US billionaires:
“Wait, you mean to say that we can keep our current quality of life, dabble in our little space projects, and that those we employ won’t suffer???”
“Lol naw fuck that.”
Exactly. The cruelty is the point. They enjoy making people suffer.
I feel like it’s a means of creating a further distance between the rich and poor when conventional means have reached their limit, though i imagine there is likely at least some sadistic pleasure they derive from it (and there are very likely some that get a lot)
Here’s a comparison that came to mind for me: when i make dinner, i like to make my wife and i a salad but I’ll go out of my way to make a very nice presentation of the various ingredients on my wife’s salad. I will have the exact same ingredients for mine, but intentionally slop them onto the plate with hasty abandon and even take measures to try to make it look even worse. I like to argue that my wife’s salad is the better of the 2, that there is a hierarchy that’s immediately distinguishable–even though it’s the exact same stuff. That her salad is actually even better than if they both had been presented the same way–that i can make that basic salad even better than previously thought possible by creating a severe inequality in its presentation to the other one. Of course, that’s a very harmless comparison but i think there’s something in it.
I mean, it’s like the rich can only be so pleased with their riches and the luxuries it affords them. Not to mention a lot of that stuff probably becomes trite/commonplace even if it’s a giant yacht or fancy food or living space or whatever. They can only be so happy, and sustaining that happiness is probably not easy when you’ve burned through the conventional happiness-granting activities. It would seem that they find more nuanced, and perhaps even perverted means of pressing the happiness button. I suppose Epstein’s Island really kinda drives home that whole disgusting “someone has to suffer in order for me to be happy” kinda dynamic.
It’s disgusting to think people derive pleasure from making others suffer like this, but it’s not the least surprising to discover. 🫠
You mean, instead of having $ 99.9, I would only get 99? Over my cold, dead body!
Unfathomable wealth isnt enough, they also need to rule.
Yeah… It’s like the mobile f2p games. The paying players need the f2p players so they can stomp on them.
And this is America right now:
Housing and food - yes, be angry that there’s no money for that.
But healthcare? Money is not the issue - US healthcare, yes the precious private healthcare, is already getting a ridiculous 16% of the federal budget. For context - their military gets around 4%!
The money is already in the system, it’s the system itself that must be changed and made to work for the general public instead of shareholders.
worth noting how norway is rich off of oil
True and the Nordics have plenty of poverty themselves once people look closer.
(This is just saying it exists, nothing more)
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Not even a successful society is perfect. It certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It’s still better than what most of the rest of the world is doing.
It certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Nobody said we shouldn’t. The point is, we shouldn’t look away from the issues in a country just because they are doing better than others in some cases.
It means that when people advocate for improvements, YOU SHOULD STOP IMMEDIATELY PLAYING CRAB BUCKET.
Let better be better and then sure raise some issues. Your comment seems intentionally obtuse.
It means that when people advocate for improvements, YOU SHOULD STOP IMMEDIATELY PLAYING CRAB BUCKET.
…your argument is that we literally should not criticize ideas until they’re actually implemented and proven to be lacking? How does one establish that something is better without open critique?
I think it speaks more to who you are as a pwrson that your first reaction is to criticize an idea.
Negativity begets negativity. I choose to look for positivity and hope first, and criticize later.
You’re seeing a motivation behind my comment that isn’t there, so you really shouldn’t call me obtuse. Is Norway doing pretty good? Yes! Could they also do better? Yes! I’m not playing crab bucket, but I’m also not sticking my head in the sand here.
Maybe next time open with the “pretty good” stuff. Before this comment everything cooking was negative which sure looks like crab bucket (not just from you, but also from you) and I’m still leaning toward obtuse by omission tbh.
I’m sorry I didn’t spoon feed my comment for you, mister obtuse.
Norway relies on the exploitation of billions in the global south, as all of the western world does.
What does that even mean? For those of us who aren’t in the know like you are, that phrase doesn’t mean anything to us.
And if you’re open to a friendly suggestion, nix the “western world” propaganda; focus on explaining the “exploitation of billions in the global south” part.
Norway doesn’t produce cocoa beans. Norway doesn’t produce cotton, or bananas, or iron ore, or cobalt, or gold, or most basic raw materials you need to run a society. Neither do Spain, or Germany, or France, or the USA. Instead, these countries focus on the production of high value-added goods and services, which they can do because they are historically highly industrialized, developed, and have high levels of education, infrastructure and concentration of productive capital.
In this manner, Germany imports iron ore from poor countries in the global south at low prices, and exports cars at high prices. In the international market, therefore, one hour of German/French/Norwegian work is exchanged often for tens of hours of work from India, or Congo, or Mexico. This is unequal exchange, and is the pillar of neocolonialism.
Through political, economical and military powers, the western world has ensured that the global south remains underdeveloped. IMF predatory loans and neoliberal policy impositions, support for fascists or monarchists, coups, or outright military invasions are some of the most common tools the west uses to maintain these countries underdeveloped and with cheap labor.
In the international market, therefore, one hour of German/French/Norwegian work is exchanged often for tens of hours of work from India, or Congo, or Mexico.
Explain where the exploitation comes from.
- Is the argument here that developed goods are worth more on the market than their raw materials & shouldn’t be?
- Or that a unit of time of more skilled labor to develop those goods from raw materials should earn the same as less skilled labor, so the disparities in their market value is exploitation? If they could earn the same with less skill, then why bother developing skill?
