Class Struggles

Why won’t rich people donate much of their wealth to poor people?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why won’t rich people just donate a tiny bit of all their wealth to poor people?”

Some of them do. MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated over $17 billion to charitable causes since 2019. Our problems, however, can’t be fixed by relying on a few donations by the small percentage who care about other human beings beyond themselves.

People need to stop thinking about ways to guilt the few rich capable of feeling guilt into ponying up on behalf of those who don’t care in the least about the poor as long they shut up and die quietly and out of sight.

Why do you think “hostile architecture” exists?

A lot of people don’t want to help the poor. 
They want them gone out of sight and out of mind.
They want to blame the poor for creating their conditions of poverty.

They want to think of them as lazy addicts who irresponsibly ruined their own lives.

It’s no different than shaming a woman for her clothes or behaviour for inviting a rapist.

It’s like shaming a mugging victim for paying cash for their drink in broad daylight.

People don’t want to think about why things go wrong for other people because it means dealing with the possibility that things can go wrong for them. If people believed they could also become one of “those people.” many would just give up, while others wouldn’t be able to function past their anxieties.

Although the existence of centibillionaires is a huge symptom of a system so broken that so many poor exist, no one wants to change anything because it means having to do things differently than they’ve become used to.

Look at how impossible it’s been for Americans to adopt a universal metric system — even though it would save them money.

Look at how impossible it’s been for Americans to adopt universal healthcare — even though it would save them money and lives.

People may demand change, but they hate change. Many people prefer complaining about how bad things are to doing something different because they fear change will be worse than what they’ve gotten used to.

My province of BC has had three referendums on electoral reform that would have made our elections more representative of the people. We would have become a more democratic province that more effectively addressed the needs of the people if the people could vote for what they want rather than vote against a change they don’t understand. Even worse, the change is easy to know if one makes a small effort to educate themselves, but they don’t and won’t understand something until they’ve lived it. When people are unsure, they consistently vote to maintain a corrupt status quo instead of voting to change it.

Americans are going to continue voting for corrupt leaders until they realize their lives are at so much risk that the choice is no longer “change or continue suffering” but “change or die.”

That’s where we are right now… or at least, those who refuse to read the writing on the wall will eventually figure out that’s the case when they start seeing the suffering around them can no longer be denied. They will change only when they become more afraid of maintaining a destructive status quo than the change they can’t understand until they’ve made their change.

Rich people won’t give up their wealth, even in part to sustain a failing system until it fails so badly that they start running and hiding for their lives from the mobs who are angry enough to repeat history. They won’t change what they’ve gotten comfortable with, even if it means they’ll end up more prosperous.

This is why “woke” is such an important concept these days — because we are at the stage where a lot of people are sick and tired of screaming “Wake up!” to people who insist on ignoring the threat they’ve become to our future.

The bullying Nazis among us still think they can play their bullying games endlessly while laughing at the “librul” tears they imagine are being shed out of frustration without realizing those tears are being shed because of what comes after those tears… the mourning of having to do what could have been avoided.

The few wealthy people cannot, through donating portions of their money, fix what’s broken.

The system needs to change on fundamental levels enough to force the greedy sociopaths to acknowledge the critical importance of maintaining a universally sustainable social contract. They need to understand the benefit of giving up some of their money to pay back into a system that allowed them to become rich in the first place.

Allowing a small number of elite few to grow hoards is not how to develop a sustainable economy or lift people out of poverty.

People like Musk know this. They don’t care because they see themselves as entitled to rule over the rest of us like we were herd animals.

Eventually, someone like Musk will push society far enough for the guillotines to come out and put his head on a pike. He doesn’t believe that’s what he’s inviting into his life. He thinks he is untouchable… just like Trump thinks he’s untouchable — that no one would dare do the unthinkable.

Suppose Trump decides to start a war with Canada, and NATO steps in. In that case, the chances of an American military officer putting a bullet in his head on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against a long-time partner becomes a very real possibility. Just because he’s the “commander in chief” doesn’t mean he has carte blanche to do whatever he wants. Everyone has limits. That’s just life. We must acknowledge that and protect them for everyone, for all our sakes.

