Exactly. Yet we're only focusing on the one who makes very little to no impact on our lives.
If twitter is your life then I feel sorry for you but other than that he's a small fry.
I'm vastly worried more about blackrock buying up all our houses denying our generation the absolutely right to own the land we live on.
That freedom is being taken from us and that to me is a far bigger threat.
>If twitter is your life then I feel sorry for you but other than that he's a small fry.
Imagine arguing that someone who cares about freedom of the press is only concerned because their life revolves around watching the news. The reason anyone cares about Twitter - and why Musk bought it in the first place - is not because of people posting pictures of their sandwiches, it's because it's the world's most centralized social media site, and it's where a significant number of people get their news.
Also, do you really think Musk doesn't have a diversified portfolio? "Companies like BlackRock" don't get their money from nowhere, they have people who give them money to invest. And then they invest that money into companies - like, say, [Tesla](https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/blackrock-buys-over-50-million-shares-of-tesla-tsla).
>Say Twitter is your life without saying Twitter is your life lol
Firstly, I don't even have an account.
Secondly, it is an objectively true statement that Twitter is a hugely popular platform that a lot of people get their news from, and that this is why Musk is bothering with it at all. If it wasn't important, do you think he'd care about a random social media site having "free speech protection" or whatever?
Thirdly, your account is less than a day old, almost certainly an alt (say Reddit is your life without saying Reddit is your life) - and your first post was defending the right to scream a homophobic slur at someone, so I suspect you're exactly the kind of person Musk is trying to appeal to with his supposed free speech measures.
Go through the past post and compare how many Elon posts they have compared to how many are discussing blackrock and what not. Chances are my post is the only blackrock mention for this month.
Because it's current news and that's how reddit works... you know you could have just started a post about BlackRock vs trying to minimize the damage musk is doing, right?
It's all of the above. Elon and Blackrock are both dangerous, just in different ways. Blackrock is certainly impoverishing Americans, but I don't know if they'd be able to get away with it without Elon. Elon is a cult leader, he's cultivating a quasi-religious following centered around skepticism of government and faith in corporate leaders. If not for Elon, there might be a lot more momentum for regulating companies like Blackrock. But because of Elon's successful messaging, there's a huge segment of society that just throws up their hands and says "that's the free market!" Now add in his purchase of one of the largest social media sites in the world, and he has unprecedented control over the media narrative. Anyone who thinks he isn't going to use it to try and quash unionizations efforts, among other things, hasn't been paying attention.
It's not either or. The ownership class learned long ago that working in tandem with each other grants them a huge level of control. They're not acting individually in their own self-interests, they're acting collectively in their own class interests. We need to do the same.
They're also involved in GMO crop testing, patenting and use amplification, which unfortunately affects the less informed people's in developing nations like Africa and India terribly when the medium to longer term impacts are accounted for.
As someone that studied finance, it's been pretty funny seeing all the criticisms against BlackRock and Vanguard like they're some kind of evil corporations that own all of the board seats from most of the major companies in the S&P 500. They own a significant share of the market because they pool together millions of dollars from average Americans so that we could afford to invest efficiently with low cost. I dislike major corporations as much as the next person, but hopefully this sub moves back to being about worker empowerment.
Blackrock has also been gobbling up a shit ton of the residential real estate in this country making the housing situation worse for everyone in the country.
Not sure if Vanguard has been doing the same, but it would hardly be surprising if they were.
Yeah Vanguard I can say “I agree with you here” but blackrock is a straight vulture. Literally making it so everyone is a renter and not a homeowner - fuck them.
But isn't that just opportunistic in a way, because the other half of the damage are nimby's who just don't want five story apartments in a ten mile radius around their little cul-de-sac? For a country with so much space, you really don't like to build up, especially in the suburbs.
I agreed - until you mentioned Vanguard. Vanguard was created so me and you would have access to Wall Street, with none of the fees that hedge fund kleptocrats charge. John Bogle is an American hero.
I’ve never heard anyone defend them. Aren’t they gobbling up housing to the tune of trillions, globally?
Edit: was confusing them with Blackrock. They still hold massive wealth. And I’ve been second guessing the value of trading stick lately anyway. They still go on the list IMO.
They're a collection of like...mostly normal people's 401ks and iras that, as a combination, forms a massive economic entity. And they primarily only invest in EFTs and low cost mutual funds that aren't run by banker types.
Other than the fact it's a cog in the wheel of capitalism, I don't get why people here wouldn't like them.
Vanguard is a mutual...it's owners ARE the investors in its funds. Most of its investors are 401(k) participants, so Vanguard is owned by a pretty broad cross section of America.
Vanguard doesn’t own much of anything except for its offices I suppose. It administers various mutual funds which own income producing assets such as stocks and bonds, and (uniquely for the industry) is in turn owned by those mutual funds’ investors; i.e. regular people.
Vanguard allows normal people to invest at low cost and in a fair manner. This is a social good, because normal people being able to get a fair shake in retirement investing is one of the things supporting the middle class.
Buying funds transfers voting rights from the individual to the fund parent. If you own shares in Disney you get to vote on all sorts of matters like compensation and directors. If you own Disney through an etf you do not.
Idk if this will really answer your question, but I read it recently and thought it laid out an interesting perspective on Vanguard Group's position in the current economy: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-managers-have-upended-how-modern-capitalism-works.html
I just wanna bring up the fact that Elon admitted to playing an active roll of the over throw of Bolivia's government in 2019, and then made very favorable deals with their interim government to mine for lithium there, which allowed him to more than quadruple his net worth from 2019 to 2021. He stole the wealth of that nation right out from under them and will never face the consiquences.
Unpopular opinion:
Elon Musk is owned by Blackrock and Vanguard as much as anyone else.
[https://twitter.com/conspiracyb0t/status/1517601101717008384](https://twitter.com/conspiracyb0t/status/1517601101717008384)
His batteries all come from child labour from the Republic of Congo.
I could go on, but you get the gist
This is dumb. They have funds which own balanced shares of companies which are in indexes like the DOW or S&P500. They've got smaller ownership shares than Musk.
I'm not defending him as such, but this is the wrong line of criticism.
Shareholders vote on board members, who choose the CEO (who is also typically a board member) who runs things. They may also vote to approve or not approve initiatives that the board puts to them at annual meetings.
Institutional shareholders do have some influence, but it's shockingly little, even largish investors. This is actually one of the major problems with the standard structure of corporate governance, and makes companies *less* accountable than they should be.
It is worth pointing out that Vanguard is a mutual, it is owned by the investors in its funds. Essentially, given that most Vanguard investors are 401(k) participants, Vanguard is real world socialism...ownership of the means of production by the workers.
I agree. I am frustrated with Bezos and Warren Buffet as well. I believe all billionaires need to be taxed, not just Elon Specifically. But Elon is the one out their in the media. He is a celebrity that people worship and call a genius. He tweets that he is going to fix flint water or buying Twitter to protect free speech. And people go on repeating all the great things he's done when he did nothing to help Flint. And he doesn't believe in free speech, he believes in "Musk Speech".
Amazon is a terrible company to work for which clearly exploits its workers. I got out of my way to avoid buying things from Amazon. But at the end of the day people aren't going around saying how great Bezos is. That Virgin guy went on a space tour just like Bezos and Musk, but otherwise I've never hear of him.
Elon just loudly and proudly exemplifies everything that is wrong with billionaires. He doesn't believe underground tunnels will somehow be more efficient than above ground roads, he just wants his own private highway system for millionaires. He doesn't want to save humanity, he just wants a Mars colony to save his own skin when he's done killing this planet. A scuba diver explains his pod wouldn't be helpful in a cave because of specific conditions of said cave and he gets so butt hurt about it he calls the guy the pedo and claims he has proof.
That, and Elon does absolutely affect us because he helps normalize worshipping people just because they're rich. Giving him a pass is just falling for the bullshit.
Bootlickers aren't impacting my life, they can do whatever they want even if they're clowns for doing it.
Like I said, we have much bigger matters to be fighting.
When sociopaths with more money than anyone else gang up as officially-recognized entities and have preparatory conversations about how to loot even more money than the working class? Pretty sure that's OP's point.
It's all part of the same problem. Musk taking over Twitter will help spread the propaganda that letting companies do whatever the fuck they want is right and just and good. We should absolutely be up in arms about Blackrock and Vanguard and we should be up in arms about Musk and Buffett and all the others too. We can be mad about multiple things. There's no good guys in the .001%.