- It’s not like they govern the foreign countries of international businesses they trade with for raw materials. Is your argument that they shouldn’t trade internationally for raw materials?
It’s not like they govern the foreign countries of international businesses they trade with for raw materials
Not directly, perhaps, but that’s how neocolonialism works. 14 countries in Africa use currency whose central bank is in Paris, western nations keep military forces in many African countries and support only the governments that they want, and when a nation rejects complete exploitation by western corporations, they either apply sanctions (with the explicit aim of “creating hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”), or organize coups to democratically elected leaders, or directly bomb the fuck out of them.
More subtle means include IMF loans conditioned to applying neoliberal economic policy. In his 100-page resignation letter from the IMF, former IMF senior economist Davison Budhoo described the extensive and systematic statistical fraud used by the IMF to impose its policies on developing countries, and explained that the consequences of these policies led to massive poverty and starvation. In the letter, Budhoo wrote that the IMF’s policies are made in “utter disregard to local conditions” and lead countries to “self destruct” and “unleash unstoppable economic and social chaos” and also compared the IMF’s structural adjustment policies to a “terrorist attack”. He also stated that the routine policy packages of the IMF “can never serve, under any set of circumstances, the cause of financial balance and economic growth” and that “the ill-gotten, inadvertent power that we revel in wielding over prostrate governments and peoples - can only serve to accentuate world tensions”
Is your argument that they shouldn’t trade internationally for raw materials?
My argument is that these countries aren’t allowed to industrialize in their own terms with their own companies. It’s either western corporations controlling everything and extracting the wealth to Europe and North America, or murder.
Worth noting that most of the time oil (newly discovered natural resources really)makes a country poorer than richer. See Venezuela and such.
So good on Norway to not give in to unbridled corruption and out that money on a public fund to make its own citizen wealthy
Well yes, Norway’s leader wasn’t assassinated by the US, followed by sanctions and throwing money and weapons at militant factions. I wonder why…
This is bad analysis. Natural resources don’t make countries poorer, they make the US/UK/France/Spain/Italy invade you.
Libya, rich in oil, was the richest country in Africa (and highest Human Development Index) until the west bombed it and triggered a civil war. Iran was on the way to use its oil for its own profits by nationalizing it under the democratically elected leftist government of Mosaddeq until it got blockaded and couped by MI6+CIA and a corrupt monarch got reinstated. Venezuela took millions of people out of poverty until US sanctions came in an attempt to kill the socialist government and put millions through hardship. Saudi Arabia, having a government very cozy with the US, gets away with no US coups, but has 70% of the population being effectively slaves.
Eh, no reason to discard the idea of putting a ceiling on the rich. Even if you took away all of the money people had that was over 1 billion dollars, that wouldn’t cause any of those people to suffer.
1000x the median household income. That should be the cap. It’s a nice round number; people can understand it. And it indexes automatically with inflation.
Moreover, this is about the maximum lifetime fortune achievable by someone who actually works for a living. In a US context, 1000x median household income is about $80 million USD. That’s still an incredible amount of money, though just barely achievable by actually working for wages. It’s the kind of fortune two neurosurgeons could amass if they both worked long careers, lived extremely frugally, and invested everything they made. 1000x median household income is what I consider the largest possible ‘honest’ fortune. In order to earn beyond that level, you have to earn your money not through your labor, but the labor of others. You have to start a business and start sponging off the surplus of your employees. 1000x median income is about as large a pile as you can get without relying on exploiting someone else’s labor. And that seems like a reasonable place to set a cap. Still high enough to provide people plenty of incentive to work hard, get an education, better themselves, etc. But no so high that people amass fortunes that are threats to national security.
It would cause them to move to a country without such regulation. Maybe somewhere in Africa or Southeast Asia, or South America. Though maybe there they lose a bunch of their money to corruption so overall it’s a win.
If that were true, they would have already done it.
They scream about taxes and such, but they know that they are in the very best country in the world to get super wealthy. It’s relatively easy to get access to money, systemic corruption is relatively low, and legal bribery is build into the system. The government is literally based on Capitalism.
Sure, they threaten to leave if their billion dollars is threatened with a 1% increase in taxes, but they won’t, because they know that the American economic system is what gave them the billion dollars in the first place. They’re just being whiney little bitches.
These people will lie to you to make you help them get what they want, at YOUR expense. You aren’t obligated to believe them, or help them.
This what they so to literally every positive economic policy ever discussed and yet every one of those places still has rich people and overinflated companies. Maybe we should stop believing their lies?
If billionaires decide to leave the country then the factories and businesses run by workers producing the billions they made will remain. You can’t pick up a building and take it with you.
It’s exceedingly rare that they actually do this because they don’t want to live in a third-world country. The irony, ofc, is that their actions are turning the U.S. into one.
The issue is a bit more… circular than that.
Certain things, certain ventures, need more money than that. And in a free, capitalist society you want people to be able to achieve such goals and ventures.
Problem is, once you pool that wealth into a company (the very meaning of the word, like companion, meaning “together”, or more literally “with others, in a multitude”), imbalances will occur. What if you start it out as a group of 5, each putting in a billion, then the company, without employees, becomes successful, but due to how it worked out, one person was the main brain behind the success so they get a bigger share? Suddenly the company is worth 25 billion, 15bn belonging to the genius, and the rest having 2.5bn stake. How do you regulate that?
Also what if that money is truly for operating costs, because this company is setting up a brand new town, so they’re literally paying dozens of construction crews, establishing shops and whatnot for people to use once they move in, and so on? Do you just take any excess wealth away?
