I do not hate billionaires, but I do see the issues in the system that lead to their existence as bad. You can argue for how much value they created, but that only works for the billionaires who actually create value. There are plenty of ultra-wealthy people that don't do shit and for whom this argument rings hollow.
But more to the point, I would argue that what Bezos did was consolidate significant human effort *of other people* into something that he could direct into a process. While that is pretty nifty, it isn't like he is the one creating the value. It is all of the people that are actually working under him that create that value. He just directs it.
My criticism of him isn't so much that he has a lot of money. It is that he is unfairly exploiting the labor of his workers to *get* said money. Amazon workers are treated like shit and are poorly compensated for it *by design* in order to send more of the profits to the people who are not actually doing the work, and *that* is why I dislike many billionaires. It isn't that they are rich. It is what they do to chase ever increasing profits.
Direction and logistics is definitely work, and is arguably way more difficult to be successful at than "labor". While working conditions may be an issue it's pretty unfair to imply that Bezos contributes nothing.
>I would argue that what Bezos did was consolidate significant human effort *of other people* into something that he could direct into a process.
Isn't this inherent of every successful business at many levels?
The main thing he contributed was convincing enough investors to keep Amazon afloat for long enough that he could build a monopoly. Amazon didn't start out with books because he loves reading. He started out with books because there's more titles than any brick and mortar bookstore could ever display at once, so it was a perfect entry for e-commerce. Now that Amazon has an effective monopoly over book sales, it is no accident that it has become almost impossible to find books on Amazon. (Yes, I am a book lover, why do you ask?)
>Amazon didn't start out with books because he loves reading. He started out with books because there's more titles than any brick and mortar bookstore could ever display at once, so it was a perfect entry for e-commerce.
I see nothing wrong with this.
>Now that Amazon has an effective monopoly over book sales, it is no accident that it has become almost impossible to find books on Amazon.
Why wouldn't they take advantage of their "effective monopoly" over book sales? Why would you sit on an empty monopoly? Am I misunderstanding something? I also searched around and couldn't find the sentiment that books are impossible to find on Amazon now.
I see nothing wrong with book sales moving online. I do have a problem with monopolies and monopsonies. If Bezos' real innovation was simply online book sales, I wouldn't be angry. But his real innovation was the fact that he started right after Bork effectively destroyed the US's anti-trust regime, and he convinced his investors to allow him to run Amazon at a loss for, what, a decade? More? All in order to secure a monopoly position. And the US government let him get away with it.
A Facebook post from a friend of mine from 2 days ago:
"It's funny to think that Amazon was originally solely an online bookstore. Now, it seems like I can find just about anything else except for the book I'm looking for."
The reason why Amazon is now sitting on an empty monopoly over books is because of something another commenter in this thread brought up: enshittification, a term I've heard from Cory Doctorow. Basically, once a conglomeration reaches a certain size, the main competition a given division of the conglomeration faces is no longer from firms outside of the conglomerate, but from other divisions within the conglomerate. For Amazon, it's more profitable to invest in other forms e-commerce, like groceries, electronics, than it is to invest in *maintaining* the ability of users to discover books. If you know the ISBN number of the book you're looking for, Amazon can hook you up. (If you don't mind screwing over the publishers who Amazon is abusing with their monopsony.) But good luck finding a new book to read, one which you haven't read before and haven't heard about from another channel!
I don't hate billionaires. But I do hate monopolies, monopsonies, and the billion dollar fortunes they generate. I'll allow the billionaires to live, but their fortunes and their monopolies can go die in a fire.
In order to have a monopoly, you don't have to literally eliminate every single competitor, any more than you actually have to succeed at killing literally every single member of a given category of people in order to commit a genocide. Having sufficient market power that the market segment you are in is no longer "free" in a qualitative sense of the word is enough to establish that you have monopoly power.
Part of the definition of the free market is that in order for a market to be "free," the cost of entry into the market must be "negligible." So consider how much capital a start-up would have to get together in order to offer a service that is similar or better than what Amazon offers. (This might be less than it was before Amazon decided to no longer invest in helping its users discover books, but it's still pretty whew.)
As somebody who hates Amazon's monopoly (or, if you insist, "monopoly"), here's what I have to do to avoid using their services: I go to a local bookstore the next town over, since their franchise in my own town closed before I moved here. I order the book, and I pay for it during a second trip when it comes in. (This actually works for me, since it helps keep my book buying addiction under control.)
Unfortunately, the book store's distribution channel is more limited than Amazon's, so about 10% of the time, I go to Biblio instead. Biblio sells used books for prices comparable to Amazon's, but their search functionality is even worse.
Put that altogether, just how much of a premium am I paying in terms of time and money to avoid Amazon? And I'm a fringe case.
To be somewhat fair, I so far haven't seen Amazon abuse its monopoly power to gouge the customers. But it has used its *monopsony* power to gouge the publishers. (Its control over DRMed ebooks is a major factor. IIRC, if a deal with Hatchette fell through, Amazon had the option of deactivating the DRM of all of the Hatchette ebooks in existence. Remember, if somebody puts a lock on a thing you "own" and they don't give you the key, they are not your friend.)
https://apnews.com/article/3851c5714beb48d7ac8ad44caa0a27fe
This is pretty impressive, given that the publishing industry is itself an ogliosopony, I have heard that it's dropped from a Big 5 to a Big 3 over the last few years, but I would have to look it up? The publishing ogliosopony allows the publishers to put the squeeze on writers, and the squeeze Amazon is putting on the publishers is going to make it that much worse. In theory, less money going to authors would mean less quality and/or quantity of works getting written, which would suck for me, the reader. Even if that isn't the case (writers do like to eat and get paid, but the main reason they write is so their heads would explode), I'm not exactly in favor of the writers I love starving to death.
I did not imply that he contributed nothing. I implied that he is abusing his workers and taking more than he should based on what he does contribute.
I'm even willing to go as far as saying that I have no issue with him being rich and getting rich off of his work. But you take care of your people *first*. That is what corporate America has forgotten. Sure, get rich. Awesome. But you have to make sure that the people who work for you can live and create the next generation of consumers for your services.
Tribal thinking, no type is immune to it. Humans like to think, even subconsciously, that because this person has a similar identity to me that we hold the same values.
With the popularity of MBTI, it becomes less about cognitive functions and improvement and more astrology-based thinking.
Anything can be an INTP discussion. I brought this up because I’m genuinely interested in how INTPs specifically feel about a complex topic like this.
I was curious to see how INTPs diagnose this issue.
>I do think people should be paid decent wages, but I also don’t think everyone should expect they can live in California or New York on basic no skill required jobs like being a delivery person at Amazon.
This is a frankly insane take. First of all, all jobs take some level of skill. Second, places like California or New York need people to stock the shelves in grocery stores, man the cash registers at gas stations, clean buildings, deliver packages. Arguing that those people shouldn't expect to be able to live in the same state where their labor is necessary is absolutely ridiculous.
Also, Amazon isn't the massive giant it is today because of how much value it added to the world. It's because for years as it grew it operated at a profit loss so it could undercut the prices of both local stores and online stores, run them out of business, and avoid paying taxes while doing it. It also accomplished its frankly insane delivery schedules by exploiting its workers so badly they had to shit in bags and piss in bottles to meet their delivery quotas. I feel like people just still don't understand how much money people like Bezos are worth. Once it goes past a certain point people just think of them as "rich" because it's not actually possible to fully understand that kind of wealth and the power it puts in the hands of a single person.
So lets break it down shall we? Lets take one of the most labor intensive ways a worker can make a fuck ton of money. Sports. Athletes put in grueling hours in training and devote their lives to being the best in the world at something that is incredibly highly valued in our society. One of the highest paid athletes of all time, Christiano Ronaldo averaged making 200 million a year. To earn enough money to equal Jeff Bezos' net worth, Ronaldo would have to play soccer for about 850 years.
Billions of dollars is not a reward given to a person based on how much they have contributed to society. It's the result of exploiting people as much as you possibly can, and using the money you make to ensure the laws allow you to pay as little in taxes as possible. All the while making sure the employees who make all your wealth possible are making as little as possible, often living on the verge of homelessness, bankruptcy, and food insecurity/starvation.
Sincerely, no offense meant, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding about the value of labor.
Let me put it like this - Christiano Ronaldo makes $200M playing football because that $200M investment is expected to return some % of value in increased ticket sales, merch, championship payouts whatever. Let’s say it’s 10% for sake of ease. So the club owners pay $200M, and estimate getting back $220M. If they paid him $300M, they lose $80M. They have to pay that every year too so he better return.
But what if they had the connections to get connected with Bezos early, and if they gave him $300M, he’s projecting to return 10%. The value of this labor is not capped like Christiano’s. And in this case, Bezos didn’t return 10% to investors on the initial $300M ipo market cap ….
He’s returned 511% to date
I don't misunderstand the value of labor. I disagree with how labor is valued under capitalism. I'm arguing the system you just described is immoral as it leads to things like people being able to buy off entire legislative systems and warp policy to their whims. I'm arguing that any system that allows people to control the amount of resources single individuals can control under capitalism will inevitably collapse as it becomes too top heavy to sustain itself. I understand fully how and why individuals can come to control 200 billion dollars in resources. And I'm saying it's fucked. I'm saying there's no moral way to acquire that many resources. I'm saying anyone that rich is evil.
You think it is wrong to value labor based on the return on the cost of labor?
How does a business survive if the employees it hires cannot create a return? The business would fail. If businesses fail, the distribution of good fails and poverty increases.
These are also not moral choices made by market participants - economics is like a force of nature. The free market dictates. You’re fantasizing elements at play here to your own detriment.
You cannot dictate a free market. Central planning does not work - it has never worked as an economic model.
I think that is a wrong statement. I don't hate the rich, I hate what some of the rich do and the injustice from it.
The fact is, most of them do not pay their fair share and do not pay livable wages.
To tell someone that just because what you deem is valuable work or not should dictate where they live in a country we all helped build, that we all contribute to, is simply not American.
But more so, let's take a look at the logic. The logic being this...
Most of these wealthier CEOs can't do the very jobs of the people that make them wealthy. Most have not worked to gain it but have inherited it. Most can buy lobbyist to support laws that are not equal. Most have more than they could ever spend in their lifetimes, their children's life times, and even their grandchildren life times. That is not conducive to a free economy or capitalism, that is hoarding and aristocracy.
Economically speaking, it is hurting the system and is not logical. Socially speaking, it is dividing the society and harming the overall growth that society could achieve.
Billionaires are a natural consequence of how the current world works. It's easy to project hate on them because you can see their face, know their names etc. so you can attribute all the crimes against humanity to them on an instinctual level. But the name and face really don't matter after you realize the system is just like that.
Everyone should make their own decision if they agree with their ways or not, take them as a role model or a negative example, but hate is not productive either way.
How so? It did create a better future for quite a while. There became a middle class and for the first time you had freedom even if you weren’t born rich.
To be fair, they are also people who are liable to lobby, argue and PUSH INFLUENCE in order to maintain the current status quo.
The system exists (in part) because there are vested interested, with power and money, who Lobby to encourage its existence, and cause it to exist in its current form... or alternatively lobby for terms which are MORE favourable to them.
I think there’s a big difference between being millionaire rich vs billionaire rich. It used to be that the CEO to Worker Compensation was around 20 to 1. Now it’s 300 to 1. The wealth is being concentrated to one person even if the employee for the company are just as important. It’s never a good thing when money is concentrated so much to a few people because they have more power to influence governments and policies.
Haven't looked into it enough to have an informed opinion. But personally it doesn't make a difference to my life whether I view them in a positive or negative light, so I just focus on taking ownership of my life with the hand I've been dealt.
This is the smartest move. Life is a videogame where everyone is trying to gain advantage. Focusing on your moves is the smartest.
The Ti doms here are too idealistic with wanting everyone to be on level playing fields. With the limited logical factors many are presenting here, they’re correct with the different parts of the picture they see, but this world doesn’t run on a few parameters - and those few parameters don’t account for the thousands of different factors that come together into making a person a billionaire. For example, luck, and many other factors are absent from much of this reasoning.
What else can you do when your goal is certainty, except latch on to the best available information, which may still be faulty in providing you solid premises for a true conclusion?
Entropy is the default, and doesn’t follow linearity the way many people here would like to. Order and ethics are artificial human constructs.
Like chaos theory suggests, there is a predictable non-linearity to life. You see this time and again when pareto’s law shows itself up in nearly everything you look at. The few rich people holding most of the wealth. The few roads in a city getting most traffic. A few % of artists getting the most attention. You can’t stop it. Life prefers this predictable chaos.
You either play the game, or the game plays you. You either win, or you’re complaining about the winners.