We don’t know right now what those limits are and what it will take to cross that one bridge too far… but if or when it does happen, there will be chaos in the streets. We’ll be spending the next hundred years dealing with profound regret while armed with microscopes to examine in micro-detail how it could be that we allowed this nightmare to go on as long as it did.

We will be kicking ourselves with the kind of regret that will change us forever in ways that will horrify us deeply if this happens again. We should be paying attention to how the German people have had to cope with their recovery from the madness that overtook them. We should be learning from history, but 76 million people voted for a repetition, while another 80 million said they didn’t care enough to do anything different but pretend it wasn’t their problem to solve… so they made it their problem and everyone’s problem.

Meanwhile, it’s unfair to the few wealthy who are generous and care about humanity to put the onus on them alone to solve the problems we all have a responsibility to solve.

If that means we have to start punching Nazis to get them to develop enough humility to behave like human beings, then we need to start swinging as if our lives depend on it because they do.

Nothing will change until we take this dystopia seriously enough to deal with the threats we face in the form of hatemongers who feel themselves entitled by God to rule this world.

If there’s one thing we can learn from Luigi Mangione, it’s how overwhelming this problem is and how overpowering the enemy is. They’re not taking any breaks now that they’ve been given the keys to transform the landscape radically. They’re putting the pedal to the metal, and if it means running over millions of homeless people with a bulldozer, then so be it.

They don’t care about the poor. They are happy to destroy the easily victimized among us.

Why do you think they’re starting with schoolchildren?

Why aren’t Americans taught that freedom from debt is an important freedom?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-Americans-taught-that-freedom-from-debt-is-an-important-freedom/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

For someone who values a debt-free existence, it can undoubtedly be viewed as an absence of a burden that enables greater freedom of choice. However, the entire system of capitalism is based upon leveraging debt to create revenue.

Revenue and profits are seen as far more powerful versions of freedom within a system that can be leveraged in ways in which the debts themselves can be resolved by servicing them with the increased revenue they generate or by being forgiven.

Of course, this form of debt is not the same as implied by the question, which is based on the notion of debt accrued in purchasing lifestyle augments. For example, a purchase of an air purifier I made just today was made through a credit card, constituting an assumption of debt on my behalf. This purchase will generate no revenue, but I applied my justifications to the decision before making it.

One can argue that my decision decreased my freedom, but that’s only a tiny part of my decision. I can easily say in favour of the practical benefits of making this purchase, even with the context of it ultimately increasing my freedom (from headaches, specifically). However, that makes this degree of granularity in decision-making a cartoon.

Suppose the point of this question is to criticize people for spending thousands on a 100″ television through credit debt instead of a quick payment of a couple of hundred for a 24″ television that would leave them debt-free. In that case, these discussions are merely psychological masturbation sessions where people are attempting to objectify subjective considerations for themselves and applying essentially bigoted reasoning to determine values of rationality toward decisions made by others for things they value.

The reality, however, is that if one is going to argue how debt freedom is an important freedom, then so are many other forms of freedom. For example, freedom from a crushing health exploitation system through a universal healthcare system is also an important freedom that many don’t consider freedom because they’re obligated to support it through their taxes — even if it means a reduced fiscal burden and improved services. The fact that they have no choice but to contribute to it, whereas they do have a choice in a privatized system to pay much more and be rejected by their insurance carrier to die, is also considered an important enough form of freedom for many that universal healthcare remains unimplemented in a nation that likes to think of itself as a bastion of freedom even though it has the highest incarceration rates in the world.

The point is that no matter how vital debt freedom seems to some, sound fiscal management skills are more critical because debt is contextual. The largest corporations in the world carry the most significant amount of debt and begin by getting deeply into debt. Our financial systems are geared around rewarding debt.