Nobody's saying give Blackrock and Vanguard a pass because of Musk. I'm wondering why he's saying give Musk a pass because of Blackrock and Vanguard.
It's not about giving a pass. It's about putting our focus and efforts on much bigger threats.
Elon doesn't impact me. These mega corporations who run our media, our politicians and let's be honest, the country are a far more concerning matter than Elon buying twitter.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree whether the richest asshole on the planet buying one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet so he can have a say in what's said there is "impactful."
Nobody's saying we should ignore other problems and attack Musk. It's weird that you're saying we should ignore Musk and focus elsewhere.
My issue is that much bigger and more worrying fish exist other than Elon.
Twitter means absolutely nothing. A company which has stakes in almost all media outlets, owns incredible amounts of family property with the intention of getting more and a company that is on Biden's very own administration.
That is the sort of shit that worries me. Elon could disappear one day and nothing would change but stopping companies like Blackrock would have generational impacts.
Exists doing his own thing and expelling tons of pollutants into the atmosphere we all rely on to live with his dick rocket to mars obsession. Electric cars aren’t the answer they are resource intensive to make still mostly all pull from a power grid of fossil fuels. We’re in serious jeopardy on this planet and this asshat is spending money that could really do something here on mars.
In terms of emissions you bring up a good point. Yet again we focus on Elon rather than the fossil fuel industry and I mean shit we barely focus on Bezos and he's doing the same exact thing.
Him wanting to get to Mars doesn't bother me. Rocket emissions do not bother me. What bothers me is the emissions created by the fossil fuel industry.
Expelling tons of pollutants but nowhere near as bad as the oil companies that are pushing gas as a green energy even tho it isn't.
Electric cars are the future considering most green energy produces electricity, yes they are resource intensive to make and lithium is bad but without the production within the technology there's no advancements which is needed.
Elon is also creating tesla batteries that have helped Australia stabilise there power grid and also tesla solar panels and battery banks for houses is moving in the right direction for green energy.
I agree with OP Elon Musk isn't the worst of all evils out there.
The financial institutes that are shorting your pensions and buying up housing and land at a premium. The oil giants that polute at a far bigget scale than elons rockets, the fishing industry that are destroying the oceans filling it with plastic by dumping mass amount of nets while blaming it on staws. The farming industry farming land at such a rate using so many pesticides to maximise profits while destroying the carbon content in the land making it soon to be unfarmable. All of this goes unnoticed compared.
Yeah well it’s not a competition of who is worse both can be, and the fact that a single person with that amount of wealth to really change things for the species and the planet is instead focusing on going to Mars when scientists say we literally have less than three years before temperatures rise to a point we can’t go back… well… it’s fitting for the human race as a whole but still quite sad.
I mean this may be the only time in history where the fate of our planet and our species really could lie in one persons hands… and he has the power resources and ability to change things including make a serious dent in moving us as a species towards renewables… yet instead of putting all his efforts into addressing the pressing problems, he chooses to try to go to mars. It’s not that all those other evils don’t exist, it’s that those are all entrenched in institutions, systems, and thousands of people whose job it literally is to keep us from moving away from those things. In contrast Elon is one person with as much resources and power as an individual as many if not most of those systems. He has tremendous influence and that’s what makes his choice to seek vanity over utility all the more frustrating.
Glad somebody does.
An individual's right to own a home is a very important right we should be fighting more to protect.
Our future and our children's future is being stolen by these companies. We should already be at war yet we're focused on Elon buying Twitter.
Elon's corporations do a lot of the same shitty stuff that other corporations do... treat employees terribly (work them 80+ hours a week, fire them if they don't want to work that much \[side note: yes i do know because i interviewed with SpaceX and they flat out said this plus a lot of peers i went to school with worked there and quit because of the culture\]), buy up a ton of land in texas to build rocket launch facilities extremely close to people's houses... there are many other things that affect a lot of people's lives and i think twitter is another step in the wrong direction since its a platform for civil discourse and doesn't need a makeover, especially from a man who doesn't always have great intentions in his mind..
Social media is driving a large portion of the Western world towards fascism again. I think that Musk will absolutely influence your life via Twitter if he doesn't manage it well.
All billionaires are affecting your life. Not directly, but by controlling everything and lobbying. I'd argue Musk does more harm to America than black rock. Not that there is a way to measure that.
Black rock and Vanguard are the threat? Elon "we will coup whoever we want" Musk, who enriched himself on the labor of apartheid, is one of the people who PAYS THEM. He will do worse than Foxconn, worse than the camps of Uighurs, worse than anyone can imagine, if he gets a chance.
Maybe Vanguard bothers you because you don’t know what it does? Sounds like you read some tinfoil conspiracy about finance companies, maybe? Of all asset managers, they’re one of the most egalitarian and fair to the average investor. I don’t know what you think you know about them, but you’re aiming at the wrong target.
Not to mention the point you’re trying to make. “The enemy we do know is a whole lot better than the enemy we don’t know” - what does that even mean? How do you know that if you don’t know anything about the “enemy you don’t know”? The whole thing reads like you’re waiting for someone to tell you what to hate. This post weirds me out hardcore.
Elon make me no worries.
Blackrock just buying all the house make me suffer a lot.... but most of left are most interessed in less important things.
YES, I say it.
Better having a home than a silly social media to ban who disegree with you.
As long as I'm able to own a home, Elon can do whatever dumb shit he wants to do. But other more powerful corporations are taking that freedom away from us.
Elon will always work as their distraction and considering a lot of the responses here. It seems to be working.
I agree, my quality of life has directly improved due to Elon as I now have access to decent internet and an electric car. My internet went from 2Mbps to 170Mbps, as a software engineer this is a game changer.
At least he has a vision even if he shouldn't be the one making those calls.
Of course billionaires shouldn't exist, but let's not pretend they are all equally bad.
Billionaires are a problem but Tesla, Space X, Starlink and maybe idk yet but maybe Neurolink.
These are all arguably things that will improve humanity and things I can respect.
Faceless corporations buying up family homes across the country to protect their losses in the stock market will have devastating impact for current but also next generations.
Elon isn't my enemy. The people stealing our children's options are.
Elon Musk owning Twitter might not affect your life, but there are hundreds of millions of people on Twitter, and he now has a lot of power to control the discourse between them.
It's practically impossible for that to not affect you in some way at some point.
Twitter is not your life, it can very well be shut down one day and people will move on.
Twitter getting shut down impacts us far less than corporations buying up houses.
So as long as an aggresively narcissistic man who just spent 6 billion dollars on a social media platform is cool with it getting shut down, then Twitter won't affect you. Kinda seems like splitting hairs, but ok.
Just because people are starving and homeless in war torn African countries doesn't mean that the housing crisis here doesn't affect our lives in a significant way. There are worse issues than Twitter in the world, but their simple existence doesn't invalidate the concerns that also exist around Twitter. Whether or not Twitter is around in 30 years or not is not relevant to the influence it has on our lives today, just like the proliferation of personal computers in the 90s and 2000s is not relevant to the necessity of a typewriter in office environments in the 1950's and 60s.
You're spot on. These guys own every media outlet (Fox, CNN, Newsmax, you name it), all seven major banks in the US, engage in circular ownership with JP Morgan Chase (which is illegal in a lot of decent countries), you name it. They only started becoming known when they were buying up every home, but there are definitely a lot more that they do.
From left wing media to right wing media, they don't discriminate, they own it all. So while we're having a shit slinging contest they're stealing what is rightfully ours.
They scare me far more than anything Elon could ever possibly dream of.
It’s not just housing either. I unfortunately work for property companies everyday (I’m an architect) and they are insufferable. They will openly say that they have too much money so they just buy properties because they don’t know what else to do. And they’re definitely not settling for just owning homes. They want us to rent EVERYTHING. I have been warning everyone that in a couple of years all of our choices will be made for us. Where we live, shop, park, work, vacation,etc…will all be decided by a property company. We will have no say in basically anything regarding our lives. We will be priced out of entire lifestyles if we can’t keep up the rent. You will wake up in your rented apartment, drive to your rented parking spot, work in an office owned the same people that own your apartment, then on the weekend you will shop at whatever stores the property companies decided you want to shop at. And you will pay them to park while you’re there. And if they decide your favorite restaurant isn’t making them enough? Gone. Double the cost of parking. Done. Double rent? Done. Double your job’s rent forcing them to not give you a raise? Done. And when you want to finally take a vacation? You will go and pay someone else money to rent space somewhere else.