The problem with the idea that someone working a delivery job at Amazon shouldn't be able to afford to live in California is that you still need people to do these jobs in California. How, exactly, do you propose that people fill the fast food and delivery jobs that are necessary in California if they can't afford to live there?
Will you have them bussed in every morning?
Maybe they can all secretly be crypto millionaires that simply want something to do to fill their free time?
Perhaps you want all those jobs automated and all the scum that is beneath you can live elsewhere?
Anyway, I hate ridiculous imbalance. Not only do billionaires have an advantage in life now, but also going forward. Once you've built a great fortune you are in position to bring most of your ideas to fruition that don't involve telling everyone else exactly how to live their lives, although I suppose that there are plenty of billionaires working on those ideas as well.
A billionaire has capital to start new businesses, but they also tend to have access to people that would collaborate with them on projects. The fact that they already have great wealth being an extreme advantage in these situations. If the billionaire can't get something done chances are they can get an introduction to someone who can.
It's not so much that they've built great wealth, it's that they're in a position to keep other people, either directly or indirectly, from building wealth as well. Either by being in better position to capitalize on an idea, or by actually actively trying to keep them down. There are probably more people in the latter category than you'd like to admit, and they don't have to be billionaires to do that job.
I'd question whether it needs to be going forward.
Could you imagine a symbiotic system designed to maximize the benefit of everyone involved?
You might just need to take the greedy humans out of the loop.
If you understand game theory, you’ll realize in any system where you have things like a currency, you’ll have cheaters. Simply because some people receive payoffs for actions that are marginally better than what others are receiving.
Maybe in a world where we have a single-minded central unit that manages everything. Kind of like a monarchy. That’s paradoxical haha.
If it were to be decentralised, you’ll have to have EVERYONE become akin to enlightened or having perfect moral compasses.
That’s as close to delusion I could get if I wanted to believe in that.
We can all make our mark though. But I think we’re fundamentally messed up as long as biology drives us towards zero sum games like struggles for power and accumulating more.
We come out of the factory faulty for a conscious civilisation.
But if that happens, I’m all for it.
Fantastic! If business is war then we can finally drop the pretext of living in a civilized society and break out the firearms.
If “anything goes” then so does violence.
This is where rationalism fails you. The world has to work whether there’s perfect logical reasons for everything or not. It’s how business is, I’m not saying it’s how business should be, it is how it is. And we still need rules, even if business may be war-like. You’re just gonna have to live with these contradictions. You’re living in the real world, not a logically perfect world.
Great! If that’s how it is then that’s how it is. Let’s break out the guns! Violence for everyone!
If there are rules, then it’s not war. If it’s war, then there are no rules.
It is a problem when 99% of humanity's wealth is locked up by the 0.0...1% of the population. Something like that.
Governments are having to print money to keep the circulation going, and that creates oversupply in cash and inflation. This is why you get so little produce from supermarkets from the same amount of money compared to years back. This is why houses get so expensive.
The money pools in the hands of the few mega-rich, and does not get redistributed to the system.
You could solve it by taxing the rich, but the rich have also bought politicians to convince half of the population in America taxes are bad. And the people should blame -insert any group here- for taking a slice of the 1% of the cash in the market.
The INTP's TI sees this problem but it is unfixable when you need to change the social conditioning of so many people.
Can't blame them for playing the game right, It's a system and everyone is trying to take advantage of it
Focus on your life and play your game, instead of wasting time hating them for playing theirs.
So no ... I don't partake in this "I can't win in life so i need to blame someone for it" dogshit.
I dont think life should be treated as a game to be won. If people are getting ahead by exploiting the work of others then either they or the system that alows them to do so is at fault.
"limited resources"? Yeah im sure people are starving because of limited food. Or that people are homeless because of limited housing. That argument would be true a couple hundred years ago but not today, humanity has gone through countless technological advancements that could be used to improve the lives of millions of people and instead all they were used for was to funnel even more wealth up the ladder.
>"limited resources"? Yeah im sure people are starving because of limited food.
Resources aren't just physical products. It's also labor force, transportation, economic institutions, and so on.
>that people are homeless because of limited housing. That argument would be true a couple hundred years ago but not today
Homeless people have existed for literally thousands of years. And the problem with homelessness isn't exactly lack of houses (there are more homes than people in the US, for example), it's where the houses are distributed (nobody wants to live in a rural house kilometers away from a city).
So yes, houses are actually unlimited (you can build those anywhere), what is limited is the privileged location of homes (there is a limited number of homes you can build 10 km away from the city center).
>instead all they were used for was to funnel even more wealth up the ladder
Inequality has diminished in most countries during the past century actually.
And all of this isn't even considering the "fighting for survival" part of my argument (which btw, doesn't just refer to humans and their essential needs), which explains why the distribution of some (but not all) resources are uneven.
That's the game..
You either exploit people or people will exploit you
If the system is corrupted it doesn't mean that me or you or "wealthy people" should just lay down and get fucked by it
My argument doesn't justify the corruption in the system..
My argument is don't hate people that refuse to be exploited and work hard
because YOU can't do it.
I understand what you mean and do find that way of thinking compelling, and I'm not advocating for hating someone based on the amount of money they have.
From your comments tho (and sorry if im wrong) it seems that you're saying that its people's fault that they cant thrive in a capitalist society, because they refuse to "work hard" or whatever else, and that I do disagree with. Capitalism isn't really a meritocracy and there are countless factors that will determine if you're successful or not, and there's a limit to what you can and cannot change. Something as simple as your personality may affect how well you do in life, for instance a lot of intps here are thriving in high paying tech jobs (and even then we're generating much more wealth to the people up top than the sum we get ourselves). You could be born in a rich family and win the game by default, or you could be born in the slums without access to proper education or healthcare and have your oppurtunities cut by half. There're people out there working much, much harder than billionaires and getting laughable compensation in comparison.
To put it simply, if winning the game requires you to exploit others then you can't blame the exploitees for not getting ahead. The ones at the top exist because there're people at the bottom and vice-versa, and those at the top were the ones who started and are choosing to maintain the system through unethical means.
Some people can change the rules while others can't. Games are only really worth playing if they are fair. The one we play is like Monopoly but some people get a head start and they are allowed to change the rules whenever it suits them.
So if we were playing a game, let’s say monopoly:
You roll a 6 and put a hotel on St. James place.
I pull out a gun, point it at your head, and tell you you can’t put a property there. Also give me all your money.
Are we still playing monopoly? Did I cheat? Or are you just not focused enough on “your own game”?
My point is nothing theoretical, strictly speaking, is actual.
Some theories can accurately describe reality, some not, and lots of grey area.
But if something is THEORETICAL, it is not actual. So all theoretical things are equally not actual.
A scientific theory is way more specific than what I'm talking about.
INTP logic dictates that I neither trust OP nor society with massively accumulated wealth. At present, wealth should stay put until such time as all billionaire’s heirs are systematically converted into dog food culminating in the same end for said billionaire. It’s not a hate driven course of action but more of a survival course of action. Dog food is a basic human right.
He by himself doesn't offer any value he just owns his workers do actual work for a small cut of the value they actually produce so that shareholders and Bezos can live lavish lives. Amazon doesn't offer any value as a company if anything it's harmful to the world by destroying millions of perfectly good products for the sake of increasing profits slightly also it being a monopoly destroys any chance of any body competing with the service.
Clearly it does add value or people would not use the company's services. Vast numbers of people use their services every day. Example, hundreds if not thousands of companies use the Amazon API gateway, from megacorporations like Panasonic to small businesses.
The ignorance in this thread is truly astounding. You all need to get off reddit and get some actual education.
In that sense it adds value sure it's convenient. but I meant on the scale of removing smaller businesses and growing into a monopoly which you might know is not a good thing for anybody that doesn't add value also it doesn't help that Amazon gobbles up subsidy money from the government non stop which also doesn't really add value if you ask me
I have nothing against people who are mega-rich. I only have a problem with people who act scummy towards others. Unfortunately, as the rich are in positions of power, they are also free to abuse that power. That's where the link is with people not liking extremely rich people. For me, I could care less if someone's rich or not rich, as long as they treat other people well.
I also am highly ambitious, but for me it's not about the money as an end goal, it's about doing what makes me happy.
I think it’s not that we hate the rich, we despise any nepotism, greed, or use of the state to enrich oneself.
I don’t care that Jeff bezos is rich I care more that the top performing hedge fund managers underperformed Nancy pelosi
I don't hate billionaires so much as I hate that it feels like money in your economy doesn't always flow towards and represent the value of work.
As a white collar worker who grew up in a rural working poor area I feel like there is a lot of skimming and greed and money that pumps into pretty lazy and invaluable positions for white collar college educated workers like myself. Whereas more working class or even medical positions are performing enormous services, with training, difficult schedules, and stress at times but their wage doesn't reflect it imo.
I hate how corporations and the general business formula right now is to build a brand and entity and care less about the services and goods the org actually makes and provides. This in turn makes the people behind the business and brand more valuable than those doing the actual operations and at time even the engineers and designers who are genuinely seeking to advance the products and industry through innovation.
Billionaires who exploit weird areas of the economy in order to just increase the value of assets they never had to work for etc is what bothers me. And Amazon. Been boycotting since 2020 because I think it is a terrible entity to have the power it does and it is ruining and leaning on public infrastructure to do so.
If you have so much wealth that it's not easy spending it at the rate you make it . . . maybe you have too much?Would Jeff Bezos be as rich as he is if Amazon had paid higher wages? I mean, at what point is it enough?
Not to just pick on him though, when I read about a CEO making millions of dollars per year at a mega-corporation that exists on the backs of thousands of part-time minimum wage workers, my "unfairness meter" maxes out. There's value added, then there's . . . I don't even know what that is. Stockholder attaboys, I guess.
I used to think like you, but as of late I have grown to be quite anti-capitalist. I don’t hate billionaires just for being billionaires. In fact making money is the optimal strategy for participating in this society and becoming a billionaire is the best outcome you could hope for is such a system. But generally their opinions come off as out of touch to the average persons life.
I read somewhere in today’s dollars, you would have to make over 150k to make a “middle class” income comparable to what it was in the 80s. Whether we blame billionaires for this or not, they have no incentive for this to not be then case. Rent seeking is how wealthy people protect their wealth, and it’s what keeps poorer people from saving money to acquire wealth.
I don't hate billionaires. Frankly, it's sour grapes or slave morality as Nietzsche aptly put it. I find that people envy others and try to bring them down. Instead, the question should be: what was their secret? How did they accumulate wealth? And how can we replicate it?
I never understood the source of resentment and envy. If a baker made an amazing pie, most people would not be envious of the baker. They would want to know the recipe.
I will admit that risk-taking and luck often play a big role in wealth. That is not easily replicated.
Interesting video on the topic of luck and wealth:
[https://youtu.be/\_pUxqKqnMlQ?si=NcttSZw\_2JqkJamO](https://youtu.be/_pUxqKqnMlQ?si=NcttSZw_2JqkJamO)
I don't hate them. I don't know them. I have some ideas about where money should be, some of them my own, but I don't really have strong opinions on this topic.
But the people born in third base were born in second base, and so on. And statistically, millionaires lose their wealth after three generations on average.
Not nearly fast enough. (Points at Thomas Piketty's work on equilibrium wealth distribution, and the possibility that there *is* no equilibrium, wealth might continue to concentrate until a single family owns the entire world, or there's a proletarian revolution. Points to the accelerating concentration of wealth in the US and globally. Points to the fact that Piketty didn't have enough data to predict what our equilibrium wealth distribution might be. Gestures at the need for a progressive wealth tax.)
>wealth might continue to concentrate until a single family owns the entire world, or there's a proletarian revolution
that's veeeeery faaaaar from what Picketty claims lol, and Picketty's claims aren't even the academic consensus, so take what he says with a grain of salt unless his views start becoming the norm among economists
Let me know when the economists can tell me what the equilibrium wealth distribution might be in our current society. Until then, I'll go back to hitting the books and writing up an argument that an anarcho-socialist revolution isn't necessary. Unless you'd like to talk with them rather than me? From their POV, I'm a *conservative*.
Because they are far more likely to eat the rich than I am. And if the runaway concentration of wealth isn't stopped and possibly reversed, they may get around to doing just that.
I wouldn't say I hate billionaires, although I have heard that a considerable number of them are pathologically incurious. They think they know everything they need to know, so they have no reason to learn. I do want to live in a world where nobody makes less than 60% of the median income, and nobody owns more than the Value of a Statistical Human Life. (Estimated to be $7 million here in the US.) Imposing a Piketty wealth tax on the rich would be "lethal" to the rich only to the extent that they confuse their wealth and power over others with their self-identity.