Or do you let them continue operating knowing full well that someone in the company will try to use the operational funds as their personal bank account?
The idea of a wealth limit in an optimal society is good, but in our current imperfect crap, it’s never going to work, because it will put limits to what we can achieve in general.
Mind you I do agree that billionaires shouldn’t exist and should be taxed out of existence but that’s not done with a wealth ceiling.
Companies shouldn’t be creating towns, period. If we need new cities, their locations and forms should be chosen by the people. By elections. Not by some lone asshole whose only urban planning qualification is that he happens to have a large pile of money.
Towns were just an example of scale - a more realistic example would be, albeit futuristic, is whatever space-faring vessels we’ll build, and I don’t mean Musk and his rocket toys he keeps blowing up, I mean actual interplanetary and deep space ships, which will cost about the same to build as a small town.
Do you want the right to building those to be retained by the government only? Or would you prefer if the right people with the appropriate resources could do it too?
The billionaires ARE the right… they’re the ones with all the money to be pushing those right-wing narratives and the ones that profit most from the success of those narratives. Mussolini himself admitted that Corporatism was a more fitting name for his ideology than Fascism, because it is a merging of the state and corporate power. If the corporations and billionaires didn’t privately capture all those billions of dollars, what, do you think that wealth would just evaporate? No! It’s us doing all the work and making all the sacrifices, we should have control over the profit we generate and a say in what we are willing to sacrifice for it!!
Whatever spacefaring vessels are going to be built should be built at the behest of the people, for the interests of the people. Not by and for whatever person is able to lie, cheat, and steal the most wealth out of our hands. What is the point of building a rocket if all it’s going to do for us is generate another few billion dollars for one guy, who already has more money than god, at everyone else’s expense?? It’s our cake, we are the ones who spilled our blood sweat and tears over it, and we’re gonna just give it away to a guy that’s pinky-promising to drop some crumbs behind him? Fuck that!
Repeat after me: THE INTERESTS OF BILLIONAIRES ARE INCOMPATIBLE WITH THOSE OF THE PEOPLE.
Man, so interesting. Why do we have to pay those workers to build something that society needs? Is it because the workers need to eat? Why are the workers starving? Is it because the food they need is locked away in a hoard of wealth that only gets distributed by people who own the hoard? Why won’t they just feed people? Oh they only feed people if it means they’ll make a profit?
Hmm. How does a system this cruel stick around? What’s that? 90% of the wealth of the world is owned by a vanishingly small number of people who will only deign to feed people if it makes them a profit?
Man. Real “imperfection” you got there. I’m sure we can fix it with some reforms though once we learn more about economics…
15bn belonging to the genius
Oof.
Anyway…
The regulation part is absurdly easy: they get a tax bill, they sell their shares, they pay the tax bill.
Operating costs don’t have anything to do with personal wealth. The company pays the operating costs. If the company’s revenue is greater than its costs, it pays dividends or reinvests and in theory, the stock prices goes up. See above.
The problem isn’t the logistics: point gun, take money. That’s pretty straightforward. The problem is ramifications. If billionaires can no longer grow their wealth, what would happen? Well, for one their control over these companies would wane. If Musk can’t own more than a billion, then he’d have to sell a bunch of stock, which means he would have less control over the board, and thus less control over decision-making. But is that such a bad thing? Are the skills and personality that cause a company to go from zero -> public the same ones you want once the company has grown to a large size? Idk, maybe ask Zuckerberg about Oculus Rift and the Metaverse.
I don’t think anyone actually knows what would happen. But we do have a lot of data on what happens if you significantly increase the marginal tax rates for upper income brackets, and it sure seems to benefit society as a whole, but depends on what outcomes you’re targeting. And that doesn’t actually target the ~900 billionaires in the United States because most of them earn money through capital gains rather than regular income.
Indeed, whilst it’s more difficult to raise a floor, it’s certainly a good idea to have a roof close enough to it to keep the heat where the people exist
What if we just burn the rich as firewood instead?
no reason to discard the idea of putting a ceiling on the rich.
There is a very good reason to discard the idea of assigning an arbitrary ‘maximum wealth’, two actually:
- it’s effectively impossible to actually enforce
- it will cost us more to try to enforce it, than we will gain in revenue
It would be tremendously expensive resource-wise, logistically, to even reliably determine if one has reached that ceiling (net worth figures for individuals that you see in the media are guesses, not the result of actual auditing), much less calculate with any degree of certainty how far over the ceiling someone is, and that ‘research/enforcement cost’ is practically certain to completely cancel out (and then some) any potential added revenue, especially because it’s also trivially easy to circumvent by creating debt, etc.
- it will cost us more to try to enforce it, than we will gain in revenue
That sounds to me like an assertion that has no basis in reality.
That would most likely be because you are ignorant of when it has already literally happened in the past, in other nations.
On multiple occasions in multiple countries, wealth taxes primarily aimed at the wealthiest demographic have been tried, and then repealed because overall tax revenue literally decreased as a result. There is a reason the vast majority of countries that have implemented such taxes have either since repealed them, or ‘loosened’ them such that they’re no longer primarily aimed at said demographic, and have become a much more ‘typical’ tax that the middle class pays.
This is why the Zucmann taxation model is so hyped tbh. I doubt you haven’t heard of it?
I honestly don’t think the problem is that Capitalist’s don’t understand that concept; they very much do.