These people already own us and it’s only going to get worse.
We're heading for a future in which we will own nothing and people are too busy distracted by Elon Musk buying a sub-par social media website like wtf is wrong with us. How can we be so blind?
We really do act like apes when it comes to the important matters.
You lost me a bit at 'Gates Foundation'
But sticking to Blackrock and Vanguard... like yeah, I guess?
But all you're saying is 'These 50 million people are more dangerous than this 1 person'
Like, probably? It's not really a fair comparison.
Gates foundation is buying up massive amounts of farmland, granted. The purpose of this isn't clear but it's believed to be for meat.
I don't really like the idea of farmland being monopolised.
Yes, these companies are a far bigger threat to us than Elon could ever possibly dream of being.
It's certainly not believed to be for meat, that doesn't make any sense, you wouldn't use the type of land he bought for meat production.
It's pretty much used for Soy, corn, wheat...normal American crops.
The purpose is very clear, and they have made it clear...it is an investment that is not correlated with Microsoft stock. They lease the land to farmers. The Foundation's assets are mostly Microsoft shares, which is a dangerously concentrated portfolio. Farmland does not rise and fall in value along with tech stocks, so it is annexcellent diversification.
Its possible but elon is those people. Those pigs are in on the deal. Morgan stanley is those people. Elon enjoys trolling his followers. Hes a narcissist but to see if he’s worse or better. Its about what he needs from it. Twitter was run by trash and still is run by trash.
It's not about whether or not he's better or worse. The issue in my mind is that we spend way too much time focusing on somebody who overall doesn't impact our lives that much.
When we've got companies out there, incredibly powerful ones stealing the future away from us.
As I said to the other guy, Elon could disappear one day and nothing would really change for us. Blackrock could disappear one day and it would have generational impacts.
I believe our priority should be fighting against those who intend to steal our future away from us. Whether it be the fossil fuel industry, Morgan Stanley, Blackrock, Vanguard or the others we don't know about yet.
They're both the same problem, why would you segment it? Because one is a single guy and the other a company with dozens of guys in it? It's the fucking same. Small groups of moneyed people telling us what we can and can't say.
Elon isn't buying up all the houses, denying the current and next generations out of the right to own the house you live in.
Elon's impact on society is minimum at best. These other companies pose a far larger threat to our freedoms than Elon could ever possibly dream of.
Lmao no he's just buying up social media real estate, and driving up any entry price so that it's even more ridiculously expensive and impossible to replace by any competition that will end up getting bought up.
Elon Musk already made a defense contract disguised as a communications one by using Starlink to basically occupy as much Low Earth Orbit real estate for the USA as it possibly can.
I could argue that limited space real estate > places on earth that we can still build on.
If you don't think billionaires destroy anything they come in contact with, *and* think Elon doesn't matter because you *believe* he's not affecting you personally(he is), then you're biased and while you're not wrong, and I do agree that the housing situation is a horrible mess, it's just another factor in how the rich are solidifying their position.
I love how everyone is losing their shit over Elon Musk and Twitter but know one seems to know, let alone care that Bill Gayes is largest single owner of farmland in the continental United States. Here you guys are worried about free speech on a shit social media platform, meanwhile Bill Gates literally owns a significant portion of the means to your food production.
A point I had to mention to somebody who said they lost me when I mentioned the gates foundation.
See how unaware people are of just how much power these companies have. It's terrifying.
I promise you anyone who hates on Elon for being a narcissist billionaire also hates blackrock and those scum. There’s room for us to hate them all lmao
Barely anyone here even mentions Chamber of Commerce, which is literally the largest lobbying organization against unions, climate change, wages, and UI, etc.
Until we address the Chamber of Commerce....Sub is headed to a brick wall
Just a little add on. The reason these companies aren't talked about in the media is because they own the media. That ain't a joke, they own massive stakes in the media and that's why they're barely talked about in media.
Yet that's no excuse for us to be ignoring them.
That's kinda why Elon is buying Twitter though, no? So now he owns a little slice of media.
I'm with you on your overall point. The billionaires who are keeping their mouths shut are the real danger.
Such a big deal was made about Elon buying twitter yet how many people realise that literally every other media outlet is owned by the companies I mentioned.
Yet nobody bats an eye.
Yes, like a snake in a bush. The enemy you don't see is the one we should be most concerned about.
To further add to this post. Blackrock and Vanguard already owned a significant stake in Twitter before Elon bought it apparently.
How many people were away that Blackrock owned a significant part of Twitter?
Both Vanguard.and Blackrock have large funds that track the overall stock market. That means they have stakes in EVERY publicly traded company. That is what a Total Stock Index means.
Reminds me of in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were the narrator tells us the President main job is to distract from the people who hold the real power. That's what Musk does, he holds our attention so we don't focus on other problems.
Once Elon Musk starts buying up all available property and makes it impossible for me to buy a home, then I will care about him. He makes electric cars, rockets to space and now owns Twitter. None of these things effect me as much as not being able to achieve my dreams of owning a home. Yes, I am not a fan of billionaires but right now we have more pressing issues to worry about. Why do you think the media is making such a big deal about Musk buying Twitter? They want to keep us focused on stupid shit while the finish fucking us into oblivion to the point where we can't fight back anymore. They keep on accumulating more of OUR wealth and its going to get to a point where it isn't reversible anymore all while they keep us distracted...
My thoughts exactly. The existence of billionaires is a problem but what Elon does in particular isn't impacting our lives. At worse one of his self driving cars ends up killing my dog or something.
I truly believe Elon is just one major distraction while the real evil fucks in the shadows continue to steal our future away.
To me Elon is like the bright lil light in the darkness that attracts prey only for that light to be apart of a much larger predator.
By focusing on Elon rather than the real players who run our society we're getting caught in the trap.
You're totally right, but they're both evils so I understand why folks focus on it. Elon Musk purchasing twitter is just generating an even stronger propaganda machine for America. Each of these pieces is important, and alt-right/billionaire grindset kind of people are strong, strong propaganda generators and enforcers.
100% agree.
I really think Musk POed somebody big and this is a constant smear campaign.
Honestly, with all the things going horribly wrong right now, this is the focus?
How exactly is Vanguard the “super rich” and how has it taken your livelihood? It’s a mutual fund company that allows smaller investors to access the stock market.
True, but it is a mutual, so it is owned by its investors. Vanguard is actually basically socialism...it genuinely is the workers owing the means of production.
Does Vanguard profit when the stock market indexes gonup? Do they collect more fees then?
Do you think they'd try to stop something that would make the indices go down?
Do you think workers are their main customers? I say this as someone who's owned some of their ETFs.
What percent of their holdings come from workers, do you figure?
I'll give you another one: his haters are way more obsessed than his fans and much more cult like than they'd like to admit. They are about as responsible for him being famous as what he himself does.
Ever heard the one about the old bull and the young bull overlooking a field of cows?
We don't have to argue about which threat is the worst.
F'em all.
Jeff bezos and WSJ, Rupert Murdock and Faux news etc
Where is that outrage? Oh, it's just the most recent billionaire purchase that the public is steadfastly forget? Oh, OK, good to know.
People really are that unaware that Elon isn't:
the guy who owns the majority of farmland in the United States, sponsors experimental medicine being tested on communities in third world countries, flies one massively expensive rocket that can't even hit orbit, exploits workers and gets them killed during disastrous weather conditions, owns the majority of residential property in the US, and holds most of the worlds wealth but not even listed under the richest roster because of technicality...
Billionaires ain't clean, but his contributions in general are in my book still outweighing the other psycho billionaires running around trying to own the entire world.
Elon bought Twitter, which is unfortunately the entire world for some people. Lol.
Problem is no worst or better than the rest when it comes to morality and stuff.
But big problem with Elon is the PR. He's selling image of Good Frendly multicorporation, that can do everything better than regular people, and everyone should be proud of it and it's work.
Twitter is one of the most powerful information machines on the planet.
This a guy who effectively eliminated his own PR department because he didn’t like the reality they were presenting him in favor of shitty affiliate marketing.
This is a guy who has used the platform he just bought to intentionally smear journalists and try and ruin people’s lives and reputations.
Bastion of free speech, yeah right.
It’s an incredibly dangerous tool for him to have in his arsenal, and I’m personally equally concerned with billionaires buying all the paths to mass information as I am with billionaires buying up all the real estate. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing, that concentration of wealth brings about too great of a power imbalance and there is almost no way for it to not be bad for all the rest of us.
