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Inequality


AngryOfTuebrook
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On 14/07/2021 at 21:15, Strontium Dog™ said:

Branson's a signatory to the Giving Pledge, probably no need to take his from him

The thing he's written on his Giving Pledge page is hilarious.  Perfectly straight-faced he says "my family and I aren't that concerned about material things; for example, it wasn’t the end of the world when there was a fire in our massive fucking mansion on our private fucking island".  There's also some hippy shit about the environment  - written by an airline-owner who twats about not-really-in-space in a dick-compensator that (I'm guessing) doesn’t compare to the Renault Clio for fuel economy.

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2 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

The thing he's written on his Giving Pledge page is hilarious.  Perfectly straight-faced he says "my family and I aren't that concerned about material things; for example, it wasn’t the end of the world when there was a fire in our massive fucking mansion on our private fucking island".  There's also some hippy shit about the environment  - written by an airline-owner who twats about not-really-in-space in a dick-compensator that (I'm guessing) doesn’t compare to the Renault Clio for fuel economy.

Are pledges legally binding?

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22 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Are pledges legally binding?

Nah.

It's just a way of giving a proportion of your (usually unearned) income to causes you think are good and making sure that people see you doing it. 

 

There's no doubt that a lot of good comes out of some forms of philanthropy; but a lot more could be achieved by fair taxation. 

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Wasn't there something posted on here a video showing how the giving pledges are a con and most of the money is retained within the family. Theres tonnes of loopholes, parameters and paybacks. For me I dont give a shit about what they pledge, they shape the political game in their favour using their vast wealth and then they get to tell us what will happen after they die.

 

This is one shitty path we are on with all the major companies buying up all the rest, monopolies with the power to terrify governments. Individuals with the wealth to send themselves up into space, full of smiles while the same time they pay employees pittance, give them shocking work patterns and fire them via an app all while attacking unions and influencing governments to make it even easier to shit all over their employees and the environment. We can have very wealthy successfully people without the price being shit on the rest.

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8 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

Pretty sure in-work poverty has existed for a very long time, even if it wasn't called as such.

The defining myth of Conservatism is the moral angle to poverty: if people are poor, it's because they're lazy. Work is the surest route out of poverty. The flip-side is that riches flow to the worthiest, brightest and hardest-working.

 

Bollocks, though, isn't it. 

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4 hours ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

Pretty sure in-work poverty has existed for a very long time, even if it wasn't called as such.

Of course it has, slavery, serfdom every form of peasantry from time immemorial. It's frustrating now because it feels like we're slowly but surely going backwards. I think capitalism has elevated more people out of poverty than any other system before it but there's a balance and now its tipped or is tipping too far one way and it doesn't look like there's anyway or want for those in power to address it. 

 

I read ragged trousered philanthropist years ago and I know it's a clichéd thing to read like some twat thinking catcher in the rhye symbolises their freedom and rebelous angst but the parts that appalled me I see now in Tory ideology and a "gig economy". When they say freedom they mean fear. You will be free to choose except if you choose wrong you'll starve or be homeless.

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31 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Of course it has, slavery, serfdom every form of peasantry from time immemorial. It's frustrating now because it feels like we're slowly but surely going backwards. I think capitalism has elevated more people out of poverty than any other system before it but there's a balance and now its tipped or is tipping too far one way and it doesn't look like there's anyway or want for those in power to address it. 

 

I read ragged trousered philanthropist years ago and I know it's a clichéd thing to read like some twat thinking catcher in the rhye symbolises their freedom and rebelous angst but the parts that appalled me I see now in Tory ideology and a "gig economy". When they say freedom they mean fear. You will be free to choose except if you choose wrong you'll starve or be homeless.


I had a copy of that thrusted upon me years ago and I looked at it and thought, fuck that it’s huge, but I ended up reading it in a few days, wonderful book.

 

This, amongst others, really stuck with me…

 

No one had any right to condemn him for this, because all who live under the present system practise selfishness, more or less. We must be selfish: the System demands it. We must be selfish or we shall be hungry and ragged and finally die in the gutter. The more selfish we are the better off we shall be. In the 'Battle of Life' only the selfish and cunning are able to survive: all others are beaten down and trampled under foot. No one can justly be blamed for acting selfishly--it is a matter of self-preservation--we must either injure or be injured.‘

 

Labour did a really interesting thing a few years back, think it was Miliband, might even have been Corbyn, but they bought a load of copies and left them on park benches up and down the country.