Your credit score, for example, drops when you’re debt-free and increases when you have debt and show that you can manage it. The only way to improve one’s debt ceiling is to go into debt. You can live your entire life being a cash-only person and living debt-free, but when you reach a point where you need debt to resolve an issue or accomplish a goal, going debt-free becomes a liability in your application for debt.

In short, Americans are not taught that freedom from debt is an essential freedom because it isn’t. The ability to service one’s debt through revenue constitutes a far greater level of freedom. After all, there isn’t one investment manager who counsels investing one’s money into risky investments. They always counsel investing other people’s money.

Some may wish to argue for a return to debtor prisons based on this dynamic, but that would just penalize the wrong people.

Here’s how wealthy people leverage debt to lower their cost of living, for example:

The wealthiest among us experience the most significant degree of fiscal freedom precisely by how they manage their debt.

The kind of debt and the thinking about debt described by this question is from an era when people could count on stable 40-year careers, prudent personal economic management, and modest living that would result in a comfortable retirement. Those days are long gone.

Why do poor people move all the time?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-do-poor-people-move-all-the-time/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

Their options are always limited to housing, which most often includes conditions that would be unbearable for those who take their ability to afford decent housing for granted. Consequently, any time spent with anyone living a marginal life will reveal horror stories most people could not believe were real.

As an example, someone I know had no choice due to prior “accommodation difficulties” (of which this person was a victim of the behaviours of others in this prior matter), chose an opportunity of availability and expedience because neither time nor resources allowed the luxury of shopping and waiting. As a result, a choice was made for a temporary resolution to bide time and save money for something better. The living conditions were rather horrendous as it was a suite within a house (which tends to be what’s most available at the lowest costs) owned by a hoarder who often snooped and eavesdropped while generally inebriated every waking moment — fortunately, not the violent type.

At any rate, this temporary accommodation was six months filled with fun and adventure, ending in an almost surreal form of coincidence. Upon having found another, more appropriate suite in a moderately priced complex and beginning preparations for moving, the owner was found unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital and treated for a heart condition, but since his mental faculties had failed so severely, he was moved into a care facility. Of course, this turn of events meant relocating sooner rather than later.

This person’s new and seemingly stable accommodation required some austerity to maintain a stable and relatively comfortable lifestyle. After the one-year lease expired, the rent increased by its legal maximum. Shortly thereafter, they were informed that the building complex had been sold and that the new owners were considering redevelopment, which may require them to move again.

This is one of the overlooked details of poverty. The lack of stability itself is an incredible drain on resources, which means this approach to living by addressing crisis after crisis over time is psychologically, physically, and financially draining. The consequence is this is just another forgotten example of how poverty is an existence of perpetual punishment for simply being poor while having little to no access to escape.

A harrowing statistic I’ve just recently posted in another answer to another question since answering this question 6 years ago is the number of people who work full time and are homeless.

I was also prompted by what’s been happening in California with predatory real estate corporations owned explicitly by Blackstone and headed up by Stephen A. Schwarzman from an email I received from Brave New Films. It prompted me to create a provocative meme to post on Xitter that may be a bit too provocative for some but can’t be ignored as a practice that can only be endorsed by psychopaths who are responsible for the current state of dire straits experienced by victims of theirs.

This is an argument against corporate ownership of residential real estate.

Why is there so much misanthropy nowadays?

We have cultivated it by allowing our societies to grow into corrupt monstrosities that people have no choice but to struggle to survive within.

We have placed a physical resource like money at the top of our values and have dehumanized people every step of the way. At the same time, we convert human beings into disposable commodities.

We are dehumanizing ourselves at every level by endorsing a system that devalues the ineffable qualities of humanity because they are not viewed as profitable by industry. Instead, we have ways of further dehumanizing people by leveraging their despair against them with global institutions that dictate dogma to follow without question.

Everything has become reduced to a competition for tentative comforts that bear no intrinsic value or meaning beyond serving the immediate gratification of shallow desires.

