tax them until they learn to mind their own business
90% wealth tax is needed
Anyone with over 10 million dollars in wealth should be legally classified as a dragon and anyone stealing from their hoard shall not be punishable under the law.
Not so fun fact: The absolute richest dragons in all of fantasy, excluding Smaug, only have a net worth of several hundred million dollars. A Red Elder Wyrm will have, on average, around 2.5-3 million gold pieces of wealth, with an absolute maximum of 5 million gold pieces. That means that the absolute greediest, and richest type of dragon, by far, only has between 100,000 to 500,000 oz worth of gold.
Smaug being the absolute outlier because he had somewhere between 5 to 10 billion dollars worth of gold.
Now if you are wondering why I’m making a big deal about this, it is because 500,000 oz of gold is only worth about 1.1 billion US dollars. But that is the absolute outlier of the greediest type of dragon that there is. Still only looking at Chaotic Evil Red Elder Wyrms, the average would only be about 3.5 million gold pieces, or a mere 350,000 oz of gold. That’s only about $850,000,000 and that is just the most average of the absolute greediest manefestations of greed that our limited minds could imagine. Most dragons would be absolutely fine with between $1,000,000 to $10,000,000. The literal manefestations of greed don’t need more than $10,000,000 according to every treasure table.
Those people that have more than 100 million dollars have already passed the greed alignment chart into Chaotic Evil. They are damn near caricatures of dragons at this point.
My favorite is always the Egyptian god deciding to save the equivalent of $10,000 usd every day and never spend a single penny of it back in 10,000 BC and they still don’t have as much money as Jeff Bozos.
I believe that the normal person can imagine themselves as a dragonslayer far more easily than a godslayer. A dragonslayer just needs a sword, shield, set of armor, and an unbreakable will. A godslayer needs to be able to turn the entirety of their target, including the things that don’t exist on any Universe Plane, or Prime Material Plane, into a black hole.
These modern “unassailable” individuals that constitute global fifedoms in and of themselves are merely dragons. They absolutely can be defeated. They aren’t the invincible gods that they attempt to claim to be.
Edit: umm, what Egyptian god? They had a lot of them.
Sounds like a Set thing to do. Real prideful and blows up in his face.
Fair enough, I could see Ra or Anubis doing the same, based on your description of “real prideful and having the whole thing blow up in his face.” Certainly sounds like most of the exploits of all three of them.
Free press in the USA? LOL, it becomes more and more difficult every time a US oligarch buys a news outlet.
Majority Report, Some More News. I suppose the on the other side of the aisle it would be Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro.
There is still some of the fourth estate left that hasn’t been bought by oligarchs, it’s just not exactly effective on the leftward side of the overton window.
Breaking Points is up and coming. But all these shows still rely on Youtube which can pull the plug at any moment.
Isn’t the Daily Wire funded by oil barons? I wouldn’t put them in the same category as MR which is entirely funded by their viewers and a handful of sponsors.
Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, in his own tweet on the news wrote, “The first step towards fascism is when the free press cowers in fear.”
I don’t know if this is the free press cowering, or the free press being bought out by rich people. Either way, it’s some bullshit.
Private ownership of a news outlet breaks every definition of “free” in “free press”.
A “free press” no longer exists.
Eh… no? Most free press is privately owned. Just not by billionaires who influence the content.
When Bozos bought it, this was the exact concern, because there is no ethical billionaire. I’m pretty sure he promised to not interfere with the reporting or content. Turned out to be another lying, selfish asshole with more money than he can ever spend… Who could have predicted that (besides everyone)?
So government owned news is better?
When the billionaires who own the media and the highest level of government are in bed together so long as the government continues to tailor it’s policies to ensure that the wealthy stay wealthy, then the line is so blurred it might as well not exist.
Maybe non-profit would be best. Incentives to encourage good journalism, but not trying to raise the bottom line every year, chopping costs and spamming mass amounts of AI garbage because I’d bet 100 shitty articles is worth more than 1 good article for their bottom line.
Easy access links to the journalists other works, peer reviews from other non-profit and about me profiles can also help people discern bias.
I’m no expert though, so I’m sure someone has tried it and found making money is better for their paychecks
What if it already exists, but you, like many others, don’t read it and instead continue to passively consume the very media you’re complaining about? Making better journalism doesn’t mean multiple generations of people hooked on social-media-feed dopamine hits will read it.