 

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The human race is basically divided into empathetic individuals and a smaller percentage of psychopathic, ruthless cunts who'd blow a city up to make a million quid. They're parasitic and manipulate the former, larger group to get what they want, via force or by politics or the media. Whether you're Al Capone or Boris Johnson, an HR manager who pushes the button on a thousand redundancies and doesn't bat an eyelid or a banker that knowingly destroys an entire housing market to secure a bonus so they can buy a car, it's the same relationship between them and wider society. It's all about how they can use and manipulate to get what they want.

 

But these days, because of social norms and because they're outnumbered they have to shroud their true selves. 

 

They can't exist without the former group though, if you put them all on an island together they'd be dead within 48 hours because they're incapable of cooperation or of keeping a lid on their own wants and desires in favour of the group.

 

I'm sure like one in 100 people are psychopaths, they're not human in many ways, their brains are wired completely differently. It pays to remember that a lot of these people at the top simply don't think like most of us, they don't care whether you live or die. Once you realise that, a lot more about the modern world will make sense.

 

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1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

The human race is basically divided into empathetic individuals and a smaller percentage of psychopathic, ruthless cunts who'd blow a city up to make a million quid. They're parasitic and manipulate the former, larger group to get what they want, via force or by politics or the media. Whether you're Al Capone or Boris Johnson, an HR manager who pushes the button on a thousand redundancies and doesn't bat an eyelid or a banker that knowingly destroys an entire housing market to secure a bonus so they can buy a car, it's the same relationship between them and wider society. It's all about how they can use and manipulate to get what they want.

 

But these days, because of social norms and because they're outnumbered they have to shroud their true selves. 

 

They can't exist without the former group though, if you put them all on an island together they'd be dead within 48 hours because they're incapable of cooperation or of keeping a lid on their own wants and desires in favour of the group.

 

I'm sure like one in 100 people are psychopaths, they're not human in many ways, their brains are wired completely differently. It pays to remember that a lot of these people at the top simply don't think like most of us, they don't care whether you live or die. Once you realise that, a lot more about the modern world will make sense.

 

I agree with this but you do realise HR Managers are the foot soldiers? 

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1 hour ago, Section_31 said:

The human race is basically divided into empathetic individuals and a smaller percentage of psychopathic, ruthless cunts who'd blow a city up to make a million quid. They're parasitic and manipulate the former, larger group to get what they want, via force or by politics or the media. Whether you're Al Capone or Boris Johnson, an HR manager who pushes the button on a thousand redundancies and doesn't bat an eyelid or a banker that knowingly destroys an entire housing market to secure a bonus so they can buy a car, it's the same relationship between them and wider society. It's all about how they can use and manipulate to get what they want.

 

But these days, because of social norms and because they're outnumbered they have to shroud their true selves. 

 

They can't exist without the former group though, if you put them all on an island together they'd be dead within 48 hours because they're incapable of cooperation or of keeping a lid on their own wants and desires in favour of the group.

 

I'm sure like one in 100 people are psychopaths, they're not human in many ways, their brains are wired completely differently. It pays to remember that a lot of these people at the top simply don't think like most of us, they don't care whether you live or die. Once you realise that, a lot more about the modern world will make sense.

 

I think there's also a lot of conditioning goes into the making of our ruling classes. Just as huge swathes of the population can be conditioned to suspend their innate compassion (witness the outpouring of grief when Alyan Kurdi drowned, which briefly interrupted years of orchestrated hatred for vulnerable people in his position) a good proportion of political and business leaders have been conditioned to see themselves as natural rulers, so gifted that their actions are unquestionably correct,  so they never need to even consider the human consequences of their decisions.

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9 minutes ago, A Red said:

I agree with this but you do realise HR Managers are the foot soldiers? 

One of my favourite Ken Loach films is It's A Free World.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807054/

 

It's about the exploitation of migrant workers, so it would have been easy to portray the woman who runs the employment agency as an irredeemable monster; instead, she's the central character and we get to see not only the bad stuff she does, but also how she got there. It's clear that she's just switching off her conscience and trying to get ahead in a system that's still as dehumanising as described in Bruce's quote from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think what public schools do is condition people to expect success. There'll be lots of little lord fuckpants types who say they expect to be prime minister or head of the bank of England or whatever and none of their teachers or parents will be laughing.

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