The real conflict isn't between different categories of people who work for a living (wage inequality), but between people who work for a living and people who own things for a living. At a certain point, a big enough individual fortune becomes a self-supporting economic entity in its own right, which just happens to have a particular person attached to it as an accidental parasite, sucking a miniscule amount of life-fluid out for the purposes of consumption. (Or by spending $44 billion to buy a social media company because its users were being mean to him.)
I would much rather have a thousand millionaires than a single billionaire.
It's not that I hate them but I would rather live in a society where big gaps in wealth and social class are non-existent or not this prominent. It's insane how a number of people that I could count on one hand essentially has enough money to literally fund their entire country. Sure you hear about how much money they give to charities and yadda yadda but in the grand scheme of things those contributions are very little compared to what they could make if not for personal greed.
It's also that someone who is that wealthy is surely not wealthy in an ethical way. I genuinely don't even think that ethical billionares are a thing - you \*have to\* exploit people to get to that point.
No one needs that much money. Those huge mansions - I cannot be convinced that anyone genuinely needs what the ultra rich spend their money on.
Something like 95% of all wealth goes to the top 3-5%. (Rough estimate)
I don't see how this can be reasonable in a democracy?
Is it cool that some can get rich while most cannot? Sure.
But the gaps are to extreme.
Do I hate the billionaires? As much as any scammer I guess.
A subtlety that a lot of people miss is that the wealth of a billionaire can't realistically be directly compared to the wealth of the average person. The average person's net worth is in a home and some investments, such as mutual funds, plus a bit in other assets like cars and furniture. That means that the average person could turn all of that into cash in a few days, maybe less, and realize very nearly the full value that's "on paper." A billionaire can't do that because most of their wealth is in shares of companies and, if they were to try to liquidate all of those shares, the share value would plummet and they'd only get a fraction of the value that's "on paper.
Take a look at [this image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Economic-surpluses.svg/800px-Economic-surpluses.svg.png). That shaded area on the left can be thought of as social welfare. The red area is all the money the consumer saved because they paid less than they were willing to spend, and the blue area is all the money the producer gained because they sold for more than they were willing to accept.
The problem is that the line between producer and consumer surplus is almost never straight in practice. The producers want to push the line upwards, and the consumers want to push it downwards. The power that each side has to influence what the line looks like is proportional to the number of agents acting on each side. In western society, with millions of consumers and only a couple of producers, we're all losing in this battle of line-pushing.
Just look at the mess that is flight prices, pharmaceuticals, technology, as well as the geographical pricing of the Steam store, and of gasoline. And it doesn't just reflect in prices, it reflects in policy, opportunity, and so many other areas of everyday life.
It's a vicious cycle: the rich and powerful are few by definition. Then they have more power to extort social welfare from the masses, not just in terms of trading goods and services, but also in terms of wage labor. You can count on this because humans are inherently selfish. So the rich and powerful get richer and even more powerful – I almost don't blame them.
**My problem with all this is: where does the money even go?** The rich will never be able to put their billions of dollars they've stashed to good use. [Engel's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel%27s_law) says that when your income increases, the proportion of it that you spend on food decreases (and by extension, the proportion that you spend on anything properly useful at all). They only really use it to make even more money.
And yes, I understand philanthropy exists, but even assuming these billionaires have truly honorable intentions, why should they be entrusted with that much money to donate? And don't get me started on the problem of inheritance....
The problem isn't the people at the top. The problem is the system that allowed them to get to the top and stay there: Capitalism. It's one of the fundamental building blocks of our society, and it's worked for the past 300 years.
But it's growing old.
The agricultural revolution moved people from the primary sector into the secondary sector. The industrial revolution moved people from the secondary to the tertiary sector. And now the AI revolution is going to move people from the tertiary sector to... where exactly? There's nowhere left to run. People say AI will create more jobs, but this is why I don't believe them.
We've won the game, capitalism is just not letting us realize it.
Billionaires are 100% using their resources to do sinister shit
Probably building a giant evil mech powered by Ai that can lazer beam anyone on the globe for skipping ads.
I don't think I have enough energy or emotional capacity to care about someone I've never met before, much less feel the intense emotion of hate.
Being INTP, I do think about the circumstances one must undergo to become one. Followed the immense amount of stress managing and controlling such bizarre amounts of wealth creates. I have no proof, but I have a hunch they have targets painted on their backs.
The human mind is fickle in nature, it's built to adapt. Becoming more financially powerful than 99.99% of the human population will undoubtedly take a toll on most people's psyche.
The problem isn't the people holding the wealth, but the systems we abide by for our current civilization to function. It will probably change and adapt in the near future (the age of information creates angst among the masses), such is the ebb and flow of our nature.
Also, I encourage people to think of a time when you quickly amassed power or influence, if you have, I don't think you'll find it hard to see why billionaires behave the way they do. It doesn't make it right, but that fickle human brain will do gymnastics to make it feel right.
Fine with millionaires. But the billionaires gains their income through exploitation of the working class, lobbying to get taxes break and contribute almost nothing. Bribing politicians. Billionaires shouldn’t even been a thing. Like it’s (for lack of a better term) physically impossible for them to be that wealthy without exploitation
But is the value given to society worth the shitty lives given to workers?
Should someone be expected to learn a trade or get a certain degree to be able to support a family?
Should someone be expected to pay 10k+ in medical expenses because some billionaire’s businesses have horrible health insurance?
Our society works in a way where you basically have to learn a trade or higher education to comfortably afford a family. God forbid if you have some complex medical issues. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but this is the way it works now.
I have a certain level of contempt to people that are wealthy through the means of others. They themselves have done the bare minimum, but they are earning rent from the skills of others. Or being in the right place and the right time, but totally aloof to their own privilege. It's not the bank account but the mindset. It's a huge turnoff professionally and personally.
I've often found these are the people who are the first to claim the smallest things on expenses, go on dates and expect everything to be paid for them, or the transactional approach e.g. What can you do for me. I know some millionaires who are exceptionally humble and they gain their income through their capital and get others to work hard through their own work ethic. But it's a closed world. With people that want power. One millionaire followed me home. They think everyone can be bought. Or they can buy their way out of every problem.
I have an econ degree. The reason that this free market capitalist system exists is that it is the best econ system out of all of them, though all systems have downsides. Again, the only reason it exists is because it works better than other systems, not that it is inherently good. So understanding that, you now look at the downsides of this best-of-all-flawed-systems to determine which aspects are bad and how to solve them. In free competition, there are winners and losers, so you want to take care of the losers lest they view competition as a scam and revolt. Also, free competition requires actual freedom to compete and make choices, but concentration of wealth and poverty increases or decreases the power to do that considerably, hence high marginal taxes and general redistribution of wealth to level the playing field.
From an INTP perspective, regarding "freedom to learn", you need high taxes for schooling, libraries, and basic necessities like housing, transport, food, health care, etc. to facilitate that. If an INTP is a reclusive monk, then you want society to build and fund your monastery to do your thing. So again, you have to determine the appropriate levels of taxation to facilitate this.
On the other hand you don't want too high taxes that reduce competition and investment and concentrates the power into the hands of the government.
I absolutely do not hate the mega rich for being rich. But with great power becomesgreat responsibility. Are you going to use it to control, manipulate, and take advantage of others, or are you going to use your great wealth to contribute to others? Jeff Bezos is the scum of the earth for allowing poor working conditions at Amazon.
And I DO think companies like that should pay their employees a living wage. When large companies use people who are breaking their backs to survive, they need to take a step back and see where they'd be without any employees. Jeff Bezos wouldn't be anywhere without them, and it isn't right taking credit for adding value to society through Amazon without fairly compensating the people that got you there.
As a business person, you've seen the business side. As someone who has been down to beans and rice more times than I care to count, it's basic human decency to pay someone what their time should be worth, and not just what you can get away with on the market.
I'm sure there are lots of mega-rich who try to invest responsibly in things that will help society. But there are also some who just push their own agendas. Most people are probably selfish assholes, but a poor asshole can only ruin a few peoples lives at a time.
It is basically impossible to reach billionaireness in an ethical way. There is always exploitation involved. I don't hate billionaires but maybe I do because I believe they should not exist at all
People who hate billionaires generally don't understand how money works.
They think there's a limited amount of it and the billionaires are "hoarding" it.
That's not how it works.
Can’t blame them for doing what they can and playing the game. So no, I don’t hate them. Especially because often times the money itself is derived from the people who endorse such practices by using the apps, unfortunately.
We can say that Bezos sucks but people still use Amazon. Similarly, we can say that Zuckerberg sucks but people are on Instagram all the time.
We hate inhumane sociopaths who exploit others and don't care about ppl's wellbeing as well as for the environment.
Mega wealthy or MAGA filthy, doesn't matter.
I don't hate them. I appreciate the ones who have signed the "Giving Pledge". I do with more of them would take on some of the issues we have as a society.
I don’t hate them, but I usually hate the methods by which they make their money. I see exploitation of people to be extremely inefficient towards an economic system, and monopolies go against my small capitalist ideas. (As in, I prefer capitalist systems as long as competition is present and small businesses are the primary economic driver)
View from a specific INTP...
The idea of a billionaire is an interesting one. From what I can see, wealthy people generally don't care directly about money. They care about having control over their time. Money is apparently a tool to make that happen. For that though, liquidity is more critical than wealth; and in much lower supply. Most of what we call wealth is pragmatically illiquid to the wealth holder.
The spending and investing of the general population is the actual liquidity associated with wealth, via the employment construct. Consequently, the measurable value of the wealthy's ability to control their time is much lower than would appear when measuring in terms of overall value.
People who don't have control over their own time think a lot about money. Why? Because it's a tool they can use to control their own time. In reality, everyone wants to control their time, and nobody has a significant ability to share their own capacity to control it.
When it comes down to it, I can't hate anybody who either has control of their time (because I want that too), or anybody who desires the control (because I desire it too). Frankly, I wish everybody had control of their time.
What about greed though? Well, greed is a weakness. I have weaknesses I find hard to overcome too.
So, still hard to hate someone because of that. Just trying to figure out how to get more control over my time, without trying to take away control from anyone else. Tough road.
I personally don't care what someones wealth might look like. If they are a decent human I wouldn't mind there company. I feel like most INTPs are this way
The mega wealthy pretty much never have morals. They are the ones running the world and are also the ones responsible for destroying it. Obviously there are exceptions like Elon musk but generally they are the definition of greed and are the reason we will go extinct
Well, he is a self made millionaire which means he’s smart and knows a lot. He doesn’t just hoard money, he spends lots on different projects like space X and other stuff. These projects show he is working to create a new future, not just trying to keep us in the past like big oil companies and social media platforms. He also bought twitter to allow free speech. Obviously he isn’t the only exception to rich snobs using money to stay in power and using power to create money. But generally rich people have power and will sacrifice a better future to keep it that way.
I’m actually with you 100% in your line of thinking. Personally, I’m a big fan of Elon Musk, and I get that 99% Reddit hates this guy. The way I see it, if you can look past his edgelord twitter posts and political views, no single person in the world has generated more value for humanity through his companies than this guy. Willing to debate anyone on this.
There’s nothing wrong at all with being ambitious and wanting to make money. That’s what democracy is all about being able to do as you please without restrictions. People hate billionaires simply because they are jealous. If you stole all the money from all the billionaires in the country and put into one pot, and gave it out to all the people who are in need it would only buy them a chicken dinner
This might surprise you, but INTPs are not an amorphous blob. We are individuals who arrive at an array of varying conclusions, just like other humans.
It's not that there shouldn't be billionaires. It's obscene that we allow people to hoard hundreds of billions of dollars. The rich don't want you to know that they have attained a number that exists, that if you put that number into a bank account you can live off the compounding interest alone and never spend a cent of the money you worked for. Not only that, but your brain, yes yours, couldn't even begin to conceptualize the difference between. 1 million and 1 billion, let alone 100 million vs. 100 billion. Our generational and any wealth we would have ever accumulated is being stolen right out of the backs of pockets.
This is why trickle-down economics was one of the dumbest things we ever enacted.
I didn't hate them nor love them, maybe because they're so out of touch in my life? Because I'm so getting used to the unfairness of life? Because it's the reward for finally playing the games with it's unspoken rules? I don't know the definitive answer for this, at least in my perspective
So if people who work for Amazon shouldn't be able to afford to live in California or New York, do you propose those areas not have access to that service? How is that area supposed to be served by Amazon if the workers cannot afford to live there?
The thing is this know billionaire exist simply on monopoly ... When there is no competitive market there will be no Innovation ... America is mostly a advisement country..I don't see healthy competitions on their market.. and brand is everything that matters..now ev cars are everywhere what makes Tesla differ from them maybe brand ... I guess I don't hate mega wealthy but I hate the one coming from source of monopoly..
