I’m going to correct you. Billionaires were also evil during the guilded age they literally burned company housing down with families in them and had the army shoot down stikers. The thing is people took up arms and we were able to gain some workers rights because the pedophile class was scared not because they were kind. After all that they started doing things like that to repair their reputations. We’re at the part of the story where an uprising is needed but the mass surveillance police state is being rapidly built in anticipation of this
The modern wealthy are completely divorced from country and city. They no longer build a mansion and improve the town they built it in…now they own several mansions in different countries and the real status symbol is the private jet. The ability to go anywhere at anytime without any strings attached.
Public opinion used to matter, now they onow that they can get away with quite literally whatever they want.
They need reigned in.
If they can do anything, and we know humans are corrupted easily when given so much power, is there any other option to stop them, other than death?
we know humans are corrupted easily when given so much power
Are people corrupted by power?
Or is corruption a means by which people accrue power?
is there any other option to stop them, other than death?
Mass opposition movements can quickly defang a corrupt official. At the end of the day, you only have as much authority as other people are willing to give you.
But social networks of patronage give each individual a strong incentive to defend the corrupt organization as a whole. So the network only fails when an even greater number of dissidents stop taking orders.
You say this as if that weren’t the desirable option…
We should have a rule where you don’t get to talk tough until you have actual blood on your hands. It is so fucking tedious to have to read your coping, identical to that of an army of other impotent keyboard warriors. STFU and do it or just STFU.
Are you ok? Because you don’t seem to be ok.
Are you? When are you gonna do it, killer?
Turn off the internet, go outside and if it doesn’t work, seek help. You are hating the wrong people here.
Billionaires used to build libraries and hospital wings
Interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rupert Murdoch laying down bricks. Are you sure those libraries weren’t build by workers?
Billionaires once bribed public officials to put their names on libraries.
But now we don’t fund library construction, so they buy the rights to naval warships instead.
Threaten the guillotines more aggressively. That’s what worked previously.
Better yet, start forming / joining militias, so we have some working class mobilization efforts going on.
Before, the millionaire/billionaire was raised with the classist attitudes that often included charity works for the masses to keep favor with “the people” despite the horrible working conditions that they often kept the lower classes in. Orphanages, libraries, schools, hospitals, homes for the disabled, etc were all on the board for these kinds of “giving.” Of course there was no secret who donated, if their name wasn’t on the building.
Now the donations come with strings attached, rights to any profits from the research these facilities generate, naming rights, tax writeoffs, and can even be donations to charities already owned by a family member or someone already a subdivision of a subdivision of an LLC owned by a parent company of the billionaire.
Isn’t capitalism great? Aren’t you glad we’re not doing the Scientific Socialism thing?
Tbh america should just rebuild their democratic system so it works for multiple parties
In my country we got over 10 political parties parliament
Unfortunately, laws are only able to be changed by the same group that stands to lose if something like that law gets passed. The system all but guarantees a two-party system eventually.
It guarantees a one party system.
The two party system only holds up when you have large, disparate regions when one party local government can operate independently.
There are so many alternatives that aren’t definitely this bad that we aren’t trying.
Can somebody please tell me what that Citizens United ruling is all about ?
( Brit in Australia )
Citizens United is a Conservative nonprofit but people talking about it are usually referring to the court case.
allowing large corporations to wield disproportionate political power by allowing them to spend unlimited amounts of money to support their chosen political candidates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
AU Accessibility
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sǝʇɐpᴉpuɐɔ lɐɔᴉʇᴉlod uǝsoɥɔ ɹᴉǝɥʇ ʇɹoddns oʇ ʎǝuoɯ ɟo sʇunoɯɐ pǝʇᴉɯᴉlun puǝds oʇ ɯǝɥʇ ƃuᴉʍollɐ ʎq ɹǝʍod lɐɔᴉʇᴉlod ǝʇɐuoᴉʇɹodoɹdsᴉp plǝᴉʍ oʇ suoᴉʇɐɹodɹoɔ ǝƃɹɐl ƃuᴉʍollɐ <
˙ǝsɐɔ ʇɹnoɔ ǝɥʇ oʇ ƃuᴉɹɹǝɟǝɹ ʎllɐnsn ǝɹɐ ʇᴉ ʇnoqɐ ƃuᴉʞlɐʇ ǝldoǝd ʇnq ʇᴉɟoɹduou ǝʌᴉʇɐʌɹǝsuoƆ ɐ sᴉ pǝʇᴉu∩ suǝzᴉʇᴉƆ
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court about campaign finance law, in which the Court held that laws restricting the political spending of corporations and labor unions are inconsistent with the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United in a 5-4 decision, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing the majority opinion. All Democratic-appointed justices dissented.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
I am not a lawyer but as I understand the issue the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that money = speech, and since there is no point at which an authority can say “You’ve spoken long enough”, there is no point at which an authority can say “You’ve spent enough.” In public city council meetings people do get arrested if they speak considerably longer than the allowed time limit.