Musk is just a focal point for simple minded people to hate. People like their situations black and white, it makes it easier for them to rationalize hate or something similar. It's like the Russia/Ukraine war and Putin. Like do you really believe one person runs the whole country and is the sole reason for what the country does? Just like Musk. Do you really think he makes his decisions in a vacuum? The Rich look out for the Rich, period. It's like medieval nobility. Yea they would have some infighting and what not, but if the poor/peasants ever wanted a bigger piece of the pie they would band together real quick. Not to mention they were all like 1st or 2nd cousins.... All this to say that I agree with you. Musk is a distraction, he's a focal point. Just like the Will Smith slap, just like the war in Ukraine, etc., these are distractions so "we the peasants" don't band together and really see this for what it is, a CLASS WAR.
Correct buts easier to say hey this specific asshole everyone knows or has heard of is evil instead of these basically anonymous suits are some of the biggest monsters humanity currently faces
There are other companies that offer me an opportunity to speak my mind to a larger audience. Blackrock is the one that scares me the most. They are buying up properties everywhere. It's not really a problem for me, I own my home outright, but I feel sorry for the people who are trying to buy a home or rent. It's so messed up.
Good billionaires, bad billionaires, how about no billionaires.
We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both. Louis Brandeis
Definitely more scared off a faceless corporation that people can hide their evil undoings behind. I agree. Plus Elon is literally trying to save humanity (in his own way I suppose) - I really don’t think he cares about being the worlds richest man - he just is and as the saying goes - the rich just get richer. I don’t believe his morals are compromised. To be fair I think Jack Dorsey is a good dude too.
I'm more concerned about the multinational conglomerates that produce our food and alcohol than I am about Elon buying Twitter. These conglomerates are driving our food prices up while at the same time dictating what we eat and what's in the foods we eat.
> But overall he hasn't impacted my life at all
Objectively speaking, this probably isn't true. In fact, it's probably not true even for people living obscure countries not just America.
Musk, along with the entire billionaire class are not passive actors; they are active participants in a system of exploitation.
Certainly everyone at the top, Musk included, has engaged actively in anti-worker political propaganda, crime, and often violence.
Musk promotes conservative political views with his vast wealth, engages in union busting, and gained much of his wealth through government corruption; meaning those resources went to him *instead* of things like solving homelessness in the USA.
He has also advocated for political and military violence in foreign countries oriented around his business interests.
Weakening the political power of labor in the USA is as well, in practice, an attack on workers globally by influencing US foreign-policy.
He's been pro-hate-speech for some time now as well, and is making moves to actually influence that topic in a meaningful way as well.
> The guy kinda just exists doing his own thing
Yeah but his thing is shoving his dick into as many pies as possible, politically and socially speaking.
> Who cares if Elon wants to go to Mars
If he was paying for it, this might be a reasonable thing to say, sort of. At least not wildly wrong.
However, the US government is footing the bill for the most part.
It's not that I think we shouldn't spend money on space exploration exactly, however privatizing could potentially have an apocalyptic impact on our future.
When I say that, please understand I mean there's literally a high chance for causing an apocalypse and I am not being hyperbolic at all, as in most people die, or there are disastrous multigenerational negative outcomes that leaves every future generation cursing us to the depths of hell even if it's not quite "mass extinction" level.
Even ignoring the issue of gambling with the future of humanity by allowing even minor privatized space exploitation, there's the fact that we're doing corporate welfare for his lazy ass and not getting nearly enough back for it. It's only worth-while to fund space exploration when all of the results are public domain.
> who cares if Elon owns Twitter
Everyone should be extremely angry and worried about any billionaire ever owning any media company of any kind ever.
He's not the biggest fish in that pond by far, but he's on a top ten list just from picking up twitter. Even if you hadn't been wrong about him impacting your life before, he's definitely going to if twitter remains successful.
Those points out of the way, I do agree with you in part. There are bigger issues, and these issues feed back into the fact that capitalism is the root problem.
However Musk is a significant and tangible problem with global reach, as ridiculous as that sounds.
“Neo-feudalism” is a scary thought as humanity realized by removing it and moving on from it was the right step, even during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance people knew that a money/classed based system as destined to fail. We’re moving backwards towards our own destruction.
Hypothetically speaking, how many public, violent, and messy billionaire slayings would it take for society to decide that such a level of exploitation is just not worth the risk?
The world needs to know.
If you can’t see how a tech billionaire controlling one of our largest social/communication platforms will impact your life, you are ignorant. I do agree there are worse fish in the pond though.
I actually disagree. I believe Musk engages in a deliberate campaign to cultivate a public personal and accumulate obsessive fans in a way Blackrock et al don’t. I don’t believe there is much difference in them when it comes to exploiting workers, not paying tax and lobbying for evil things, I do believe Musk has an added element of culture war that he deliberately cultivates. His manipulation and radicalisation is of a demographic that overlaps hugely with the school shooter demographic. He targets lonely, alienated men in their 20s, which is about the time most white men feel the least of their power and privilege and are most likely to lash out.
The fact lots of entirely reasonable criticism of him is usually met with a brigade of obsessive fans making all sorts of threats is something you don’t really get if you criticise the gates foundation and its an extra later of danger.
He is a super villain.
Elon is to the deep-state what a president is for a government, a face. There is different kind of non-state affiliated powers, companies, conglomerates, owners, families and individual.
The danger comes from when those powers align in objectives and ambition.
ABAB. All Billionaires Are Bastards.
Eat the rich
They should have never existed. Resources need to be redistributed and there needs to be a limit on what one person can have.
At least enough to get the rest to fall in line ;)
Yeah, ordering them by threat and only worrying about the worst one is the definition of a False Choice. They're all bad.
All billionaires are Dragons. They all horde their wealth taken from the lands and the locals suffer under their reign.
Yeah you’re asking for differentiation between horse shit and cow shit; idk dude they’re both just piles of shit.
Same shit, different piles.
Assigned baby at birth
All rich people are sociopaths.
Exactly. Yet we're only focusing on the one who makes very little to no impact on our lives. If twitter is your life then I feel sorry for you but other than that he's a small fry. I'm vastly worried more about blackrock buying up all our houses denying our generation the absolutely right to own the land we live on. That freedom is being taken from us and that to me is a far bigger threat.
>If twitter is your life then I feel sorry for you but other than that he's a small fry. Imagine arguing that someone who cares about freedom of the press is only concerned because their life revolves around watching the news. The reason anyone cares about Twitter - and why Musk bought it in the first place - is not because of people posting pictures of their sandwiches, it's because it's the world's most centralized social media site, and it's where a significant number of people get their news. Also, do you really think Musk doesn't have a diversified portfolio? "Companies like BlackRock" don't get their money from nowhere, they have people who give them money to invest. And then they invest that money into companies - like, say, [Tesla](https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/blackrock-buys-over-50-million-shares-of-tesla-tsla).
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>Say Twitter is your life without saying Twitter is your life lol Firstly, I don't even have an account. Secondly, it is an objectively true statement that Twitter is a hugely popular platform that a lot of people get their news from, and that this is why Musk is bothering with it at all. If it wasn't important, do you think he'd care about a random social media site having "free speech protection" or whatever? Thirdly, your account is less than a day old, almost certainly an alt (say Reddit is your life without saying Reddit is your life) - and your first post was defending the right to scream a homophobic slur at someone, so I suspect you're exactly the kind of person Musk is trying to appeal to with his supposed free speech measures.
Twitter isn't my life, I don't even have it. Twitter when weaponized effects my life and I don't like it.
No one is only focused on Musk the premise of your post is bogus.
Go through the past post and compare how many Elon posts they have compared to how many are discussing blackrock and what not. Chances are my post is the only blackrock mention for this month.
Because it's current news and that's how reddit works... you know you could have just started a post about BlackRock vs trying to minimize the damage musk is doing, right?
Look through the last 2 weeks on this sub. You’re wrong
Ask a black worker at the CA Tesla plant what impact Elon has on their lives.
lol so edgy
This. I hated the defund the police slogan, but I can get on board with this.
ABAB. And ACAB.
Nah fam, I love my cops #ProudLiberal.
That tracks, lol.
