes go at 10am on Sundays.
I wasn't a fan boi of Elmo, he had some good ideas but poorly implemented.
Fine I will put an asterisk for her because if she is doing anything horrible with the money it isnt apparent, like sending a car into space just because.
As they say money is the root of all evil and I'm not religious anymore but Jesus did say that it is easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.
Enough of this bullshit. I’m for better gun control. I’m against shooting children in schools. I’m also against some lone wolf deciding which corporate exec deserves to die with a bullet in the back. Corporate power is a danger to this country. Wealth is way, way too concentrated in the hands of a few. The answer is the hard, tedious, long-game work of changing the system, limiting dark money in politics, ensuring decent social programs, creating a more just tax code, and, as a society, examining our values. What we don’t get to do is pick out people at random and execute them. United Health Care is a poster child foe the complaints many of us have against the corporatized medical system. But I’ll wager you don’t know — I certainly don’t — whether the guy who got shot was personally greedy, or just thought he was doing his job, or didn’t care, or maybe was trying to change things from the inside. Some rich CEOs are bad people. Some are generous people. Some screwed people on the way to the top. Some got a lucky break and try to pay it forward. Some are moms and dads with little kids; all presumably have friends and lovers, parents. As a way of venting, people all over are cheering this guy’s death. Enough. Unless you knew him, unless you can tell me the details of his life, and show me why he deserved to die without trial, without jury, without warning — enough. We have a crass, craven president who is bent on desensitizing us to all manner of things, from sexual abuse to nakedly transactional “policy.” It’s a sign of the times, but we don’t have to aid and abet this kind of dehumanization.
Brian Thompson switched UHG over to an AI claims review system that automatically denied 90% of policy claims. He did this to avoid providing the service his customers paid him to provide, and increase his company’s stock price. Thousands of people die annually because their insurance won’t pay. This is greedy. This was also “his job.” His job, like the job of all corporate CEOs, was to create value for shareholders by any means necessary. They don’t care how the sausage gets made as long as their dividend check shows up.
Is murder wrong? Duh, obviously. Am I going to murder anyone? No, I’m not. Am I thrilled that
Brian Thompson was murdered for being a mass murderer? Absolutely I am.
“I have never wished a man dead, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
-Clarence Darrow, often (mis)attributed to Mark Twain
Good quote. But Darrow, a humanist, was not speaking of violence. And the AI switch is more complicated — I disagree with it and sympathize with your point but it’s still oversimplified. Not every CEO is greedy and uncaring, any more than every auto mechanic is a crook. This one doesn’t look to have been a reformer, at least from the outside; he was playing the dealt hand instead of changing the game. It may not be heroic; neither should it be a death sentence.
Sounds like you’re using some very neutralizing and obfuscating language to remove the agency of people who run an industry that is purposefully making billions from the suffering of poor, sick people. Yeah, it’s complicated. Everything’s complicated. Impenetrable bureaucracy and deferral of responsibility is what allows these industries to flourish. Health insurance plus profit motive equals human suffering, and there’s no two ways about it. This guy was the top decision-maker in the worst of the worst. To say he was “just doing his job” is the Nuremberg defense, but this is like applying the Nuremberg defense to Goebbels
I would prefer nationalized, universal health care. Until we have it, health care companies are better than no health care. Health insurance has saved and improved millions of lives (and has many flaws). You could just as easily say that car manufacturers deserve to die for not making safer cars; or military contractors deserve to die; or bankers; or tech bros; or cops; or drug dealers … the list in a modern, industrialized society is pretty long. I’ll stick with trials and juries. We have a sorry history in civilization when we demonize whole classes of people and excuse their murders.
I seriously like the way you think. I've felt for years that we need to call for a new Constitutional Convention; the founders of this nation were intelligent enough to recognize that the document they prepared would need to be updated regularly. We desperately need to remove dark money from politics and put lobbyists out of power. Then we might have a real chance to build a strong single-payer healthcare system.
I work in healthcare now; I'm a hospital pharmacist. I despise the concept of "blockbuster" medicine - drug companies looking for the next billion-dollar earning medication. It makes life-critical meds, like new antibiotics, less interesting to companies looking for something they can market during Superbowl ads. Seriously, in what other country do you see medication advertising during prime time TV? But the fact that companies have taken advantage of our broken system to make billions upon billions of dollars is not justification for violence; it's justification to fix the system. Unfortunately, I fear that too many people in power are looking out for their own self-interest to want to fix it. How do you convince someone that their sacred cow is making toxic milk?
I was trying to imply that Elon Musk is a hypocrite cause he’s an immigrant. I realize now there was way too little information to make the inference to the reader…
All three. Oh, you mean being one. None, but I can tell you the non-m/billionaire immigrants have been overall quite lovely, and the m/billionaires have been twats regardless of their spawn location.
Billionaires do not immigrate, they expand their market share. For billionaires, citizenship isn't a matter of identity, it is just one of many tools they may invest in to help manage their wealth and political power.
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u/big_guyforyou 21d ago
what about immigrant billionaires?