They also understand that the money for raising that floor would likely come from taxes on them; and so keeping the floor low means that they can keep even more profit.
It’s not a lack of understanding. It’s pure unadulterated evil.
The rich capitalists sure, but there are plenty of poor capitalists being fed misinformation, in order to maintain the status quo. And when it is the many vs the powerful few, then the more we have on our side the better
Capitalist generally refers to people who own and control capital, not to fans of the system. One cannot be a poor capitalist, it’s a contradiction.
I used to use the term the same way as you, but I think using it the way it’s meant is better.
That seems an odd definition to me, to my knowledge all other definitions of ideologies depend only on ones own beliefs or values, not upon ones physical possessions or life situation. What else would you call a poor person who fervently believes that capitalism is the best system for the world? If Bezos suffered some catastrophic business collapse and went broke, would he suddenly no longer be a capitalist?
Edit: also I thought the traditional name for those who own capital is “bourgeoisie”?
If Bezos suffered some catastrophic business collapse and went broke, would he suddenly no longer be a capitalist?
Depends, if that collapse meant that he can’t live from his ownership of capital anymore, he would not be a capitalist.
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The reason social democracy doesn’t work is because it doesn’t change the power structure. It’s treating a symptom and not the root cause. By leaving the root cause untouched, the symptoms will always come back.
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To be fair, it helps that Norway suddenly got rich by selling ecologically disasterous products to the rest of the world while avoiding them itself.
are you serious?
Yes, Norway’s oil production is state owned, so every Norwegian benefits from it rather than a select few.
We are a plutocracy, our government sold out long ago and is the most corrupt country of all time.
I know that they say it’s actually pretty good and we are a rule of law country without a corruption problem, but unfortunately, that’s because we’ve made corruption and bribery perfectly legal.
If you haven’t done this yet, check out Super PACs, long story short it’s a cash pipeline with laughably weak oversight, and everybody in government knows exactly why it legal.
In 1970s FBI did a bribery catfish of reps, mayors, and more, and almost half of them took the bait and many were convicted of bribery (ABSCAM).
Starting in 2000s, Super PACs allow unlimited funding and they don’t have to declare who gave it to them. The FBI is now investigating furries instead of congress.
It’s a madhouse.
“doesn’t put a ceiling on wealth”
eeeeehh. maybe we fucking should?
increased privatisation is happening all over the Nordics. I don’t know how much in Norway compared to here in Finland, but being in my fourth decade I can definitely see it happening and intensely. I can’t get a fucking public dentist anymore. Hell, children aren’t given free dental care anymore.
If no one were living in poverty I would be more accepting of the ultra-rich’s existence.
The whole point is that the floor is the important thing. In Scandinavian countries, they have a fairly firm upper bound. But they don’t suffer when people above that upper bound flee to avoid taxes
The critical part is the lower bound
In Scandinavian countries, they have
Sounds like you don’t actually live here.
We don’t have a “firm boundary” on people being rich. We just don’t have multi-billionaires. Or if we do, they’re the silent type, not the Musk/Bezos type. And even those are pretty different.
But like, how many multi-billionaires do you know from like Minnesota, Louisiana, Oregon & Oklahoma?
The progressive taxation we have is for income, not capital gains. So essentially you can never get rich by working, but if you’re just profiting from having a lot of capital (renting properties etc, even airbnb, and tons of other ways for rich people to shift their income from “labour income” to capital gains), then you have a flat 30% tax rate. And if you’re actually a billionaire, you’d just shift it all to a tax haven to avoid even the 30%.
Sure, yeah, I agree there’s a certain type of bottom — insofar that we don’t allow people to die to starvation or the elements — but that’s a fucking low bar, don’t you think?
I bet you’re one of those people who actually believe Finland is the happiest country in the world. (It’s like North Koreans talking about freedom lol.)
Jesus Christ, you have no idea…
Our ultra-wealthy pay literally nothing in taxes. They take out loans against their holdings, and when they do sell they use losses on paper to offset their gains, so they get away with paying nothing
And most of ours fly under the radar too. There’s around 300 resorts and compounds worldwide where the billionaires live their social lives away from cameras, not counting their more personal compounds
We do let people die of starvation and to the elements. In fact, we regularly have fights over if poor children deserve to be fed, and the results recently have been “no”
Lately, we’ve been criminalizing homelessness to put a capstone on decades of regularly tearing down whatever shelter they manage to cobble together.
Hell, a church got sued for letting homeless people shelter during a cold snap. People get arrested and charged for feeding the homeless in some places
And don’t get me started on medical care… It’s literally worse than you could imagine. You wouldn’t believe me even if I sugar coated it
I’m sure your life isn’t perfect, but have no idea how bad it’s gotten over here. I’d kill for a system as imperfect as the one you take for granted
You probably think I’m exaggerating about all this, but I’m really not. Luckily the administration is incompetent, because otherwise we’d be neck deep in a genocide right now. Instead, both of our political parties have settled on mass death, just so long as it’s indirect
Sheesh I hate it when Americans are like “you have no idea”.
Yes, we do. We have the internet here as well and you can’t really avoid hearing about American shit.
Why would you think I don’t know what a tax-haven when I specifically mentioned that any “proper” billionaires can get around paying even the 30%. And that’s private citizens. Google is equally a tax-avoiding scumbag company for us Nordics as it is for you. There’s just so many laws the extremely wealthy corps and individuals can use to avoid paying anything. Google’s tax rate is literally zero.