None of this contributes toward the growth of those qualities of humanity that we value. None of this brings us together as people in common cause for the betterment of all. Everything is catered toward the propulsion of individuals we stratify with blind worship.

When we replace human qualities we cherish with an avatar, like money as a metric for determining their value, we become divorced from our humanity.

While living in a world that views wealth as an indicator of all positive human qualities, people inevitably start to develop disparaging views toward their neighbours because everyone has been left fighting over the same scarce resources that are left behind by the plutocrats dehumanizing all of us with a system they parasitically siphon of wealth at our expense.

We can only live so long with oppressive conditions before the effects grow out of control and well into making our environments breeding grounds for chaos.

Misanthropy is just an early stage of widespread systemic collapse.

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora. For answers to additional questions, my profile can be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/“

Is it possible that capitalism will lead to its own destruction?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Is it possible that the ability of the Western-style capitalistic system to create great individual wealth will eventually lead to its own eventual destruction?”

I clearly remember my only extended holiday trip out of the country to visit Mexico in the late 1980s — around 1988. It was a fantastic month-long experience I had hoped I would do again within a few years while I was eager to explore the world. I had been living at that point, under the illusion that stability in my income would continue indefinitely while growing year by year as I applied my efforts diligently to what I was doing for employment.

At that point, I worked as an “Educational Counsellor” (according to HR) on the SAIT campus in Calgary, Alberta — a more familiar title for those with experience in post-secondary residence life would be “Residence Life Co-ordinator” — of which I learned many things. In this case, I realized job titles might be universal, but the roles vary dramatically from environment to environment. For the uninitiated, my function was essentially “Community Development,” I wore several hats to succeed in that role while being informed that I had developed — on a green field — the most advanced program in Alberta. I was pretty proud of my accomplishments and still have many good memories from that time.

In my early to mid-twenties, I believed I had developed a firm professional grounding that I could build a successful career for my future. That was less the case than I had hoped because I didn’t follow a defined career prescription and chose to carve out a path unique to my specific interests. There are many reasons for divergence from choosing the road more travelled, but they constitute a divergence from the opening sentence of this answer.

Rather than emulate Grandpa Simpson, I’ll say capitalism isn’t a formula or a universally applicable prescription anyone can follow and achieve great results if they stick to their map. The world I grew up in was filled with people who applied themselves throughout a forty-to-fifty-year stint in a role many hated but stuck with because they had mortgage payments and a family to feed. They could maintain their commitments for so long because the carrot of retirement at the end of their trek meant mortgage-free home ownership.

The first winds of change to that dynamic began to blow around the time I managed to see a small part of the world that was foreign to me. Ronald Reagan was president then, and his betrayals of the working class hadn’t been felt or predicted because the heyday of tax cuts left a lot of cash on the table for people to party it up. It wasn’t until the spend-like-a-drunken-sailor party began winding down that the hangover of austerity began kicking in — then came the dramatic downward slide of uncertain futures.

Lifetime jobs began to disappear as fast as the unions started disappearing.

At any rate, this was all academic to me at a time when I was excited to go on a month-long excursion to an exotic tropical locale that I had been familiar with from books but was eager to experience first-hand. I spent a couple of months in preparation for my trip by learning Spanish as best I could — which was relatively easy for me, having been raised in a Portuguese-speaking household. In several cases, it was more challenging for me to separate the two languages while I spoke. I had to think about my word choices to realize I may have used an unfamiliar Portuguese word when greeted with a quizzical expression.

On the other hand, it was like music to my ears when I heard a Spanish word identical to the Portuguese version of the concept. “Bastante” was such a word that made my heart jump in realization of how much both cultures have in common. The locals seemed to appreciate my efforts at communicating with them in their language and, at times, treated me like one of them. My travelling partner at the time received no such courtesy and was open about expressing her disdain toward this dynamic. For the record, I did try to help her learn the languages alongside me. However, she wasn’t very interested because she felt we would encounter enough English-speaking locals to manage without all that trouble.

