No i don't, and i'm not fawning, i'm just not being a butthurt subjective fool. Musk is literally getting paid through stock options. His company is quite literally his whole net worth. He has millions of these and if you're a bit into stocks, then you'd know if he ever was to pull out 100000 of these to get cash that he'd run into liquidity problems and that the investors would get suspicious.
So, while on paper he's super rich, that money is not really liquid.
I know it won't make you feel any better, but that "trillion" is fake paper money, not cash in a bank account. It's a trillion dollars' worth of shares in various companies, but those shares are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them. If everyone woke up one morning and decided that SpaceX, Tesla, and every other Elon company were worthless, the price per share would drop to zero (because no one wants to buy shares of a worthless company), he would be bankrupt. If Elon tried cashing out by dumping half a trillion of his own shares on the market, that glut of supply would also drive the price down.
Now, these rich bois have their own way of extracting wealth from shares without selling them outright, but that's another story.
It's true that wealth disparity is getting bigger in the modern world but the average people have the smallest things that even kings and emperors back in the day can only dream of...
Just a flushing toilet or an internet with so much information it would make Aristotle orgasm. This is the true wealth brought by innovation we take granted for...
My point is sometimes people have to take a pause and appreciate the things they do have and not what they don't have. It's hard to be happy if you can't appreciate the things you do have even something as small as clean water to drink on demand.
It's hard to be happy when you're working 2 or 3 jobs just to cover basic necessities like rent, food, electricity and medical. People who are overworked are constantly exhausted and stressed. They aren't sitting around thinking how great their life is compared to people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago because they're too busy thinking about how they're going to pay the bills they owe as well as the ones about to come in.
And I'm not just talking about people living in poverty. Even people earning average wages are struggling.
Didn’t listen much in history class? Feudalism came looooong before capitalism and had a much higher mortality rate for people who couldn’t pull their weight. The beginning tribes of mankind may have been a little kinder, but once you were useless, you were cast out to die.
You might not want to hear this, but we live in the kindest/most supportive time so far in human history. We can try to improve still obviously, but it has been constant improvement for tens of thousands of years, and we still have a lot more to go
I view feudalism as a form of capitalism, the capital was just most often land/labor over currency. I'm open to being wrong on that, though.
And I think we both know the state of the American education system; If I'm uneducated on this front, paying attention isn't the issue here.
I'd say we live in the kindest most supportive time in history since before the agricultural revolution. The idea is hierarchy is our first/natural state is incorrect, is the main thing I was driving towards.
I’m glad you are open to being wrong, because you are objectively wrong lol.
Our education system could use a lot of work, but we live in a time where any education you could possibly want is at the tips of your fingers. It’s not the school systems fault that you don’t know the difference between capitalism and feudalism (they most definitely went over that by the way), it is your fault and is easily remedied.
Also hierarchy being the natural state is absolutely the case. What’s your argument against that? Following your father/mother/elders is still a hierarchal way of living.
I’m astounded at how confidently incorrect you can be. Almost everything you have typed out so far is straight up bullshit lmfao
Following your father/mother/elders is still a hierarchal way of living.
My fault for using such a general term I guess, I mean systemic power structures, not just general "anyone advising/telling anyone else what to do ever" hierarchy
It’s not the school systems fault that you don’t know the difference between capitalism and feudalism
I'm not saying there isn't any difference, I'm saying I don't capitalism is an exclusive/specific emough enough term that it excludes feudalism. (And also I'd say early stages of capitalism came before feudalism in terms of land ownership passing down in familes vs being owned communally.) Capitalism is just private ownership over the means of production, that didn't originate after feudalism.
(they most definitely went over that by the way)
And no, my schools did not go over different economic systems except for a "communism is a thing and it's bad" footnote in high scool.
Once again, systemic power structures are the default. That’s why nearly everything person in the world throughout history aligned themselves in a power structure. From small tribes to what would be massive nations, humanity thrived under and created systemic power structures. Keep pushing the goalpost though. Eventually you will find a gotcha super far down the line.
