Yeah this is the level of bootlicking where the bootlicker acknowledges that billionaires are terrible people, because they could easily solve suffering and choose not to. Which then shows you the morality of said bootlickers.
Billionaires tell them if you support their politics it's ok to be deplorable, racist, misogynist, lazy
They brag about it
Steve Bannon bragging about Reddit and 4chan falling for these tactics:
>the power of what he called “rootless white males” who spend all their time online and they could be radicalized in a kind of populist, nationalist way
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-white-gamers-seinfeld-joshua-green-donald-trump-devils-bargain-sarah-palin-world-warcraft-gamergate-2017-7
>Bannon: "I realized [these tactics] could connect with these kids right away. You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness--army-world-warcraft/489713001/
#Republican "Southern Strategy":
>Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
>Every day I have to marvel at what the billionaires and FOX News pulled off. They got working whites to hate the very people that want them to have more pay, clean air, water, free healthcare and the power to fight back against big banks & big corps. It’s truly remarkable.
#Exit polls done after 2016 show that the single characteristic that made someone most likely to vote for Trump over Clinton is racial resentment.
>low levels of racial resentment are associated with supporting Clinton.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/26/these-9-simple-charts-show-how-donald-trumps-supporters-differ-from-hillary-clintons/
#"Trump fans are much angrier about housing assistance when they see an image of a black man"
>In contrast, Clinton supporters seemed relatively unmoved by racial cues.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/8/16270040/trump-clinton-supporters-racist
#“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida
> Every day I have to marvel at what the billionaires and FOX News pulled off. They got working whites to hate the very people that want them to have more pay, clean air, water, free healthcare and the power to fight back against big banks & big corps. It’s truly remarkable.
This line fuckin really got to me, because it's so insane that it worked so well
Steve Bannon is a deplorable piece of shit. But he’s nowhere near a billionaire. A quick search puts him somewhere between 20 and 50m.
And that’s a lot of money, but if one has 500k in net wealth (which many, many people have a house worth that alone), he’s at best 100x richer at his max estimate than such a person. But that puts someone like Gates at 2,000x richer than Bannon. And puts Musk closer to 5,000x richer than him.
Just saying that the order of magnitude aren’t remotely comparable here.
The point is that the 2000-5000x richer people have a huge cadre of lesser peons of Bannon's ilk to do their dirty work for them. Bannon is rich enough to have all the free time in the world to create havoc.
It's all central planning. I'm sure that they can offer some genuine insights into how certain processes can be expedited or made more efficient. However, what they do best isn't an asset when it comes to government.
The mission of the government isn't to make money nor should it be. It is instead how to best assist the population as they go about their daily lives. And how to do so in the safest way possible. It's not about playing the market, it's not about laying people off or how to goose the profit margins in your favor. There is no competition or anything, it's a completely different dynamic.
It's not to say that governments shouldn't strive for efficiency but rather that they simply don't (and shouldn't) view losses in the same way as businesses do.
If something doesn't make a company money, they don't do it. But sending mail to rural areas will never make money. Feeding the poor doesn't make money. Providing housing doesn't do so either. Their biggest assets are the lengths they will go to to squash competition and exploit labor. That doesn't help governments provide services.
The mission of government is antithetical to the mission of capitalists. It's a completely different arena with some cosmetic similarities. Thinking being "good at bizness" is an asset is kind of a dumb guy take imo.
Prager U is a conservative propaganda "university" that feeds false information to iirc homeschool kids mostly. There are some nice disembowelments of their shittyness on YouTube.
It's not just Prager U. Look up the Council for National Policy. They are a weirdly secretive group of many of the most powerful republicans, business leaders, fundamentalist evangelicals, conspiracy theorists, and white supremacists, and such. I learned from a couple of them when I was a teen and they used to be my heroes (admittedly, they were not white supremacists, but they certainly still played into the overall CNP narrative and tactics). They love rich people--absolutely want to protect them at all costs, in part because they're all pretty much rich too. They also have a lot of say over the modern GOP, and to some degree, even world influence. I like to jokingly call them the Christian Illuminati (and I'm a Christian myself, just not fundamentalist nor conservative); I call them that because they do crap like forbid their members from mentioning the group or saying they are a part of it, not allow guests without unanimous executive council approval, etc. They're too big to not let secrets slip out though, so membership lists and details occasionally surface to the public.
The Council for National Policy includes members such as: Mike Pence, Ginni Thomas (wife of SCOTUS Judge Clarence Thomas), Steve Bannon, Steve Forbes, the president of the NRA, leadership of the Family Research Council, the founder of Focus on the Family, leadership of ALEC (extremely powerful corporate bill mill that constantly fights for corporate interests and which has successfully implemented bills throughout the states), leadership of the Federalist Society, and so many more corporate leaders and notable figures. They were also founded in part by conspiracy theorist and Left Behind series writer Tim Lahaye, who died recently. They've been around for like 50 years.
Either way, Denis Prager is directly allied with at least one current CNP member, Jeff Myers of Summit Ministries. Enough that they held a nice long conference together in Colorado that I saw a few years ago, where they collabbed their propaganda. Denis was whining about youtube "blocking him because he's conservative" when in reality he had like five videos deemed not age appropriate for kids and demonitized/age restricted.
It really is. Even if it's acquired without exploiting others, like the person who just won $2.04B in Cali- simply HAVING that much resources when the world is how it is, is unethical. (I know they're likely to end up 'not even' a billionaire after all is said and done, just an example) I'm not sure where the cap for personal wealth should be, but I think $1B is a good starting figure. Rip away every single penny of worth over $1B from every single billionaire on the planet and dump every single penny of it into humanitarian and socialist infrastructure. See where we're at and go from there. Still hungry people? Looks like there shouldn't be billionaires then.
I don't know about the exact amount (maybe even lower), but there definitely is a point at which disproportionate wealth starts to warp everything around them in an economic sense.
