Dave RahardjaJan 18

I want a society that’s designed to make everyone moderately wealthy, and not only five people astronomically wealthy. The damage and misery caused by unmitigated inequality has been demonstrated over and over again, for millennia, yet we fall for the lie over and over again.

In the US, we choose inequality because we are taught to believe the blatant lie that we might one day *be* one of those five fabulously wealthy people. But look at the numbers: there are only five of them among millions; the odds are staggeringly against you.

It’s like a middle-school sports enthusiast thinking they will become a top-billing star in some major league, and make tens of millions of dollars a year: the numbers simply do not work out; there are only so many quarterback positions available, and tens of thousands of applicants. Yet they are raised to cling to that selfish “dream” instead of focusing on building something that *everyone* (including themselves) is likely to benefit from.

#wealthInequality #TheAmericanLie

Show threadDave RahardjaJan 18

The constant hunger for “hitting the jackpot” and becoming fabulously wealthy corrupts *everything* one does. The goal of one’s social activities shifts from SERVICE to EXTRACTION. No one is a friend; everyone is a mark. Nature exists only for exploitation; society exists only for you to steal their money.

It’s a hollow, ghoulish existence. The numbers in your E*TRADE account becomes your self-worth. You don’t live; you “hustle”. Your thirst for the next jackpot causes you to reduce humans, animals, nature, resources—everything—into numbers on a spreadsheet, waiting to be “optimized” to drive out “waste”. You hire laywers and CPAs to minimize dollars leaving your portfolio, even when they pay for the common good. You think of politics in terms of Return On Investment, because fuck people. There is nothing you can’t represent as a dollar figure, even your soul.

You become a parasite.

#wealthInequality #TheAmericanLie

Show threadDave RahardjaJan 18

I’ve never liked anyone who said the primary reason they started their own business is “to make money”. When your TOP reason for a business venture is “to make money”, I know you’re already a ghoul—nothing else matters.

There is a way to start profitable businesses that become net positives to the community, that provide products or service at a reasonable price, that give people ways to ease their burden and enjoy their lives. And that way is to have the product or service as your primary reason for going into business, and to make the money work secondarily; and to resist #enshittification forever. But there is one major problem with this kind of business: they tend to only be MODERATELY profitable.

The lure to become FABULOUSLY RICH is always there, even after a good company becomes successful. Sell it to Private Equity and make a bundle! Begin enshittifying and raise your margins! Go public and make the shareholders your lords and ride the stock price!

#wealthInequality #TheAmericanLie

Show threadDave Rahardja

Asking individual business owners to become heroes and resist #enshittification on their own does not scale, at least not without widespread pushback from consumers. The rules of the game reward businesses that grow and monopolize and exploit and extract and corrupt government, so that’s what we expect businesses to do. The system creates parasites, because the rules make it profitable to be a parasite.

#wealthInequality #TheAmericanLie

Jan 18 at 7:39amWeb
Show threadDave RahardjaJan 18

Blog post: https://www.humancode.us/2026/01/17/inequality-american-lie.html

#wealthInequality #TheAmericanLie

Inequality and the American Lie

I want a society that’s designed to make everyone moderately wealthy, and not only five people astronomically wealthy. The damage and misery caused by unmitigated inequality has been demonstrated over and over again, for millennia, yet we fall for the lie over and over again.

humancode.us
Show threadAaronJan 18

@drahardja

Fuck yeah! If I wasn't already following you, I'd follow you right now.

Show threadAaronJan 18

@drahardja Have I told you about my proposed solution? (I lose track of who I've told, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself.)

The Cooperative-Based Economy

If we replaced all for-profit corporations with cooperatives -- democratically run, one share and one vote per member -- it would fundamentally change the incentive structure of our economy from one of exploitation to one of cooperation and mutual benefit. There would be no wealth concentration due to exponential leveraging effects, and companies would be owned by the very communities they serve. Cooperatives already have a solid track record, being more robust to economic downturns, longer lasting, treating their workers and customers better, reducing environmental impacts, reducing wealth and income inequality, etc. We just need to shift our existing companies to cooperatives. Worker/customer buyouts could do the trick, if that were a legal option.

Show threadJens Oliver MeiertJan 18

@drahardja, yet here, perhaps, is a little hope as well:

By allowing and incentivizing assholism to scale, we also put the spotlight on how bad of a call that is—which may in turn help us incentivize more people to make *much* more constructive decisions, that is, decisions that are good for everyone, understanding that that is also good for ourselves.

It will get worse now before it gets better, but let’s have some hope that we up-level collectively—before we kill us all.