Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

@The Smiling Pony
 
I wonder how much of that will end up being tax deductible?

@Mikey  
Have wealthy connections, use criminal tactics, delegate work to others and seize the lion’s share of the reward for yourself.

@Vivace  
In their company, their field or just the economy as a whole?
 
(If implemented, top positions will likely become centered around perks rather then cash.)

@Latecomer  
Probably company.

You have greater odds of being struck by lightning than becoming a multimillionaire. And you have a higher chance of dying in a plane crash than becoming a billionaire.
 
 
Only .00002% of the global population can say they are. And only a small fraction of those have actual, liquid billions.

@Background Pony #A63C  
I think you’re overestimating how effective that actually is. You still need a ton of luck for that to work.
 
@Zincy  

 
This^^^

@Background Pony #A63C  
If actually doing that were so easy, you’d think there’d be more of them.

@Background Pony #A63C  

 
The existence of their wealth lies on the rights afforded to them to treat other people as market commodities. Mark Zuckerberg treats his users - us - as a commodity to be sold to advertisers infinitum for large swathes of cash. Bezos’s wealth is based on grossly underpaying his workers in classic bougie style. Mark Zuckerberg has no advertising scruples, allowing the wildest shit to be posted on and throughout his site. Both men rely on the collection of and obtaining ever growing pools of assets to astronomically raise their wealth and even their own personal political power beyond that of anyone else in the nation.
 
Their rights come at the detriment to or erosion of millions of other’s rights to their own labor. And taking even a fraction of their asset value will not give them any worse a quality of life will improving the lives of all the rest of us ten fold.

nobody asked if it was easy.

@AaronMk  
Zuckerberg made a service people like, and I agree with his advertising policy. Bezos his employees a wage capable of filling the positions

An angry tea partier probably just ensured that Dems will keep the governors mansion in VA come 2021.
 
The women in question is state senator Chase, an idiot so deplorable that the local GOP kicked her off their rolls. It was already into the election, and she ran unopposed and won as a “Republican”.
 
She’s now said that if the party doesn’t make her the GoP standard bearer in 2021, she’ll run as an independent.
 
Let’s see if the dumb bimbo makes good on her promise and keeps the Dems in power for a few more years.

@AaronMk  
@Background Pony #A63C  
Nah. Facebook is a cringe site. It’s a waste of time, its only purpose, like every social network, is datamining and indeed exploiting the users.  
It’s not even a business. The best thing you can do is to not use it, or make it pointless with a fake account if you really need to keep an eye on that shit.  
I think the idea that people can not live without a smartphone connected on facebook would get anyone mad, how can people believe this is the apex of modernity to have people being degenerated by such a pointless system.

@Patachu
 
You know, I often wonder if people know they can, you know, just not buy/use the service if they hate it so much. That’s pretty much the most effective way to tell the enterprise “I don’t like what you do”.

@Background Pony #D4DE  
When it comes to Facebook and Amazon, that’s already what I do. Fuck you, Mark, and fuck you, Jeff.

@Background Pony #D4DE  
Because ethical consumerism is a scam.

@byte[]
 
Who cares.

@Background Pony #D4DE  
Amazing rebuttal. You must’ve been the prize of the debate team and chosen as prime orator at your university, I imagine.

@The Smiling Pony
 
I’m not debating. People wouldn’t turn off a service just because. Just do your lifes.

@byte[]  
@Background Pony #D4DE  
To be more specific:
 
The idea that industries could be regulated by dollar voting is quite frankly laughable when the businesses which most need to change their practices are relative monopolists in their particular arena.
 
But even if you you accepted that it could be possible, it is very badly thought out to begin with, because you are in practice absolving industry leaders of any responsibility for their crimes. After all, under this framework, you must accept that if lots of people want a particular product (the process of which making destroys natural habitats), it’s their fault for wanting it, and not the fault of the business for destroying natural habitats.

@byte[]
 
Everyone is responsible, not just someone here or there. And is not absolution, because anyone who can’t handle their things will eventually lose everything in the process. In my opinion, I think you tend to underestimate the people’s intelligence, we are not kids that should be protected from the wolves.

@Background Pony #D4DE  
No. It is a frequent occurrence that individuals are perpetually victimized by a corporation, but do not have any alternatives other than continuing to purchase from the same corporation, or not purchase any at all (for basic needs, this is fatal).
 
Saying “everyone is responsible” for victimization is absurd. You wouldn’t say this about anything else, like if someone gets punched out by a bully in a school, it’s very obviously not the victim’s fault.

@byte[]
 
They’re not comparable. People are not victims for simply buying something. No one forces them to buy anything, buying something involves a voluntary exchange. You can go all your life ignoring Amazon and none the wiser, neither your life nor ours will get better or worse for it.

@Background Pony #D4DE  
Comcast is the only residential telecommunications provider in the downtown area I live. If a resident has an issue with Comcast service, they have no recourse outside of uncomparable exotic options (no, DirecTV does not count). Comcast has one of the worst customer service ratings of any business in the country because they can treat their customers like dirt and they know it. They lobby tooth and nail to drive away competition and impose draconian measures on their customers because they know their customers don’t have any choice. If you don’t like what they’re doing, guess you don’t have an internet connection or landline or TV anymore. (An internet connection and a telephone are typically necessities for seeking employment in this era.)
 
Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint (now approved for merger) are the only major wireless carriers in the US. If you have an issue with their service, you can get bent. The nature of spectrum allocation is such that practically no other carrier can possibly compete without breaking the law. Regional service sucks? Been punted from service rep to service rep trying to work out a late payment? Too bad, fuck you. And because they have the market cornered and they know it, the carriers don’t compete with each other, and have been raising prices year after year with profit margins soaring.
 
Transportation? If you live in the US and own or lease a car, it was probably made by one of a small list of domestic or import manufacturers. Petrol and natural gas? Extracted and refined by one of a small list of companies with enough capital to handle the realities of oil production, a business that victimizes everyone from pollution.
 
You might consider even more fundamental things than that, though. Where do you get your food from? I bet, unless you are into self-sustenance, that if you live in the US, you have consumed food produced by one of a very small list of companies, all of which are dumping millions of tons of pesticide onto the land and raising animals in CAFOs and battery cages. The fact that there has been awareness and legislative pushback against battery cages is a sign of progress, but you simply choosing not to eat eggs is not sufficient to stop the use of this cruel and inhumane farming method. And because all of these farming methods involve massive levels of pollution, you are indirectly being victimized by every single food choice you make.
 
But I bet that’s not what you were thinking of. If you don’t use Facebook, so the reasoning goes, you’ll never be harmed by it! But isn’t it true that you can suffer if you are excluded from important or relevant discussions that occur on Facebook that you simply do not get to witness by not being part of the platform? And you are indirectly victimized from Amazon’s business decisions every day because of things you literally are not aware of with how web infrastructure works and how Amazon has abused its monopoly power to charge extortionate prices for other businesses. Yet, they cannot avoid doing business with Amazon.
 
The fact of the matter, you “choosing not to use” something because a business is behaving badly is a completely pointless endeavor. You need to go after the business with something with actual teeth, like legislation or actual enforcement of existing laws.

@byte[]
 
Well, why no one has done another business to fight that monopoly then?