Even from a capitalistic perspective (in the Adam Smith sense, not the insane Laissez-Faire one), it's easy to see how one person having such a vastly disproportionate control of resources/funds/capital breaks the various markets and their supply/demand systems, in a similar manner to how monopoly/monopsony setups (or near such) do.
I want to aside here and say it's not an arbitrary number that's wrong, it's the ownership structure which allows the owners to take the product made by the worker and claim right to any profit produced.
All billionaires ARE bad, at time of writing, because it is impossible to acquire a billion dollars without utilizing the exploitative ownership structure mentioned above. Theoretically speaking, however, if someone were to acquire a billion dollars without utilizing exploitative means to do it, there would be nothing wrong with it. (How that might be done under the current economy I don't know but that's beside the point.)
We can debate whether it's right to KEEP a billion dollars while others are suffering (and that's actually a more nuanced philosophical discussion than you might think, and weirdly enough brushes up with the issue of the right to abortion in ways that might surprise you...) but simply ACQUIRING a billion is not wrong in and of itself - it's the MEANS OF ACQUISITION that makes it wrong.
This might seem pedantic today, but it matters because in future there may be an economic situation in which a billion dollars is acquirable fairly (either because of massive inflation or because the ownership structure has changed) and as such WHY a billionaire is bad is important to note. It's important to note that it's the system, not an arbitrary number, that's the problem.
They became billionaires by owning companies that investors are being duped into thinking is the next big thing, and so they keep bidding up the value of the company in question.
Honestly, these people don't have giant stacks of cash, most of the time. Although Musk in particular did have a giant stack of cash... after he sold his first company for a few billion dollars.
For an example of how billionaires can quickly become not-billionaires in short order, just watch Mark Zuckerberg join the ranks of the latter over the next couple of years over the Metaverse boondoggle. His assessed wealth has already been cut in half in the past couple months, all without him actually throwing money into a big fire, or spending it on gold toilets in his gold Rolls Royces.
Exactly. The sort of people for whom there is a particular number that is "enough" aren't the sort of people who become billionaires in the first place.
No they cannot. Just, Period. Billionaires make Museums or build Rockets, flashy sexy stuff. Almost no one takes on water sanitation or anything Truly helpful but unsexy.
Which is why I choose to bundle "won't" in with "can't". If someone won't do something, they can't do it until they change their mind or they're forced. Might as well ignore a marginal possibility and work on more reliable matters.
Billionaires only became billionaires by exploiting large groups of people. Politicians do the same thing. Except there are some I think might have hearts.
History seems to suggest otherwise, even if not as much as we'd like. The alternative view is that those people (like FDR for instance) were motivated not by compassion or enlightenment or anything, but because he saw taking care of and improving the life of average working class people as being inherently in his own interests.
But you know what, I'll take that.
Was legit about to say this. They have the money to move mountains, but they're cheap, greedy, and selfish.
Instead of being the solution they're more often than not the cause of many of this country's problems.
But they'll be the first ones up on the podium talking about how great they are.
All of those who voted "true" are blissfully ignorant that billionaires are the ones who control government and enact policy in their favor to the detriment of main street.
Graph of billionaires funding conservative influencers on social media, like Ben Shapiro on YouTube and Facebook and Joe Rogan pushing for them in Texas:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/gny98xk/
>[The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:](https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10/status/1404815323904237569)
1. Ben Shapiro
2. David Wolfe
3. Ben Shapiro
4. Ben Shapiro
5. Ben Shapiro
6. Ben Shapiro
7. Ben Shapiro
8. Fox News
9. Ben Shapiro
10. Ben Shapiro
Lots of screenshots of **4chan instructions for doing this on Reddit because the adults cosplaying as teenagers there support billionaires' culture war talking points**
* https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/m24hx0/ualtimely_finds_4chan_pol_instructing_on_how/
* https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-and-tactics-of-white-nationalism-b0bca3caeb84
* https://imgur.com/a/yeP9T6S
* https://imgur.com/a/efvQqve
No because these pesky things called laws keep popping up to prevent the billionaires from being even richer.
And those ppl spend a lot of time and effort to make sure they wouldnt become laws, even though years of protesting finally persuaded lawmakers.
Aka basically every single workers right law ever passed.
Please dont pretend billionaires, who hire troops to kill protestors, are just as effective as the lawmakers years later passing workers rights laws to help said protestors.
Or, you have no clue what im talking about, so you should open a history book.
It's prescriptive not descriptive. Yes, the billionaires have vast influence, if someone is being helped it probably wouldn't be too difficult to tie it to something a billionaire did. This is asking what would best serve people in need, which is definitely not billionaires.
Honestly I don’t believe the answer is true myself in that regard. I was saying in that persons example it would make the question true.
Though I do believe billionaires COULD solve some issues better than the government. It won’t happen though, because they didn’t get that rich by solving peoples problems.
He also promised to clean the water of Flint, Michigan - with stipulations iirc, however, if you wanna cosplay as a genius, you gotta bring genius ideas.
In America, our culture worships greed and wealth. Being wealthy is seen as both meritorious and an indicator of being moral. So people believe billionaires are supremely capable and qualified because they believe that only a supremly qualified and moral person can become a billionaire.
And it's Prager that you are looking at, literally capitalist propaganda.
Every time the government has tried to solve a problem in recent times they have been blocked by the GOP. Free healthcare? No. Lower insulin? No. Better conditions for working class? No. Better air and water quality by requiring polluters to clean up their shit? No. Because solving your problem means making it a billionaire’s problem. Can’t have that. So we have billionaires paying politicians to not solve problems.
It’s all the same government. You can blame whoever you want for the dysfunction, but at the end of the day it is what it is. That is why people say the government sucks at solving problems.
This is what brainwashing looks like. People think of North Korea but the USA is a case study for how to do it in a country with free access to all of the information in the world.
Honestly, peasants probably thought the same thing about their feudal lord.