Ironically, this was also my first experience with Americans abroad. I learned why many Americans affix Canadian maple leaves to their luggage when travelling abroad. I found it very easy to pick out an American from a crowd in Mexico. This isn’t to say that all were quite so brash and boorish in their entitlement, but every time I witnessed someone behaving in an overtly aggressive manner, it was always an American. To be clear, my point isn’t to trash Americans in general because I’ve known several who are decent people, but we can’t ignore the psychosis plaguing the nation at the moment without lying to ourselves about how much of it has existed for a long time. It had just never been so apparent before the afflicted began donning their colours in a political alignment of hatred as we have now.

At any rate, Mexico was and is a capitalist country, and that’s what this answer to the question intends to address. Of the many things I noted and was in awe of, such as the culture and witnessing with my popped open eyes, and the marvellous artworks of notables like Diego Rivera’s murals, was that the nature of its capitalist culture stood in stark contrast to what I had experienced in the much more subdued Canadian environment.

For example, my younger and naive self was quite shocked to see armed guards outside and inside every bank and shop that sold luxury goods like jewelry. This was in the “Zona Rosa” (Pink Zone) in Mexico City — a multi-block area expressly set up for tourist accommodations. Poverty was rampant, and street vendors, known as “ambulantes,” were everywhere outside the Zona Rosa in Mexico City that we travelled who set up tables at the train stations. (I remember being excited to see the Metro Station area we used as our starting point to our daily destinations a couple of years later in the 1990 movie Total Recall.) Walking around Mexico City in parts was like walking through a gigantic outdoor flea market where one could buy from an assortment of cheap electronics, music CDs, and crafts.

We travelled a lot by bus on excursions outside Mexico City while there for about one week. Each time we boarded a bus or when the bus stopped at locations along our route, three to five vendors wearing strapon trays filled with goods stepped on board to make their rounds and entice people to buy sticks of gum, candy, breath mints, and what have you of small goods they could carry.

(This is a screen grab from a video on a NYC subway that I found while searching for vendors at transit stations in Mexico. The hustle-culture trend from impoverished nations to the south has moved Northward. During my visit to Mexico, this was such a common event that no one responded with the shocked surprise and suspicion seen in this video. There would have been at least two or three other candy vendors on this subway if it had been the Mexico I experienced.)

This was the definition of a “hustle culture” before the term was coined.

Every poor person was a budding entrepreneur.

Mexico was dealing with serious political issues that were mainly responses to the widespread poverty that existed then. I remember hearing news of a Zapatista uprising nearby when we stayed in Oaxaca for a time before arriving at our final destination in Puerto Escondido, a beautiful and secluded beach resort.

At this beach, I experienced my most stark introduction to the world of capitalism through the lens of poverty.

I had been lazily falling asleep under a tree on the beach when I felt something graze the top of my head. I initially swatted away what I thought was an insect, but it continued to flicker on the top of my head. When I opened my eyes to see what was going on, I saw what must have been a barely eighteen-month-old child wearing only diapers and holding a wire coat hanger with handmade bracelets attached to it.

I was pretty confused by the scene as it presented itself to me, and then I saw a woman standing about ten metres behind him with a smile, nodding her head and pointing to the child. That was when I registered that this child was a street vendor in the making and his mother was using him as emotional leverage to make sales.

That’s the image I can’t get out of my mind when I think of capitalism.

Capitalism is a promise made to the desperate to survive that they can succeed if they’re willing to be creative and put in the effort to work at selling either product or themselves to get their material success.

Unfortunately, it’s a promise made by the Lucys of the world to the Charlie Browns of the world that they, too, can kick the football over the goalpost if they concentrate enough and put all their effort into making that magic kick to achieve their dreams.

The desperate to survive have no choice but to play the game while knowing after a while and after having the football yanked away at the last microsecond before each kick attempt that capitalism is a game played at their expense.

