The human species has essentially been transformed into a giant machine to generate profit for corporations.
Under capitalism, humanity exists to serve the interests of the corporation. We are all livestock; beasts of burden used to carry margin expansion forward from quarterly statement to quarterly statement. Enjoyment of life has no value other than the extent to which it can be used to increase the net worth of the shareholders.
That’s why everyone’s so unhappy. We’re not living with purpose. We’re not working together to build a better world and a better future, we’re just pulling levers to turn gears to make the arrow line go up on the graph in the conference room. It’s a hollow, pointless way for people to live.
It makes our whole culture vapid and soulless.
Crosspost from https://news.abolish.capital/post/56355
Not to this extent, but yeah, it’s almost like there should never be superwealthy to exist.
We need tax brackets that go up to 100%. If you own more than $100m in assets, everything above that should be taxed 100%. We need to remove the possibility for billionaires to exist. We also need to dissolve massive corporations by enforcing/expanding antitrust laws. Stop the concentration of wealth, in any form. There should be zero incentive to concentrate wealth in the first place, which could be achieved (at least, at first) with a significant amount of socialism infused into our current capitalist systems.
I really don’t see a need for a large having to have 100mn, and like dengism, can see allowing some capitalism to exist to jumpstart socialist production, but otherwise agree, sibling.
It’s more about allowing vestiges of the current system to exist to ease the transfer to a more equitable system. When systems are ended abruptly, it tends to have unforseen consequences. We need to treat society as the living construct that it is. It’s very ill right now, so we put it on life support by infusing some socialism, let it stabilize, then add more socialism until we have a system that is truly egalitarian.
I don’t think there’s an inherent problem with people having a (reasonably) large amount of wealth. We just need to make it so having that wealth doesn’t harm anyone else, or deter anyone else from gaining wealth. In other words, let money obsessed people have some money, just make it an amount that every human could achieve, if they wanted to, and make it kind of pointless by making sure every living being has the best quality of life possible, whether they pursue wealth or not. Like the Scandinavian model, we need a system that steers society towards altruism, community, and egalitarianism.
But… That’s like dengism with extra steps and money, if I understand either, correctly.
100 mn is not achievable by most, regardless of how hard they work. Assuming a 40 hour work week (which is too many hours, in my opinion), $100k/yr would require $48/hr pay rate. Deduct taxes at an assumed rate (say 30%) to cover cleaner infrastructure, education, health, clean water, social programs, how much is left? Even if we immediately nationalize all necessities for living, there are still expenses on both sides, bringing housing, water, food, education up to par, for example, on the government side, and travel, clothing (which is a necessity, in my estimation), pencils, books, computers, furniture, dishes, on the private side.
So it’s not going to be overnight, and with hours will be necessarily long, for a time. The current generations may never realize gains from our investments; but generations behind us may.
Nope. It’s social-democratic capitalism, or capitalism with massive guard rails. The emphasis is on guiding society to a more equitable default. We would need to prosecute all of the current billionaire class and their bought politicians and have a massive redistribution of wealth, in the form of reparations. People can choose how they want to live their lives from there. A soft reset.
I don’t think it’s wrong for people who want to lead organizations to have more wealth than others, there just needs to be limits to it. It should be illegal to exploit others in any way. You know; life, liberty, and justice for all.
Social democracy still stomps on the South/Asia/East. I’ll hard nope on that.
I don’t think you understand social democracy well enough. The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway all have social democracy. South Asia/East does not. Assuming you’re mostly referring to China, since you referenced dengism earlier, China is an authoritarian regime with a strict class system and unevenly regulated capitalism favoring the authoritarian class at the top. That is the opposite of social democracy.
Oh boy. Who told you that?
https://tankie.tube/w/5joHDUsFHLWkPXTEPQVW7B