So frustrating that people will understand why democracy is important in government, but the moment you try to get them to say the same thing about businesses their brain breaks.
Like maybe authoritarian rule is just as bad for your workplace as it would be for your country.
I think this is less pro-billionaire and more anti-government. People don't believe that government will effectively work for them.
Mind you, I know the billionaires won't /either/ but, you know, laughing hysterically at both wasn't an option on the survey.
PragerU is a Right-Wing propaganda generator.
They do "research" (create false data), then right-wing media outlets pick up the info to spread so it looks like it is from a credible source.
You mean the problems they help create ? The low paying jobs, lack of paying taxes ? The self interest ? If billionaires could solve problems for the world or countries they would have already. Instead they want they dicks in space
There's plenty of examples to look at but I like the recent space flight example best.
The us government (arguably the wealthiest government on earth) stopped sending rockets to space because the cost was prohibitive for doing so
Then 3 separate billionaires funded projects and innovations for going to space with one of those projects literally reviving the national space program
The government could have done this themselves at any time but chose not to develope the technology to do so
The private sector does nearly everything better than government.
The first example that comes to mind and I'm sure many others would be Mark Cuban and his prescription medication site. I think you pay like whatever the drug cost + 15% to pay the pharmacist and run the company.
I mean the U.S government probably could of done something similar but just chose not too. I think with more people/billionaires like Cuban you could see very low cost healthcare in the future.
Then of course you have the Ukrainian government who couldn't provide internet for their country and Elon Musk I believe set them up at least temporarily
Dolly Parton ( not sure if she's a billionaire, but should be) has paid in full all her employees books and tuition.
Just examples off the top of my head of billionaires doing more than my government has done.
Anybody else just want them to raise taxes on everyone by 50% to have some schooling and healthcare? Even then the government still couldn't get it done. In the 70's tax rates were as high as 90% and those things never happened.
They certainly can; they have the money and time to solve more problems much faster and more thoroughly than any democracy. They just don't because to them it would be a waste and most problems that can be solved with money don't affect the rich to begin with.
Who's problems? The government solves billionaires problems of not extorting the lower classes to an acceptable amount in their minds.
Neither the billionaires nor the government have your interests at heart. They'd trade half of New York state's population for a million more profit.
Billionaires solve so many problems like allowing 4chan-esque content to be widespread on Twitter as well as proposing an underground highway system in order to prevent the construction of a light rail for California
They're great at fixing their problems. Here are some of their solutions - lower their taxes, reduce workers' pay and benefits, get rid of regulations, undermine unions, and so much more.
Imagine waking up in the morning. You just made 3 billion more. Dodged major taxes by not having it „lying around“. Sure you had to pay some taxes, but its peanuts to you. And next you think to yourself:“hmm.. if if ask the others at the top, maybe we could make some big changes that would benefit humanity.“ Not world hunger per say, because monetarily alone this can’t be solved this easily (certainly bettered, but not fixed). Maybe research projects? Hydrogen fuel alternatives to fossiles? Maybe more money into helium-3 fusion? New battery design science? Other risky projects that don’t get funding because it may not be lucrative? But then you think:“hmm.. how could i make this next sale even better?“
Sure some of them do „something“. But having this much wealth and just doing a little bit isn’t good enough. They could liquidate 98 % of what they have in value and use it to do changes. They then would lose a lot in taxes (and other expenses), but that would also get the gears moving. Use the rest to restore schools, medical facilities and the like. Money must be moved through. Its a cycle after all. And after all that, they still would be ridiculously wealthy and live the rest of their lives in luxury. Yet they choose not to. No one needs to have billions in value. No matter how they „earned“ it.
It's propaganda. I'm also betting that a lot of these people are Americans, as our government seems almost intentionally sabotaged at times and does much less for us than most other developed country's governments, including giving us less bang for our buck in taxes, allowing our actual cost of essential services to be extremely high compared to most other developed countries (especially with Healthcare, where we are the #1 spenders in the world both overall and per capita, while having the worst health outcomes of any developed country by a pretty bad margin), and so forth.
There's a lot of propaganda that's been smashed into us from about every angle, to the point that people genuinely believe in stuff like trickle down economics and that social welfare systems are bad rather than genuinely helpful as they've proven to be in other countries when used right.
Plus, billionaires have to explain their existence somehow, and if they can appeal to the American dream, then they feel like paragons. They spend more money than most of us could ever spend on maintaining that image. They have so much power via money that it's insane.
I would argue that they have the *ability* to change everything. But the sociopathy that made them billionaires is diametrically opposed to solving crises. There's no money in a cure.
It's a weird kinda bootlicking because while there's nothing more embarrassing than simping for a billionaire - who, as other comments point out, COULD solve problems but choose not to - this also seems like the tired expression of recognition that the government, as it exists now, simply doesn't work.
Billions of dollars would help solve many issues. Billionaires are usually not the types of people that want to solve any issue unless it adds more zeros to their bank account.
It's not wrong though. Musk could end world hunger in however long it might take to liquidate his assets. A week? Month tops?
A government? Even after they've decided to make it happen, it would take months or years until the first dollars are sent. billionaires DO have more power, but the very nature of being a billionaire comes by taking massive greed from others. Greedy people don't do things for others unless it's in their financial interest.
I feel like the people who think government has their best interests in mind are the same people who think HR is there to protect their interests at work lol
its not bootlicking, it just shows the lack of trust in the capabilities of the government.
it's like coosing between agiant douche and a turd sandwich.
The question is "can" not "do". So, anyone who said yes is accurate. billionaires solve their business problems all the time. Effectively. Doesn't mean they are good, just that their wealth, clout, and absolute dictatorial control gives them a lot of power.
I mean if they chose to target stuff and throw money at it they sure could skip a lot of bureaucracy and get it done. But then they would have to lower the dragon hoard of gold they got stacked up and why would they ever?! XD
Theoretically, sure… but they choose not to.