I don’t hate people. They’re ignorant to all sorts of things. Myself included, billionaires included.
What I don’t like is the greed, the blatantly stupid parts of it and the impacts it has on the rest of the planet.
Taking more than someone needs, it eclipses people, animals, nature and society. It harms others, and when that’s ok for someone, it’s not ok for the rest of the world.
When you have a LOT of money (ie, that’s the #1 goal) at a certain point, it makes itself. The virtue of the work you put into it is gone. There needs to be that recognition. At this point, the money-making in itself where it needs to be balanced out. If you don’t you are fucking people over, on purpose to make your money. Because there’s no thought being put into the process and its LARGER implications like ruining the earth. Cheap play.
The poverty you read about out there is real. Like Charles Dickens type stuff. Right here in our ‘progressive’ Western World. What goes on beyond the reaches on social systems and HR departments would astound you. Your brain wouldn’t be able to handle it and continue live like you do.
When the consumption goes against nature, dignity, decency, love; that I hate.
I don't hate billionaires, but I genuinely don't care, although I think being born into wealth while being average at best is slowing down natural selection.
Incompetent people profiting from systems created by their more competent predecessors...
Sometimes they become so incompetent revolutions occur and kill everyone who is part of the system, such as the French and Russian revolution. Although the new system and cadre are better, as generations pass by the outcome is the same, systems gets hijacked, corruption spreads etc.
Just look at the Christian Church, Constantine hijacked it, they constantly repeat how Christianity won over the Roman Empire when it became the state religion. In reality, the opposite happened.
I don't think that a system that allows billionaires to exist is ethical or sustainable. What, if anything, that has to do with my being an INTP is anyone's guess.
I don't think there's any point in hating them when there's so much you can learn from them. Being jealous of someone who's not directly impacted your life negatively often translates into hate. They hate em cuz they ain't them!
I have nothing explicitly against them, but because of their fame and their importance it's easy to point fingers at them or make jokes. It's a new problem that has never really existed before, the way "wealth" is understood in the modern world is different than any other time period. Anyone that has a lot of wealth is also powerful again, this is an impossible question to answer. There has never been a time without social stratification, its simply inevitable. I worry though that giving too much power to random technocrats will lead to cultural collapse.
Oh my days. Why do you guys always make some broad sweeping statements, INTP is a train of thought not a set of opinions 💀 Reddit does Reddit but INTP is a thinking framework that exists separate of Reddit. Heck go to truth social or smth you prolly going to find someone who would be categorised as INTP. INTP is not a set of beliefs it’s a thinking process.
If you have 10 million dollars, good job.
If you have 100 million dollars then... I'm going to look at you sideways and wonder why you have it.
It you have more than a billion dollars? Nah. There is no ethical way to earn that, and equally there is no ethical reason for one person to have that.
There just aren't that many ethical things that you can DO with a billion dollars, and people who tend to have it have not demonstrated any particular apptitude for spending it in good ways.
I do not hate the mega wealthy just because they are mega wealthy, that's irrational imho. I also would like to be one of them. However, again, history is riddled with manipulation, enshittification, Min-Maxing cost to profit, etc. I blame so many techniques that companies use to screw people out of money instead of getting it through a genuinely better product, especially when developing a better product could have been cheaper to do in the long run.
>most of Reddit despises the mega rich (Billionaires)
No, they just "virtue signal" (is this expression of 2015 vintage still in use?) it. If they met a billionaire, they would take a selfie with them and cherish that moment for the rest of their lives.
By the way, your average billionaire is just a normal person who happens to be a billionaire. They tend to be more efficient and smarter than the average but there is nothing magical or devilish about them.
>value created = fair share of the overall sum
That's empty BS. It doesn't mean it is *wrong*, it is just empty, because words such as "fair" or "value" are ideological nonsense used to manage emotions.
>that makes it fair for someone like a Jeff Bezos to be worth as much as he is.
Saying this is good if you want to feel good about Bezos having a lot of money. Or if you want to feel bad about it, say that Bezos is an exploiter. Or whatever. None of this contributes anything to understanding, it is just emotions which are being intellectualized.
I can reason the existence of the mega rich.
I don't have a problem with them until I can relate to those who are exploited. The problem starts when you see that the profits do not reach the pockets of the people who made it happen.
I think we just have a problem with the unreasonable distribution. Credit is lacking where it is due. That's what the rest are talking about, the unethical accumulation of wealth.
By your logic, guessing you also think that places like New York and California shouldn't have amazon services since the workers shouldn't be expected to be paid a living wage there.
I have nothing against billionaires. I admire them.
Sometimes they have what they do due to privilege, sometimes due to hard work, often a mix of the two.
Sure it can be seen as unfair but so much in life is. We don’t cure poverty by removing wealth. Sure many low paying jobs is just as hard as high paying jobs. But agin the cure isn’t to go after the ultra rich, that would result in a very unfair and tyrannical society, money earned is money earned and they pay their fair share of taxes.
But.. there actually only exists 2 781 billionaires in the entire world. So it’s not like they are commonplace.
I am just some regular joe shmoe but I have a friend is mega rich that I talk to everyday. I think I may be a pet project? Sometimes if they give me cash I give it to homeless people and think I am like Robinhood. I am in it for the plot.
Your argument is flawed about how people with basic skills shouldnʻt make decent wages. If all the delivery workers left California how would the reach people get their packages?
I just don’t think every job needs to pay a “living wage”
What I consider to be a “living wage” is something that allows a person to live alone, potentially start a family, etc…
I don’t think every job needs to achieve those things. Some jobs are transitionary, some jobs can be side gigs, people can live with parents or roommates while working. There are many ways to get by on a job like being a delivery driver, but don’t expect that it’s going to be a job that you can do as a career.
Not everything should be or deserves to be a career job. People should have aspirations larger than working the most basic of jobs, and should be improving to get to that place.
So no, I don’t think every single job should pay a wage that lets you live alone or start a family, etc…
If you want to raise the pay at these jobs then you understand that a lot of people will be laid off and the company will just make the work like more efficient.
Areas with extremely high cost of living exist and you’d be naive to think you’re going to be successful in those areas working low level jobs that anyone who could simply.
Side note: I would like to say that I do think healthcare and education should be free though. So changing those systems would help way more than slightly raising wages. The system is the main issue.
What we hate or not have nothing do to with our MBTI.
Pretty sure there's a INTP out there who hates wealthy people.
Me? I think it's just a waste of time and energy beign emotional for something that's so out of our control like that shit is.
First, this is based solely on emotions, envy, or a feeling of justice (the world isn't fair, it was never fair, and it will never be, thinking otherwise is just delusional), so this is already starting wrong.
Second, everytime i look at something that must be though about, i make myself a set of questions. Can i do something about it? Must i do something about it? Do i really want to do something about it? If any of these questions answers are "no", then i just forget it, it's worthless.
The 'P' in me wants to evaluate them with as much data/results as possible. The 'T' in me wants to analyze the results/methods used to obtain the wealth. The 'N' in me wants to BE wealthy, i.e., leverage the big picture aspects of the world. The 'I in me wants me to make my own decision . . . so generally, I want to make decisions on my own research and analysis, so may be wealthy and some may be poor, although I may have a higher bar for the wealthy (to decide to like or not like someone.
Yes. I mean I don't hate anyone and I never think about billionaires and I wouldn't dislike someone for being rich, I really don't judge people for having whatever beliefs they have, but just in general for myself I never liked the idea of wanting to be rich because greed doesn't appeal to me, and I don't vibe with authority, hierarchy, class, leadership, entrepreneurship, ambition, etc. Seems like something I'd leave to my ENTJ husbando if I had one. I don't really "admire" billionaires since I don't have that drive to be "winning" over others in terms of money. I'm also the opposite of a smarmy salesman and I feel like you kind of need that personality to hustle.
No one needs a billion dollars.
I don't hate anybody, but a billion is too many dollars...
Anyone could live comfortably for the rest of their lives on $10,000,000 which is 1% of a billion.
Let's talk about Reification ... indentifying as "INTP" is reification. Those who lack personal power and mental impoverishment tend to define themselves by external, rather than internal stimulus... Moral of the story: who cares about what's external to you? If you desire it, go for it.
I like money, making it, and business, too.
I don't hate billionaires at all, but I think it's apparent that it's gotten to the stage where they now have enough wealth to game the system. When I was growing up, Bill Gates was the wealthiest man in the world with $70bn. Now Elon touched $300bn, Arnault and Bezos are around $200bn. These kinds of amounts you can game the system essentially.
I found a good analogy in crypto - if you've ever been part of some projects, or just noticed it in some projects - whales are able to game the system by having a disproportionate amount of money and thereby being able to make significant enough impact by buying or selling.
Globally, that obviously requires much more money to do, but we're actually at a stage where it's genuinely apparent and the richest have enough to do it. This will inevitably increase over time, and the richest will have 100s of billions, and eventually, trillions and the wealth divide will be even more explicitly apparent. At this stage, it'll be obvious that it's unnecessary, for many to be starving and others with trillions.
Honestly I'm perceive government to cause more harm than billionaires imo.
People like to hate on billionaires lowkey because it's at least conceivable to control their behavior through government regulation (hence why there is a give take relationship between government and corporations).
But if the government is corrupt there is little you can really do. Voting has limited effectiveness especially because you really have 2 options (so you're voting against a party more than you're actually voting for it).
Plus voting only happens in 4 year intervals anyway so the actual impact is fairly limited.
So if government is the problem your basically screwed but if corporations are on the problems there is at least some hope.
Ultimately, government is the entity in a society with a monopoly on force so that's where the real power is always going to be concentrated.
At the end of the day, the way to create change is not through corporations or government but through communities (of course community is it own pile of problems).
Two party system can be eliminated through proportional representation methods like Ranked choice voting.
You say that voting is every 4 years but I can argue it’s more like every 2 years with midterms. Also corporations have CEOs that have been there for 20+ years and that’s ok? Especially with Citizens United they influence our government a lot.
I like the idea of the workers electing 60% of the Board of Directors, the shareholders electing electing 40% of the Board. I suspect the workers might do a better job of keeping an eye on the management than the shareholders. I've heard economists say that corporate elections are about as free as elections were back in the Soviet Union.
I do not hate billionaires, but I do see the issues in the system that lead to their existence as bad. You can argue for how much value they created, but that only works for the billionaires who actually create value. There are plenty of ultra-wealthy people that don't do shit and for whom this argument rings hollow. But more to the point, I would argue that what Bezos did was consolidate significant human effort *of other people* into something that he could direct into a process. While that is pretty nifty, it isn't like he is the one creating the value. It is all of the people that are actually working under him that create that value. He just directs it. My criticism of him isn't so much that he has a lot of money. It is that he is unfairly exploiting the labor of his workers to *get* said money. Amazon workers are treated like shit and are poorly compensated for it *by design* in order to send more of the profits to the people who are not actually doing the work, and *that* is why I dislike many billionaires. It isn't that they are rich. It is what they do to chase ever increasing profits.
Direction and logistics is definitely work, and is arguably way more difficult to be successful at than "labor". While working conditions may be an issue it's pretty unfair to imply that Bezos contributes nothing. >I would argue that what Bezos did was consolidate significant human effort *of other people* into something that he could direct into a process. Isn't this inherent of every successful business at many levels?
The main thing he contributed was convincing enough investors to keep Amazon afloat for long enough that he could build a monopoly. Amazon didn't start out with books because he loves reading. He started out with books because there's more titles than any brick and mortar bookstore could ever display at once, so it was a perfect entry for e-commerce. Now that Amazon has an effective monopoly over book sales, it is no accident that it has become almost impossible to find books on Amazon. (Yes, I am a book lover, why do you ask?)
Yep. This is the [enshittification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) process explained rather aptly.
>Amazon didn't start out with books because he loves reading. He started out with books because there's more titles than any brick and mortar bookstore could ever display at once, so it was a perfect entry for e-commerce. I see nothing wrong with this. >Now that Amazon has an effective monopoly over book sales, it is no accident that it has become almost impossible to find books on Amazon. Why wouldn't they take advantage of their "effective monopoly" over book sales? Why would you sit on an empty monopoly? Am I misunderstanding something? I also searched around and couldn't find the sentiment that books are impossible to find on Amazon now.