I’m subbed to my local NPR’s daily top news stories. Highly recommend folks in the US look to see if their local station has a similar program or find the closest one.
Free press is your uncle’s Facebook rants
“The most consequential election in our country, a choice between Fascism and Democracy, and you sit out? Cowards. Unethical, fearful cowards,” wrote one reader.
Haha, yep.
Honestly don’t know what’s worse. People who don’t vote or people who vote 3rd party in protest.
You are worse than both, because you’re insulting them which in turn undermines your own goals.
“Hahahaha don’t you see that by being mildly mean to those sitting idle while fascism takes hold you were in fact just as bad?”
That’s how you sound.
Your comment would have more weight if we lived in a country with parliamentary or ranked choice elections. But we don’t.
Oh man the first 3 words got me excited.
Pervert :)
Where are the conspiracy theorists when there is actually something going on? I guess they stand back and stand by…
NGL, I had to reread the headline because my brain got too excited.
Not for nothing but what would even happen if someone like Bezos got caught red-handed killing someone on twitch.
I don’t think very much. Free shipping to come in before 10am is just too good to pass up.
Sigh
Canceled my friday.
Oh Jeffrey… that’s not how you’re aupposed to run a newspaper.
Wow, a hugely wealthy oligarchical capitalist facilitating the rise of fascism?
How completely unpredictable, with no historical precedent whatsoever!
Who could have possibly expected this?!
Some real bald-headed behavior right here.
The motto of the Post is literally “Democracy dies in Darkness”, and it was adopted immediately after Trump was elected. It is deliberately positioned as pro-Democrat and anti Trump. I didn’t have a high esteem of Bezos, but I am still disappointed.
Nobody else finds this ominous? Besos was not exactly Trumps friend. Why is he being a bitch now? What does he know what’s changed
If trump actually…shudder…wins, he could do as he’s said and bring down the fascist military hammer on any type of dissidents. These billionaire ghouls don’t care what happens to the country or world, they just care about their hoard.
I don’t know about you, but I get this feeling there is a massive coordinated campaign between the monied interests behind the scenes. The Republican party is unpopular, by a lot. Voters are super pissed off about abortion, and it’s consistently been a losing issue for the GOP that they can’t help but double down on. Donald Trump is a criminal that a not-insignificant portion of the population think should be in prison. SCOTUS is openly corrupt, Kamala pulled in over a billion dollars last quarter, while Trump’s small-dollar donations have all but dried up.
Yes, the wealthy typically support the GOP, but like… why this election are they going so hard for Trump? If Kamala appoints a competent AG, there’s a very real chance Musk gets hit with election interference charges. Bezos had to know that this was going to lose WaPo subs, because the right doesn’t trust WaPo thanks to years of distrust sown by Trump so there was no way this wasn’t going to cause a financial hit. Ditto for the LA Times. So just… why? The whole vibe of the thing just feels off.
Edit: also not to mention the praising Hitler thing, the number of his former staff who are endorsing Harris, the number of former and current members of the GOP who are endorsing Harris, the fact that he’s been adjudicated as a rapist, his obvious sundowning, his “enemies within” remarks, wanting to send the military after his perceived enemies, his desire to see Israel completely obliterate what’s left of Palestine…
Money is stronger than any ethics or morals billionaires pretend to have
Certainly not Prescott Bush!
Man… that’s one of the things that seems like a conspiracy theory to a great many people, but just actually is true.
Dude literally got caught doing massive amounts of money laundering for literal Nazis during WW2 and by all rights should have been convicted of treason.
Its like how most people don’t know that IBM machines enabled the Germans to tabulate and keep track of the holocaust, that their machines spit out the UIDs that were tattooed onto the victims at the death camps…
… I think that ‘War is a Racket’ by Smedley Butler really needs to be added to the basic K-12 curriculum alongside 1984 and Brave New World…
But oh oops, the Republicans already destroyed our education systems, nevermind.
And definitely not Woodrow Wilson!
How much money do these fuckers need before they are content enough to not rat fuck American democracy so they can eek out a few percent more on their billions?
Not until they are the god king.
Capitalism eventually turns into feudalism.
No, capitalism is feudalism with loot boxes! Because I could win the lottery.
… The answer is infinity.
Capitalism requires constant growth, constant extraction, constant return in investment, constant tendency toward monopolies and wealth disparity until you end up with a neo feudalistic caste society.