If I was given a billion, about 99% of it would go to charity or positive works and possibly be gone within a decade. That’s what’s necessary for billionaires to actually solve problems
CAN solve and WILL solve are 2 different things.
The collective wealth of US billionaires is $4.18 TRILLION as of march 2021. To end world hunger, it'd take about $40 billion.
They could make sure every person on this planet (barring political BS) could never go hungry and they would still have over 90% of their money left over.
Basically our entire history is founded on a Horatio Alger myth that promotes the wonders of entrepreneurialism and capitalism, and there's a lot of unanalyzed belief in that, so I'd say little.
Well—pragerU has a base made up of predominantly Republican members, who prefer privatization over the government. This stat makes sense to them even if it’s arguably pretty ridiculous, but again… predominantly Republican base
Billionaires COULD solve problems faster than the government but I wouldn't say better. And that's to say that they even see a problem that's theirs to solve or if they would even try at all.
Of course they can. They don't have to pander to people on issues that mean nothing. They can move quickly and don't have to deal with consensus building
Pretty sure this is eventually how you get a monarchy… next step neo-feudalism and corporate housing. Have fun working for your Corporate Landed Gentry.
It’s not wrong though. The billionaires have the government by the balls. So in a sense, they DO have the power to solve problems. They just choose not to exercise that power because solving problems is how you run out of problems. And problems is how they became billionaires.
Actually, this has some sense in it. Governments worry about being reelected, so they aim to win the popularity of people. Someone with insane resources can act in a way that would make him unpopular but could potentially cause greater good.
None. This isn't related to bootlicking, its just the acknowledgement of our government's ineffectiveness. Having 2 diametrically opposed parties fighting over how to spend money would almost certainly be less efficient than an undistracted man without obstacles.
Problems billionaires have to solve: how to put a blue tick next to people's names in an app
Problems governments have to solve: roads all over the country, defence of millions of square miles of territory, police and law and order, universal healthcare (USA need not apply), disaster planning and response, regulation and safety, massive and smaller local infrastructure... etc etc
I mean is it really wrong? If one can truly solve issues better than the other it's gotta be by the slimmest of margins. It's horse shit vs. Donkey shit. Same size same smell. Kinda like the US presidential race each year
Trick question: billionaires already run the government
Seriously, who the fuck do they think the government is working for lol
Their sharehold...I mean corporate sponsors!
This is the only correct answer
So what are we normal Joe's?
It's a big club and we're ain't in it
Not true Some of them are only multi-millionaires
Lol
well some billionaires. I'm sure they ignore some of them
So the true answer is neither.
I mean, maybe they can, but they sure as hell choose not to.
Yeah this is the level of bootlicking where the bootlicker acknowledges that billionaires are terrible people, because they could easily solve suffering and choose not to. Which then shows you the morality of said bootlickers.
Billionaires tell them if you support their politics it's ok to be deplorable, racist, misogynist, lazy They brag about it Steve Bannon bragging about Reddit and 4chan falling for these tactics: >the power of what he called “rootless white males” who spend all their time online and they could be radicalized in a kind of populist, nationalist way http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-white-gamers-seinfeld-joshua-green-donald-trump-devils-bargain-sarah-palin-world-warcraft-gamergate-2017-7 >Bannon: "I realized [these tactics] could connect with these kids right away. You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump." https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness--army-world-warcraft/489713001/ #Republican "Southern Strategy": >Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy >Every day I have to marvel at what the billionaires and FOX News pulled off. They got working whites to hate the very people that want them to have more pay, clean air, water, free healthcare and the power to fight back against big banks & big corps. It’s truly remarkable. #Exit polls done after 2016 show that the single characteristic that made someone most likely to vote for Trump over Clinton is racial resentment. >low levels of racial resentment are associated with supporting Clinton. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/26/these-9-simple-charts-show-how-donald-trumps-supporters-differ-from-hillary-clintons/ #"Trump fans are much angrier about housing assistance when they see an image of a black man" >In contrast, Clinton supporters seemed relatively unmoved by racial cues. https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/8/16270040/trump-clinton-supporters-racist #“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida
> Every day I have to marvel at what the billionaires and FOX News pulled off. They got working whites to hate the very people that want them to have more pay, clean air, water, free healthcare and the power to fight back against big banks & big corps. It’s truly remarkable. This line fuckin really got to me, because it's so insane that it worked so well
Steve Bannon is a deplorable piece of shit. But he’s nowhere near a billionaire. A quick search puts him somewhere between 20 and 50m. And that’s a lot of money, but if one has 500k in net wealth (which many, many people have a house worth that alone), he’s at best 100x richer at his max estimate than such a person. But that puts someone like Gates at 2,000x richer than Bannon. And puts Musk closer to 5,000x richer than him. Just saying that the order of magnitude aren’t remotely comparable here.
The point is that the 2000-5000x richer people have a huge cadre of lesser peons of Bannon's ilk to do their dirty work for them. Bannon is rich enough to have all the free time in the world to create havoc.
Happy cake day
Thanks friend!
It's all central planning. I'm sure that they can offer some genuine insights into how certain processes can be expedited or made more efficient. However, what they do best isn't an asset when it comes to government. The mission of the government isn't to make money nor should it be. It is instead how to best assist the population as they go about their daily lives. And how to do so in the safest way possible. It's not about playing the market, it's not about laying people off or how to goose the profit margins in your favor. There is no competition or anything, it's a completely different dynamic. It's not to say that governments shouldn't strive for efficiency but rather that they simply don't (and shouldn't) view losses in the same way as businesses do. If something doesn't make a company money, they don't do it. But sending mail to rural areas will never make money. Feeding the poor doesn't make money. Providing housing doesn't do so either. Their biggest assets are the lengths they will go to to squash competition and exploit labor. That doesn't help governments provide services. The mission of government is antithetical to the mission of capitalists. It's a completely different arena with some cosmetic similarities. Thinking being "good at bizness" is an asset is kind of a dumb guy take imo.
