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devil’s advocate: "actually, if the factory owner disappeared, the factory wouldn’t be able to run because there would be nobody to replace the roof after it caved in; i held off on repairing it for 3 years to buy a vacation home but that’s not important.’
Nuhuh I’d be celebrating hard
Don’t have to imagine it. It’s literally what happened during the COVID lockdown.
The billionaire parasites were nowhere to be seen - they even disappeared off our tv’s. They became irrelevant overnight, while everybody scould easily see for themselves who it really was that made our societies tick.
They did not appreciate that at all.
“Imagine waking up tomorrow and every billionaire vanished.”
I imagine this almost every night. It’s called a “dream.”
It’s good to have dreams.
I typically tell it with a less drastic story / time frame. Send the CEO on a month vacation vs sending all the workers on a month vacation, and then see what has the biggest impact on the company.
I wish we get to make the first outcome real.
We all do
Maybe we will be lucky to see it in our life…
Who is “we all”? Unfortunately there’s still plenty of people that side with their oppressors.
People who regularly post here
But maybe we’d also realise that the majority of work done is just callisthenic activity to enrich a tiny minority of freeloaders, and we could reorganise society around sharing expediency and creating leisure and creative time?
That would be Star Trek communism, we can’t have that. We gotta live in the Star Wars prequels instead.
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A bunch of companies would start acting really weird as multi-millionaire board members get into knife fights over corporate control.
Some of them would become billionaires if they wrangle control.
So billionaires are really just the symptom, the entire system is the cause. Leave the system in place and your symptoms come back almost immediately.
Even if these companies somehow magically, within the realm of imagination were to split up or disappear and it’s just small to medium sized businesses who are left, capital would inevitably concentrate back again. The billionaire narrative is beyond ass istg
I disagree that the “billionaire narrative is ass” because it does help to unite people in the moment, however you’re right that billionaires are a symptom and not the cause.
The issue is not just the capitalist system in the west, it’s the fact that the overarching system of the world is capitalist, and capitalism operates by rewarding maximization of profit (by means of exploitation) with concentration of power.
So while the billionaires are a symptom rather than a cause, demonizing them helps to turn working class people – a lot of whom lack the education or context to understand the systemic issues creating billionaires – against the concept of concentration of power as reward.
At least, in my opinion, anyway.
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In what way does the working class benefit from the anti-billionaire narrative, assuming that we live in an imaginary world where their goals are realized and reforms are put into place (which have no chance of happening in our world)? Who benefits from this if not nation states arming themselves for upcoming imperialist war or medium sized capitalists absorbing the company splits?
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This narrative isn’t even being spearheaded by “the working class”, but progressive bourgeois standing to gain for it via either opportunism or the aforementioned capital absorption/takeover. Workers aren’t some goycattle that you need to tell who the enemy is and bam, you suddenly have class consciousness, that’s how the world works only in fiction.
My answer is in my initial comment and I don’t wish to elaborate, I am not emotionally attached to this opinion enough to defend it further.
I believe you have good reason to think that narrative is ass, I just disagree with you (for personal, idealist/optimist reasons that likely won’t change your mind), and I’m okay with that as I don’t think you believing that is causing any issues.
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Bug infestations of your house sometimes reoccur as well. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exterminate them though. You just got to keep doing periodically. That’s part of Home Maintenance. Exterminating billionaires periodically is part of society maintenance.
mfs would rather do fucking human sacrifices than read marx
We can do both.
If infestations are the analogy we are using, I’d use mold infestation as an example.
When you get black mold on your wall, what do you do? Do you replace the drywall and wait until it comes back to replace the drywall again, or do you figure out what is causing the mold (ie. The source of the moisture) so you can get rid of it for good?
Like yeah sure replacing the drywall will make it look nice, but it won’t be long before it comes back with a vengeance because the cause never left.
Expecting later generations to follow our rules is how we got here.
I think its simply adorable that you think human greed can be “fixed”. But no, like some bug infestations there are times when shit goes bad and you have to deal with it periodically. There are not always magical one time solutions to everything.
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You think greed is not inherent? That is a hell of an opinion. Truly difficult to Fathom how you came to it. Considering there are just mountains of evidence otherwise.
The overall problem is human nature. Greed is part of that nature and has been so for millennium. That’s simply undeniable. Through the Ages through every human society through every human economic system it rears its ugly head every time. It’s not new. It’s not specific to the current world. Denying that is simply childish. Thinking you can fix that is simply childish.
Some things take constant work and constant vigilance to fight. Magic solutions don’t exist. Any system you create that doesn’t account for these factors and doesn’t have consistent safeguards is destined to fail.
True, if every billionaire vanished then literally nothing would change, workers would still be forced to participate in wage labor for their survival and be exploited!
And we can’t seem to convince people to use this power even for their own best interest.
But who would own everything? Liberals cant think.
They believe they can build some sort of heaven, if they just kill ALL the poor.
Imagine that.
Depending on how/where we vanish to, I could go either way.
Most workers wouldn’t be going to work. Most of them would be out of a job instantly. This is because most billionaires operate on leverage, or loans against their stocks and have low cash high weath. When they die the bill is due, and the buyers would dry up in the market causing a dealty spiral as margin calls start coming in.
This is the difference between cash and wealth.
At the executive top the power vacuums will cause some to go absolutely insane. Their is a lot of potential wealth to conquer here.
The speed of information matters a lot here, a good amount of time will be needed to settle most things post-death.
Short term for the majority of people, little will change, tomorrows contractor job is either signed or not. Management isn’t going to sink the company the instant leadership gets confused.
Over time some melt/split/mutate/survive or end. As is the natural lifecycle of companies.
All that doesn’t matter in the end.
The work the workers are doing still needs doing, so everyone can eat, sleep with a roof over them, have healthcare, etc.
Some things may change on papers, ownerships, bank accounts, lots of stuff that doesn’t really matter.
The work still needs done, so the workers will be doing it.
Not if there isn’t the money to pay them
Right you’re going to stop eating, using water, living in a shelter, wearing clothes all because the current businesses are gone? People have ‘worked’ for millenia longer than capitalism has existed. We work in order to live.
Your right they have, but that isn’t the point of the post. The post implies everyone would just go on as normal. But this isn’t the case, it would be very different.
Ahh yes because the only way to motivate people is with money. Nevermind the fact that moneyless ancient civilizations existed in the past
Which ones?
The Indus valley civilization is a good example. It was just as technologically advanced as the roman empire despite not having money or a ruler.
