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Ontario billionaire under fire for arguing poor people shouldn't be able to vote (www.blogto.com)

submitted 9 hours ago by avidamoeba@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It's Shopify's Tobi Lutke.

A reminder that he's behind Build Canada and Build Toronto, and that Build Toronto's Eric Lombardi is running for the Ontario Librral Party leadership as we speak.

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[-] MisterD@lemmy.ca 17 points 6 hours ago

Why should billionaires get to vote? They live in an alternate reality.

[-] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 54 points 9 hours ago

Billionaires shouldn’t exist.

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 10 points 8 hours ago

That is why we need to tax them.

[-] Davel23@fedia.io 16 points 8 hours ago

Yes. We need to... tax... them.

[-] Somsphet@lemmy.zip 17 points 8 hours ago

Im sorry, im hard of hearing. Did you say Axe them?

[-] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 hours ago

Only after we decide what the best BBQ sauce is that goes on a rack of billionaire ribs!

[-] OwOarchist@pawb.social 5 points 8 hours ago

... or otherwise cause them to stop existing. I'm flexible on that.

[-] ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 1 points 6 hours ago

There's ways to make that happen...

[-] thefluffiest@feddit.nl 16 points 7 hours ago

Under fire? Why do you guys keep missing?

[-] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 hours ago

They are fighting over what is the best bbq sauce rather than aiming.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 hours ago

Classism is usually brought up as a word when identity politics writers want to pay lip service to it. But this is classism.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago

A class war tool?

[-] switcheroo@lemmy.world 31 points 9 hours ago

Billionaires are such fucking parasites...

[-] unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It is so frustrating when I become responsible for the neighborhood problems

Edit that was for a different thread but fuck it

[-] Whitebrow@lemmy.world 15 points 8 hours ago

Under fire? Put him in the fire.

[-] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 10 points 8 hours ago

This is the same company that simps for PP and MAGA

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works -1 points 8 hours ago

He's not necessarily wrong, there are certainly issues with democracy (stares at the US and Trump), it's just that we haven't figured out a better system yet.

[-] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 9 points 7 hours ago

He is totally wrong. Flat out completely wrong. and he's an asshole.

"I should get more votes because I'm rich!" is wrong. "My vote should be more equal" is wrong.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works -4 points 7 hours ago

I'm not saying he's right, I'm just having a discussion about related topics.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 9 points 7 hours ago

Oh we have. He's just not gonna like it. It's expanding democracy to the place where everything happens - the workplace. Worker democracy where Tobi's vote is equal to every other worker at Shopify.

[+] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works -11 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Unions are great, but they don't really figure into country governance?

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Didn't mean unions. Unions are a solution for traditional corporations. I'm talking about one-worker-one-vote co-op ownership model. Mondragon-style. If that's the dominant firm ownetship model, Tobi would have never become a billionaire as Shopify workers would have always voted to distribute the profits much more equally amongst themselves with a bit more for him. If they thought he deserved it. Therefore Tobi wouldn't have gotten the wealth needed to lobby the political system to work for his interests instead of his employees who have way more political votes.

Actually unions have historically also served a role in country governance by using their financial and collective power to counter-lobby the political system in the interest of their members. But they never got powerful enough in North America and there are some reasons to believe they tend to lose in the long run to capital owners even when they get the upper hand for a while.

E: Wasn't my downvote.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago

E: Wasn't my downvote.

Yeah, it's annoying to have a good faith discussion being treated like a competition by outsiders.

Therefore Tobi wouldn't have gotten the wealth needed to lobby the political system to work for his interests instead of his employees who have way more political votes.

I agree with you, but it wouldn't really fix the issues with democracy that we're seeing in the US, including but not limited to a (intentional) collapse of education leading to really uninformed voters.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 hours ago

Yeah, it’s annoying to have a good faith discussion being treated like a competition by outsiders.

Don't you even worry abt it.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 hours ago

If anything the American "situation" is proof of too little democracy. Their system is archaic, incredibly difficult to reform, with ridiculously tiny winning coalitions compared to the selectorate, with winner-take-all cosmic level elections, and with all sorts of anti-democratic "safeguards" (remove the quotes if you're a rich white guy) baked in right from the start of their republic.

[-] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Yeah, but it's very much a 'there but for the grace of God go I' situation. There's really nothing preventing any other democracy from ending up the same way, given enough time and unchecked Sino-Russo propaganda.

[-] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago

I could name one Communism, you know where the community works together to better the community. I hold a political belief a little further to the right than communism, because I still like the idea of having a country so I fall left of Socialism.

So hey look at that I named two/three political systems that are better than Socialist Democracy vs capitalist democracy, Communist Democracy some would argue that is the same as a socialist democracy, or true stateless Communism.