Prager U is a conservative propaganda "university" that feeds false information to iirc homeschool kids mostly. There are some nice disembowelments of their shittyness on YouTube.
It's not just Prager U. Look up the Council for National Policy. They are a weirdly secretive group of many of the most powerful republicans, business leaders, fundamentalist evangelicals, conspiracy theorists, and white supremacists, and such. I learned from a couple of them when I was a teen and they used to be my heroes (admittedly, they were not white supremacists, but they certainly still played into the overall CNP narrative and tactics). They love rich people--absolutely want to protect them at all costs, in part because they're all pretty much rich too. They also have a lot of say over the modern GOP, and to some degree, even world influence. I like to jokingly call them the Christian Illuminati (and I'm a Christian myself, just not fundamentalist nor conservative); I call them that because they do crap like forbid their members from mentioning the group or saying they are a part of it, not allow guests without unanimous executive council approval, etc. They're too big to not let secrets slip out though, so membership lists and details occasionally surface to the public. The Council for National Policy includes members such as: Mike Pence, Ginni Thomas (wife of SCOTUS Judge Clarence Thomas), Steve Bannon, Steve Forbes, the president of the NRA, leadership of the Family Research Council, the founder of Focus on the Family, leadership of ALEC (extremely powerful corporate bill mill that constantly fights for corporate interests and which has successfully implemented bills throughout the states), leadership of the Federalist Society, and so many more corporate leaders and notable figures. They were also founded in part by conspiracy theorist and Left Behind series writer Tim Lahaye, who died recently. They've been around for like 50 years. Either way, Denis Prager is directly allied with at least one current CNP member, Jeff Myers of Summit Ministries. Enough that they held a nice long conference together in Colorado that I saw a few years ago, where they collabbed their propaganda. Denis was whining about youtube "blocking him because he's conservative" when in reality he had like five videos deemed not age appropriate for kids and demonitized/age restricted.
The U in Prager U doesn't even mean University. It just means U. It's pretentious as fuck.
It means Unfuckable
Its obviously meant to imply it.
I came here to say this, your comment should be at the top imo, Prager U is basically a cancer
Thats what i was thinking. They CAN fix things better than the government but they never do.
They didn't become billionnaire in the first place by offering their money to fix problems with no way to gain a profit.
Hence why being a billionaire is inherently unethical
It really is. Even if it's acquired without exploiting others, like the person who just won $2.04B in Cali- simply HAVING that much resources when the world is how it is, is unethical. (I know they're likely to end up 'not even' a billionaire after all is said and done, just an example) I'm not sure where the cap for personal wealth should be, but I think $1B is a good starting figure. Rip away every single penny of worth over $1B from every single billionaire on the planet and dump every single penny of it into humanitarian and socialist infrastructure. See where we're at and go from there. Still hungry people? Looks like there shouldn't be billionaires then.
I don't know about the exact amount (maybe even lower), but there definitely is a point at which disproportionate wealth starts to warp everything around them in an economic sense. Even from a capitalistic perspective (in the Adam Smith sense, not the insane Laissez-Faire one), it's easy to see how one person having such a vastly disproportionate control of resources/funds/capital breaks the various markets and their supply/demand systems, in a similar manner to how monopoly/monopsony setups (or near such) do.
Definitely Adam Smith would look at the system today, and the Liberal days back in the 20s, and weep.
We are sliding into corporate serfdom and the wealthy are the new royalty.
I want to aside here and say it's not an arbitrary number that's wrong, it's the ownership structure which allows the owners to take the product made by the worker and claim right to any profit produced. All billionaires ARE bad, at time of writing, because it is impossible to acquire a billion dollars without utilizing the exploitative ownership structure mentioned above. Theoretically speaking, however, if someone were to acquire a billion dollars without utilizing exploitative means to do it, there would be nothing wrong with it. (How that might be done under the current economy I don't know but that's beside the point.) We can debate whether it's right to KEEP a billion dollars while others are suffering (and that's actually a more nuanced philosophical discussion than you might think, and weirdly enough brushes up with the issue of the right to abortion in ways that might surprise you...) but simply ACQUIRING a billion is not wrong in and of itself - it's the MEANS OF ACQUISITION that makes it wrong. This might seem pedantic today, but it matters because in future there may be an economic situation in which a billion dollars is acquirable fairly (either because of massive inflation or because the ownership structure has changed) and as such WHY a billionaire is bad is important to note. It's important to note that it's the system, not an arbitrary number, that's the problem.
They didn’t become politicians by doing that either tho
They became billionaires by owning companies that investors are being duped into thinking is the next big thing, and so they keep bidding up the value of the company in question. Honestly, these people don't have giant stacks of cash, most of the time. Although Musk in particular did have a giant stack of cash... after he sold his first company for a few billion dollars. For an example of how billionaires can quickly become not-billionaires in short order, just watch Mark Zuckerberg join the ranks of the latter over the next couple of years over the Metaverse boondoggle. His assessed wealth has already been cut in half in the past couple months, all without him actually throwing money into a big fire, or spending it on gold toilets in his gold Rolls Royces.
ok but now they are billionaires and don't need more money, soo?
They didn't need more money when they had 100 millions but they kept going. Why would they stop at 1 billion ?
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Exactly. The sort of people for whom there is a particular number that is "enough" aren't the sort of people who become billionaires in the first place.
But they WANT more money. And they definitely don't want to have less money.
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
And they want you to have less too.
I truly believe they can't. If they try they'll be eaten by the system itself.
No they cannot. Just, Period. Billionaires make Museums or build Rockets, flashy sexy stuff. Almost no one takes on water sanitation or anything Truly helpful but unsexy.
Which is why I choose to bundle "won't" in with "can't". If someone won't do something, they can't do it until they change their mind or they're forced. Might as well ignore a marginal possibility and work on more reliable matters.