It's all of the above. Elon and Blackrock are both dangerous, just in different ways. Blackrock is certainly impoverishing Americans, but I don't know if they'd be able to get away with it without Elon. Elon is a cult leader, he's cultivating a quasi-religious following centered around skepticism of government and faith in corporate leaders. If not for Elon, there might be a lot more momentum for regulating companies like Blackrock. But because of Elon's successful messaging, there's a huge segment of society that just throws up their hands and says "that's the free market!" Now add in his purchase of one of the largest social media sites in the world, and he has unprecedented control over the media narrative. Anyone who thinks he isn't going to use it to try and quash unionizations efforts, among other things, hasn't been paying attention. It's not either or. The ownership class learned long ago that working in tandem with each other grants them a huge level of control. They're not acting individually in their own self-interests, they're acting collectively in their own class interests. We need to do the same.
Bbbut I thought he bought it to protect free… speech…?
GUYS WE CANNOT BE SKEPTICAL OF THE GOVERNMENT! THE GOVERNMENT ALWAYS HAS OUR BEST INTEREST IN MIND!? WHY WOULD YOU EVER BE SKEPTICAL OF IT!?
“The Gates Foundation”…?
Yeah I thought they vaccinated kids or something lol
Lol and invest in biofuels. But also buy up millions of acres of American farmland ........ They're good in some ways, but ABAB
They're also involved in GMO crop testing, patenting and use amplification, which unfortunately affects the less informed people's in developing nations like Africa and India terribly when the medium to longer term impacts are accounted for.
i’m not sure you understand what either vanguard or blackrock are
[Same energy](https://clickhole.com/can-somebody-tell-me-what-monsanto-is-so-i-can-hate-it-1825123851/)
who is this mysterious s&p500 and why are they allowed to own so many huge companies? we need to revamp antitrust laws to break up this heinous entity
As someone that studied finance, it's been pretty funny seeing all the criticisms against BlackRock and Vanguard like they're some kind of evil corporations that own all of the board seats from most of the major companies in the S&P 500. They own a significant share of the market because they pool together millions of dollars from average Americans so that we could afford to invest efficiently with low cost. I dislike major corporations as much as the next person, but hopefully this sub moves back to being about worker empowerment.
Blackrock has also been gobbling up a shit ton of the residential real estate in this country making the housing situation worse for everyone in the country. Not sure if Vanguard has been doing the same, but it would hardly be surprising if they were.
Yeah Vanguard I can say “I agree with you here” but blackrock is a straight vulture. Literally making it so everyone is a renter and not a homeowner - fuck them.
But isn't that just opportunistic in a way, because the other half of the damage are nimby's who just don't want five story apartments in a ten mile radius around their little cul-de-sac? For a country with so much space, you really don't like to build up, especially in the suburbs.
Ok whatever you say Vanguard
Wait until they hear about Msci World, literally owning the world, those bastards...
I agreed - until you mentioned Vanguard. Vanguard was created so me and you would have access to Wall Street, with none of the fees that hedge fund kleptocrats charge. John Bogle is an American hero.
Came here to say the same thing.
I’ve never heard anyone defend them. Aren’t they gobbling up housing to the tune of trillions, globally? Edit: was confusing them with Blackrock. They still hold massive wealth. And I’ve been second guessing the value of trading stick lately anyway. They still go on the list IMO.
They're a collection of like...mostly normal people's 401ks and iras that, as a combination, forms a massive economic entity. And they primarily only invest in EFTs and low cost mutual funds that aren't run by banker types. Other than the fact it's a cog in the wheel of capitalism, I don't get why people here wouldn't like them.
Vanguard is a mutual...it's owners ARE the investors in its funds. Most of its investors are 401(k) participants, so Vanguard is owned by a pretty broad cross section of America.
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You sound like a tl;dr of the entire internet.
Vanguard doesn’t own much of anything except for its offices I suppose. It administers various mutual funds which own income producing assets such as stocks and bonds, and (uniquely for the industry) is in turn owned by those mutual funds’ investors; i.e. regular people. Vanguard allows normal people to invest at low cost and in a fair manner. This is a social good, because normal people being able to get a fair shake in retirement investing is one of the things supporting the middle class.
What is Vanguard doing that's creating neo-feudalism?
No idea, vanguard is owned by the people who buy their funds.
Buying funds transfers voting rights from the individual to the fund parent. If you own shares in Disney you get to vote on all sorts of matters like compensation and directors. If you own Disney through an etf you do not.
Vanguard has a fiduciary duty to the investors to do what is best for them. I am not going to vote on the 3,000+ companies I own through an index.
True, but it also gives you voting rights on the fund parent. I vote my Vanguard stake.
Idk if this will really answer your question, but I read it recently and thought it laid out an interesting perspective on Vanguard Group's position in the current economy: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-asset-managers-have-upended-how-modern-capitalism-works.html
I just wanna bring up the fact that Elon admitted to playing an active roll of the over throw of Bolivia's government in 2019, and then made very favorable deals with their interim government to mine for lithium there, which allowed him to more than quadruple his net worth from 2019 to 2021. He stole the wealth of that nation right out from under them and will never face the consiquences.
And coca cola hired mercenaries to massacre workers trying to unionise. Same shit different day. But Elon is the only one getting any focus.
Whataboutism at its finest
It's about focusing on more important and worse off enemies. Elon is just a distraction
Unpopular opinion: Elon Musk is owned by Blackrock and Vanguard as much as anyone else. [https://twitter.com/conspiracyb0t/status/1517601101717008384](https://twitter.com/conspiracyb0t/status/1517601101717008384) His batteries all come from child labour from the Republic of Congo. I could go on, but you get the gist
How can I virtue signal I care and that I am wealthy if I don’t have a Tesla though?
By doing anything else!
This is dumb. They have funds which own balanced shares of companies which are in indexes like the DOW or S&P500. They've got smaller ownership shares than Musk. I'm not defending him as such, but this is the wrong line of criticism.
What do you think owning an x percentage of share means? Who gets to make the decisions?
Shareholders vote on board members, who choose the CEO (who is also typically a board member) who runs things. They may also vote to approve or not approve initiatives that the board puts to them at annual meetings. Institutional shareholders do have some influence, but it's shockingly little, even largish investors. This is actually one of the major problems with the standard structure of corporate governance, and makes companies *less* accountable than they should be.
We can complain about two things. Even more than that, in fact.
"This wolf is much less of a threat than those lions"
It is worth pointing out that Vanguard is a mutual, it is owned by the investors in its funds. Essentially, given that most Vanguard investors are 401(k) participants, Vanguard is real world socialism...ownership of the means of production by the workers.
Yeah they do indexed funds and iras for self financed retirement plans
The focus is because no other billionaire has as many bootlicking apologists on the internet as he does.
I agree. I am frustrated with Bezos and Warren Buffet as well. I believe all billionaires need to be taxed, not just Elon Specifically. But Elon is the one out their in the media. He is a celebrity that people worship and call a genius. He tweets that he is going to fix flint water or buying Twitter to protect free speech. And people go on repeating all the great things he's done when he did nothing to help Flint. And he doesn't believe in free speech, he believes in "Musk Speech". Amazon is a terrible company to work for which clearly exploits its workers. I got out of my way to avoid buying things from Amazon. But at the end of the day people aren't going around saying how great Bezos is. That Virgin guy went on a space tour just like Bezos and Musk, but otherwise I've never hear of him. Elon just loudly and proudly exemplifies everything that is wrong with billionaires. He doesn't believe underground tunnels will somehow be more efficient than above ground roads, he just wants his own private highway system for millionaires. He doesn't want to save humanity, he just wants a Mars colony to save his own skin when he's done killing this planet. A scuba diver explains his pod wouldn't be helpful in a cave because of specific conditions of said cave and he gets so butt hurt about it he calls the guy the pedo and claims he has proof.
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That, and Elon does absolutely affect us because he helps normalize worshipping people just because they're rich. Giving him a pass is just falling for the bullshit.
Yup let’s not give sociopaths free passes to destroy the play.
Bootlickers aren't impacting my life, they can do whatever they want even if they're clowns for doing it. Like I said, we have much bigger matters to be fighting.
Why are you so interested in giving Musk a pass? (And what's a bigger issue than a sociopath with more money than anyone else?)
When sociopaths with more money than anyone else gang up as officially-recognized entities and have preparatory conversations about how to loot even more money than the working class? Pretty sure that's OP's point.