We do let people die of starvation and to the elements
Yes, we know. Hence me explicitly mentioning we don’t?
Lately, we’ve been criminalizing homelessness
And that’s clear here as well, despite there being very few homeless and practically none of them live on the street. For some 9 months at least it’s mostly too cold to sleep outside. Yet the silly hostile architecture for benches and whatnot has pervaded into the Nordics as well.
We don’t need it, but they’re still there. So there are people here working on getting rid of even the most basic securities that allow us to function like this. Also, I’m on the same latitude as Juneau, Alaska, about. And I’m in the very SW corner of Finland, on the level of Stockholm.
Does Alaska have a large homeless population? I doubt anything like in the States where the winters are milder?
People get arrested and charged for feeding the homeless in some places
I’ve seen the videos. You’re still pretending as if we don’t have selfish people here who would rather just kill all the poor. You at least have people who care and help others. Here in the Nordics, due to there being a system people can point to, personal responsibility for anyone doing badly is extremely small. People are apathetic and just default to “the system should be helping them.”
Hell, when I was properly suicidal, my mom literally just went “well what do you want me to do about it” and called the social workers with a care notice or something. The funny bit being that she is a social worker with higher education. What could she do? Idk, give me a ring sometime, or come to visit so I don’t feel as bad. But no. People just default to “the bureaucracy will help them, the bureaucracy is infallible”.
I’d kill for a system as imperfect as the one you take for granted
Except you’ve very clearly demonstrated that your assumed version of our system is pure fantasy.
There’s a reason we’re quite high in the suicide stats. Because we’re definitely not even close to being “the happiest country in the world”. I don’t ever remember my grandma laughing. She died cold and alone, hallucinating basically dream paralysis demons. With not even a nurse who would’ve know her, because the care home was being run down and there were just random nurses for a few shifts and then new ones again.
So I implore you, don’t put the Nordics on a fucking pedestal. Dismissing the problems we have, pretending this is some Lintukoto.
Would you rather be in prison with a dozen of your best mates, or literally forever alone without even the possibility of emotions and if you talk about them, you’ll be shunned?
You probably think I’m exaggerating about all this, but I’m really not
Again, just because you don’t know things about the Nordics nor see our news does not mean we don’t see yours.
What’s the point of competing who has it worse? That’s literally whataboutism that’s just dismissing Nordic problems. And you’re not even Nordic. Trying to have this discussion with fellow Nords is very hard, because lots and lots literally won’t allow themselves even an inch of wrong-think.
Our police seem very skilled, don’t they? I never had problems with them, always good interactions. Then I got arrested for weed. They put me in an isolation cell for 3 days while denying me my prescription medication, the lights were on constantly and there wasn’t even a mattress to sleep on or a blanket. Just the cold ground. Was the cell prolly cleaner than average jail cells in the US? Probably.
But would I be able to sue the shit ouf of them for literally torturing me, breaking Geneva conventions? At one point they turned of my water for hours. I have a congenital kidney malformation and due to that slight inefficiency in left kidney so I must keep good hydration.
I drew over 300 words in my own blood on the walls.
In the US there’d be a queue of lawyers on my door for all the violations, and I’d be looking at tens of thousands to millions in compensation.
Here in Finland, I can’t literally even get people to accept it happened. The only one who does is my therapist and he was born and raised in the UK only moved here later in life.
So we really don’t have to compete which sort of horror is the worst.
In the US, I’d probably be on the streets or in prison. But after years of literal solitude and nothing else, I’d actually welcome it. My own fucking mother went “weeeelll, you know, I can’t actually now what happened in the cell” when I phoned her to cry about my injuries and the injustice of it all. She implied it was my own fault that the police tortured me. And that’s the most anyone’s spoken to me about it. Finns always decline and refute it at first, then when I produce some photos (I only have those because they claimed I vandalised the cell. We then asked for the security cam footage as evidence of the crime. Weirdly it was suddenly completely lost and the charges dropped.
I would rather get beaten up and kicked than do that again. But again, both suck, they’re just different. So what’s the point in competing who has it worse and by how much?
There’s clearly problems in both places. I’m not critical of everything in the Nordics, but nor am I critical of everything America either, despite having been actively arguing against your foreign policies and criticising you in general for a few decades online.
And don’t get me started on medical care… It’s literally worse than you could imagine. You wouldn’t believe me even if I sugar coated it
Do you think the free healthcare here is some superior quality? No. The best in classes go to private clinics, the worst end up in the public system. And the wait times are ridiculous. Some of the doctors have confidently said things that are just plain untrue. I could genuinely list 30+ years of bad experiences in the public healthcare system. Sure it’s not bankrupting me, but it’s also not doing jack shit for anything and genuinely gets like 80% of their guesses wrong when it’s even the least bit subjective. You wouldn’t believe half the shit I’ve heard from supposed “professionals”.
So again, every different, but neither is good, is it? So don’t think you’d “kill” to switch places with me, when I’ve spent a good deal of the past few years considering just killing myself.
I get what you’re saying, and I’m not comparing personal experiences at all, that sounds horrible. If I thought the Nordic countries were some kind paradise, I’d be working my ass off to get there. I get that the entire world is being worn down by the billionaires
But you still don’t get it… If you lived here, your worst 3 days is something common for people who fall through the cracks. There are people kept in similar conditions for months or years at a time. Including for just having a small amount of weed
And it’s legal to do this in a lot of places. It isn’t something they have to cover up, they might not even need to justify it with a reason.