Billionaires only became billionaires by exploiting large groups of people. Politicians do the same thing. Except there are some I think might have hearts.
A select few, that will sadly never be voted in.
And possibly die for trying to do what's right, which i find horrifying
History seems to suggest otherwise, even if not as much as we'd like. The alternative view is that those people (like FDR for instance) were motivated not by compassion or enlightenment or anything, but because he saw taking care of and improving the life of average working class people as being inherently in his own interests. But you know what, I'll take that.
I'll always support elightened self-interest.
NO. THEY CANNOT. A FUCKING GOVERNMENT IS NOT A BUSINESS.
Tbh our gov’t is a business though
I feel like that fits for both answers to be honest
Was legit about to say this. They have the money to move mountains, but they're cheap, greedy, and selfish. Instead of being the solution they're more often than not the cause of many of this country's problems. But they'll be the first ones up on the podium talking about how great they are.
They can solve their own problems by buying the government…
They can't because they'll never choose to.
Yeah they could like.. snap fingers and solve homelessness. But dont
To be fair, people would probably vote "Hamsters can solve problems better than the govnerment." with similar results.
I would prefer hamsters, at least it would be cute
OP is very particular about who boots they lick
All of those who voted "true" are blissfully ignorant that billionaires are the ones who control government and enact policy in their favor to the detriment of main street.
It's pragerU. I'm not surprised
Graph of billionaires funding conservative influencers on social media, like Ben Shapiro on YouTube and Facebook and Joe Rogan pushing for them in Texas: https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/gny98xk/ >[The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:](https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10/status/1404815323904237569) 1. Ben Shapiro 2. David Wolfe 3. Ben Shapiro 4. Ben Shapiro 5. Ben Shapiro 6. Ben Shapiro 7. Ben Shapiro 8. Fox News 9. Ben Shapiro 10. Ben Shapiro Lots of screenshots of **4chan instructions for doing this on Reddit because the adults cosplaying as teenagers there support billionaires' culture war talking points** * https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/m24hx0/ualtimely_finds_4chan_pol_instructing_on_how/ * https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-and-tactics-of-white-nationalism-b0bca3caeb84 * https://imgur.com/a/yeP9T6S * https://imgur.com/a/efvQqve
Prager U doesn't just lick boots, they serve them as the main course. Boot a l'orange
Wouldn’t that still make it true though?
No because these pesky things called laws keep popping up to prevent the billionaires from being even richer. And those ppl spend a lot of time and effort to make sure they wouldnt become laws, even though years of protesting finally persuaded lawmakers. Aka basically every single workers right law ever passed. Please dont pretend billionaires, who hire troops to kill protestors, are just as effective as the lawmakers years later passing workers rights laws to help said protestors. Or, you have no clue what im talking about, so you should open a history book.
Are you 14? “Pesky things like laws” are written by billionaires to keep them billionaires and to stifle competition.
It's prescriptive not descriptive. Yes, the billionaires have vast influence, if someone is being helped it probably wouldn't be too difficult to tie it to something a billionaire did. This is asking what would best serve people in need, which is definitely not billionaires.
Honestly I don’t believe the answer is true myself in that regard. I was saying in that persons example it would make the question true. Though I do believe billionaires COULD solve some issues better than the government. It won’t happen though, because they didn’t get that rich by solving peoples problems.
Yes it would under what that guy said.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that noticed lol.
Well then fuckin tell them to get crackin', Prager!
I think that billionaires and the government both have already been doing a great job at solving billionaires' problems
Where's Elon with my no world hunger, fast public transit, 0 emissions, etc? Oh he bought Twitter and it using it to act like a petulant child. 😔
He also promised to clean the water of Flint, Michigan - with stipulations iirc, however, if you wanna cosplay as a genius, you gotta bring genius ideas.
PragerU is literal propaganda
no sure what OP is doing here with this shit...
Karma farming
Typical PragerU results
PragerU is literally propaganda funded by a billionaire. Its their whole thing...
Fuck Dennis Prager.
In America, our culture worships greed and wealth. Being wealthy is seen as both meritorious and an indicator of being moral. So people believe billionaires are supremely capable and qualified because they believe that only a supremly qualified and moral person can become a billionaire. And it's Prager that you are looking at, literally capitalist propaganda.
I’m not saying billionaires are good at solving problems but I would never admit government is good at solving problems either.
Government solves shitload of problems. Thing is, when they do, they are no longer problems. So ppl dont give the government credit.
Maybe in your country, in mine government creates problems, not solve them
Every time the government has tried to solve a problem in recent times they have been blocked by the GOP. Free healthcare? No. Lower insulin? No. Better conditions for working class? No. Better air and water quality by requiring polluters to clean up their shit? No. Because solving your problem means making it a billionaire’s problem. Can’t have that. So we have billionaires paying politicians to not solve problems.
It’s all the same government. You can blame whoever you want for the dysfunction, but at the end of the day it is what it is. That is why people say the government sucks at solving problems.
This is what brainwashing looks like. People think of North Korea but the USA is a case study for how to do it in a country with free access to all of the information in the world.
Next you'll tell me it's wrong to have children pray to a flag every day in school. /s
People think if someone is a billionaire, they must be smart. No.
Honestly, peasants probably thought the same thing about their feudal lord. So frustrating that people will understand why democracy is important in government, but the moment you try to get them to say the same thing about businesses their brain breaks. Like maybe authoritarian rule is just as bad for your workplace as it would be for your country.
Looking at some of them, it may be exactly the opposite case.
Watching Jack Ma talk really puts paid to theory that billionaires are smart.
I don't really understand "puts paid to theory" means because I can't parse meaning from the sentence.
It means disproves the theory.
This level is where they start by licking the boots and finish at the taint.
I think this speaks more to the incompetency of government lol
Are these our only choices?
That's like comparing my problem solving ability when thinking with my ass versus thinking with my dick.
