Some Billionaires Should Be Dragged Out into The Street and Shot
Not all of them, though (or maybe all of them, I haven't made up my mind, yet)
There is no justice, or even fairness, in nature. Animals pounce on each other, ripping the offspring from their mother, with no mercy or compassion. That’s life.
However, in our societies, we pretend otherwise: we think we’re “civilized” because we’ve invented complex systems of oppression that mask inequality and injustice.
For decades, we got the middle-class and even the low-class to look away, since they were getting their piece of the pie. As long as a working-class American could buy a house and two cars, he didn’t care much about the rentier financial class. So we created an intricate scheme, built on “elections” and “courts” to justify these differences in purchasing power and try to explain them away as “fair” and “just” because supposedly John Galt built an engine in his basement, or something.
Look at our cities: these soulless behemoths we've crammed millions of human beings into, belching clouds of pollution and excreting homeless people. Would you call this setup “developed and civilized”? No. We’re just as barbaric as an animal sinking its teeth into prey, the only difference is we can quote Ayn Rand while evicting some poor bastard and throwing him into abject poverty.
If there is no justice in nature, how could there be justice in our societies? These machines of destruction and deceit, of fabricated courtrooms and corrupt politicians, are supposed to be governed by just laws? Even worse, they are supposed to make the laws? Geez, I wonder what could go wrong.
The reality is people who work hard sometimes get nowhere. I’m willing to say that most of the time, people who work hard and respect the rules and norms get diddly squat for it, apart from some internal, moral peace (which, to be clear, isn’t nothing).
This is because our capitalist system is built for bullshitters and con artists to move ahead, not hard-working people putting their head down and doing their job. Capitalism is about exchanges, about extracting as much as possible from your collaborators without compensating them accordingly. That’s what “The Art of the Deal” actually is.
So, in a system where only transactional relationships hold importance (importance in the social way, not in the finding meaning in life, way) sociopaths are rewarded and climb the hierarchy. Why sociopaths? Because they're the only ones capable of firing dozens of people in a heartbeat and not feeling anything, and say that this is "business" (or something). And they get rewarded for it. Because they're loyal to the company, not to the people. Even worse, as a society, we give them money for this. For destroying families. For tearing people's lives apart.
The fact that some of these billionaires (and I say some and not all, because I hope amongst the ones I haven't met, there's still a sliver of light piercing the darkness, somewhere) aren't chased down the street and mocked by the people is baffling to me.
Ancient tribes would never have allowed this. A tribesman that hurt the tribe or its members was automatically shunned by the rest. If you told lies or were caught cheating or stealing, you could be banished from the tribe.
Yet now, these billionaires lie about their products and projects (where's my Hyperloop, Elon?) and make money by some financial extravaganza that turns believed future riches, called share valuations, into legal tender. However, nobody mocks them, quite the contrary: there's a fair bit of people who would like to be like Musk.
I'm sorry to say, but you have to be really fucked up to want to be like Elon Musk. His fans want to be like him? So they want to have like, how many kids with different women? Some without actual sex but just insemination? Then have them raised by someone else? Have them hate you, or not talk to you, or have outright disavowed you? Or seem like they still like you because they're too young to know you're the world's biggest asshole?
How the fuck is this guy not getting stoned out of the tribe?
Or Jeff Bezos. I mean, like, I've never really cared about this guy, but then I learned his girlfriend (wife? Who cares) was getting an environmental prize in Cannes. Because she cares about the environment, even though she's rolling up to receive her prize in a floating pollution machine, a mega yacht.
Then I saw here picture:
Is it mean to say that it's kind of a cliché to break up with your wife when you get rich and marry a fat-lipped, heavily chested TV girl? Who am I to judge, right? Maybe she's brilliant. Maybe they really love each other. Maybe I'm just being mean. But you can't deny it's a huge cliché. I mean, look at her, again:
What are we doing, here, Jeff? At least Kanye West has the excuse of being a bipolar Nazi when people ask him why he (un)dresses his… girlfriend? Wife? (again, who cares), Bianca Censori, in public. The difference is West is a (self-proclaimed) genius who has been compared (by himself) to Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Jesus.
I’m baffled at how our society idolizes these flaming assholes. It’s not a girlfriend thing: fuck whoever you want, as long as it’s consensual. It’s a society thing: these imbeciles are responsible for two-thirds of our carbon emissions since 1990, or, as a recent study put it:
“Fifty of the world’s richest billionaires produce, on average, more carbon emissions in under three hours than the average British person does in their entire lifetime”.
So what do we do about it as a society? We give them a FUCKING ENVIRONMENTAL PRIZE IN CANNES.
I get it: there is no justice in society, I said that myself at the beginning. But putting up with billionaires pissing on us and telling us it’s rain, has got to stop. If our society wasn’t as sick and perverse as it is, these assholes would have been banished from social life a long time ago.
Now that everyone is exploring ancient traditions, trying to reconnect with nature and following weird vegetarian diets, how about we bring back the old tradition of beating cheaters and liers up and throwing them beyond the walls of the tribe?
Let’s go full ancestral living, guys. Don’t just do the Ginko Billoba supplements: put your heart into it, too.
Where do we sign up?
Actually, nobody should be dragged out into the streets and shot. Not even the oligarchy. Apart from that, it would not change anything, because the culture that grew them would just grow new ones.
Last time I checked, communism failed pretty much the same capitalism does.
I wouldn't be quite so sure about tribes never being victim to tyranny. But in a tribe, people have a much better chance to still see each other.
The golden plates at the voyager probes are great PR, no more. That's how mankind would like to be. They show none of the suffering that characterizes earth.
To close the loop: Why shouldn't we shoot the billionaires? Because that would screw up our own life. Unless you were sick in your mind, you would think about having ended someone's life for a really long time. And that's how we differ from the non-sentient part of nature. Well, most of us, at least.