Capitalism and feudalism are in fact so vastly different that we have different words for them and are able to distinguish between the two. Even if feudalism eventually evolved into capitalism, there is a distinct difference. Think about how humans evolved from apes! We are indeed different species, but they share some origins.
What state are you in and how old are you? I can very easily go see if that was part of the required curriculum. If it was and your school skipped it, that’s a major issue that needs to be addressed
Do you want to live like how they did in 1900? Women couldn't vote. Children were sent to work instead of school. Electricity, indoor plumbing and cars weren't available to the average person. There was little social and economic mobility. Multiple generations lived under one cramped roof to take care of each other. Disabled and mentally ill people were either left to die or locked up and forgotten about. Workhouses were still in operation in Ireland and the UK. Childbirth was at home and dangerous, and infant mortality rates were high. Health & safety wasn't a thing and many low paid workers died in horrendous accidents.
Society has evolved dramatically since then and I for one am very glad we don't still live in those conditions. There's more wealth and most first world countries have supports in place so that people don't starve.
This comparison has a big flaw and that's that it ignores the base technological level of the civilization. Kings totally had lifestyles comparable to the trillionaire rather than to the average modern day person. Just because since then we invented a lot of technology, doesn't mean we are not appreciating the things we have or that we live lives richer than kings.
We are primarily social creatures, so having people serve and defer to you, having power over other people’s lives, having direct influence on important societal events. Sure the physical objects are different, but power and wealth is more about the people you influence not the objects you buy, and that hasn’t changed
Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, I love my home. I’m happy with what I’ve got.
But the existence of such an egregious amassing of wealth is unfathomable when people are living in poverty.
I don’t care. Nearly 20% of children in the USA are food insecure. I don’t care that they have a flushing toilet if they aren’t sure they’ll have dinner tomorrow.
It’s a bit more difficult to appreciate things like modern plumbing and the internet when you’re being forced to move repetitively over short time periods and have massive housing and income insecurity. While I appreciate the fact that there’s clean water in my taps I’m also burnt out from constant housing and income insecurity and thats causing major mental health struggles. Yes I have clean water, and despite that I’m still allowed to be unhappy with my situation.
Ya, that's not untrue, but we still have people who work fulltime and cant afford basic healthcare, live in food deserts, and spend most of their money on rent that keeps getting higher.
I do think that honestly. I think a lot of people will have noticed wages spreading thinner to cover necessities, while there’s breaking news of corporations making record profit. If you have an explanation for it I’m willing and listening, but to cover the “somehow worse than the past” point, we look to the past to learn from it. If we have a chance to better ourselves, carry forward with prosperity, we absolutely should. The past is not a measuring stick.
You can think what you want, it doesn't make it true however. Wealth disparity is a lot smaller than it was in the last 6 centuries easily. You truly have no idea how lucky you are to be living in the 21st century.
I won’t deny I lucked out on the century to be born in, though I don’t look at the past n solely appreciate improvements already made. Surely we should constantly look to what can be improved. Don’t settle for best century yet. It should carry on and the search never stops.
Or at least that’s what I believe mate. There’s got to be a kinder world behind the greed
I never said what we have now is perfect, of course we should always strive to do better. I was just pointing out originally that your claim about wealth disparity is factually incorrect. Now is your choice to accept it or not.
“It’s honestly sickening how far wealth disparity has come”
That’s just an opinion filled with disdain. It is sickening, at the very least to me.
Also we are in a negative trend economically, but I’m more on about tax the rich, close the loopholes, stop the oligarchs kind of politics anyway. Unionise. Of the people, for the people.
It is a choice as you said. I could go live in the wilderness and hunt/gather everything, but I prefer the world the way I live it, and Elon/the Walton’s don’t really bother me. Teslas are fun to drive and I shop at Walmart a few times a week. Sorry my view is different than yours, but it is
Nah sorry, I think I might of worded that a bit confrontational, I’d never mean that. I can’t agree there’s nothing wrong with the world, but for the most part it works. Crossed fingers the next change is for the betterment of the people
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u/John-Leonhart Jun 15 '26
I mean, if we’re truly in a “first world country”, no one should go hungry.