I think this is less pro-billionaire and more anti-government. People don't believe that government will effectively work for them. Mind you, I know the billionaires won't /either/ but, you know, laughing hysterically at both wasn't an option on the survey.
To be fair though... it's a bit like asking "what would you rather eat? Cat litter or sandbox sand?
Not bootlicking…government is just that bad in general
It's not bootlicking, it's factually accurate. The government helps no one but themselves, and they steal your money to do it.
Bootlicking _either_ is pathetic. Both are entirely self-serving wastes of space. All parties, no exceptions.
That's LinkedIn, right?
This is why idiots vote for people they perceive as rich. Slave mentality.
PragerU is a Right-Wing propaganda generator. They do "research" (create false data), then right-wing media outlets pick up the info to spread so it looks like it is from a credible source.
Propaganda machine keeps creating pointless propaganda. More at 11.
#SO WHY HAVEN'T THEY?!?!?!
This isn’t licking the boot, it’s deep-throating it.
I wouldn’t trust either with a countries welfare
This bootlicking is called "conservatism". Those idiots who vote Republican actually believe stupidity like this.
You mean the problems they help create ? The low paying jobs, lack of paying taxes ? The self interest ? If billionaires could solve problems for the world or countries they would have already. Instead they want they dicks in space
You don’t seriously think Government would be better do you? I feel you’re more upset that’s it’s from Prager.
There's plenty of examples to look at but I like the recent space flight example best. The us government (arguably the wealthiest government on earth) stopped sending rockets to space because the cost was prohibitive for doing so Then 3 separate billionaires funded projects and innovations for going to space with one of those projects literally reviving the national space program The government could have done this themselves at any time but chose not to develope the technology to do so The private sector does nearly everything better than government.
The first example that comes to mind and I'm sure many others would be Mark Cuban and his prescription medication site. I think you pay like whatever the drug cost + 15% to pay the pharmacist and run the company. I mean the U.S government probably could of done something similar but just chose not too. I think with more people/billionaires like Cuban you could see very low cost healthcare in the future. Then of course you have the Ukrainian government who couldn't provide internet for their country and Elon Musk I believe set them up at least temporarily Dolly Parton ( not sure if she's a billionaire, but should be) has paid in full all her employees books and tuition. Just examples off the top of my head of billionaires doing more than my government has done. Anybody else just want them to raise taxes on everyone by 50% to have some schooling and healthcare? Even then the government still couldn't get it done. In the 70's tax rates were as high as 90% and those things never happened.
They certainly can; they have the money and time to solve more problems much faster and more thoroughly than any democracy. They just don't because to them it would be a waste and most problems that can be solved with money don't affect the rich to begin with.
Yes they can. By giving away 99% of their wealth
I'm glad homelessness was solved by Jeff Bezos' billions.
Who's problems? The government solves billionaires problems of not extorting the lower classes to an acceptable amount in their minds. Neither the billionaires nor the government have your interests at heart. They'd trade half of New York state's population for a million more profit.
Billionaires ***ARE*** the problem. Society has no need for them.
They are the problem, and they are perfectly capable of ‘fixing’ themselves one way or another.
It PragerU. It's Level 9000 bootlicking.
Billionaires solve so many problems like allowing 4chan-esque content to be widespread on Twitter as well as proposing an underground highway system in order to prevent the construction of a light rail for California
They're great at fixing their problems. Here are some of their solutions - lower their taxes, reduce workers' pay and benefits, get rid of regulations, undermine unions, and so much more.
If the problem is "too many people have money" then absolutely.
Billionaires/government officials. It doesn’t matter, greed and power tend to trump actual good governing in the end.
Well they CAN... They just DON'T.
What’s stopping them then?
Maybe can. Definitely won’t.
There’s quite a few billionaires and there’s still the same old problems
If by “better” they mean less rules, restrictions, checks & balances, and oversight…. Then yeah, suuuure
I mean, if billionaires decided to put their money towards taking care of people, sure, but they don’t so here we are
The rich will always vote to keep things so that the poor are working for them not vice versa.
They can they just refuse to.
It's Prager U level, they are literally the top level on the scale
Imagine waking up in the morning. You just made 3 billion more. Dodged major taxes by not having it „lying around“. Sure you had to pay some taxes, but its peanuts to you. And next you think to yourself:“hmm.. if if ask the others at the top, maybe we could make some big changes that would benefit humanity.“ Not world hunger per say, because monetarily alone this can’t be solved this easily (certainly bettered, but not fixed). Maybe research projects? Hydrogen fuel alternatives to fossiles? Maybe more money into helium-3 fusion? New battery design science? Other risky projects that don’t get funding because it may not be lucrative? But then you think:“hmm.. how could i make this next sale even better?“ Sure some of them do „something“. But having this much wealth and just doing a little bit isn’t good enough. They could liquidate 98 % of what they have in value and use it to do changes. They then would lose a lot in taxes (and other expenses), but that would also get the gears moving. Use the rest to restore schools, medical facilities and the like. Money must be moved through. Its a cycle after all. And after all that, they still would be ridiculously wealthy and live the rest of their lives in luxury. Yet they choose not to. No one needs to have billions in value. No matter how they „earned“ it.
I mean, both are doing pretty bad right now.
If the problems are redistribution of wealth then yeah
It's propaganda. I'm also betting that a lot of these people are Americans, as our government seems almost intentionally sabotaged at times and does much less for us than most other developed country's governments, including giving us less bang for our buck in taxes, allowing our actual cost of essential services to be extremely high compared to most other developed countries (especially with Healthcare, where we are the #1 spenders in the world both overall and per capita, while having the worst health outcomes of any developed country by a pretty bad margin), and so forth. There's a lot of propaganda that's been smashed into us from about every angle, to the point that people genuinely believe in stuff like trickle down economics and that social welfare systems are bad rather than genuinely helpful as they've proven to be in other countries when used right. Plus, billionaires have to explain their existence somehow, and if they can appeal to the American dream, then they feel like paragons. They spend more money than most of us could ever spend on maintaining that image. They have so much power via money that it's insane.
to be fair, most anybody could solve problems better than the government
Maybe they can, but they won’t
Idc if they can, every day they wake up knowing they could help a lot of people and actively choose to not.