There have been too many times in my life when that magic kick was within my reach, and it was yanked away by some greedy sociopath who decided their desires outweighed the needs of the many. Their Lucy attitude was rationalized in the same terms every person who combines psychopathy with manipulation as their vocational strategy for material wealth does; collateral damage is justified as the cost of doing business. If people go bankrupt as a consequence of some decision to benefit personally, then it’s their fault for making a bad choice.

Because we have put no restraints on greed, capitalism will fail, not because capitalism is flawed but because humans are flawed in their social contract-betraying greed. Moreover, humans lack the desire to regulate greed, which has always resulted in the harshest lesson in life, as history has repeatedly informed us and that the Brian Thompsons of this world have been ignoring.

There are many more Luigis among us, and if the perceived solution for the billionaires is to beef up their security, they will also regret not taking the road less travelled… not because anyone wants that. Victims only ever want justice.

“Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution necessary.”

Why doesn’t Elon Musk want to save poor people in the world?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Elon-Musk-want-to-save-poor-people-in-the-world/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

He is saving the “poor people in the world.”

The disconnect is presuming he sees other people in the world as people rather than as objects placed on this Earth to cater to his poor existence.

Haven’t you noticed how much whining Trump does about life even though he was born on third base and has destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives throughout his life? After all that destruction, he still views himself as a victim.

Ironically, they’re both victims of failing to maintain contact with their essential humanity.

They will both go to their graves, completely frustrated and confused about why most people hate them.

Sure… they have devoted followers, but those are the easy and gullible idiots to manipulate. It’s not enough because they know the people who challenge them think poorly of them.

The jealousy is why Trump can still gripe about Obama a decade later.

Supporting a hated monster like Trump is the closest Musk will get to camaraderie. Meanwhile, both regard each other as useful idiots to their self-serving causes. Once the wheels fall off in their relationship — and it will because there isn’t enough room on the planet for two competing megalomaniac egos — eventually, one of them will step on the other’s toes hard enough to escalate into an open conflict — we’ll see embarrassing demonstrations that remind us of all the sandbox behaviours we experienced in elementary school.

Sadly, the more Xitter fails, the harder Musk will go after austerity for the little people, and that’s how he will deal with his “poor stature.” Musk is this century’s poster boy for why restraints on personal wealth and power are crucial to the stability of human civilization.

The MAGAts won’t see that, though, because they’re conditioned to desire submission to authorities they’ve been accustomed to worship. They will identify more with Musk’s struggles than their fellow citizens who suffer from Musk’s spitefulness.

Elon Musk is essentially living a life of revenge against whatever broke him in his childhood. His and Trump’s attitudes and behaviours are typical for bullies who remain convinced of their infinite entitlement to destroy others. They are self-righteous in their acts of destruction to levels equivalent to extreme religious zealotry.

Musk will sincerely believe he is a poor victim for being denied the $56 billion he demanded as compensation from Tesla. Self-serving bullies like won’t stop until someone stops them. Until then, Musk in his “DOGE” role will strip away lifelines from the little people to save himself a few dollars on taxes with righteous fervour. He will sincerely believe he’s doing the right thing for society by getting revenge on his victimization.

The attitude of being a poor victim is a common among billionaires who brazenly justify denying people their right to life to save themselves a few dollars in taxes. Meanwhile, all of their justifications for austerity for the little people is presented as if tax increases are and should be equal across the board. The wealthy have had their taxes cut by more than half in the last several decades which constitutes billions in savings for each billionaire. The little people have conversely gained pennies in tax cuts by contrast. Meanwhile, people like Musk, Thiel, and those support Trump consider themselves poor and unjustly victimized if their taxes were increased by a few percentage points.

The next time you hear someone use the expression, “victim mentality,” pay close attention to the person who accuses others of having such a mentality because that expression is projection for a sociopath. We’ve all had enough experience now to understand how the corrupt will make accusations that are confessions in disguise — deflections away from responsibility for their actions. People like Musk and Trump embody that mentality. Every choice they make is a form of revenge for their victimization while anyone who suffers as a consequence deserves their fates.