Villains

What are all the Christmas stories all about? It's always someone being greedy and changing their ways. It is a value in America to be generous and to change your ways. We have just forgotten...

We just have to actually listen to our revered holiday stories. Shove them down their throats

I prefer this new way of planting messages directly into their ribcages

It's even worse than that ... if you are profiteering off the money that people use for their health, life saving treatments, preventative health care or just to stay alive .... that is far worse to me than a Hollywood villain.

Movie villains state outright that they want to kill people or blow up an entire city full of people. A health care CEO gouging money off of cancer patients and being rewarded for taking advantage of millions of people across the county is far more evil to me.

You don’t become a billionaire by keeping your hands clean.

people forget just how much of the world lives in shocking poverty

no one should be able to amass wealth in the billions

also, capitalism serves to create oppressive business models: a health insurance company that pays out their insurance claims likely does not perform as well compared to companies like UHC that deny claims on a dime. companies like UHC can grow their business and expand with the wealth they've made from scamming their clients out of health care

They act like literal Bond villians and then act surprised when people see them as less than nice people?

Bond villains also do this
- I felt like Bond villains actually paid their henchmen a decent wage, hence why they were always willing to die for the job.
  That's much more than we can say for real life billionaires.

Maybe it's time the US enforces a new law stating that max pay and min pay for a company must be no more than a certain ratio, including shopped out work and part time workers.

- In some cases, not a bad thing.
Lots of executives don't earn a high salary. They get other benefits like company car, stocks, trips, etc.
- Yea, loopholes would have to be addressed

All I'm saying is, if it's the real ~~hero~~ killer, then the lesson we can all take from this - hypothetically - is next time just lie low, don't go to McDonald's and especially don't go to McDonald's with your fake ID, manifesto and, for the love of Christ, not your favourite 3D printed gun.

Also don't wear a mask deep in COVID-denying Bumfuck, PA.
If there is ever a time for Uber eats to drop off food contactless, this was it.

Actually, it takes a lot of hard work and intelligence to exploit the vulnerable and you're just jealous you didn't think of it first.

Poe's Law

Herp derp "job creators exercising the noblest of impulses: rational self-interest"

The greatest cultural propaganda the owners achieved through their for profit media and captured education, particularly economics, that enabled all others was that greed/avarice was not the personal failing, character deficit, and destructive force that it is, but instead the highest of virtue.

Its not. The Gordon Geckos, Mr. Potters, and Ebenezer Scrooges in fiction were cautionary tales, villains. Yet they've convinced us that that is what we should either be or worship.

For most people if you never had to work a day of your life for you to live a decent life you probably would follow your own interests. And I'm not blaming you for that, but mass wealth isn't accomplished by everyone going on a journey of selffulfillment. Which economic system works better might I ask you?
- It's not just about different systems. It's about priorities.
  The Nordic model keeps capitalism heavily, heavily straightjacked, to power the wellbeing of society.
  Taxes aren't largely resented, because everyone is educated to understand that when you succeed, the society you're a part of succeeds. No one fears going to a doctor, higher education is based on academic merit because everyone benefits from an educated populace. When you succeed, you are taxed to a degree that would make our capitalists cry. Yet they are the happiest people's in the world. And if that isn't the goal of any society, they're doing it wrong. We don't prioritize that at all, only how high our most effective sociopaths can fly.
  Here, the tail has been wagging the dog for a long time, the false promise of being "free" to attain society warping levels of wealth has toxified our culture into forgeting that freedom devoid of responsibility is a rampage. Meanwhile everyone else is free to die in the gutter alone for the crime of not making them enough money.
  Letting people gain enough wealth to warp society beyond their single vote, and more, not punishing trying to infect our politics with life imprisonment, has destroyed our democracy, it's all for show. You pick a major party, and I'll show you a party that's been bought and paid for by the same people, to the point they've made it all perfectly legal since Reagan and especially since Citizens United.
  Capitalism belongs in making optional widgets for a reasonable profit it has no place in sectors people need to survive. Those should be socialized, because in those sectors stability is more important than economic growth/metastasis.
  If it isn't enough motivation to have a peak of maybe 2 really big homes and 1 really big boat, then I question that person's motivations and recognition that they are a member of a society and not society's owner.
  No one should have more unelected, unaccountable power over society than their single vote allows. No one. Capital beyond material needs and desires is power.
  TLDR start with making attempting to bribe an elected official the highest of capital crimes, life no parole as they're actively attempting to bend all of society to their desires, only public funds for campaigns, continue by rewarding labor with far lower taxation than speculative, insider info laden gambling that should be taxed astronomically as the vice it is, and then have a maximum wealth tax at let's say a 100 million dollars where they're declared the winner, given a cake, and congratulations on all additional wealth going into improving the roads and commons of the society that facilitated their accumulation of such astronomical wealth to begin with.
  If someone like Elon wants a kingdom, let him fly to Mars and make one.

Hey now! They are also taking on a lot of risk! Like being poor if they somehow manage to miss the golden parachute after messing up on the job

They are also taking on a lot of risk! Like being ~~poor~~ marginally less rich if they somehow manage to miss the golden parachute after messing up on the job
- If you don't have wealth amassed outside the company and the company ends up not being able to pay debts your entire livelihood can be taken by a debt collector. Really depends on the company but if you want to get a loan banks want some safety to back it up

Educate, agitate, organize.

Yes but I dehumanize rich folk and technically they're still human. Just, you know, parasites be parasites.

I'm sorry but I think OP was a bit out of line. Elon Musk for example has billions of dollars but is looking to give himself BILLIONS and benefits. FTFY.