Just to add, there are still limits in place that prevent corporations from giving money directly to political campaigns or candidates, but there’s nothing that prevents corporations from telling people who to vote for or spending millions on ad campaigns in support of their preferred candidate.
So a given candidate’s campaign may raise only a modest sum, but they don’t need a lot of money to run ads when Megacorp A is willing to spend $1 billion on their own series of commercials to get them elected. And if that politician happens to provide favorable treatment to the corporation after they win, then it’s seen as an investment worth spending.
CU wasnt the first time SCOTUS ruled in favor of corporations being human, the first was not long after the 14th amendment
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Speech = Free: People have the right to say what they want. You can’t keep a person from talking.
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Spending = Speech: People have the right to spend money about political issues. You can’t keep a person from spending.
…
- Corporations = People: A group of people have the same rights that an individual has.
Basically, Citizens United says that for-profit companies can’t be restricted from political activities. They are free to buy elections.
Oh shit right thanks. Yeah that’s simply wrong. The absolute minority controlling isn’t what voting is about, as we all know.
Get that “let them eat cake” era back and sort that whole damn mess out. What a corrupt entire system.
Yeah, what they should have said is that corporate personhood is a legal fiction. Corporations exist solely for purposes of legally distinguishing the conduct of business from the actions of individual shareholders of that business.
Corporations exist solely to conduct commerce. Any “speech” by a corporation is an act of commerce, and commerce is well within the regulatory authority of Congress.
But that would be reasonable.
Corporations exist solely for purposes of legally distinguishing the conduct of business from the actions of individual shareholders of that business.
Which has, itself, not worked out so good. Shareholders and managers hiding behind the corporate veil have done irreparable harm.
The alternative is that when your co-worker goes on vacation, gets in a car wreck three states away, and the victim’s family takes your house in compensation.
What I just described is the liability structure of a partnership, absent any remnant of the “corporate veil”. Liability flows from your partner through the partnership and back to you. It is the corporate veil that isolates the company from the personal actions of its employees, and the employees from the business operations of the company.
There’s a little more nuance.
The alternative is that when your co-worker goes on vacation, gets in a car wreck three states away, and the victim’s family takes your house in compensation.
That doesn’t logically follow at all.
What I just described is the liability structure of a partnership
You do not have claim on someone’s house because of an uninsured motorist claim on a business partner on vacation.
That doesn’t logically follow at all.
It does. When you eliminate the “corporate veil”, liability doesn’t end at the person, but reaches back to the person’s business as well. If we eschew the traditional liability limits of a partnership by eliminating the veil (such as by commingling personal and business assets), the legal distinction ends. The partners and the business all become a single entity. Liabilities of one become liabilities of all.
You do not have claim on someone’s house because of an uninsured motorist claim on a business partner on vacation
That is generally true, yes.
But it is only true because of the concept of the corporate veil. In saying that the victim can’t make such a claim, you are describing the veil. The only reason you do not have a claim on the partner’s house is because of the veil.
You do not get to simultaneously claim the veil is bad, and then hide behind it.
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Therein lies the problem.
Thank you for sharing this, OP.
They rewrote the tax laws to get the tax breaks where they didnt have to do philanthropic works
They have forgotten the guillotine, and only have deranged fantasies of the assassin’s bullet.
It is on all of us to remind them.
if you wanted a single image or chart or graph to illustrate what happened and when, to get where we (the u.s.) ‘are’ today…
this is it.
The wage gap between working people (the 90%) and the ultra-rich (the 1%) is also pretty comprehensive:
Wealth redistribution, American style
I’m sure it’s true.
However, currently in Boston(U.S.), there are new hospital buildings going up at Mass. General Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer center that have Billionaire names attached.
A few more in the near pipeline.
Great, build hospitals we can’t afford to use.
Not true. MA actually has universal healthcare. Matter of fact the state insurance called MassHealth can be better than private insurance.
Massachusetts is a lot better than the majority of the U.S.
JFC. Would be interesting to have this adjusted for inflation as well!
You know, I don’t think inflation will make much of a difference in this case
Edit: I looked it up. $1 usd in 2000 is $1.94 in 2026 money. So… Amount in 2000 is $36 million. Not quite the 2.6 billion today
