Libertarian hard man and recreational jogger, Damien Grant, cheerleads for Billionaires by claiming failure at trying equates to Masters of the Universe level adoration.
Sure.
Entrepreneurs risk and if their idea is successfully launched and wanted by consumers they get rewarded.
If they lose, they get to write off the loss and try again.
Not a bad system for those who know how to play the game, but to extend that to worshipping the necessity of Billionaires seems a leap.
3 things in response to the suburban marathon Frost Otter here.
1: Billionaires operate in a society (a word that will already have Libertarians flinching) that enables their wealth.
Don’t believe me?
Listen to a billionaire then, Steve Jobs…
“I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I used. I make little of my one food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on.
…Billionaires stand upon the shoulders of a society and draw their wealth and power from that society with minimal obligations placed upon them. They have benefitted from an educated civil society but want to pay sweet fuck all for its upkeep!
Worshipping Billionaires as cravenly as Damien does seems a tad misplaced when it is civil society that is enabling his market.
2: Their technological risks aren’t completely ‘free’ to us, we have to agree to our meta data to be harvested in ways that can be invisible and contrary to our personal interests, it’s not the cost free exercise Damien paints it as.
And 3, fuck Billionaires.
if we want to build the social and physical infrastructure we need to radically adapt to the realities of catastrophic climate change, we need to tax the rich!
I’m not looking for socialism here folks, just basic garden variety regulated capitalism!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.
You should be angry, NZ Capitalism is a rigged trick for the rich and powerful. The real demarcation line of power in a western democracy is the 1% + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us!
Do not allow their smears of ‘Envy’ dilute the righteous rage you should all be feeling!
There’s no point making workers pay more to rebuild our resilience, tax the rich!
-Sugar Tax
-Inheritance Tax
-Wealth Tax
-Financial Transactions Tax
-New top tax rate on people earning over $300 000 per year.
-Capital Gains Tax
-Windfall profit taxes
-First $10 000 tax free
Lift the tax yoke from the workers and the people and place it on the mega wealthy and have them pay their fair share for once!
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
And now in 2021, 20 people own more than 50% of the entire planet.
This isn’t democracy, this is a feudal plutocracy on a burning Earth
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber allas where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
I respectfully disagree with Damien’s praise of Billionaires.
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Does ‘Democracy’ actually count, or have any meaning, in NZ under this one-eyed, sorted CoC and its enablers. Thanks Danien Grant – you are a “real KIWI bloke”!!! All you are interested in, just like your “mates”, is ME ME ME. Just keep playing your sick, greedy, game and let’s see where that takes you? NZ desperately needs a fair and level taxation system where EVERYONE gets to contribute, especially those who have lots more, and not necessarily because they earned it! Martyn, do you send these emails to politicians on the Left – no point in sending it to the Right – waste of space. I despise Greed = “A selfish and excessive desire for more than one needs, often for money or possessions”. It has to be the worst of the seven deadly sins and is considered the root that gives rise to other sins. Way past time to look at the big picture. Do please read this article in RNZ this morning. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/579275/30-with-guyon-espiner-economist-gary-stevenson-on-why-new-zealand-should-tax-the-rich