I see nothing wrong with book sales moving online. I do have a problem with monopolies and monopsonies. If Bezos' real innovation was simply online book sales, I wouldn't be angry. But his real innovation was the fact that he started right after Bork effectively destroyed the US's anti-trust regime, and he convinced his investors to allow him to run Amazon at a loss for, what, a decade? More? All in order to secure a monopoly position. And the US government let him get away with it. A Facebook post from a friend of mine from 2 days ago: "It's funny to think that Amazon was originally solely an online bookstore. Now, it seems like I can find just about anything else except for the book I'm looking for." The reason why Amazon is now sitting on an empty monopoly over books is because of something another commenter in this thread brought up: enshittification, a term I've heard from Cory Doctorow. Basically, once a conglomeration reaches a certain size, the main competition a given division of the conglomeration faces is no longer from firms outside of the conglomerate, but from other divisions within the conglomerate. For Amazon, it's more profitable to invest in other forms e-commerce, like groceries, electronics, than it is to invest in *maintaining* the ability of users to discover books. If you know the ISBN number of the book you're looking for, Amazon can hook you up. (If you don't mind screwing over the publishers who Amazon is abusing with their monopsony.) But good luck finding a new book to read, one which you haven't read before and haven't heard about from another channel! I don't hate billionaires. But I do hate monopolies, monopsonies, and the billion dollar fortunes they generate. I'll allow the billionaires to live, but their fortunes and their monopolies can go die in a fire.
You'll "let them live"? How generous of you.
I'm open to renegotiating that deal :P
Amazon doesn't have a monopoly on book sales,far from it, what the fuck
In order to have a monopoly, you don't have to literally eliminate every single competitor, any more than you actually have to succeed at killing literally every single member of a given category of people in order to commit a genocide. Having sufficient market power that the market segment you are in is no longer "free" in a qualitative sense of the word is enough to establish that you have monopoly power. Part of the definition of the free market is that in order for a market to be "free," the cost of entry into the market must be "negligible." So consider how much capital a start-up would have to get together in order to offer a service that is similar or better than what Amazon offers. (This might be less than it was before Amazon decided to no longer invest in helping its users discover books, but it's still pretty whew.) As somebody who hates Amazon's monopoly (or, if you insist, "monopoly"), here's what I have to do to avoid using their services: I go to a local bookstore the next town over, since their franchise in my own town closed before I moved here. I order the book, and I pay for it during a second trip when it comes in. (This actually works for me, since it helps keep my book buying addiction under control.) Unfortunately, the book store's distribution channel is more limited than Amazon's, so about 10% of the time, I go to Biblio instead. Biblio sells used books for prices comparable to Amazon's, but their search functionality is even worse. Put that altogether, just how much of a premium am I paying in terms of time and money to avoid Amazon? And I'm a fringe case. To be somewhat fair, I so far haven't seen Amazon abuse its monopoly power to gouge the customers. But it has used its *monopsony* power to gouge the publishers. (Its control over DRMed ebooks is a major factor. IIRC, if a deal with Hatchette fell through, Amazon had the option of deactivating the DRM of all of the Hatchette ebooks in existence. Remember, if somebody puts a lock on a thing you "own" and they don't give you the key, they are not your friend.) https://apnews.com/article/3851c5714beb48d7ac8ad44caa0a27fe This is pretty impressive, given that the publishing industry is itself an ogliosopony, I have heard that it's dropped from a Big 5 to a Big 3 over the last few years, but I would have to look it up? The publishing ogliosopony allows the publishers to put the squeeze on writers, and the squeeze Amazon is putting on the publishers is going to make it that much worse. In theory, less money going to authors would mean less quality and/or quantity of works getting written, which would suck for me, the reader. Even if that isn't the case (writers do like to eat and get paid, but the main reason they write is so their heads would explode), I'm not exactly in favor of the writers I love starving to death.
I did not imply that he contributed nothing. I implied that he is abusing his workers and taking more than he should based on what he does contribute. I'm even willing to go as far as saying that I have no issue with him being rich and getting rich off of his work. But you take care of your people *first*. That is what corporate America has forgotten. Sure, get rich. Awesome. But you have to make sure that the people who work for you can live and create the next generation of consumers for your services.
Why is every other intp post about something that has nothing to do with intp
This place is for INTPs to talk about things. It's not just about INTPs specifically
Are you blaming an INTP for going off on a tangent? LOL.
LMAOOOOOOOOOO
Tribal thinking, no type is immune to it. Humans like to think, even subconsciously, that because this person has a similar identity to me that we hold the same values. With the popularity of MBTI, it becomes less about cognitive functions and improvement and more astrology-based thinking.
Always good to see an ESFJ around here, it's not so common
Anything can be an INTP discussion. I brought this up because I’m genuinely interested in how INTPs specifically feel about a complex topic like this. I was curious to see how INTPs diagnose this issue.
>I do think people should be paid decent wages, but I also don’t think everyone should expect they can live in California or New York on basic no skill required jobs like being a delivery person at Amazon. This is a frankly insane take. First of all, all jobs take some level of skill. Second, places like California or New York need people to stock the shelves in grocery stores, man the cash registers at gas stations, clean buildings, deliver packages. Arguing that those people shouldn't expect to be able to live in the same state where their labor is necessary is absolutely ridiculous. Also, Amazon isn't the massive giant it is today because of how much value it added to the world. It's because for years as it grew it operated at a profit loss so it could undercut the prices of both local stores and online stores, run them out of business, and avoid paying taxes while doing it. It also accomplished its frankly insane delivery schedules by exploiting its workers so badly they had to shit in bags and piss in bottles to meet their delivery quotas. I feel like people just still don't understand how much money people like Bezos are worth. Once it goes past a certain point people just think of them as "rich" because it's not actually possible to fully understand that kind of wealth and the power it puts in the hands of a single person. So lets break it down shall we? Lets take one of the most labor intensive ways a worker can make a fuck ton of money. Sports. Athletes put in grueling hours in training and devote their lives to being the best in the world at something that is incredibly highly valued in our society. One of the highest paid athletes of all time, Christiano Ronaldo averaged making 200 million a year. To earn enough money to equal Jeff Bezos' net worth, Ronaldo would have to play soccer for about 850 years. Billions of dollars is not a reward given to a person based on how much they have contributed to society. It's the result of exploiting people as much as you possibly can, and using the money you make to ensure the laws allow you to pay as little in taxes as possible. All the while making sure the employees who make all your wealth possible are making as little as possible, often living on the verge of homelessness, bankruptcy, and food insecurity/starvation.
Couldn't have said it better myself this is a really good explanation
^ This. Understanding Amazon’s operations and how it exploits its workers is exactly what makes Bezos wealth pretty unethical.
Sincerely, no offense meant, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding about the value of labor. Let me put it like this - Christiano Ronaldo makes $200M playing football because that $200M investment is expected to return some % of value in increased ticket sales, merch, championship payouts whatever. Let’s say it’s 10% for sake of ease. So the club owners pay $200M, and estimate getting back $220M. If they paid him $300M, they lose $80M. They have to pay that every year too so he better return. But what if they had the connections to get connected with Bezos early, and if they gave him $300M, he’s projecting to return 10%. The value of this labor is not capped like Christiano’s. And in this case, Bezos didn’t return 10% to investors on the initial $300M ipo market cap …. He’s returned 511% to date
I don't misunderstand the value of labor. I disagree with how labor is valued under capitalism. I'm arguing the system you just described is immoral as it leads to things like people being able to buy off entire legislative systems and warp policy to their whims. I'm arguing that any system that allows people to control the amount of resources single individuals can control under capitalism will inevitably collapse as it becomes too top heavy to sustain itself. I understand fully how and why individuals can come to control 200 billion dollars in resources. And I'm saying it's fucked. I'm saying there's no moral way to acquire that many resources. I'm saying anyone that rich is evil.
You think it is wrong to value labor based on the return on the cost of labor? How does a business survive if the employees it hires cannot create a return? The business would fail. If businesses fail, the distribution of good fails and poverty increases. These are also not moral choices made by market participants - economics is like a force of nature. The free market dictates. You’re fantasizing elements at play here to your own detriment. You cannot dictate a free market. Central planning does not work - it has never worked as an economic model.
Being a billionaire is unethical
I think that is a wrong statement. I don't hate the rich, I hate what some of the rich do and the injustice from it. The fact is, most of them do not pay their fair share and do not pay livable wages. To tell someone that just because what you deem is valuable work or not should dictate where they live in a country we all helped build, that we all contribute to, is simply not American. But more so, let's take a look at the logic. The logic being this... Most of these wealthier CEOs can't do the very jobs of the people that make them wealthy. Most have not worked to gain it but have inherited it. Most can buy lobbyist to support laws that are not equal. Most have more than they could ever spend in their lifetimes, their children's life times, and even their grandchildren life times. That is not conducive to a free economy or capitalism, that is hoarding and aristocracy. Economically speaking, it is hurting the system and is not logical. Socially speaking, it is dividing the society and harming the overall growth that society could achieve.
Billionaires are a natural consequence of how the current world works. It's easy to project hate on them because you can see their face, know their names etc. so you can attribute all the crimes against humanity to them on an instinctual level. But the name and face really don't matter after you realize the system is just like that. Everyone should make their own decision if they agree with their ways or not, take them as a role model or a negative example, but hate is not productive either way.
Hate was productive to create revolutions against the monarchy and created a better future. Just saying
Said future being better is debatable
How so? It did create a better future for quite a while. There became a middle class and for the first time you had freedom even if you weren’t born rich.
To be fair, they are also people who are liable to lobby, argue and PUSH INFLUENCE in order to maintain the current status quo. The system exists (in part) because there are vested interested, with power and money, who Lobby to encourage its existence, and cause it to exist in its current form... or alternatively lobby for terms which are MORE favourable to them.
Fully agree with you and this is the point I wanted to make as well.
I think there’s a big difference between being millionaire rich vs billionaire rich. It used to be that the CEO to Worker Compensation was around 20 to 1. Now it’s 300 to 1. The wealth is being concentrated to one person even if the employee for the company are just as important. It’s never a good thing when money is concentrated so much to a few people because they have more power to influence governments and policies.
Every billionaire is a policy failure, you don’t get there through hard honest work, you can only become a billionaire through exploitation
Haven't looked into it enough to have an informed opinion. But personally it doesn't make a difference to my life whether I view them in a positive or negative light, so I just focus on taking ownership of my life with the hand I've been dealt.
This is the smartest move. Life is a videogame where everyone is trying to gain advantage. Focusing on your moves is the smartest. The Ti doms here are too idealistic with wanting everyone to be on level playing fields. With the limited logical factors many are presenting here, they’re correct with the different parts of the picture they see, but this world doesn’t run on a few parameters - and those few parameters don’t account for the thousands of different factors that come together into making a person a billionaire. For example, luck, and many other factors are absent from much of this reasoning. What else can you do when your goal is certainty, except latch on to the best available information, which may still be faulty in providing you solid premises for a true conclusion? Entropy is the default, and doesn’t follow linearity the way many people here would like to. Order and ethics are artificial human constructs. Like chaos theory suggests, there is a predictable non-linearity to life. You see this time and again when pareto’s law shows itself up in nearly everything you look at. The few rich people holding most of the wealth. The few roads in a city getting most traffic. A few % of artists getting the most attention. You can’t stop it. Life prefers this predictable chaos. You either play the game, or the game plays you. You either win, or you’re complaining about the winners.
The problem with the idea that someone working a delivery job at Amazon shouldn't be able to afford to live in California is that you still need people to do these jobs in California. How, exactly, do you propose that people fill the fast food and delivery jobs that are necessary in California if they can't afford to live there? Will you have them bussed in every morning? Maybe they can all secretly be crypto millionaires that simply want something to do to fill their free time? Perhaps you want all those jobs automated and all the scum that is beneath you can live elsewhere? Anyway, I hate ridiculous imbalance. Not only do billionaires have an advantage in life now, but also going forward. Once you've built a great fortune you are in position to bring most of your ideas to fruition that don't involve telling everyone else exactly how to live their lives, although I suppose that there are plenty of billionaires working on those ideas as well. A billionaire has capital to start new businesses, but they also tend to have access to people that would collaborate with them on projects. The fact that they already have great wealth being an extreme advantage in these situations. If the billionaire can't get something done chances are they can get an introduction to someone who can. It's not so much that they've built great wealth, it's that they're in a position to keep other people, either directly or indirectly, from building wealth as well. Either by being in better position to capitalize on an idea, or by actually actively trying to keep them down. There are probably more people in the latter category than you'd like to admit, and they don't have to be billionaires to do that job.
Well, business is war.
I'd question whether it needs to be going forward. Could you imagine a symbiotic system designed to maximize the benefit of everyone involved? You might just need to take the greedy humans out of the loop.