You can either attempt to restrain and regulate the system, which we are currently doing a rather poor job of, overthrow the system, which is nigh impossible given the precarity of the average prole, or you can just watch as we head closer and closer to… some kind of hybrid of the handmaids tale and elysium.
… Or, maybe, escape to a slightly less insane foreign country, but you’re gonna need a lot of money or a very lucrative skill set as an employee to do that as anything other than an illegal immigrant.
You know, I always wondered where the professionals ended up in Elysium. Like there are the medical professionals taking care of the earthlings, but the life saving machines are in Elysium so they aren’t needed up there.
But like, what about the software folks? Like there’s an epic shit ton of software going on in that movie that just kind of gets handwaved.
Passification is handled by robots and crazy humans. Other than the one executive who comes down, where are his direct reports? There is no way he was interested in the factory management, that would be a middle management job. And then what about accountants? Researchers designing the tech on Elysium?
It never really made a whole lot of sense that Elysium was just the rich. They can’t just “get” everything they want up there, it had to come from earth.
How much does a single round of ammunition cost these days?
7.62 x 51mm goes for around a dollar a round.
5.56 x 45mm is about 50 cents.
Jesus that’s a lot more than I would have expected.
I’m sure its Obama’s fault, somehow.
Well yeah, he had the audacity to be black, which scared bubba and jimbo so much they had to buy a year’s salary worth of bullets before ObAmA tAkEs ThEiR gUnS
Also, crickets when Trump said he’d take the guns and worry about the courts afterwards.
It was already teetering but Sandy Hook is what pretty much locked permanently high ammo prices
The guy that “gifted” millions to political commentators from CNN tries to influence politics? No way!
The world is full of surprises, my friend.
Sigh.
Canceled my subscription.
Just spoke to my parents. Uninterrupted subscribers since '73.
I called them right after canceling my own subscription and they’d already canceled theirs.
I hope Bezos is happy losing 51-year patrons of his paper.
Look, that’s honestly quite sad and very telling of the way things are, but I audibly snorted at the idea of Jeff Bezos noticing his income slightly lower this week, panicking, scrambling to find The Borbendorfs’ payment. A single tear wells up, but he wipes it away frantically. Never let them see. Never let them know how it hurts.
Yes, and that’s exactly the point, isn’t it?
There are some areas of business that are still built on trust and personal relationships and people trying to right by each other so they can each support their families.
But that’s not the case in modern politics or tech. It doesn’t matter if you have a relationship dating back decades. It’s inconsequential to a billionaire who’s earning a margin on an all the goods - and increasing share of which are brazenly counterfeit - that he sells globally.
Bezos doesn’t care about you, or me, or my aged parents. It’s not only that he doesn’t care about us, but instead that the billionaire class in general doesn’t care about anything besides contingencies to maximize profits and mitigate losses, real-world consequences be damned.
He will never notice any of us. It will not meaningfully affect his paycheck. It is up to each of us, including you, to determine whether to construct meaning in a symbolic act of protest, if an effectual act of protest is no longer an option.
I know. I know. I’m already a converted vegetarian or “bad at it vegan”. I’m spending a fortune on an EV car payment. My electricity is from a wind farm. I’m off all the socials. I’ve been recycling properly for decades and they tell me it was pointless. I’m getting pretty tired of personal responsibility. Can we do the guillotines now? I can’t make the first move. I’ve got kids and a mortgage. Start rounding them up and I can do some small part there too.
Has this f*ing idiot never heard of the Streisand Effect? The fact that they broke a decades long tradition to do this makes a louder thump than their endorsement would have.
Louder to people who know who they’re voting for already
Quieter to people on the fence
Subscription cancelled.
WaPo or Amazon?
WaPo for now. Audible, Prime Video ad-free, Amazon Photos, and Kindle Unlimited after dinner. I don’t use any of those subscriptions but they were on autopilot. Jeff’s cowardice made me look and now (shortly) they are gone.
What is wapo
Short for WAshington POst (a US newspaper/website)
Ask Cardi B.
Also, cancel your prime subscriptions you cowards!
Anyone who’s still using Amazon and wants to keep democracy is drowning in cognitive dissonance. Amazon is a bigger threat to decent lives for non-millionaires than any single politician, even granting that Trump is a nightmare.
Laaaaaaazyyyyyyyy
I certainly much hope he has to justify that decision to a jury and later a deity