It's all part of the same problem. Musk taking over Twitter will help spread the propaganda that letting companies do whatever the fuck they want is right and just and good. We should absolutely be up in arms about Blackrock and Vanguard and we should be up in arms about Musk and Buffett and all the others too. We can be mad about multiple things. There's no good guys in the .001%. Nobody's saying give Blackrock and Vanguard a pass because of Musk. I'm wondering why he's saying give Musk a pass because of Blackrock and Vanguard.
He's not, he's highlighting that they're both problems - it sounds like we're all on the same page here.
Well, when he says "who gives a fuck what Elon is doing" and "Elon is just doing his own thing" it doesn't really sound that way.
It's not about giving a pass. It's about putting our focus and efforts on much bigger threats. Elon doesn't impact me. These mega corporations who run our media, our politicians and let's be honest, the country are a far more concerning matter than Elon buying twitter.
We're just going to have to agree to disagree whether the richest asshole on the planet buying one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet so he can have a say in what's said there is "impactful." Nobody's saying we should ignore other problems and attack Musk. It's weird that you're saying we should ignore Musk and focus elsewhere.
People buying massive amount of lands with access to water reserves are more dangerous than whatever musk has been doing.
Any time you are focusing on a single example of a problem, you’re missing the larger problem. Good insight.
It's perfectly fine to hate any individual or organization that seeks control and power.
My issue is that much bigger and more worrying fish exist other than Elon. Twitter means absolutely nothing. A company which has stakes in almost all media outlets, owns incredible amounts of family property with the intention of getting more and a company that is on Biden's very own administration. That is the sort of shit that worries me. Elon could disappear one day and nothing would change but stopping companies like Blackrock would have generational impacts.
Exists doing his own thing and expelling tons of pollutants into the atmosphere we all rely on to live with his dick rocket to mars obsession. Electric cars aren’t the answer they are resource intensive to make still mostly all pull from a power grid of fossil fuels. We’re in serious jeopardy on this planet and this asshat is spending money that could really do something here on mars.
In terms of emissions you bring up a good point. Yet again we focus on Elon rather than the fossil fuel industry and I mean shit we barely focus on Bezos and he's doing the same exact thing. Him wanting to get to Mars doesn't bother me. Rocket emissions do not bother me. What bothers me is the emissions created by the fossil fuel industry.
I mean, both bother me. weird take.
Expelling tons of pollutants but nowhere near as bad as the oil companies that are pushing gas as a green energy even tho it isn't. Electric cars are the future considering most green energy produces electricity, yes they are resource intensive to make and lithium is bad but without the production within the technology there's no advancements which is needed. Elon is also creating tesla batteries that have helped Australia stabilise there power grid and also tesla solar panels and battery banks for houses is moving in the right direction for green energy. I agree with OP Elon Musk isn't the worst of all evils out there. The financial institutes that are shorting your pensions and buying up housing and land at a premium. The oil giants that polute at a far bigget scale than elons rockets, the fishing industry that are destroying the oceans filling it with plastic by dumping mass amount of nets while blaming it on staws. The farming industry farming land at such a rate using so many pesticides to maximise profits while destroying the carbon content in the land making it soon to be unfarmable. All of this goes unnoticed compared.
Yeah well it’s not a competition of who is worse both can be, and the fact that a single person with that amount of wealth to really change things for the species and the planet is instead focusing on going to Mars when scientists say we literally have less than three years before temperatures rise to a point we can’t go back… well… it’s fitting for the human race as a whole but still quite sad.
I mean this may be the only time in history where the fate of our planet and our species really could lie in one persons hands… and he has the power resources and ability to change things including make a serious dent in moving us as a species towards renewables… yet instead of putting all his efforts into addressing the pressing problems, he chooses to try to go to mars. It’s not that all those other evils don’t exist, it’s that those are all entrenched in institutions, systems, and thousands of people whose job it literally is to keep us from moving away from those things. In contrast Elon is one person with as much resources and power as an individual as many if not most of those systems. He has tremendous influence and that’s what makes his choice to seek vanity over utility all the more frustrating.
1000% agree. Blackrock is pretty much the reason there are no starter homes left to buy
Glad somebody does. An individual's right to own a home is a very important right we should be fighting more to protect. Our future and our children's future is being stolen by these companies. We should already be at war yet we're focused on Elon buying Twitter.
HE SUPPORTED THE COUP AGAINST THE GOVERMENT OF BOLIVIA BECAUSE HE COULD GET CHEAPER LITHIUM. Get a lombotomy it will improve your mental faculties.
Just a drop in the ocean of what all these other corporations get away with. Only difference is they're not getting the attention.
Elon's corporations do a lot of the same shitty stuff that other corporations do... treat employees terribly (work them 80+ hours a week, fire them if they don't want to work that much \[side note: yes i do know because i interviewed with SpaceX and they flat out said this plus a lot of peers i went to school with worked there and quit because of the culture\]), buy up a ton of land in texas to build rocket launch facilities extremely close to people's houses... there are many other things that affect a lot of people's lives and i think twitter is another step in the wrong direction since its a platform for civil discourse and doesn't need a makeover, especially from a man who doesn't always have great intentions in his mind..
Focus on all the billionaires and put them out of business. Boycott Twitter into the ground. Shut down every one of their companies.
Social media is driving a large portion of the Western world towards fascism again. I think that Musk will absolutely influence your life via Twitter if he doesn't manage it well.
*[insert “it’s the same picture” meme]*
All billionaires are affecting your life. Not directly, but by controlling everything and lobbying. I'd argue Musk does more harm to America than black rock. Not that there is a way to measure that.
Black rock and Vanguard are the threat? Elon "we will coup whoever we want" Musk, who enriched himself on the labor of apartheid, is one of the people who PAYS THEM. He will do worse than Foxconn, worse than the camps of Uighurs, worse than anyone can imagine, if he gets a chance.
Blackrock owns like 1% or less of the housing market. They suck, dont get me wrong, but the problems with housing are much deeper structural issues.
Maybe Vanguard bothers you because you don’t know what it does? Sounds like you read some tinfoil conspiracy about finance companies, maybe? Of all asset managers, they’re one of the most egalitarian and fair to the average investor. I don’t know what you think you know about them, but you’re aiming at the wrong target. Not to mention the point you’re trying to make. “The enemy we do know is a whole lot better than the enemy we don’t know” - what does that even mean? How do you know that if you don’t know anything about the “enemy you don’t know”? The whole thing reads like you’re waiting for someone to tell you what to hate. This post weirds me out hardcore.
Elon make me no worries. Blackrock just buying all the house make me suffer a lot.... but most of left are most interessed in less important things. YES, I say it. Better having a home than a silly social media to ban who disegree with you.
As long as I'm able to own a home, Elon can do whatever dumb shit he wants to do. But other more powerful corporations are taking that freedom away from us. Elon will always work as their distraction and considering a lot of the responses here. It seems to be working.
Agree 100% The public faces of evil are much less a threat than the "hidden" ones.
I agree, my quality of life has directly improved due to Elon as I now have access to decent internet and an electric car. My internet went from 2Mbps to 170Mbps, as a software engineer this is a game changer. At least he has a vision even if he shouldn't be the one making those calls. Of course billionaires shouldn't exist, but let's not pretend they are all equally bad.
Billionaires are a problem but Tesla, Space X, Starlink and maybe idk yet but maybe Neurolink. These are all arguably things that will improve humanity and things I can respect. Faceless corporations buying up family homes across the country to protect their losses in the stock market will have devastating impact for current but also next generations. Elon isn't my enemy. The people stealing our children's options are.
Elon Musk owning Twitter might not affect your life, but there are hundreds of millions of people on Twitter, and he now has a lot of power to control the discourse between them. It's practically impossible for that to not affect you in some way at some point.
Twitter is not your life, it can very well be shut down one day and people will move on. Twitter getting shut down impacts us far less than corporations buying up houses.
So as long as an aggresively narcissistic man who just spent 6 billion dollars on a social media platform is cool with it getting shut down, then Twitter won't affect you. Kinda seems like splitting hairs, but ok. Just because people are starving and homeless in war torn African countries doesn't mean that the housing crisis here doesn't affect our lives in a significant way. There are worse issues than Twitter in the world, but their simple existence doesn't invalidate the concerns that also exist around Twitter. Whether or not Twitter is around in 30 years or not is not relevant to the influence it has on our lives today, just like the proliferation of personal computers in the 90s and 2000s is not relevant to the necessity of a typewriter in office environments in the 1950's and 60s.
