More than just a place to sleep; a place to call your own. And every place I've rented did not feel like my own; most corporate rental contracts make it very clear that this is their property, don't you dare make it feel like home, you only get to temporarily reside there by the grace of their good will (and by paying out your nose, ears, eyes, and ass for the privilege).
Not because the capital spared from denied meals (or production thereof) are going directly towards yachts, but because the capitalist mode of production requires the threat of starvation to force us into unfavourable compensation for our labour.
Really, we could easily do both at this point (and more), but since greed knows no limits, there is also no limit to what pain the capitalist class will impose on us in order to extract surplus value.
We already produce enough food for a billion more people than what exists, but still around a billion live in starvation to deter the rest of us.
Well, billionaires should not exist. But ending world hunger takes way more than just money. There is enough food already, it's just not evenly distributed. And even in areas where we send aid, local power plays and corruption prevent the fair distribution. Ending world hunger is a hugely complex issue, unfortunately. Of course I'm not saying we shouldn't try or try different approaches. It's just not as simple as saying "feeding all hungry people costs x money, and some billionaire could pay for that"
From all developers honestly but just from indies would be great considering they already have it in their contract that the % goes down after X$ of sales (which benefits larger devs).
Valve makes enough money to pay their employees more than the competition while also having surplus to have tons of side projects that will lead to nothing and making the boss a billionaire... I don't mind the first two, but that last bit means money coming out of our pockets and going towards buying yachts...
(Disclaimer: I hate all billionaires, this applies to all platforms, we overpay for games [and most other things] in general because there's billionaires at the top of the creation/distribution chain)
Bezos needed to de-construct a bridge in the Netherlands because his new build yacht wouldn't go through. Fokker paid for it too, probably a fraction of that floating monstrosity. We did not like it one bit but the city of Rotterdam pulled their pants down and bended over.
It's a historic railroad bridge that has not been used for a while, steel construction, and it has been taken apart and put together many times before, sometimes for maintenance. IIRC the current mayor promised the people not to do it again, and then came Bezos, and then they didn't take it apart, they installed the yacht's masts downstream instead.
The core issue is that it actually is impossible to maintain full democracy under capitalism. Even under perfect direct democracy with no lobbies and full representation those with the means to promote their voice louder will do so.
And if you have big money (which some will, because the more money you already have, the easier it becomes to hoard even more), you can fund projects that will have to promote you in return, skewing the voting process.
In reality though, political lobbying, corruption, etc. are omnipresent, and extremely hard to combat, because it's in the logic of capitalism to accumulate wealth at all costs, legal or otherwise.
Now, I'm not saying socialist societies are totally devoid of corruption and self-interest, but they at least have mechanisms in place to curb it.
Capitalism is not aimed at increasing people's wellbeing, it's aimed at pursuing profit, and people's wellbeing is fundamentally secondary. If putting people in worse conditions increases profits, this will eventually be done. Socialism, on the other hand, declares people's equality and wellbeing as the core priorities. Resources should be spent in a way that benefits most people.
Well then explain to me why the biggest capitalist system in the world, the USA, can feed the vast majority of people in their borders. No one here lives with food scarcity… right? Surely they don’t throw a ton of food away either. And homelessness shouldn’t be an issue either with this incredible system. Right?
I'm a fan of the cap them at 500million, then donate a park with a statue of them saying "Capitalism Winner" or some shit. All further profits go to making sure people aren't starving or living in the streets.
Addendum: 500million is a completely arbitrary number.
I've seen this episode, at first after the revolution there's three full plates of food. The party is doing well in power, then they consolidate power, the food portions get smaller as party elites get richer and more powerful.
Eventually it's just three plastic replicas of food, as they acknowledge everyone eats differently. Eventually it's just a badge or picture of the plates of food. By that time class based Capitalism has been restarted by the new party oligarchs, they even have more control and oversight than the current Capitalists.
What I mean is, you can't "should" us to a new and better system. You have to fully understand the current one, its weaknesses and strengths and the minds/views/motivations of every class and type in it before you can come up with something that is entirely and peacefully transition motivated, and has a better option to transition to... What's more the whole journey has to appeal to human nature and satisfy some if not all those needs... Even if you don't personally share all those needs... And you have to be realistic about such.
Rules for Rulers comes as close as I've seen on this:
Cool, glad it got resolved so simply and neatly, good job everyone! 👍
P.S remember when the Black Panthers had to enforce the right to have a free breakfast program, by patrolling the streets with guns? They we're Maoist by the way (Maoism dictates using the community to set up community services). Glad things are so much simpler now. Operating on kind comments, thoughts and prayers 🙏
You think that there aren't people who might need a Smartphone for work or medical emergencies? That is a non-zero number, so no. However should we have everyone's base needs met before others get past a certain point before luxury goods? Yes. Should we be able to do that now AND have luxury goods? Also Yes. Is it alright for people to have a Billion Dollars before that? Definitely No.
This probably does apply to smart phones, TV, consumer computers. Its hard to look at socialism and answer the question of what would it look like but at a guess: planned obsolescence would be out the window. No one is upgrading to an ai powered refrigerator because their old one is broke. No one is buying the newest smart phone because they're older model died(Hyperbole), Yet we live in a system of yearly releases of similar tech that we mindlessly consume. This consumption is a by product of the capitalist system. Purely manufactured to make money.
So in my imagined full communist world. We have phone. Phones that last longer, they are geared to be easily upgraded, dissembleable and actually future proofed unlike what we have now.