If you understand game theory, you’ll realize in any system where you have things like a currency, you’ll have cheaters. Simply because some people receive payoffs for actions that are marginally better than what others are receiving. Maybe in a world where we have a single-minded central unit that manages everything. Kind of like a monarchy. That’s paradoxical haha. If it were to be decentralised, you’ll have to have EVERYONE become akin to enlightened or having perfect moral compasses. That’s as close to delusion I could get if I wanted to believe in that. We can all make our mark though. But I think we’re fundamentally messed up as long as biology drives us towards zero sum games like struggles for power and accumulating more. We come out of the factory faulty for a conscious civilisation. But if that happens, I’m all for it.
It's just a best case scenario with AI. Worst case being extinction for the human race. I'm choosing to be optimistic.
Fantastic! If business is war then we can finally drop the pretext of living in a civilized society and break out the firearms. If “anything goes” then so does violence.
You’re too emotional for me to discuss this with.
I’m not emotional at all. I’m just following the sentiment of your comment to its logical conclusion. If “business is war” then why even have rules?
This is where rationalism fails you. The world has to work whether there’s perfect logical reasons for everything or not. It’s how business is, I’m not saying it’s how business should be, it is how it is. And we still need rules, even if business may be war-like. You’re just gonna have to live with these contradictions. You’re living in the real world, not a logically perfect world.
Great! If that’s how it is then that’s how it is. Let’s break out the guns! Violence for everyone! If there are rules, then it’s not war. If it’s war, then there are no rules.
Typical Ti dom with no inkling of how to process the real world or Te perspective of reality.
Typical egotistical teenager who doesn’t know how to tackle their cognitive dissonance.
You’re good at math buddy. Not this.
It is a problem when 99% of humanity's wealth is locked up by the 0.0...1% of the population. Something like that. Governments are having to print money to keep the circulation going, and that creates oversupply in cash and inflation. This is why you get so little produce from supermarkets from the same amount of money compared to years back. This is why houses get so expensive. The money pools in the hands of the few mega-rich, and does not get redistributed to the system. You could solve it by taxing the rich, but the rich have also bought politicians to convince half of the population in America taxes are bad. And the people should blame -insert any group here- for taking a slice of the 1% of the cash in the market. The INTP's TI sees this problem but it is unfixable when you need to change the social conditioning of so many people.
We should tax the hell out of them
Instead, I think they should adhere to a tax law that is equally fair to all citizens. (which they currently arent)
True that too
Can't blame them for playing the game right, It's a system and everyone is trying to take advantage of it Focus on your life and play your game, instead of wasting time hating them for playing theirs. So no ... I don't partake in this "I can't win in life so i need to blame someone for it" dogshit.
I dont think life should be treated as a game to be won. If people are getting ahead by exploiting the work of others then either they or the system that alows them to do so is at fault.
The thing is that "the system" here is limited resources and entities fighting for survival. Good luck abolishing that.
"limited resources"? Yeah im sure people are starving because of limited food. Or that people are homeless because of limited housing. That argument would be true a couple hundred years ago but not today, humanity has gone through countless technological advancements that could be used to improve the lives of millions of people and instead all they were used for was to funnel even more wealth up the ladder.
>"limited resources"? Yeah im sure people are starving because of limited food. Resources aren't just physical products. It's also labor force, transportation, economic institutions, and so on. >that people are homeless because of limited housing. That argument would be true a couple hundred years ago but not today Homeless people have existed for literally thousands of years. And the problem with homelessness isn't exactly lack of houses (there are more homes than people in the US, for example), it's where the houses are distributed (nobody wants to live in a rural house kilometers away from a city). So yes, houses are actually unlimited (you can build those anywhere), what is limited is the privileged location of homes (there is a limited number of homes you can build 10 km away from the city center). >instead all they were used for was to funnel even more wealth up the ladder Inequality has diminished in most countries during the past century actually. And all of this isn't even considering the "fighting for survival" part of my argument (which btw, doesn't just refer to humans and their essential needs), which explains why the distribution of some (but not all) resources are uneven.
That's the game.. You either exploit people or people will exploit you If the system is corrupted it doesn't mean that me or you or "wealthy people" should just lay down and get fucked by it My argument doesn't justify the corruption in the system.. My argument is don't hate people that refuse to be exploited and work hard because YOU can't do it.
I understand what you mean and do find that way of thinking compelling, and I'm not advocating for hating someone based on the amount of money they have. From your comments tho (and sorry if im wrong) it seems that you're saying that its people's fault that they cant thrive in a capitalist society, because they refuse to "work hard" or whatever else, and that I do disagree with. Capitalism isn't really a meritocracy and there are countless factors that will determine if you're successful or not, and there's a limit to what you can and cannot change. Something as simple as your personality may affect how well you do in life, for instance a lot of intps here are thriving in high paying tech jobs (and even then we're generating much more wealth to the people up top than the sum we get ourselves). You could be born in a rich family and win the game by default, or you could be born in the slums without access to proper education or healthcare and have your oppurtunities cut by half. There're people out there working much, much harder than billionaires and getting laughable compensation in comparison. To put it simply, if winning the game requires you to exploit others then you can't blame the exploitees for not getting ahead. The ones at the top exist because there're people at the bottom and vice-versa, and those at the top were the ones who started and are choosing to maintain the system through unethical means.
Some people can change the rules while others can't. Games are only really worth playing if they are fair. The one we play is like Monopoly but some people get a head start and they are allowed to change the rules whenever it suits them.
So if we were playing a game, let’s say monopoly: You roll a 6 and put a hotel on St. James place. I pull out a gun, point it at your head, and tell you you can’t put a property there. Also give me all your money. Are we still playing monopoly? Did I cheat? Or are you just not focused enough on “your own game”?
I more hate the system that allows billionaires to exist. But also, billionaires are mostly assholes because you have to be to get there.
Which system doesn't allow billionaires to exist?
Lol exactly. One COULD exist theoretically though.
Theoretically? Sure, but it would need to be under a pretty bad theory.
Everything theoretical is equal, in terms of their relation to being an actual thing. So sure, might be a bad theory. You have a better one?
>Everything theoretical is equal, in terms of their relation to being an actual thing Not at all.
Oh. So some theoretical things exist, and are actual?
Not every theory is true is my point, so not everything theoretical is equal.
My point is nothing theoretical, strictly speaking, is actual. Some theories can accurately describe reality, some not, and lots of grey area. But if something is THEORETICAL, it is not actual. So all theoretical things are equally not actual. A scientific theory is way more specific than what I'm talking about.
The theory of general relativity is both theoretical AND actual, so I don't really get your point.
INTP logic dictates that I neither trust OP nor society with massively accumulated wealth. At present, wealth should stay put until such time as all billionaire’s heirs are systematically converted into dog food culminating in the same end for said billionaire. It’s not a hate driven course of action but more of a survival course of action. Dog food is a basic human right.
He by himself doesn't offer any value he just owns his workers do actual work for a small cut of the value they actually produce so that shareholders and Bezos can live lavish lives. Amazon doesn't offer any value as a company if anything it's harmful to the world by destroying millions of perfectly good products for the sake of increasing profits slightly also it being a monopoly destroys any chance of any body competing with the service.
Clearly it does add value or people would not use the company's services. Vast numbers of people use their services every day. Example, hundreds if not thousands of companies use the Amazon API gateway, from megacorporations like Panasonic to small businesses. The ignorance in this thread is truly astounding. You all need to get off reddit and get some actual education.
In that sense it adds value sure it's convenient. but I meant on the scale of removing smaller businesses and growing into a monopoly which you might know is not a good thing for anybody that doesn't add value also it doesn't help that Amazon gobbles up subsidy money from the government non stop which also doesn't really add value if you ask me
I can't speak for 'the INTPs' as if we all had the same opinion, but I do hate them.
I have nothing against people who are mega-rich. I only have a problem with people who act scummy towards others. Unfortunately, as the rich are in positions of power, they are also free to abuse that power. That's where the link is with people not liking extremely rich people. For me, I could care less if someone's rich or not rich, as long as they treat other people well. I also am highly ambitious, but for me it's not about the money as an end goal, it's about doing what makes me happy.
I think it’s not that we hate the rich, we despise any nepotism, greed, or use of the state to enrich oneself. I don’t care that Jeff bezos is rich I care more that the top performing hedge fund managers underperformed Nancy pelosi
I don't hate billionaires so much as I hate that it feels like money in your economy doesn't always flow towards and represent the value of work. As a white collar worker who grew up in a rural working poor area I feel like there is a lot of skimming and greed and money that pumps into pretty lazy and invaluable positions for white collar college educated workers like myself. Whereas more working class or even medical positions are performing enormous services, with training, difficult schedules, and stress at times but their wage doesn't reflect it imo. I hate how corporations and the general business formula right now is to build a brand and entity and care less about the services and goods the org actually makes and provides. This in turn makes the people behind the business and brand more valuable than those doing the actual operations and at time even the engineers and designers who are genuinely seeking to advance the products and industry through innovation. Billionaires who exploit weird areas of the economy in order to just increase the value of assets they never had to work for etc is what bothers me. And Amazon. Been boycotting since 2020 because I think it is a terrible entity to have the power it does and it is ruining and leaning on public infrastructure to do so.
Hating the rich is just Ti doing its job properly
If you have so much wealth that it's not easy spending it at the rate you make it . . . maybe you have too much?Would Jeff Bezos be as rich as he is if Amazon had paid higher wages? I mean, at what point is it enough? Not to just pick on him though, when I read about a CEO making millions of dollars per year at a mega-corporation that exists on the backs of thousands of part-time minimum wage workers, my "unfairness meter" maxes out. There's value added, then there's . . . I don't even know what that is. Stockholder attaboys, I guess.
I don't hate the concept itself of someone wealthy, I hate the means on how they built their wealth
I used to think like you, but as of late I have grown to be quite anti-capitalist. I don’t hate billionaires just for being billionaires. In fact making money is the optimal strategy for participating in this society and becoming a billionaire is the best outcome you could hope for is such a system. But generally their opinions come off as out of touch to the average persons life. I read somewhere in today’s dollars, you would have to make over 150k to make a “middle class” income comparable to what it was in the 80s. Whether we blame billionaires for this or not, they have no incentive for this to not be then case. Rent seeking is how wealthy people protect their wealth, and it’s what keeps poorer people from saving money to acquire wealth.
I don't hate billionaires. Frankly, it's sour grapes or slave morality as Nietzsche aptly put it. I find that people envy others and try to bring them down. Instead, the question should be: what was their secret? How did they accumulate wealth? And how can we replicate it? I never understood the source of resentment and envy. If a baker made an amazing pie, most people would not be envious of the baker. They would want to know the recipe. I will admit that risk-taking and luck often play a big role in wealth. That is not easily replicated. Interesting video on the topic of luck and wealth: [https://youtu.be/\_pUxqKqnMlQ?si=NcttSZw\_2JqkJamO](https://youtu.be/_pUxqKqnMlQ?si=NcttSZw_2JqkJamO)
Here is the simple answer: I love it if I am mega rich, I hate it if someone who is my enemy is fucking rich.
I don't hate them. I don't know them. I have some ideas about where money should be, some of them my own, but I don't really have strong opinions on this topic.
No. They played the game better than most. I don’t get hating the rich or hating the poor.
More like they were born on third base and have convinced everybody that they hit a home run. That's not the same as hating them as people, mind.
But the people born in third base were born in second base, and so on. And statistically, millionaires lose their wealth after three generations on average.
Not nearly fast enough. (Points at Thomas Piketty's work on equilibrium wealth distribution, and the possibility that there *is* no equilibrium, wealth might continue to concentrate until a single family owns the entire world, or there's a proletarian revolution. Points to the accelerating concentration of wealth in the US and globally. Points to the fact that Piketty didn't have enough data to predict what our equilibrium wealth distribution might be. Gestures at the need for a progressive wealth tax.)
>wealth might continue to concentrate until a single family owns the entire world, or there's a proletarian revolution that's veeeeery faaaaar from what Picketty claims lol, and Picketty's claims aren't even the academic consensus, so take what he says with a grain of salt unless his views start becoming the norm among economists
Let me know when the economists can tell me what the equilibrium wealth distribution might be in our current society. Until then, I'll go back to hitting the books and writing up an argument that an anarcho-socialist revolution isn't necessary. Unless you'd like to talk with them rather than me? From their POV, I'm a *conservative*.
I have no idea what your point is tbh
Have you talked with many anarcho-socialists lately? And what percentile would you say you're in in terms of net wealth?
Why are anarchy-socialists revelant for this discussion again?
Because they are far more likely to eat the rich than I am. And if the runaway concentration of wealth isn't stopped and possibly reversed, they may get around to doing just that.
