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Comment on [META] Never change, lemmy.ml

FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I’m pretty sure “eat the rich” is not comparable to “kill 5 million Ukrainians.”

Well, that’s the thing, that’s actually almost exactly what happend. The Soviets basically labeled all the (relatively) wealthy farmers as class enemies and started deporting them en masse in order to seize their lands and turn them over to collectivized farming. The problem was that along with those farmers, they also got rid of the knowledge they had about how to work the land effectively, and as a result, the following harvests were increasingly poor, which is what caused the mass starvation.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor#Del…

The same thing happened during the Great Leap Forward in China.

And I’m also pretty sure ‘rich person’ is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.

Are you saying that because they went by income instead of by race, it technically wasn’t genocide, just mass murder? I’m not sure that makes it any better. Also, don’t forget that a lot of the poor people died as well, so it didn’t even help those it was supposed to benefit.

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FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Do you really think when people say “eat the rich” they mean “eat farmers?”

This is a ludicrous comparison. The top 1% of the world’s population causes the vast majority of problems. That is what people are talking about when they say “eat the rich.” Not millionaires, not even multimillionaires. Billionaires. People whose entire wealth was built on the exploitation of others.

Getting rid of them will definitely not “get rid of the knowledge” because the only knowledge they have is how to buy the right financial advisors.

Do you really think if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all died today that the world would be worse off?

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- FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Do you really think when people say “eat the rich” they mean “eat farmers?”
  
  No, I brought that up because that’s what historically happened. And in light of that, continuing to use a phrase like that at least seems to be somewhat poor in taste. But that’s besides the point.
  
  Do you really think if Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all died today that the world would be worse off?
  
  I honestly don’t know, but what makes you think the world would be better off if they were dead? Unless they had pledged all their money to charity (which I believe Gates has actually done), what would their deaths really change for you and I?
  
  Getting rid of them will definitely not “get rid of the knowledge” because the only knowledge they have is how to buy the right financial advisors.
  
  That might be true for people who inherited all of their wealth, but if that’s what you’re trying to say, you picked some piss poor examples, because all three of them weren’t born anywhere near as wealthy as they are now and took some considerable risks in order to get there, and they all created literally tens, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process, most of them rather well paid (though we can certainly argue about Amazon).
  
  Just to be perfectly clear, I’m by no means saying that things are okay the way they are, and that all we have to do is let rich people continue to do whatever they want. All I’m saying is that things aren’t as simple as we want them to be and the easy solution is rarely the correct one.
  
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  - FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    what makes you think the world would be better off if they were dead?
    
    They provide no value and pay almost no taxes. Without them hoarding their money, it would get circulated.
    
    All billionaires are money hoarders. They have more money than they can possibly spend in a single lifetime. And if you think their charities are truly benevolent, you should look into them a little deeper.
    
    Please, though, name a multibillionaire who is essential. Who the world will not be as good if they won’t be around. Just one. One billionaire that provides value to more than shareholders.
    
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    FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    This isn’t about whether or not billionaires are essential, but whether getting rid of them would substantially change anything.
    
    Assume, for instance, that we make owning (or earning) more than a billion dollars (per year) illegal by putting a 100% tax on every dollar afterwards. Then billionaires would simply move most of their assets abroad or find some other loophole that lets them avoid this, like setting up a bunch of smaller companies that each have $999 million. Unless the whole world follows suit, it won’t change anything, and that’s not going to happen because any country that’s willing to give them a safe haven would make a killing by doing so.
    
    Also, if this DID happen, what makes you think they’d continue to work trying to make more money and not just spend more time playing golf instead? Whatever revenue you’d expect in taxes would simply not occur because once there’s no more incentive to earn more, there’s no more incentive to produce. Ironically, it would probably lead to far more quasi-billionaires because other multi-millionaires would likely pick up the slack where the big guys throw the towel, but I don’t see how regular people would benefit.
    
    But perhaps you can explain what you have in mind?
    
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AccountMaker@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Nowhere in your link is it said that “knowledge and efficiency” was lost by getting rid of the farmers deemed “kulaks”. What is mentioned though is that grain was being massively taken out of Ukraine, and the borders being sealed so that starving Ukranians wouldn’t leave, and that even after the famine started, the USSR kept exporting grain rather than use it to feed the people.

The holodomor was a targeted weakening of Ukranians that could’ve been prevented if Stalin wanted it. Painting it as a story of commies taking away from the people that became rich because they were the best at what they do and that caused a collapse is sickening, and I really hope you try and reconsider whether the source where you got that is worth your attention and what were the motives behind twisting something as horrific as the holodomor into a cartoon story about evil commies and honest efficient workers.

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- FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Okay, so let’s say that “eating the rich” wasn’t the problem. Then what was? Corruption in the government? Who would have thought that a government that disowned and deported people by the trainload would turn out to be corrupt? suprised_pikachu.jpg
  
  Same thing happened in China BTW. People were starving in front grain depots filled to the brim because the government had sold much of it abroad in order to create the appearance that their plans were working out perfectly. I think the moral of the story is likely that you can’t murder your way to a fair and just society.
  
  Yet for some reason, people keep thinking that if only they put the right person in charge, things would be different the next time and it would work out for sure. Which is funny, because Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all shared the same belief — that they had figured out the secret sauce of how to make communism work.
  
  And no, I’m arguing that unrestrained capitalism is the answer either, but rather, that a mix of capitalism and socialism that dominates much of the world, even if imperfect, appears to be the best we can do. If you look at successful “communist” countries like China or Vietnam, you’ll find that they both adopted elements of capitalism into their economies, and they weren’t doing all that great until they did.
  
  Basically, there has to be an element of risk and reward, because people don’t make an effort if there’s nothing for them to gain (yes, that’s the old joke that communism doesn’t work because nobody works under communism). People will always strive to maximize personal gain. If they can’t make more money by working more, they’ll make more free time by working less, unless you punish them for slacking off, in which case you’ve just created forced labor. See, no matter how you try to approach this, you can’t force people not to be selfish without tyranny. It’s been tried time and time again and it always ended in bloodshed.
  
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