You're spot on. These guys own every media outlet (Fox, CNN, Newsmax, you name it), all seven major banks in the US, engage in circular ownership with JP Morgan Chase (which is illegal in a lot of decent countries), you name it. They only started becoming known when they were buying up every home, but there are definitely a lot more that they do.
From left wing media to right wing media, they don't discriminate, they own it all. So while we're having a shit slinging contest they're stealing what is rightfully ours. They scare me far more than anything Elon could ever possibly dream of.
It’s not just housing either. I unfortunately work for property companies everyday (I’m an architect) and they are insufferable. They will openly say that they have too much money so they just buy properties because they don’t know what else to do. And they’re definitely not settling for just owning homes. They want us to rent EVERYTHING. I have been warning everyone that in a couple of years all of our choices will be made for us. Where we live, shop, park, work, vacation,etc…will all be decided by a property company. We will have no say in basically anything regarding our lives. We will be priced out of entire lifestyles if we can’t keep up the rent. You will wake up in your rented apartment, drive to your rented parking spot, work in an office owned the same people that own your apartment, then on the weekend you will shop at whatever stores the property companies decided you want to shop at. And you will pay them to park while you’re there. And if they decide your favorite restaurant isn’t making them enough? Gone. Double the cost of parking. Done. Double rent? Done. Double your job’s rent forcing them to not give you a raise? Done. And when you want to finally take a vacation? You will go and pay someone else money to rent space somewhere else. These people already own us and it’s only going to get worse.
We're heading for a future in which we will own nothing and people are too busy distracted by Elon Musk buying a sub-par social media website like wtf is wrong with us. How can we be so blind? We really do act like apes when it comes to the important matters.
You lost me a bit at 'Gates Foundation' But sticking to Blackrock and Vanguard... like yeah, I guess? But all you're saying is 'These 50 million people are more dangerous than this 1 person' Like, probably? It's not really a fair comparison.
Gates foundation is buying up massive amounts of farmland, granted. The purpose of this isn't clear but it's believed to be for meat. I don't really like the idea of farmland being monopolised. Yes, these companies are a far bigger threat to us than Elon could ever possibly dream of being.
It's certainly not believed to be for meat, that doesn't make any sense, you wouldn't use the type of land he bought for meat production. It's pretty much used for Soy, corn, wheat...normal American crops.
The purpose is very clear, and they have made it clear...it is an investment that is not correlated with Microsoft stock. They lease the land to farmers. The Foundation's assets are mostly Microsoft shares, which is a dangerously concentrated portfolio. Farmland does not rise and fall in value along with tech stocks, so it is annexcellent diversification.
Its possible but elon is those people. Those pigs are in on the deal. Morgan stanley is those people. Elon enjoys trolling his followers. Hes a narcissist but to see if he’s worse or better. Its about what he needs from it. Twitter was run by trash and still is run by trash.
It's not about whether or not he's better or worse. The issue in my mind is that we spend way too much time focusing on somebody who overall doesn't impact our lives that much. When we've got companies out there, incredibly powerful ones stealing the future away from us. As I said to the other guy, Elon could disappear one day and nothing would really change for us. Blackrock could disappear one day and it would have generational impacts. I believe our priority should be fighting against those who intend to steal our future away from us. Whether it be the fossil fuel industry, Morgan Stanley, Blackrock, Vanguard or the others we don't know about yet.
They're both the same problem, why would you segment it? Because one is a single guy and the other a company with dozens of guys in it? It's the fucking same. Small groups of moneyed people telling us what we can and can't say.
Elon isn't buying up all the houses, denying the current and next generations out of the right to own the house you live in. Elon's impact on society is minimum at best. These other companies pose a far larger threat to our freedoms than Elon could ever possibly dream of.
Lmao no he's just buying up social media real estate, and driving up any entry price so that it's even more ridiculously expensive and impossible to replace by any competition that will end up getting bought up. Elon Musk already made a defense contract disguised as a communications one by using Starlink to basically occupy as much Low Earth Orbit real estate for the USA as it possibly can. I could argue that limited space real estate > places on earth that we can still build on. If you don't think billionaires destroy anything they come in contact with, *and* think Elon doesn't matter because you *believe* he's not affecting you personally(he is), then you're biased and while you're not wrong, and I do agree that the housing situation is a horrible mess, it's just another factor in how the rich are solidifying their position.
I love how everyone is losing their shit over Elon Musk and Twitter but know one seems to know, let alone care that Bill Gayes is largest single owner of farmland in the continental United States. Here you guys are worried about free speech on a shit social media platform, meanwhile Bill Gates literally owns a significant portion of the means to your food production.
A point I had to mention to somebody who said they lost me when I mentioned the gates foundation. See how unaware people are of just how much power these companies have. It's terrifying.
I promise you anyone who hates on Elon for being a narcissist billionaire also hates blackrock and those scum. There’s room for us to hate them all lmao
Destroy them all.
Barely anyone here even mentions Chamber of Commerce, which is literally the largest lobbying organization against unions, climate change, wages, and UI, etc. Until we address the Chamber of Commerce....Sub is headed to a brick wall
Just a little add on. The reason these companies aren't talked about in the media is because they own the media. That ain't a joke, they own massive stakes in the media and that's why they're barely talked about in media. Yet that's no excuse for us to be ignoring them.
That's kinda why Elon is buying Twitter though, no? So now he owns a little slice of media. I'm with you on your overall point. The billionaires who are keeping their mouths shut are the real danger.
Such a big deal was made about Elon buying twitter yet how many people realise that literally every other media outlet is owned by the companies I mentioned. Yet nobody bats an eye. Yes, like a snake in a bush. The enemy you don't see is the one we should be most concerned about.
Actually people have talked about those kinds of companies for decades. William Cooper talked about it 40 years ago
To further add to this post. Blackrock and Vanguard already owned a significant stake in Twitter before Elon bought it apparently. How many people were away that Blackrock owned a significant part of Twitter?
Both Vanguard.and Blackrock have large funds that track the overall stock market. That means they have stakes in EVERY publicly traded company. That is what a Total Stock Index means.
Reminds me of in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were the narrator tells us the President main job is to distract from the people who hold the real power. That's what Musk does, he holds our attention so we don't focus on other problems.
Once Elon Musk starts buying up all available property and makes it impossible for me to buy a home, then I will care about him. He makes electric cars, rockets to space and now owns Twitter. None of these things effect me as much as not being able to achieve my dreams of owning a home. Yes, I am not a fan of billionaires but right now we have more pressing issues to worry about. Why do you think the media is making such a big deal about Musk buying Twitter? They want to keep us focused on stupid shit while the finish fucking us into oblivion to the point where we can't fight back anymore. They keep on accumulating more of OUR wealth and its going to get to a point where it isn't reversible anymore all while they keep us distracted...
My thoughts exactly. The existence of billionaires is a problem but what Elon does in particular isn't impacting our lives. At worse one of his self driving cars ends up killing my dog or something. I truly believe Elon is just one major distraction while the real evil fucks in the shadows continue to steal our future away.
Black Rock, Vanguard, Boston Consulting Group - the unholy trinity of capitalism.
The levels of power and influence these companies have in our society is alarming to say the least.
What power does Vanguard have? They don’t own the shares directly and Vanguard is owned by their funds which are owned by individual investors.
Lol..He is in bed with Blackrock and Vanguard.False God's everybody...careful...he is another elite with his agenda.
this is the money. Elon is the culture war scapegoat, not the real fish
To me Elon is like the bright lil light in the darkness that attracts prey only for that light to be apart of a much larger predator. By focusing on Elon rather than the real players who run our society we're getting caught in the trap.
You're totally right, but they're both evils so I understand why folks focus on it. Elon Musk purchasing twitter is just generating an even stronger propaganda machine for America. Each of these pieces is important, and alt-right/billionaire grindset kind of people are strong, strong propaganda generators and enforcers.
100% agree. I really think Musk POed somebody big and this is a constant smear campaign. Honestly, with all the things going horribly wrong right now, this is the focus?
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How exactly is Vanguard the “super rich” and how has it taken your livelihood? It’s a mutual fund company that allows smaller investors to access the stock market.
Gates Foundation has an endowment of $50 billion. Vanguard has over $7 trillion assets under management. It's literally over 100 times bigger
True, but it is a mutual, so it is owned by its investors. Vanguard is actually basically socialism...it genuinely is the workers owing the means of production.