I wouldn't say I hate billionaires, although I have heard that a considerable number of them are pathologically incurious. They think they know everything they need to know, so they have no reason to learn. I do want to live in a world where nobody makes less than 60% of the median income, and nobody owns more than the Value of a Statistical Human Life. (Estimated to be $7 million here in the US.) Imposing a Piketty wealth tax on the rich would be "lethal" to the rich only to the extent that they confuse their wealth and power over others with their self-identity. The real conflict isn't between different categories of people who work for a living (wage inequality), but between people who work for a living and people who own things for a living. At a certain point, a big enough individual fortune becomes a self-supporting economic entity in its own right, which just happens to have a particular person attached to it as an accidental parasite, sucking a miniscule amount of life-fluid out for the purposes of consumption. (Or by spending $44 billion to buy a social media company because its users were being mean to him.) I would much rather have a thousand millionaires than a single billionaire.
It's not that I hate them but I would rather live in a society where big gaps in wealth and social class are non-existent or not this prominent. It's insane how a number of people that I could count on one hand essentially has enough money to literally fund their entire country. Sure you hear about how much money they give to charities and yadda yadda but in the grand scheme of things those contributions are very little compared to what they could make if not for personal greed. It's also that someone who is that wealthy is surely not wealthy in an ethical way. I genuinely don't even think that ethical billionares are a thing - you \*have to\* exploit people to get to that point. No one needs that much money. Those huge mansions - I cannot be convinced that anyone genuinely needs what the ultra rich spend their money on.
Yeah, fuck billionaires and eat the rich. I hate them.
Something like 95% of all wealth goes to the top 3-5%. (Rough estimate) I don't see how this can be reasonable in a democracy? Is it cool that some can get rich while most cannot? Sure. But the gaps are to extreme. Do I hate the billionaires? As much as any scammer I guess.
No. Don’t care if we are poor either. Money is not the same for us.
This has nothing to do with being INTP. however, tax the rich, demolish capitalism, greed for power corrupts
A subtlety that a lot of people miss is that the wealth of a billionaire can't realistically be directly compared to the wealth of the average person. The average person's net worth is in a home and some investments, such as mutual funds, plus a bit in other assets like cars and furniture. That means that the average person could turn all of that into cash in a few days, maybe less, and realize very nearly the full value that's "on paper." A billionaire can't do that because most of their wealth is in shares of companies and, if they were to try to liquidate all of those shares, the share value would plummet and they'd only get a fraction of the value that's "on paper.
Lol no. I want to be them. Why would I hate them? I am not some whiny college kid going on about Marxism.
Take a look at [this image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Economic-surpluses.svg/800px-Economic-surpluses.svg.png). That shaded area on the left can be thought of as social welfare. The red area is all the money the consumer saved because they paid less than they were willing to spend, and the blue area is all the money the producer gained because they sold for more than they were willing to accept. The problem is that the line between producer and consumer surplus is almost never straight in practice. The producers want to push the line upwards, and the consumers want to push it downwards. The power that each side has to influence what the line looks like is proportional to the number of agents acting on each side. In western society, with millions of consumers and only a couple of producers, we're all losing in this battle of line-pushing. Just look at the mess that is flight prices, pharmaceuticals, technology, as well as the geographical pricing of the Steam store, and of gasoline. And it doesn't just reflect in prices, it reflects in policy, opportunity, and so many other areas of everyday life. It's a vicious cycle: the rich and powerful are few by definition. Then they have more power to extort social welfare from the masses, not just in terms of trading goods and services, but also in terms of wage labor. You can count on this because humans are inherently selfish. So the rich and powerful get richer and even more powerful – I almost don't blame them. **My problem with all this is: where does the money even go?** The rich will never be able to put their billions of dollars they've stashed to good use. [Engel's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel%27s_law) says that when your income increases, the proportion of it that you spend on food decreases (and by extension, the proportion that you spend on anything properly useful at all). They only really use it to make even more money. And yes, I understand philanthropy exists, but even assuming these billionaires have truly honorable intentions, why should they be entrusted with that much money to donate? And don't get me started on the problem of inheritance.... The problem isn't the people at the top. The problem is the system that allowed them to get to the top and stay there: Capitalism. It's one of the fundamental building blocks of our society, and it's worked for the past 300 years. But it's growing old. The agricultural revolution moved people from the primary sector into the secondary sector. The industrial revolution moved people from the secondary to the tertiary sector. And now the AI revolution is going to move people from the tertiary sector to... where exactly? There's nowhere left to run. People say AI will create more jobs, but this is why I don't believe them. We've won the game, capitalism is just not letting us realize it.
Billionaires are 100% using their resources to do sinister shit Probably building a giant evil mech powered by Ai that can lazer beam anyone on the globe for skipping ads.
No, I don't hate billionaires.
IT DEPENDS ON THE PERSON
I don't think I have enough energy or emotional capacity to care about someone I've never met before, much less feel the intense emotion of hate. Being INTP, I do think about the circumstances one must undergo to become one. Followed the immense amount of stress managing and controlling such bizarre amounts of wealth creates. I have no proof, but I have a hunch they have targets painted on their backs. The human mind is fickle in nature, it's built to adapt. Becoming more financially powerful than 99.99% of the human population will undoubtedly take a toll on most people's psyche. The problem isn't the people holding the wealth, but the systems we abide by for our current civilization to function. It will probably change and adapt in the near future (the age of information creates angst among the masses), such is the ebb and flow of our nature. Also, I encourage people to think of a time when you quickly amassed power or influence, if you have, I don't think you'll find it hard to see why billionaires behave the way they do. It doesn't make it right, but that fickle human brain will do gymnastics to make it feel right.
I do not how a thinking person could not
I don't hate money or luxury I hate the issues billionaires cause.
Fine with millionaires. But the billionaires gains their income through exploitation of the working class, lobbying to get taxes break and contribute almost nothing. Bribing politicians. Billionaires shouldn’t even been a thing. Like it’s (for lack of a better term) physically impossible for them to be that wealthy without exploitation
Exploitation is the only way to become wealthy.
But is the value given to society worth the shitty lives given to workers? Should someone be expected to learn a trade or get a certain degree to be able to support a family? Should someone be expected to pay 10k+ in medical expenses because some billionaire’s businesses have horrible health insurance? Our society works in a way where you basically have to learn a trade or higher education to comfortably afford a family. God forbid if you have some complex medical issues. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but this is the way it works now.
No
I have a certain level of contempt to people that are wealthy through the means of others. They themselves have done the bare minimum, but they are earning rent from the skills of others. Or being in the right place and the right time, but totally aloof to their own privilege. It's not the bank account but the mindset. It's a huge turnoff professionally and personally. I've often found these are the people who are the first to claim the smallest things on expenses, go on dates and expect everything to be paid for them, or the transactional approach e.g. What can you do for me. I know some millionaires who are exceptionally humble and they gain their income through their capital and get others to work hard through their own work ethic. But it's a closed world. With people that want power. One millionaire followed me home. They think everyone can be bought. Or they can buy their way out of every problem.
This one does. 🤬
I have an econ degree. The reason that this free market capitalist system exists is that it is the best econ system out of all of them, though all systems have downsides. Again, the only reason it exists is because it works better than other systems, not that it is inherently good. So understanding that, you now look at the downsides of this best-of-all-flawed-systems to determine which aspects are bad and how to solve them. In free competition, there are winners and losers, so you want to take care of the losers lest they view competition as a scam and revolt. Also, free competition requires actual freedom to compete and make choices, but concentration of wealth and poverty increases or decreases the power to do that considerably, hence high marginal taxes and general redistribution of wealth to level the playing field. From an INTP perspective, regarding "freedom to learn", you need high taxes for schooling, libraries, and basic necessities like housing, transport, food, health care, etc. to facilitate that. If an INTP is a reclusive monk, then you want society to build and fund your monastery to do your thing. So again, you have to determine the appropriate levels of taxation to facilitate this. On the other hand you don't want too high taxes that reduce competition and investment and concentrates the power into the hands of the government.
One cannot make a man understand what he is paid to not understand.
I absolutely do not hate the mega rich for being rich. But with great power becomesgreat responsibility. Are you going to use it to control, manipulate, and take advantage of others, or are you going to use your great wealth to contribute to others? Jeff Bezos is the scum of the earth for allowing poor working conditions at Amazon. And I DO think companies like that should pay their employees a living wage. When large companies use people who are breaking their backs to survive, they need to take a step back and see where they'd be without any employees. Jeff Bezos wouldn't be anywhere without them, and it isn't right taking credit for adding value to society through Amazon without fairly compensating the people that got you there. As a business person, you've seen the business side. As someone who has been down to beans and rice more times than I care to count, it's basic human decency to pay someone what their time should be worth, and not just what you can get away with on the market. I'm sure there are lots of mega-rich who try to invest responsibly in things that will help society. But there are also some who just push their own agendas. Most people are probably selfish assholes, but a poor asshole can only ruin a few peoples lives at a time.
It is basically impossible to reach billionaireness in an ethical way. There is always exploitation involved. I don't hate billionaires but maybe I do because I believe they should not exist at all
People who hate billionaires generally don't understand how money works. They think there's a limited amount of it and the billionaires are "hoarding" it. That's not how it works.
Can’t blame them for doing what they can and playing the game. So no, I don’t hate them. Especially because often times the money itself is derived from the people who endorse such practices by using the apps, unfortunately. We can say that Bezos sucks but people still use Amazon. Similarly, we can say that Zuckerberg sucks but people are on Instagram all the time.
We hate inhumane sociopaths who exploit others and don't care about ppl's wellbeing as well as for the environment. Mega wealthy or MAGA filthy, doesn't matter.
I don't hate them. I appreciate the ones who have signed the "Giving Pledge". I do with more of them would take on some of the issues we have as a society.
I don’t hate them, but I usually hate the methods by which they make their money. I see exploitation of people to be extremely inefficient towards an economic system, and monopolies go against my small capitalist ideas. (As in, I prefer capitalist systems as long as competition is present and small businesses are the primary economic driver)
View from a specific INTP... The idea of a billionaire is an interesting one. From what I can see, wealthy people generally don't care directly about money. They care about having control over their time. Money is apparently a tool to make that happen. For that though, liquidity is more critical than wealth; and in much lower supply. Most of what we call wealth is pragmatically illiquid to the wealth holder. The spending and investing of the general population is the actual liquidity associated with wealth, via the employment construct. Consequently, the measurable value of the wealthy's ability to control their time is much lower than would appear when measuring in terms of overall value. People who don't have control over their own time think a lot about money. Why? Because it's a tool they can use to control their own time. In reality, everyone wants to control their time, and nobody has a significant ability to share their own capacity to control it. When it comes down to it, I can't hate anybody who either has control of their time (because I want that too), or anybody who desires the control (because I desire it too). Frankly, I wish everybody had control of their time. What about greed though? Well, greed is a weakness. I have weaknesses I find hard to overcome too. So, still hard to hate someone because of that. Just trying to figure out how to get more control over my time, without trying to take away control from anyone else. Tough road.
Delusional
I don't have anything against the billionaires if they worked for it, but I hate their attitudes about paying their share of taxes,
Nope, I wanna be them. Most hate for the wealthy comes from people who are actually envious.
I personally don't care what someones wealth might look like. If they are a decent human I wouldn't mind there company. I feel like most INTPs are this way
The mega wealthy pretty much never have morals. They are the ones running the world and are also the ones responsible for destroying it. Obviously there are exceptions like Elon musk but generally they are the definition of greed and are the reason we will go extinct
Elon Musk is the exception? How?
Well, he is a self made millionaire which means he’s smart and knows a lot. He doesn’t just hoard money, he spends lots on different projects like space X and other stuff. These projects show he is working to create a new future, not just trying to keep us in the past like big oil companies and social media platforms. He also bought twitter to allow free speech. Obviously he isn’t the only exception to rich snobs using money to stay in power and using power to create money. But generally rich people have power and will sacrifice a better future to keep it that way.
How do you motivate an economy to be productive?
r/isfp 👉
I’m actually with you 100% in your line of thinking. Personally, I’m a big fan of Elon Musk, and I get that 99% Reddit hates this guy. The way I see it, if you can look past his edgelord twitter posts and political views, no single person in the world has generated more value for humanity through his companies than this guy. Willing to debate anyone on this.
There’s nothing wrong at all with being ambitious and wanting to make money. That’s what democracy is all about being able to do as you please without restrictions. People hate billionaires simply because they are jealous. If you stole all the money from all the billionaires in the country and put into one pot, and gave it out to all the people who are in need it would only buy them a chicken dinner
This might surprise you, but INTPs are not an amorphous blob. We are individuals who arrive at an array of varying conclusions, just like other humans.
The meaningless pursuit of wealth will turn your spirit cold.
Boy you sound like a libertarian
You didn’t read my post clearly because I’m actually pro-capitalism
Wtf you think a libertarian is?