Hell, lots of people take pride in the cruelty to “criminals”.
And you don’t understand our medical system… Our outcomes are terrible. Your unhelpful free healthcare has better outcomes than what we go into lifelong debt for
And your meds… Depending on what you need, it could be hundreds of dollars a month, sometimes even with insurance. Without it, there’s no upper limit, many drugs are in the thousands… You’d have to jump through hoops with the drug companies and hope they give you enough of a discount
So yeah… You probably would be dead. And if you weren’t, you’d be just as alone, and more battered by your experiences
I get why you feel otherwise. Part of me craves disaster, because at least then it would justify my suffering. At least then my struggles would be less abstract. It’s very normal to feel that way when you don’t have hope in the future
But if we’re talking about economic and legal systems, you can’t throw your hands up and say “every system has problems”. Obviously they do. But if you want hope, and to build political momentum, you have to convince people something better is possible. And perfect or not, the Nordic model exists
On a personal level, the best advice I can give you is to fight. Find an organization pushing for people falling through the cracks, and get involved with them in whatever way you can. Whether that results in change or not, being around others who believe in the same things and doing something about it builds hope
But you still don’t get it…
Yes. I very much do.
How do you know about the world. Through media. Most of your information is from media, not first hand experiences. Unfortunately for you, the media is full of stuff about the US and only occasionally maybe mentions Finland.
It’s the same sort of disparity as there is with language.
You might as well be saying “you haven’t lived in an English-speaking country so you can’t be fluent in English!”
I started reading English roughly 25-30 years ago. The point being that I was exposed to it ever since I was a kid. And I leaned into learning it. Most of the people in Finland do not have my language skills, albeit everyone has a basic level of English understanding. The same goes for the US.
Or how many States have you been in? All 50? Doubt it. A dozen? Or maybe just a handful of cities?
And you don’t understand our medical system…
I understand your lack of education. Otherwise you might understand, after several times of repeating it, that I actually do know how about your country and it’s systems.
Aside from being bombarded with American news day and night everywhere, I actually go out of my way to watch news shows like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, but I can already hear you mocking about how “TV isn’t real life”, despite the fact that you get most of your news from it as well. Somehow it’s just iiiimpossible to understand shit like wounds getting treated with literally just sugar in federal prisons. Sure that was a random case but the episode about it gives context on why it’s a good example.
Hell, it’s completely possible that (aside from taxes paid) I’ve done more for the US than any random American I meet online. Just out of my age, so I’ve have been online for quite a while, and the amount of activism I do online. I used to be 9001 times more militant about American global policies and the drug war, but also against Trump ever since he first stood for president. And while you can dismiss online activity as “just [whateverlameexcuse]”, that’s how things progress. By people complaining.
And your meds… Depending on what you need, it could be hundreds of dollars a month, sometimes even with insurance. Without it, there’s no upper limit, many drugs are in the thousands… You’d have to jump through hoops with the drug companies and hope they give you enough of a discount
Do you genuinely think that this is the first I’m hearing of drugs (and healthcare in general) being insanely expensive in the US? You genuinely think I wouldn’t understand a meme about Americans avoiding taking an ambulance even when they’re very much in need? You think I’d just go… “I don’t get the joke o.o”?
And if you weren’t, you’d be just as alone
You don’t know me at all. I make friends extremely easily, alway have. The thing here is "you have NO IDEA* about Finnish culture, because the only time you’ve been exposed to it is some random henchman in a movie where an action hero is going/coming from Russia. And they never even bother to get anyone who actually speaks Finnish, it’s always gibberish or extremely poorly pronounced. (Imagine a deep southern accent someone trying to read Chinese without understanding the tones at all and you’ll get close to what it sounds like to us).
You don’t understand that I’ve chosen to avoid the people who won’t stand up to injustice. And that’s about the only criteria I have in adulthood. But for instance an American does not understand what it means to smoke weed in Finland.
It’s essentially similar to being gay in an extremely conservative and religious small town. You’ll get treated as the worst cock-sucking crack whore just for saying “I don’t think weed should be illegal.” And that is not an exaggeration I’m pulling out of my arse. If you understood Finnish I could share phonecalls with medical professionals who basically say that smoking weed on the weekends is literally as bad as shooting up heroine. One refused to give me meds, saying “you’ll just sell these for drug money”. One of the friends whom I grew up with, whom I have carried out of several parties, from one in a rolled up mat with him in the center, with his vomit all over. Like some sort of disgusting man-kebab.
Also, if I had lived in the US, I would’ve actually had the chance to do school at my speed. Which was way faster than the other kids. And you don’t understand it coming from a culture which so values individuality and individual achievement, but in Finland you’re not allowed to be better than others at basic education. I was literally held back because the others weren’t as fast. I taught myself how to read (no joke) at the age of five. So at the age of 7 in first year the teacher put me in an empty classroom by myself, saying “sit here and read” while others learned their letters.
Most Finns actively avoid people as sociable as me, but in the US I’d probably be on the introverted side of the spectrum.
I say I would be dead or in prison, but I also could just be making it big, as I would’ve definitely got a scholarship to a good school. I had a 9.3/10 (scale 4-10 4 is F 10 is A+) GPA when leaving basic education. What you’d call a straight A student. And I didn’t even apply myself, because I didn’t have to. I kept learning next year’s shit from my older brothers books.
