It’s never the grandkids. The Beatles sold the rights to their songs.

Could be even longer.

If you don’t know:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

No need for envy. He owns enough farmland that he can easily top Musk by rising prices to let many more children starve to death.

26 is the new 36

Can we do top 1% so that I don’t feel included?

Thanks again.

they put absolutely minimal work into it

I don’t believe this. The small shareholders do, but not the ones who choose the board.

The Waltons have to stay up to date unless they accept that Amazon takes over. Likewise, Bezos will work to keep his company in the lead.

Bezos bought a big house in Washington, not Florida. He will be busy all day most of the days.

Yet the highest office chose to use it anyway. Which is beyond stupid

Or they don’t care because that office is for show and they are kept out of the loop like Musk at SpaceX.

What if the president is not the top of the power pyramid but only there for distraction?

Thanks for the insights. I thought it was only Stalin who decided to collectivice the farming.

With stocks for instance the owners typically arent involved in the operation

Those are not the real owners but people who rent money.

There are always shareholders who control the board and who make the ultimate decisions. They decide when they want to meet but nevertheless I don’t think that they do much more than managing their companies which includes networking. So even when they don’t work, they will be ‘on’. No pity, they are rewarded more than enough.

I should have looked it up before. I don’t remember my original source.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War

The red army had 6 million out of 280 million citizens of the USSR. So it’s a bit more.

and often the company does worse when the owners get involved

How long do those companies exist? If owners just skim, I would expect most companies to dissolve sooner than later.

Then article 42 of the EU

My point is that the Capitalists manage the rate at which workers learn about the left point of view so that the chance of them reaching a ctitical mass for change is very low.

It’s definitely not a deliberate misunderstanding.

consumerism is driven by a necessity for Capitalists to sell more commodities. It isn’t the choice of individuals, but the underlying Capitalist system

Yes. By the same logic, Capitalists need consumers to stay calm and to not change the system.

How can the Capitalist system be changed if people don’t act on individual choices?

Finally, Leftists do reach people, with action. It isn’t a “trap.”

They reach some. Do they reach enough?

Which all go back to the white army losing.

Yes, I mean the Tsarist army. But you are right, my knowledge of history is limited.

Workers are consumers, they get their means to live through being paid wages.

That’s not what I mean with consumers. Consumers spend their money against their interest, to fulfill emotional needs that were highlighted by advertising. I don’t think that I have mentioned advertising before, but I actually think that this type of advertising won’t happen in a socialist country.

When I say your point on TikTok is Idealist, I mean it in the philosophical way, in opposition to Materialism. Idealism is wrong, it’s the concept of thoughts and ideas being the primary mover, not material reality.

I think that’s also how I understood it.

My point is that the mindset of people have changed and thoughts have become the primary movers.

The reason I say yours is idealist is because you’ve invented a problem that doesn’t exist, tik tok does not change the material base, being workers who spend their wages on goods.

Workers are not workers who rationally spend their money on products that have the most benefit to them. Those people are now consumers. They spend their money on stuff that is supposed to make them happy which induces the need to accept the current system. A revolution becomes a threat.

The answers of the “bros” like government supplied girlfriends are not worth considering.

But the motivations are. What do those people want and why do they prefer it over the offer from the left.

but that screams that you haven’t ever engaged with Leftist theory. Knowing leftist theory leads to action, not inaction.

Action means nothing if it doesn’t reach people. As I said, truth becomes a trap if it leads to ineffective action.

Congratulations that you acknowledge that rising minimum wage is a dead end.

Overall I agree with two exceptions.

The Russian civil war was fought with 1% or 2% of the population. It’s not the majority that fights to own things.

Owning means to constantly think for the company and constantly try to optimize it. There is no time off. It’s a job on its own that is more than just skimming the profits.

Jobs can always be created by lowering interest rates. It’s just not in the hand of the workers to change, neither is minimum wage.

You don’t have to trust anything I said. I am telling you about market mechanisms that you can verify on your own.

You are right that I want to abandon minimum wage, or rather the need for minimum wage. I want the demand for work to rise to the point that workers earn livable wages that are secured by the demand for their work.

You can try to rise minimum wages however much you want. My point is that your time is better spent on rising demand for workers. Marx is telling you how that works. You definitely don’t have to trust me on that.

Would you pay for an insurance to help you weather the storm?

I would argue that people in general don’t want ownership or we would have many more cooperatives.

I don’t have that disregard. My point is that the supply of jobs has to be increased instead of setting a lower bound on wages.

Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army

Focussing on minimum wages makes workers ignore how they are controlled and how they can increase their wages without having to rely on benevolence. To me, that’s disregardful.