Jef bezos net worth is 284 billion, a very bad investment yields 4% annually, that roughly translates to 11.4 billion per year, or around a billion per month, or around 31 million per day, 1.3 million per hour, or 22 thousand per minute.

In the time it took me to write this, of Jeff Bezos is stupid (which he's not) and does very bad and safe investments he already earned over 100 thousand. The time it takes you to think on an innovative idea to spend money they already earned more than what you would spend, and the time it takes to do anything they already earned more. Think about this, of they wanted to buy a million dollar house on a different country that would take them 12h to reach by private jet, they literally lost no money buying the house and traveling there to sign the papers and fly back.

I dare you to tell me something that would actually lose them more money than what they would earn in the time it takes to enjoy it.

Common subsets of this category (cynics) I’ve seen or met include those who are (A) opportunists working the corporate funding angle who are allowed or even encouraged to do so by their departments/institutions, and (B) obligate centrists who are so reticent to be identified as leaning in any particular direction politically that they effectively accept or even endorse any and every systemic injustice.

Subgroup A are quite prevalent in journals yet tend to have markedly low-quality contributions comparatively, leading me think they are over-represented in peer review especially, easily a symptom of corruption inherent to private journals.

Subgroup B are IMO the academic version of MLK’s “white moderate” who are simply self-interested careerists. I would say these are by far the most common by number. They aren’t working for the Right directly like subgroup A, but they won’t lift a finger to help if it might jeopardize their position. That is to say, cowards.

I'm also a latin american, I'm not saying corruption doesn't exist on the left wing, or that they're not assholes who will go crazy with power. Also I'm not saying voting right wing is always the wrong thing to do, for me authoritarian/democratic is much more important than left/right, so if my choices are authoritarian left vs democratic right, I'll vote right.

But fundamentally when asked about inequality the right wing answer is always along the lines of "it is what it is" or "it will be solved very slowly over the next hundreds of years by not doing anything", both of which are either ignorant or evil, and of you're talking about an educated person one of those should be off the table.

Not who you're replying to, but sounds like Latin Americans are more familiar than the US by far with leftist populist dictators, Fidel Castro types... The cigar smoking kinda guys who inspired the game Tropico.

In the US, we teach that communism is a mortal enemy that only leads to starvation and we elect greedy oligarchs that promise life will get better eventually while they fill their pockets. Socialism is seen as the extreme anti-State solution where no one starves and everyone is educated. And any evidence to the contrary is considered conservative propaganda.

There's little room for nuance in the US. We went so far right that it feels like you have to move all the way left to fix things. And the more they call socialism the enemy, the better it sounds to people. The youth grow up thinking, either they support Trump or they're a socialist... He's probably doing more for socialism than American socialists ever did.

I swear just having free healthcare in the 90s could have prevented all this.

That missed the point entirely.

In-groups: The law protects these people, but it does not restrict them.

Out-groups: The law restricts these people, but it does not protect them.

This is a core structure of conservatives. There is no similar core structure for the left because the left does not rely on it.

I don't believe in air, but damnit, it keeps pressing down on me!

It's true.

The version that's going around right now is more like that, though. Reagan is very dead. Free markets are out, blood and soil is in.