I could be in jail for weed. I could be in a state where it’s legal. Could be that I would’ve been bakruptred, or could be I’d be an ace surgeon. (I’m not that interested in surgery tbh, but I was good at dissecting animals, our biology teacher said I was the first student in 20 years to extract a perch’s swimbladder without puncturing it and literally said “you’d make a great surgeon”. Couldn’t chase that either as mom forced us to love move that year and had to remake all friends and none of the teachers knew me and it was a way shittier school.)
Anyway, you’re making assumptions which even I can’t say about myself. The reason I say dead or in prison is because I wouldn’t put up with the bullshit politics and wouldve either been tossed to jail for weed or activism or some such. But in the US , I wouldn’t be alone with my sentiment. That’s why you so enshrine your rights. You actually have a sense of justice. Finns don’t. Finns merely follow rules instead of ever considering how moral or necessary the rules even are.
You can go to a city in Finland during the night when no-one is around for miles, and people will stop at a pedestrian red light, even for intersections that are clearly clear for hundreds of feet.
And I say feet, because I understand feet as well, but I don’t think you have as good a grasp on metric as I do for imperial units. Might be I’m wrong. But seeing how little empathy you show, I’m pretty sure I’m not.
The why I do it is kinda simple. The idea of America, the American dream, or whatever, is — however subjectively — kind of a cool idea. It’s a continuation of what the French started a few centuries ago, and it was going relatively well until somewhat recently. (Like, say, post 9-11.) And would you believe it I can remember where I was and what I was doing on 9/11. I don’t think you can say the same thing for anything that has ever happened to a Finnish person or relating to Finland.
But if you want hope, and to build political momentum, you have to convince people something better is possible. And perfect or not, the Nordic model exists
Yes, and the Nordic model isn’t the fantasy you have in your head anymore than a Whopper actually looks like the ad pictures for it.
I’m telling you you don’t have an idea of the pathological avoidance pretty much built into Finnish society. Hell, it’s in the very language. We don’t have gendered words or even gender-specific pronouns. And while we have a gender-neutral pronoun, we still often default to referring to people as “se”, which translates as “it”. Only really pets and formal situations does one use the proper third person pronoun “hän”.
On a personal level, the best advice I can give you is to fight
Oh wow. What a revelation my man. Wow. Crazy that it never occurred to my. Wow. All I needed to do is “fight” yeah, that’ll change the entire social fabric of Finland. Just like if you want, you can just get everyone to admit that the 2A is a garbage law only there to perpetuate the American military-industrial complex instead of having anything to do with actually having “a well regulated militia” in order to oppose tyranny. You’re living under tyranny right now and aside from Luigi, I ain’t seen no-one doing jack shit about it.
See how the language there sounded a little different? That’s because I actually know that despite learning in school that double negatives shouldn’t be used, if one is emulating colloquial speech, one would or at least could employ double negatives as emphasis for a positive. Because again, I don’t need to have lived in the US for that. Idk where you live or how much you travel, but you can probably do at least NY, Cali and deep south accents on a very stereotypical level. So can I. It’s not exactly rocket science. And whilst you live closer to those places, unless you’ve lived several years in each, you’re also mostly drawing on the media.
So I don’t know why you keep pretending like your systems are some grand secret. Feels a bit like Americans who yell loudly (in English) abroad to make themselves “easily understood” when literally everyone can speak English. (Yes, I did just use “literally” as emphasis instead of it’s literal sense.)
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000009654524.html
The Finnish Supreme Court ruled that I was in the right and that the police limited my freedom of speech illegally when stopping me from filming them when they illegally entered my apartment. In the US, I’d have made millions off that. Here I didn’t even get a letter saying I won. Read it off the news.
Also, if I had lived in the US, I would’ve actually had the chance to do school at my speed. Which was way faster than the other kid
Are you born rich? Because otherwise that’s a fantasy. We are not a meritocracy, no matter how hard we pretend. It doesn’t work that way
And I don’t even know where to start with the rest of this… I’m on my phone and can’t clip you point by point
But you think you’d make it big? Of course you fucking wouldn’t. No one does. That’s literally impossible. Even last one of our movie and music stars come from money. Every last one of them
Have you ever spoken to homeless people? I have. I make a point of doing it. I’ve slept alongside them, I’ve shared meals. Not through media, but through human connection. And they’ve both been insanely generous and tried to steal from me
Holy projection Batman, you haven’t seen what I’ve seen, not through media, but first-hand.
Oh ran into char limit. And I’m writing on my phone.
So yeah tldr I’ve been part of several political parties and organisations. I have streamed politics and called members of parliament and even the head of the election law committee(or organisation whatever). Finns are just pathologically avoidant, which is slowly driving us to authoritarianism.
You don’t understand Finland because you’re ignorant of it but I’m not ignorant of the USA.
Oh wow quite a few broken thoughts there.
I know, I’m a bit sensitive when it comes to people telling me essentially “you haven’t tried hard enough.”
Anyway, the one childhood friend who was a man-kebab, that dude didn’t invite me to his wedding with a bitch who was equally or more an abuser of alcohol and they didn’t because was vocally for the legalisation of weed.
If you lived here, your worst 3 days is something common for people
Homelessness is common sure. But staying awake for three days while sober, shitting the eherloving shit out of yourself while eating your fingers until they literally bleed and then proceed to paint with your own blood for 70+ hours is… common in the US? And you don’t think that could be a bit offensive to me, dismissing literal torture I went through? (Sleep deprivation is torture, not to mention anything about closing off the water and not giving me my prescription meds.)