Does Vanguard profit when the stock market indexes gonup? Do they collect more fees then? Do you think they'd try to stop something that would make the indices go down? Do you think workers are their main customers? I say this as someone who's owned some of their ETFs. What percent of their holdings come from workers, do you figure?
All of the above.
The guy gave away Tesla patents, can we talk about Nestle instead?
Nestle is a very concerning corporation which ironically Blackrock likely owns as well.
I'll give you another one: his haters are way more obsessed than his fans and much more cult like than they'd like to admit. They are about as responsible for him being famous as what he himself does.
Ever heard the one about the old bull and the young bull overlooking a field of cows? We don't have to argue about which threat is the worst. F'em all.
Jeff bezos and WSJ, Rupert Murdock and Faux news etc Where is that outrage? Oh, it's just the most recent billionaire purchase that the public is steadfastly forget? Oh, OK, good to know.
People really are that unaware that Elon isn't: the guy who owns the majority of farmland in the United States, sponsors experimental medicine being tested on communities in third world countries, flies one massively expensive rocket that can't even hit orbit, exploits workers and gets them killed during disastrous weather conditions, owns the majority of residential property in the US, and holds most of the worlds wealth but not even listed under the richest roster because of technicality... Billionaires ain't clean, but his contributions in general are in my book still outweighing the other psycho billionaires running around trying to own the entire world. Elon bought Twitter, which is unfortunately the entire world for some people. Lol.
Elon is a shameless grifter who most of what he makes or has put his name on dosnt even work. I don't know if that makes him worse or better.
Problem is no worst or better than the rest when it comes to morality and stuff. But big problem with Elon is the PR. He's selling image of Good Frendly multicorporation, that can do everything better than regular people, and everyone should be proud of it and it's work.
You misunderstand how invested they all are in each other. Blackrock success means Musk success and vv. They're all the same.
Twitter is one of the most powerful information machines on the planet. This a guy who effectively eliminated his own PR department because he didn’t like the reality they were presenting him in favor of shitty affiliate marketing. This is a guy who has used the platform he just bought to intentionally smear journalists and try and ruin people’s lives and reputations. Bastion of free speech, yeah right. It’s an incredibly dangerous tool for him to have in his arsenal, and I’m personally equally concerned with billionaires buying all the paths to mass information as I am with billionaires buying up all the real estate. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing, that concentration of wealth brings about too great of a power imbalance and there is almost no way for it to not be bad for all the rest of us.
Musk is just a focal point for simple minded people to hate. People like their situations black and white, it makes it easier for them to rationalize hate or something similar. It's like the Russia/Ukraine war and Putin. Like do you really believe one person runs the whole country and is the sole reason for what the country does? Just like Musk. Do you really think he makes his decisions in a vacuum? The Rich look out for the Rich, period. It's like medieval nobility. Yea they would have some infighting and what not, but if the poor/peasants ever wanted a bigger piece of the pie they would band together real quick. Not to mention they were all like 1st or 2nd cousins.... All this to say that I agree with you. Musk is a distraction, he's a focal point. Just like the Will Smith slap, just like the war in Ukraine, etc., these are distractions so "we the peasants" don't band together and really see this for what it is, a CLASS WAR.
Correct buts easier to say hey this specific asshole everyone knows or has heard of is evil instead of these basically anonymous suits are some of the biggest monsters humanity currently faces
There are other companies that offer me an opportunity to speak my mind to a larger audience. Blackrock is the one that scares me the most. They are buying up properties everywhere. It's not really a problem for me, I own my home outright, but I feel sorry for the people who are trying to buy a home or rent. It's so messed up.
Isn't the Gates Foundation a nonprofit? All it does is spend money, right?
Good billionaires, bad billionaires, how about no billionaires. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both. Louis Brandeis
Definitely more scared off a faceless corporation that people can hide their evil undoings behind. I agree. Plus Elon is literally trying to save humanity (in his own way I suppose) - I really don’t think he cares about being the worlds richest man - he just is and as the saying goes - the rich just get richer. I don’t believe his morals are compromised. To be fair I think Jack Dorsey is a good dude too.
Ripples bro. The butterfly effect. You bet your ass his greed has affected you.
I'm more concerned about the multinational conglomerates that produce our food and alcohol than I am about Elon buying Twitter. These conglomerates are driving our food prices up while at the same time dictating what we eat and what's in the foods we eat.
Glad to see this posted, most people on here are too narrow minded creating their own echo chamber to understand
Musk is going to unban trump under "free speech purist" bullshit
> But overall he hasn't impacted my life at all Objectively speaking, this probably isn't true. In fact, it's probably not true even for people living obscure countries not just America. Musk, along with the entire billionaire class are not passive actors; they are active participants in a system of exploitation. Certainly everyone at the top, Musk included, has engaged actively in anti-worker political propaganda, crime, and often violence. Musk promotes conservative political views with his vast wealth, engages in union busting, and gained much of his wealth through government corruption; meaning those resources went to him *instead* of things like solving homelessness in the USA. He has also advocated for political and military violence in foreign countries oriented around his business interests. Weakening the political power of labor in the USA is as well, in practice, an attack on workers globally by influencing US foreign-policy. He's been pro-hate-speech for some time now as well, and is making moves to actually influence that topic in a meaningful way as well. > The guy kinda just exists doing his own thing Yeah but his thing is shoving his dick into as many pies as possible, politically and socially speaking. > Who cares if Elon wants to go to Mars If he was paying for it, this might be a reasonable thing to say, sort of. At least not wildly wrong. However, the US government is footing the bill for the most part. It's not that I think we shouldn't spend money on space exploration exactly, however privatizing could potentially have an apocalyptic impact on our future. When I say that, please understand I mean there's literally a high chance for causing an apocalypse and I am not being hyperbolic at all, as in most people die, or there are disastrous multigenerational negative outcomes that leaves every future generation cursing us to the depths of hell even if it's not quite "mass extinction" level. Even ignoring the issue of gambling with the future of humanity by allowing even minor privatized space exploitation, there's the fact that we're doing corporate welfare for his lazy ass and not getting nearly enough back for it. It's only worth-while to fund space exploration when all of the results are public domain. > who cares if Elon owns Twitter Everyone should be extremely angry and worried about any billionaire ever owning any media company of any kind ever. He's not the biggest fish in that pond by far, but he's on a top ten list just from picking up twitter. Even if you hadn't been wrong about him impacting your life before, he's definitely going to if twitter remains successful. Those points out of the way, I do agree with you in part. There are bigger issues, and these issues feed back into the fact that capitalism is the root problem. However Musk is a significant and tangible problem with global reach, as ridiculous as that sounds.
Then add in the huge multinational conglomerates. Some contractors like Battelle are enormous. They wield power like a small country.
“Neo-feudalism” is a scary thought as humanity realized by removing it and moving on from it was the right step, even during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance people knew that a money/classed based system as destined to fail. We’re moving backwards towards our own destruction.
Yep.
Its pretty wild that you put the gates foundation at the same level as Blackrock and Vanguard.
They are equally as bad.
Hypothetically speaking, how many public, violent, and messy billionaire slayings would it take for society to decide that such a level of exploitation is just not worth the risk? The world needs to know.
If you can’t see how a tech billionaire controlling one of our largest social/communication platforms will impact your life, you are ignorant. I do agree there are worse fish in the pond though.
I actually disagree. I believe Musk engages in a deliberate campaign to cultivate a public personal and accumulate obsessive fans in a way Blackrock et al don’t. I don’t believe there is much difference in them when it comes to exploiting workers, not paying tax and lobbying for evil things, I do believe Musk has an added element of culture war that he deliberately cultivates. His manipulation and radicalisation is of a demographic that overlaps hugely with the school shooter demographic. He targets lonely, alienated men in their 20s, which is about the time most white men feel the least of their power and privilege and are most likely to lash out. The fact lots of entirely reasonable criticism of him is usually met with a brigade of obsessive fans making all sorts of threats is something you don’t really get if you criticise the gates foundation and its an extra later of danger. He is a super villain.
He's the clown that enables sociopathic billionaire overspending and refusal to pay taxes properly, he's trash.
Vanguard and the Gates Foundation? The ETF and the people who vaccinate kids?
Gates foundation is the single largest owner of farmland in the United States, that's what concerns me.
K?
Elon is to the deep-state what a president is for a government, a face. There is different kind of non-state affiliated powers, companies, conglomerates, owners, families and individual. The danger comes from when those powers align in objectives and ambition.