A guy who I've known many decades said that my embrace of the far left had lowered his opinion of me a lot.

We were talking about wealth taxes, qua my earlier post about 90% tax rates. But not just income taxes, estate taxes, real estate taxes, generally speaking, asset taxes.

The billionaire class has to cease to exist. What the bootlickers defending them seem to not understand, is that this is the *nice* way to make that happen.

@fatsam the not nice way was guillotines last time around
@pipe_dreams @fatsam The “last time”? The last time in my cultural sphere was when the people rose up and killed all of the feudal landlords that oppressed them. And then a bunch of other shіt happened that makes it hard to talk about with outsiders, but personally, I see the mass execution of landlords to be a net positive for society.
@enoch_exe_inc @fatsam I was talking about the French revolution where the nobility was killed en masse. Same principle. It was the next thing I could think of from my cultural background.
Same principle.
To be clear I do not condone violence of any kind against anyone and above example ended in extremely bloody dictatorship.Not what we want. Pacifist here
But I don't care at all about riots and property damage they need to learn the hard way it seems.They don't hear our pleas on their yachts.
@pipe_dreams @enoch_exe_inc @fatsam The French Revolution happened a long time ago, and there are other, more successful revolutions that actually accomplished more than eventually restoring the monarchy multiple times or getting an Emperor instead of a King. For example, the Chinese Revolutions…the first of which got us the only liberal-democratic elections ever and he declared himself emperor shortly afterwards.
@pipe_dreams @enoch_exe_inc @fatsam For anyone wondering why modern China doesn’t have Western-style democratic elections, Yuan Shikai is basically why. One step forward, two steps back. And then the Warlord Era began. And then the Shanghai Massacre and eventual Long March. And then the Japanese invaded. It’s really not hard to see why the Land Reform Movement after the dust settled had hundreds of millions of peasants murdering all of their landlords.