The rich don't care about the poor.
They don't see the poor as human enough to hate.
They live in separate bubbles, go to different schools, live in guard gated places, vacation at places only they can afford. By design, the wealthy are segregated from us, and are taught not to empathize with their livestock.
That's all anyone outside their class are to them, livestock. Management livestock, laborer livestock, homeless (capitalist scarecrows) livestock. Just levels of livestock.
Honestly I think the sociopathy of market capitalism makes it worse, yes worse, than crimes of hatred.
At least someone who hurts or kills you for who you are cares enough about your existence enough to want to hurt you and revel in your pain.
A wealthy capitalist will feed a thousand children lead or deny a thousand claims for necessary surgeries(topical!), and pay the fine if there's one at all without so much as a glance at your name. A nameless speed bump on the road to GLORIOUS PROFIT!
It's just business after all 🤑
The banality of evil certainly wasn't invented by Nazis and it definitely didn't end with them
Honestly I think the sociopathy of market capitalism makes it worse, yes worse, than crimes of hatred.
At least someone who hurts or kills you for who you are cares enough about your existence enough to want to hurt you and revel in your pain.
Forgive me for not finding that comforting.
I think the road from hatred to empathy is far shorter than the road from cold sociopathy to empathy.
At least with hatred, the person lifts their head to see you when they hurt you, they're passionate about your existence, just in the wrong way. The capitalist presses a button and yawns hurting people in volume, the victims never given a passing thought.
I don't think it was meant to be.
One person has emotions. The other is a soulless robot begging for his off button to be punched.
As someone who's been in circles where the question of why we value homeless people and don't just remove them to make room for people who actually contribute, why yes this is surprisingly real
Besides, from the perspective of the rich, the homeless contribute a deterrent. It's a billboard warning you that you'll be homeless if you stop smiling at work.
They don't want us to die; they just don't care about us at all. As long as there are enough of us around being obedient little slaves.
They're heavily invested in AI because they think "enough of us" is a number that can be reduced substantially.
While their goonies work to outlaw abortion and birth control and divorce. What a neat combo pack.
Rich people don't want people to die .... they want poor to stay alive and live as their obedient slaves that serve them.
they want poor who can work to stay alive and live as their obedient slaves that serve them.
Minor clarification.
Those who can't work are just as important. They're made to suffer as an example to make sure those who can work never stop working.
If I were rich, I'd live in a place where the roof didn't leak. 😊
Being able to afford checks notes a house and a yard isn't "rich," it's something every generation before you was able to do with ease, and it was taken from you.
I take issue with the second panel. The rich don't want poor people to die. They want poor people to shut up and just quietly live in servitude to the wants and desires of the rich.
rich people need poor people to exist
I grew up wealthy. Not generational wealth wealthy, but my parents were in the 1 percent.
About half of rich people just don't care about poor people. Like, they don't even register them. They built entire systems to separate them for poor people. When they are essentially forced to interact with them (basically low skilled manual jobs for which there is no choice but to hire someone low wage), they just act like they don't exist.
The other half are the most progressive people you'll ever meet. Like they'll talk about how capitalism is a failed system, ACAB, and queer rights. However it'll all be from the perspective of someone who just doesn't truly understand the struggles of an average person. They still self isolate, and they don't truly understand how the world works outside their bubble.
I'm a bit of an aberration. Both of my parents were children of immigrants. They didn't grow up poor or anything, but the value set I was raised with was a bit more down to earth, even if my lifestyle wasn't.
I'm American but moved to the UK about 14 years ago. The elite over here are just different. They genuinely think that people are just livestock, and they're the all knowing farmers that keep the farm running. Without the farmers the whole operation would fall apart. It's a "you need us. If left to your own devices you'd destroy yourselves" kind of thing. Honestly, it's not that far from "the children yern for the mines" kind of thing.
In the US, my impression still is that anyone could become that wealthy elite, and the elite know it. They think they're at the top because they're the best. But they're scared someone better is already out there. What worries them is knowing what someone would do to bring them down - because they know they'd do the same.
It really is a different vibe between the two sides of the Atlantic. One side thinks they were chosen by God. The other side knows they're just the most vicious monkey in the free for all.
To be fair that isn't entirely wrong. I would in no way say I was raised in the "elites", but my parents got into the one percent from the middle class. Even among the .1 %, there's a significant minority of people who are more or less outsiders to their social class.
