Aral BalkanIf the most successful people in your system are the worst of humanity, your system is fundamentally broken.
#elonMusk #peterThiel #marcAndreessen #markZuckerberg #ericSchmidt #rupertMurdoch #jeffBezos #billionaires #capitalism
Capitalism breeds assholes.
Dr. Quadragon ❌@aral Not really "breeds" so much as "selects for".
Charles ☭ is now tooting from queer.partyCW your lewds?
Joseph Jude 
@aral
1. what are the alternatives?
2. Is it the issue here capitalism or american form of capitalism?
1. what are the alternatives?
2. Is it the issue here capitalism or american form of capitalism?
Geri ™@aral succinct and undeniable 😂
IngenNavn 🇪🇺@aral And assholes breed even more capitalism.
Mark@aral If I could choose between an asshole or a dictator the choice would not be very hard.
Looking at the "grean left socialists" we are now headed towards communism at an alarming rate.
I would rather have someone in charge who does not care about people than someone who cares about one kind of people and wants to do horrible stuff to the rest...
@mark With apologies to George Orwell, “the creatures outside looked from asshole to dictator, and from dictator to asshole, and from asshole to dictator again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
“someone who cares about one kind of people and wants to do horrible stuff to the rest...” ← you just described every scumbag billionaire CEO :)
@aral well at least you know your classics ;)
AwesomeJess 🏳️⚧️@mark Where is this happening?
Josje Toorop
ricketsonFeudalism breeds assholes. State capitalism (Leninism, Maoism, etc) breeds assholes.
We'll get there some day.
roodAssholes breed capitalism
Capitalism is a breed of assholes
Assholes are a breed
Capitalism is an asshole
Hey, it looks like a circlejerk of assholes!
MJS 
@aral given a consequence free environment, many people will become assholes. In capitalism, the more wealthy you are, the fewer consequences. Plenty of non-capitalist assholes, just the thing that allows them to be assholes isn't money, look at any authoritarian government.
Sam Adams@aral I disagree. Power breeds assholes, and power is not dependent on any particular economic system. The means to power differs, but the end result is the same.
Yal 🦄🎲✏️🏳️🌈@aral The issue is that some want us to believe (and many of us are more than willing to agree) that those are the most successful people when they're just very rich.
There is many other people we could admire and promote as models of success, imho. But we don't put them forward, and those people certainly aren't the kind to push themselves in front of the others.
Edmund Edgar@aral What's so bad about Bezos and Schmidt, they don't seem any worse than most people would be if they were suddenly gifted fuck-off money
@aral And there are lots of rich people you don't mention like Warren Buffett, or Bill Gates who seems like a sweety apart from the business with Epstein and the young ladies
@edmundedgar So let's look at our options here. One of the worst worker abusers I've ever heard of, someone who's exploited just as much but in maybe not as bad methods as the previous, and someone who's been involved in Epstein's business on top of exploiting the shit out of workers. Which I should mention, is completely unacceptable under any circumstances.
You also mentioned Schmidt, and of the four, Gates and Schmidt have Foundations I hear fairly often about in articles and such for PR.
These charitable foundations only are obligated to put 5% of their funding towards their actual goals, and the donations made to them are tax-deductible up to a certain point, which means they only do it because it's cheaper than paying taxes.
And when they do more than clear the absolute minimum bar, they're still exploiting the shit out of people, that's the way to the top.
We can do better than that.
Blackout The Conspiracy@aral It’s definitely a broken system when the top 1% owns 50% of the entire wealth of the world.
Nika2022 🐶🎶🌐☕️@aral we all know that the system favors narcissistic traits over empathy....so yes its fugded from the ground up
Riley S. Faelan@aral: This is a natural outcome of loose marginal tax rates at the high end of income. Levying high taxes on the rich is prosocial, in part, because it gives the zillionaires a motive to re-invest that income, and to spend it in ways that zillionaires are known to like but aren't taxable, such as naming museums after themselves. By taking that motivation out of the equation, the sort of people primarily motivated by hoarding money get a strong advantage at the money-hoarding game.
@aral That's because your definition of "successful" means "wealthone" which is not correct. IMHO successful people are those who pushed/helped humankind most. E.g. scientists, doctors, nurses, social services workers, etc. Not a single person you list belongs to any of those categories.
@aral ... and incorruptible judges, lawyers, police, politicians. Brave journalists. etc, etc.
Chip the Android@aral this is the most concise, well-said thing I have seen concerning the bird app 💙
Feral 3D
broVbro 🇺🇲@aral what metric are you using to determine success? The accumulation of money selects for a certain personality type, one motivated by greed.
@aral American oligarchs.
🍸Pooka🥕Boo🍸@aral True that...
TonyTrink1969 🏳️🌈
JJ
G3rn0ti@aral I assure you there are plenty of a**holes in socialist societies around the world, too. And the more powerful these socialists are the worse. Rich assholes in capitalist societies are not necessarily the most powerful on the other hand.
Kai Klostermann 
@aral don't forget the often overlooked #ReinholdWuerth.
Yaksha@aral it's not that they are the worst of humanity. It is that a handful of people gain so much leverage over the rest of us, it corrupts them. If the system was equitable and did not let them corner an ungodly amount of our common capital, humanity could still gain from their vision and creativity, without empowering their worst impulses.
Flightless Bird@aral what is the right system?