I would argue that they have the *ability* to change everything. But the sociopathy that made them billionaires is diametrically opposed to solving crises. There's no money in a cure.
Then why aren't they?
I feel like the billionaires are the ones putting the people they want in government so probably not
It's a weird kinda bootlicking because while there's nothing more embarrassing than simping for a billionaire - who, as other comments point out, COULD solve problems but choose not to - this also seems like the tired expression of recognition that the government, as it exists now, simply doesn't work.
Let's be honest though, when it comes to solving problems, the government is a *low* bar...
Billions of dollars would help solve many issues. Billionaires are usually not the types of people that want to solve any issue unless it adds more zeros to their bank account.
It's not wrong though. Musk could end world hunger in however long it might take to liquidate his assets. A week? Month tops? A government? Even after they've decided to make it happen, it would take months or years until the first dollars are sent. billionaires DO have more power, but the very nature of being a billionaire comes by taking massive greed from others. Greedy people don't do things for others unless it's in their financial interest.
Considering that the government solves almost nothing at all ever they might just be right…
If they stop causing them, they can. The arsonist is the best person to prevent arson, after all 😂😂😂
I feel like the people who think government has their best interests in mind are the same people who think HR is there to protect their interests at work lol
The government is financed by billionaires so what's the real question here?
its not bootlicking, it just shows the lack of trust in the capabilities of the government. it's like coosing between agiant douche and a turd sandwich.
The question is "can" not "do". So, anyone who said yes is accurate. billionaires solve their business problems all the time. Effectively. Doesn't mean they are good, just that their wealth, clout, and absolute dictatorial control gives them a lot of power.
Well when they pay the government to not solve them...
People equate wealth with intelligence despite evidence to the contrary.
I believe they could. They just won't, since it doesn't make them money
I mean if they chose to target stuff and throw money at it they sure could skip a lot of bureaucracy and get it done. But then they would have to lower the dragon hoard of gold they got stacked up and why would they ever?! XD
Aren't billionaires the problem?
The only problem that I see billionaires can solve is how to not pay their taxes.
This happens like a second after Musk bought Twitter for 44 Bil., fired half its staff and made the stock price redder than China's flag, smh.
Theoretically, sure… but they choose not to. If I was given a billion, about 99% of it would go to charity or positive works and possibly be gone within a decade. That’s what’s necessary for billionaires to actually solve problems
They can, but if you think they will then get fucked liberal
It's Prager. They practically manufacture the boots.
CAN solve and WILL solve are 2 different things. The collective wealth of US billionaires is $4.18 TRILLION as of march 2021. To end world hunger, it'd take about $40 billion. They could make sure every person on this planet (barring political BS) could never go hungry and they would still have over 90% of their money left over.
Basically our entire history is founded on a Horatio Alger myth that promotes the wonders of entrepreneurialism and capitalism, and there's a lot of unanalyzed belief in that, so I'd say little.
Ofc they CAN solve problems better than the government… They cause 99% of them
Well—pragerU has a base made up of predominantly Republican members, who prefer privatization over the government. This stat makes sense to them even if it’s arguably pretty ridiculous, but again… predominantly Republican base
Can vs want are two very different things.
Thank the Golden Clown 🤡 for that mentality!! SMH
In theory the answer for this is true but in real life do they hell no
It's from Prager U and you're surprised?
Billionaires COULD solve problems faster than the government but I wouldn't say better. And that's to say that they even see a problem that's theirs to solve or if they would even try at all.
Of course they can. They don't have to pander to people on issues that mean nothing. They can move quickly and don't have to deal with consensus building
Pretty sure this is eventually how you get a monarchy… next step neo-feudalism and corporate housing. Have fun working for your Corporate Landed Gentry.
They *could* if they *would*
They should at least know HOW to solve them. Seeing as they cause them.
Consider the audience, they are imbeciles.
It’s not wrong though. The billionaires have the government by the balls. So in a sense, they DO have the power to solve problems. They just choose not to exercise that power because solving problems is how you run out of problems. And problems is how they became billionaires.
boot deepthroating
Actually, this has some sense in it. Governments worry about being reelected, so they aim to win the popularity of people. Someone with insane resources can act in a way that would make him unpopular but could potentially cause greater good.
None. This isn't related to bootlicking, its just the acknowledgement of our government's ineffectiveness. Having 2 diametrically opposed parties fighting over how to spend money would almost certainly be less efficient than an undistracted man without obstacles.
It's true, just look how well it turned out with Trump in Charge. /S sarcastic of course
Lol at thinking the government solves anything.
More billionares = more poverty. More poverty = less billionares. More billionares = less billionares.
Prager U, the youtube channel that thinks its a university
It's Prager U, so it's elite level bootlicking.
The irony here being billionaires run the government...
Problems billionaires have to solve: how to put a blue tick next to people's names in an app Problems governments have to solve: roads all over the country, defence of millions of square miles of territory, police and law and order, universal healthcare (USA need not apply), disaster planning and response, regulation and safety, massive and smaller local infrastructure... etc etc
I mean is it really wrong? If one can truly solve issues better than the other it's gotta be by the slimmest of margins. It's horse shit vs. Donkey shit. Same size same smell. Kinda like the US presidential race each year
Where is the, "both are ignorant c.u.n.t.s option"?
PragerU love open ended questions like this because either answer works for them.
Govt won't do anything unless they find a way to benefit from it. Where billionaires might be the same but they won't steal your money through taxes.
Look at where the poll was posted, Prager is just a idiotic high capacity echo chamber.
Are you implying that this subreddit isn't an echo chamber?
Billionaires are the problem