It's not really about having more stuff. It's about having power relative to other human beings. It's the raw pleasure of dominating and subjugating others, of knowing you can bend others to your will. It's the sickness of the mind which draws to itself kings and oligarchs and plutocrats.

Persons like you and I are human; we want to uplift our peers and vice versa. We evolved to collaborate. But not all are like this. Some, by whatever mysterious circumstances there may be, become the opposite, addicted to the feeling of power and influence and control, even when it makes their lives objectively worse.

Unfortunately, there isn't in society the rebellious collective spirit there once was which would summon the energy to defeat them. I love modernity just as much as my neighbor, and to a degree, that's the problem. It is 2026, and I must apologize to Marx in saying that we have too much to lose besides our chains. I don't know how much of each other's suffering we must share until this calculus starts to tip away from inaction. Given that the reaction to impending geoclimate and political doom is, in societal terms, quaint, I'm not very expectant.

This is what's really crazy.

A long time ago, I was having a conversation with a workmate. Guy earned as much as me. I asked him what he'd buy with $1 billion that he couldn't buy with $50 million.

He couldn't name one actual experience/object that he'd need the extra money for.

Still insisted that he wanted the billion.

It's a fight for survival and they will CHOOSE CONCENTRATION CAMPS OVER A SMALL TAX.

No one is going to save us and no one is going to stop them. They need to go away NOW

It’s power.

Not wealth.

He’d rather kids not get healthcare than be told he is a plebe that has to follow rules like the rest of us.

He should be beaten to a pulp with a sign that reads "Don't be evil"

These people are a danger to the world

You have to cut out such sickness.

Guillotine is the gracious choice to traitors.

There are a few discussions and even some studies about the rapid effects of wealth and political power, because they change how other people interact with you, it essentially gaslights you into thinking you're less fallible than the rest of us.

We can kind of see it between the original Star Wars trilogy (when Lucas still had people able to critique him) and the prequel series (now that ILM was huge and he was ultra-wealthy).

Twenty-first century billionaires become two degrees of separation removed from commoners at all (except the help they hire themselves), and as Paul Krugman notes, lobbyists are better dressed and more well spoken than nerdy economists. It becomes very easy for a rich due to create a self-aggrandizing information silo, in which every rich-dude intuition and conspiracy theory is affirmed.

And the one thing that consistently feels good is seeing their assets and selves getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So yeah, it really is an illness.

Hey look, it's another fucking foreigner who came over and stole from Americans and now refuses to pay his fair share

Eat the Rich

He's wrong, greed isn't a sickness, it's a mental handicap. It inhibits the brain from experiencing empathy in people who amass great wealth and power.

It begs the question, why are we letting a bunch of evil, mentally handicapped people steer the course of humanity?

You'd think that if you were a doctor, and had a patient that was amassing a collection of any other thing, and that collection destroyed a part of their patients brain... You'd think the doctor (and society et. large) would want to limit the amount of that thing they were allowed to collect?

Especially if that thing they're collecting could be used to, oh I dunno, I'm just spit-balling here, give everyone universal healthcare, increase public education to include 4 year university, give everyone free childcare, invest massively in green energy and public transportation... you know, instead of just sitting in a Panamanian bank being hoarded by evil, mentally handicapped billionaires?

We need to bring back tar and feathers

Greed is not a sickness. It's a choice. The failure to hold greedy people accountable by any means necessary is also a choice. The real sickness is looking at the state of the world and not being radicalized enough to commit to that any means necessary to hold the greedy bastards accountable.

This type of k shape economy is what ends world Powers. Not just that but the sheer decay from the ground up of our economy. Cut education, less educated population. Out source jobs, people can’t afford to live and are now dependent on government assistance. The loss of the middle class, can keep going

If the billionaires are paying tk stop it, it's probably worthwhile.

Financial obesity is neurotoxic, an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

the moment when 3 Work Reform posts in a row appear in the All feed:

The dragon disease.

These people have OCD, which manifests itself as financial hoarding. If someone had so many cats that it was negatively impacting the neighborhood, and they were STILL actively attracting and breeding MORE cats, making the neighborhood even worse, the authorities would step in, get treatment for the offender, and find new homes for all those cats.

That's what they should do with Sociopathic Oligarchs.

The program works as programmed. The name of the program is capitalism. They are cogs in the machine just like we all are. The difference is, they are rotating in a different position in the machine.