But hey, you’re not victimblaming, just dismissing it. So it’s still not as bad as literally every Finnish person I know.
But staying awake for three days while sober, shitting the eherloving shit out of yourself while eating your fingers until they literally bleed and then proceed to paint with your own blood for 70+ hours is… common in the US? And you don’t think that could be a bit offensive to me, dismissing literal torture I went through? (Sleep deprivation is torture, not to mention anything about closing off the water and not giving me my prescription meds.)
Yes that’s literally just something that happens to people. Yes, it’s definitionally torture… But it’s normal here. Normally, people paint the walls in shit, but blood is far from unheard of
Norwegian here: the floor is getting more and faulty and it is dependent on the imperial mode of living generally and oil and arms exports specifically
Didint you guys just find one of the biggest rare earth minerals deposit in the world?
The issue with this is that there’s plenty of rare earth minerals (they’re not rare) all around the world, it’s the refining process that is expensive and extremely polluting.
Doesn’t matter if Norway found decades worth of supply, when nobody but China is willing to build the processing plants. And China has more than enough rare earth mineral supplies themselves.
Hard to say. Current political view seem to be that EU wants to get rid of dependancy on china and great way to get free is to start mining our own.
There is pretty large deposits in Sweden, Finland and Norway so one effiecient, central refining plant could be churning virtually limitless amounts of materials, if only there would be enough funding to get the ball rolling. (Before anybody says i know Norway is not part of european union, but it is part of european economic area and part of EFTA) France already has a refining plant so the tech knowledge is already found inside the EU.
The issue is that nobody has found a way to refine it in a way that isn’t extremely polluting without the cost being extremely excessive and making it entirely pointless.
We could mine as much as we want, but the only country OK with refining this stuff is China. Unless we solve the issue of refining this in a relatively clean way at a somewhat competitive price, no refining will ever be set up in Europe.
I think a ceiling would actually be healthy. I don’t love that we’re still pandering to the rich even with this summary. Still, it’s good to push any healthy message. I’m just saying it could be better. No one in the entire world needs more than 20 million dollars. No one. That should be the highest we allow, and even lower would be better.
Depends. I actually fully support putting a ceiling on wealth.
The analogy I always come back to is nuclear weapons. We don’t let private individuals own them. We don’t make you get an atomic bomb license. We don’t tax nukes heavily. We don’t make sure that only the kindest and most ethical people are allowed to own nukes. We simply say, this is too much power to be trusted to one individual. No one should have that level of power.
And yet, would anyone doubt that someone like Bezos, all on his own, can cause an amount of damage comparable to a nuclear bomb? If Bezos had it in for an entire city, could he not destroy it? Could he not buy up the major employers and shut them down? Could he not buy up all the housing and force the citizens into penury? Could he not buy up and shut down the hospitals? I have no doubt that, if he wanted to, Bezos could single handedly destroy a city. And how many lives would that take? How many would drink themselves to death or die by their own hand after Bezos came in and destroyed their entire lives? How many would die from lack of resources and medical care, etc?
Bezos could absolutely, if he wanted to, single-handedly cause a level of destruction and human misery comparable to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
And that is a power no one should have. The only way anyone should have that level of power is through democratic elections.
This is why I support wealth caps. I would personally set the maximum allowable wealth at 1000x the median household income. In the US, this would be about $80 million USD. That’s about the maximum fortune a person that actually works for wages can amass in a lifetime, if they’re a very high earner, live very frugally, and marry someone of similar status. 1000x median household income is the limit of what I consider to be an honest fortune - one made primarily through your own work, rather than sponging off the labor of others.
Mmmhm. Capitalism will always and inevitably supersede democracy as a matter of its own ruleset.
Norway can be all high and mighty about their superior management of the limitations on capitalism, but it won’t last. The USA is the cancer, Europe is already struck with its metastases, and the European way of life and its ideals will be swallowed like a sardine by barracudas.
USA is gone. We are next up on the chopping block, and you all know it.
That last line nails it: it doesn’t cap success, it just makes sure failure isn’t catastrophic.
It does cap the wildest, antisocial forms of success that are insane excess.
Progressive taxation should mean you can never gain enough power, which capital is, to warp your society with power beyond your single vote, whether that power is expressed through direct bribery, lobbying, or mass media propaganda to try to trick your fellow citizens into voting and advocating against their own interests with your booming, capital powered voice that drowns out those you disagree with merely because you’ve exploited more capital into your private account than others.
I don’t see any shame, horror, or problem with putting a hard cap on how much an individual can accumulate, as other people live here too.
Despite what Elon Musk believes, this whole planet shouldn’t be his personal playground, but that’s what it means to become a trillionaire, entire governments will bow at your feet. That’s perverse. No unelected, unaccountable individual should hold so much power, unless humanity wants to live in a hell of its own making.
lobbying is direct bribery, isn’t it?
Shhh, that’s a secret, those are “campaign contributions” and nothing is expected in return! Mercy me, I have the vapors…
But that’s one of the primary tenants of conservatism! What will conservatives do if people are allowed to continue living after they fail?
3 people in America each have several times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of America. It’s ok to have a ceiling nobody contributes 400B to society. For reference that is more than every teach and every doctor make in America. Does anyone believe that Elon is individually more valuable than the either profession?
It’s not as perfect as this screenshot portrays though:)
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
It’s pretty good now but the wrong people in the governments of European countries are trying to ruin it. Yes, it’s better here in Europe but there is A LOT of room for improvement.