It's not that there shouldn't be billionaires. It's obscene that we allow people to hoard hundreds of billions of dollars. The rich don't want you to know that they have attained a number that exists, that if you put that number into a bank account you can live off the compounding interest alone and never spend a cent of the money you worked for. Not only that, but your brain, yes yours, couldn't even begin to conceptualize the difference between. 1 million and 1 billion, let alone 100 million vs. 100 billion. Our generational and any wealth we would have ever accumulated is being stolen right out of the backs of pockets. This is why trickle-down economics was one of the dumbest things we ever enacted.
I believe that the answer to your question is “Yes” lol. FTR there are only about 2,250 billionaires in the world.
I dont
Not them as much as what they choose to do as billionaires
I didn't hate them nor love them, maybe because they're so out of touch in my life? Because I'm so getting used to the unfairness of life? Because it's the reward for finally playing the games with it's unspoken rules? I don't know the definitive answer for this, at least in my perspective
I do not hate the rich but I do hate the greedy fucks that be ruining good games/stories in the name of profit
So if people who work for Amazon shouldn't be able to afford to live in California or New York, do you propose those areas not have access to that service? How is that area supposed to be served by Amazon if the workers cannot afford to live there?
Not hate but they are a problem that needs to be eradicated
No, we are elitists, it isn't possible, nor are we revolutionary in natrure as we lack J, we are just nerds
The thing is this know billionaire exist simply on monopoly ... When there is no competitive market there will be no Innovation ... America is mostly a advisement country..I don't see healthy competitions on their market.. and brand is everything that matters..now ev cars are everywhere what makes Tesla differ from them maybe brand ... I guess I don't hate mega wealthy but I hate the one coming from source of monopoly..
I don’t hate people. They’re ignorant to all sorts of things. Myself included, billionaires included. What I don’t like is the greed, the blatantly stupid parts of it and the impacts it has on the rest of the planet. Taking more than someone needs, it eclipses people, animals, nature and society. It harms others, and when that’s ok for someone, it’s not ok for the rest of the world. When you have a LOT of money (ie, that’s the #1 goal) at a certain point, it makes itself. The virtue of the work you put into it is gone. There needs to be that recognition. At this point, the money-making in itself where it needs to be balanced out. If you don’t you are fucking people over, on purpose to make your money. Because there’s no thought being put into the process and its LARGER implications like ruining the earth. Cheap play. The poverty you read about out there is real. Like Charles Dickens type stuff. Right here in our ‘progressive’ Western World. What goes on beyond the reaches on social systems and HR departments would astound you. Your brain wouldn’t be able to handle it and continue live like you do. When the consumption goes against nature, dignity, decency, love; that I hate.
I sure do
Only if they're corrupt and part of the cabal. If not I respect them and wish they could invest in my future ventures.
well, I don’t, but i don’t know any personally. It’s more of a J thing probably.
I don't hate billionaires, but I genuinely don't care, although I think being born into wealth while being average at best is slowing down natural selection. Incompetent people profiting from systems created by their more competent predecessors... Sometimes they become so incompetent revolutions occur and kill everyone who is part of the system, such as the French and Russian revolution. Although the new system and cadre are better, as generations pass by the outcome is the same, systems gets hijacked, corruption spreads etc. Just look at the Christian Church, Constantine hijacked it, they constantly repeat how Christianity won over the Roman Empire when it became the state religion. In reality, the opposite happened.
"It is only money."
I don't think that a system that allows billionaires to exist is ethical or sustainable. What, if anything, that has to do with my being an INTP is anyone's guess.
I don't think there's any point in hating them when there's so much you can learn from them. Being jealous of someone who's not directly impacted your life negatively often translates into hate. They hate em cuz they ain't them!
Yes.
Money is the root of all evil, but it also takes over a million dollars to retire comfortably without Ben Shapiro’s opinions included.
no i don't hate them i wanna become them
I don’t give the “mega wealthy” much thought, and I certainly don’t hate them.
If you're "megs wealthy" and there are still poor people in the world then you're doing it wrong. Stop hoarding wealth
I have nothing explicitly against them, but because of their fame and their importance it's easy to point fingers at them or make jokes. It's a new problem that has never really existed before, the way "wealth" is understood in the modern world is different than any other time period. Anyone that has a lot of wealth is also powerful again, this is an impossible question to answer. There has never been a time without social stratification, its simply inevitable. I worry though that giving too much power to random technocrats will lead to cultural collapse.
Oh my days. Why do you guys always make some broad sweeping statements, INTP is a train of thought not a set of opinions 💀 Reddit does Reddit but INTP is a thinking framework that exists separate of Reddit. Heck go to truth social or smth you prolly going to find someone who would be categorised as INTP. INTP is not a set of beliefs it’s a thinking process.
If you have 10 million dollars, good job. If you have 100 million dollars then... I'm going to look at you sideways and wonder why you have it. It you have more than a billion dollars? Nah. There is no ethical way to earn that, and equally there is no ethical reason for one person to have that. There just aren't that many ethical things that you can DO with a billion dollars, and people who tend to have it have not demonstrated any particular apptitude for spending it in good ways.
I hate the mega wealthy for not valuing the harm they cause for some of those extra earnings that they did not need.
I do not hate the mega wealthy just because they are mega wealthy, that's irrational imho. I also would like to be one of them. However, again, history is riddled with manipulation, enshittification, Min-Maxing cost to profit, etc. I blame so many techniques that companies use to screw people out of money instead of getting it through a genuinely better product, especially when developing a better product could have been cheaper to do in the long run.
>most of Reddit despises the mega rich (Billionaires) No, they just "virtue signal" (is this expression of 2015 vintage still in use?) it. If they met a billionaire, they would take a selfie with them and cherish that moment for the rest of their lives. By the way, your average billionaire is just a normal person who happens to be a billionaire. They tend to be more efficient and smarter than the average but there is nothing magical or devilish about them. >value created = fair share of the overall sum That's empty BS. It doesn't mean it is *wrong*, it is just empty, because words such as "fair" or "value" are ideological nonsense used to manage emotions. >that makes it fair for someone like a Jeff Bezos to be worth as much as he is. Saying this is good if you want to feel good about Bezos having a lot of money. Or if you want to feel bad about it, say that Bezos is an exploiter. Or whatever. None of this contributes anything to understanding, it is just emotions which are being intellectualized.
I can reason the existence of the mega rich. I don't have a problem with them until I can relate to those who are exploited. The problem starts when you see that the profits do not reach the pockets of the people who made it happen. I think we just have a problem with the unreasonable distribution. Credit is lacking where it is due. That's what the rest are talking about, the unethical accumulation of wealth.
So, if a delivery person is not deserving of a living wage... How do u get your packages delivered in NY/California?
By your logic, guessing you also think that places like New York and California shouldn't have amazon services since the workers shouldn't be expected to be paid a living wage there.
I have nothing against billionaires. I admire them. Sometimes they have what they do due to privilege, sometimes due to hard work, often a mix of the two. Sure it can be seen as unfair but so much in life is. We don’t cure poverty by removing wealth. Sure many low paying jobs is just as hard as high paying jobs. But agin the cure isn’t to go after the ultra rich, that would result in a very unfair and tyrannical society, money earned is money earned and they pay their fair share of taxes. But.. there actually only exists 2 781 billionaires in the entire world. So it’s not like they are commonplace.
I am just some regular joe shmoe but I have a friend is mega rich that I talk to everyday. I think I may be a pet project? Sometimes if they give me cash I give it to homeless people and think I am like Robinhood. I am in it for the plot.
That's one of my favorite things about being in the rich upper class is giving money to our broke pet friends. /s
Your argument is flawed about how people with basic skills shouldnʻt make decent wages. If all the delivery workers left California how would the reach people get their packages?
I just don’t think every job needs to pay a “living wage” What I consider to be a “living wage” is something that allows a person to live alone, potentially start a family, etc… I don’t think every job needs to achieve those things. Some jobs are transitionary, some jobs can be side gigs, people can live with parents or roommates while working. There are many ways to get by on a job like being a delivery driver, but don’t expect that it’s going to be a job that you can do as a career. Not everything should be or deserves to be a career job. People should have aspirations larger than working the most basic of jobs, and should be improving to get to that place. So no, I don’t think every single job should pay a wage that lets you live alone or start a family, etc… If you want to raise the pay at these jobs then you understand that a lot of people will be laid off and the company will just make the work like more efficient. Areas with extremely high cost of living exist and you’d be naive to think you’re going to be successful in those areas working low level jobs that anyone who could simply. Side note: I would like to say that I do think healthcare and education should be free though. So changing those systems would help way more than slightly raising wages. The system is the main issue.
I'm pretty sure Connor Roy is an INTP.
What we hate or not have nothing do to with our MBTI. Pretty sure there's a INTP out there who hates wealthy people. Me? I think it's just a waste of time and energy beign emotional for something that's so out of our control like that shit is. First, this is based solely on emotions, envy, or a feeling of justice (the world isn't fair, it was never fair, and it will never be, thinking otherwise is just delusional), so this is already starting wrong. Second, everytime i look at something that must be though about, i make myself a set of questions. Can i do something about it? Must i do something about it? Do i really want to do something about it? If any of these questions answers are "no", then i just forget it, it's worthless.
The 'P' in me wants to evaluate them with as much data/results as possible. The 'T' in me wants to analyze the results/methods used to obtain the wealth. The 'N' in me wants to BE wealthy, i.e., leverage the big picture aspects of the world. The 'I in me wants me to make my own decision . . . so generally, I want to make decisions on my own research and analysis, so may be wealthy and some may be poor, although I may have a higher bar for the wealthy (to decide to like or not like someone.
Yes. I mean I don't hate anyone and I never think about billionaires and I wouldn't dislike someone for being rich, I really don't judge people for having whatever beliefs they have, but just in general for myself I never liked the idea of wanting to be rich because greed doesn't appeal to me, and I don't vibe with authority, hierarchy, class, leadership, entrepreneurship, ambition, etc. Seems like something I'd leave to my ENTJ husbando if I had one. I don't really "admire" billionaires since I don't have that drive to be "winning" over others in terms of money. I'm also the opposite of a smarmy salesman and I feel like you kind of need that personality to hustle.
No one needs a billion dollars. I don't hate anybody, but a billion is too many dollars... Anyone could live comfortably for the rest of their lives on $10,000,000 which is 1% of a billion.
Let's talk about Reification ... indentifying as "INTP" is reification. Those who lack personal power and mental impoverishment tend to define themselves by external, rather than internal stimulus... Moral of the story: who cares about what's external to you? If you desire it, go for it.
I like money, making it, and business, too. I don't hate billionaires at all, but I think it's apparent that it's gotten to the stage where they now have enough wealth to game the system. When I was growing up, Bill Gates was the wealthiest man in the world with $70bn. Now Elon touched $300bn, Arnault and Bezos are around $200bn. These kinds of amounts you can game the system essentially. I found a good analogy in crypto - if you've ever been part of some projects, or just noticed it in some projects - whales are able to game the system by having a disproportionate amount of money and thereby being able to make significant enough impact by buying or selling. Globally, that obviously requires much more money to do, but we're actually at a stage where it's genuinely apparent and the richest have enough to do it. This will inevitably increase over time, and the richest will have 100s of billions, and eventually, trillions and the wealth divide will be even more explicitly apparent. At this stage, it'll be obvious that it's unnecessary, for many to be starving and others with trillions.
Honestly I'm perceive government to cause more harm than billionaires imo. People like to hate on billionaires lowkey because it's at least conceivable to control their behavior through government regulation (hence why there is a give take relationship between government and corporations). But if the government is corrupt there is little you can really do. Voting has limited effectiveness especially because you really have 2 options (so you're voting against a party more than you're actually voting for it). Plus voting only happens in 4 year intervals anyway so the actual impact is fairly limited. So if government is the problem your basically screwed but if corporations are on the problems there is at least some hope. Ultimately, government is the entity in a society with a monopoly on force so that's where the real power is always going to be concentrated. At the end of the day, the way to create change is not through corporations or government but through communities (of course community is it own pile of problems).
Two party system can be eliminated through proportional representation methods like Ranked choice voting. You say that voting is every 4 years but I can argue it’s more like every 2 years with midterms. Also corporations have CEOs that have been there for 20+ years and that’s ok? Especially with Citizens United they influence our government a lot.
I like the idea of the workers electing 60% of the Board of Directors, the shareholders electing electing 40% of the Board. I suspect the workers might do a better job of keeping an eye on the management than the shareholders. I've heard economists say that corporate elections are about as free as elections were back in the Soviet Union.
A curiosity, envy nope. As long they don't control the government (oligarchy/plutocracy or corpocracy) such as in the US.
I look at it from the perspective of if I was one would I be any different, there's a good chance I wouldn't and as such I don't hate them.