I think you got the "anyone can become elite" aspect down, but the fear aspect incorrect. Once you reach a certain level of wealth it's incredibly hard to squander without extreme incompetence. The average rich person isn't afraid of being replaced. At the same time there is a lot of elitism with the underlying premise of "I did this, why can't you".
Sidenote a ton of talk about social justice 100 percent comes from people who grew up in families where money worries were minimal. The reason there's a disproportionate focus on identity politics is because that's the only struggle a lot of these people have ever known. The reason why the minority outreach ends up falling flat is because most people involved in these initiatives are white people taking cues off the one minority they know, and that minority often is a decently odd duck themselves. The reason why so much of economic discussion devolves into "capitalism bad" is because these people don't have so little firsthand knowledge that they can't really describe nuance.
Of course there's also Old Money in the US too. My parents went to Ivy leagues so they are friends with a few. They largely tend to project elitism via strict social standards that go beyond wealth. The problem is that an almost comical amount of them seem to burn themselves out in three generations. It kinda kills the mystique when the mark of a "true elite" is hiding your fuckup son at a summer home on cape cod that looks super regal, but lacks a lot of modern amenities and is sort of falling apart.
If i were rich I'd build a 3 story chinese buffet.
Ground floor is the restaurant. 2nd floor is employee housing. 3rd floor is for me to live in.
I would pay well, provide housing, and die within 5 years weighing roughly half a ton. Leaving everything I own to my employees.
Tbh sounds like a good deal for all involved. I wish the best of luck to you.
The real truth here is that this is the same guy
In which god damn world I would want my slaves to die?
They don't want the slaves to die, just the ones that aren't slaves, like the homeless which probably "use" more economic value than they create.
the poors ate his dog 😢🙏
Speaking as someone who grew up fortunate (and some shit happened)... Huge houses suck. They're like leeches that suck your time away, and I wouldn't buy one if I had a trillion dollar net worth.
Big house neighborhoods suck too.
The meme's about a huge yard for a dog, the size of the house is not specified ;)
ITT: a lot of over-thinking what akshually motivates the rich. The cartoon is humorously capturing the essence of their impact. It's not meant to be a treatise.
I think people who criticize the wealthy forget that if any one of them was in their place, the world wouldn’t be different. Humans are self-preserving, through and through.
Individuals aren’t to blame, and are not responsible for shitty systems unless they’re leaders of that system. Someone being wealthy doesn’t make them a leader or anyone in power to effect change.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with amassing wealth or status, what’s wrong is the sociopathy of denying that people are born into different lives because of random luck, and so need some equitable means for survival, like housing access, education and healthcare. That’s a bare minimum.
The universe is literally fucking endless, why the hell are we crying about resources or scarcity. The only scarce resource is luck and the will to do something to make sense of things for people who start out with bad luck.
As far as we know, humans are the most cognitively advanced life form in the observable universe. We need to do better than whatever we’re up to now, jfc.
This assumes hoarding wealth isn't detrimental to society which it is, and doesn't recognize the scale differences of millions, billions, and hundreds of billions. Yes, if you have billions of dollars and aren't using your insanely vast power responsibly to address systemic issues that wealth could be used to address otherwise then you individually are at fault.
Your takes are shit and I'm going to shit on each one of them.
"If you were rich you'd do the same thing humans are self preserving" is a shit take. Humans try to help other humans, that's a survival mechanism which turned into a moral code. Rich people do not help anyone. All the charities are write offs on taxes and if it didn't benefit them they wouldn't do it. Feel free to prove me wrong by giving me a few million.
"Rich people can't make changes" is a shit take. They literally help write the laws. Sometimes directly write the laws. They are usually above the law, get punished less, and even the same punishments affect them to a lesser scale. If a person can't make change with a lot of money power and influence, who tf do you think does?
"There's nothing wrong with hoarding wealth but we should make sure everyone has enough to survive" uh yeah why do you think people need help to survive my guy? Could it be people hoarding wealth?
"The universe is endless we have infinate resources" first of all, the universe isn't endless. Secondly, it's a matter of actually getting to them. Do you know how fucking expensive it is to just get to orbit, much less the moon? How are we going to mine Jupiter when we can't even get to it? How would we even get to it if we destroy our finite resources on this planet permanently before that? And how is letting a scant few people own all of those resources helpful?
Don't bother answering those questions, because frankly, I don't want to smell the boot on your breath.
lol
