Communism and communists get power from the jealousy of others. They convince poor people that the reason that they are poor is because others are rich. It’s a form of scapegoating that enables the would-be dictator to gain power by exploiting the jealousy of the poor by telling them that it isn’t their fault that they are poor- it’s that the rich guy has gamed the system and is somehow cheating. This results in stuff like this:
The reality is that investment entails risk- and this is true whether the investment is your labor, your money, or anything else of value. The riskier the investment, the higher that the reward must be, or else the juice simply isn’t worth the squeeze. If you remove the reward by telling a person that he will stop getting paid at a certain point, then that person will stop investing at that point.
If you set that limit at $999 million, then the person will stop investing beyond that point. After all, why risk losing your investment for no prospect of a reward? No more Tesla, Microsoft, or Apple. The person will shelter their wealth and simply retire.
The same goes for limiting income. Tell someone that they can only earn $200k a year, and your doctor simply stops seeing patients some time in October and takes the rest of the year off. Would you work for free?
The facts are simple-
- there is not one single human endeavor that ensures that everyone has the same outcome. More talented people are more successful that less talented people
- The more talent, the more the reward
- people won’t work if they aren’t getting paid.
Much is made of the fact that “Elon didn’t found Tesla, he bought it.” That may be true, but Tesla wasn’t as successful until AFTER he bought it. It was Elon’s talent and skill that made the company what it is. That’s the reason why he is the richest man in the world. It’s no different than Michael Jordan. He played basketball like no one ever has- because of that, he was paid obscene amounts of money to play that game.
This jealousy of his wealth is what leads to communists using that wealth as a wedge issue to gain power, where the communists themselves then gain power and become wealthier than everyone else.
Which has the result of people becoming angry and killing CEOs. Was he doing things that many of us despise? I would argue that using a computer system to deny legitimate insurance claims wholesale, which resulted in needless death and illness is indeed evil. However, that isn’t an indictment of the entire economic system, and certainly doesn’t mean that citizens should begin executing CEOs. That ends in a place that is far, far worse than where we are now. The real fault here lies in government oversight that permits companies to get away with this.
Insurance companies argue that they can’t be held legally responsible for a person’s illness or death because they aren’t the ones who make medical decisions. After all, it’s the doctor who decides on your course of treatment, they argue. The courts and our laws have agreed. Of course, this completely ignores that a medical procedure that can’t be paid for is as good as prohibited. After all, if your doctor wants to order an MRI, but the insurance company won’t pay for the expensive test, it isn’t going to happen.
Now I am not arguing that the government needs to intervene. I am against the retarded intervention of power hungry bureaucrats into affairs of business. When legislatures have the power to dictate what is bought and sold, the first thing that is bought and sold will be the legislature itself.
No, the way to settle this is through the legal system with the use of lawsuits. That doesn’t mean that lawsuits where juries award someone a billion dollars because they called you a crisis actor is a perfect system, and there should be some limits on that sort of thing, but that is a different discussion. However, an insurance company that refuses to pay for someone’s surgery, despite the fact that they were supposed to insure that very person, is clearly involved in medical decisions and shouldn’t be permitted to claim that they aren’t.
It would be easy to blame healthcare and claim that we should have government run healthcare. This doesn’t solve the problem, it simply transfers the power from a CEO to a random government apparatchik that decides who gets medical care based upon his own whims: “Oh, only left handed transwoman lesbians with purple hair get MRIs this month.”
It’s a complicated situation, as most adult problems are. Looking for a simple solution to a complex problem is to believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. It’s a childish dream that just can’t work when we talk about hundreds of millions of people interacting and trying to gain advantage over one another.
32 Comments
Thatguy · December 8, 2024 at 10:04 am
Hopefully someone starts killing the doctors and nurses that made bank pushing the covid mandates on us.
Divemedic · December 8, 2024 at 10:40 am
COVID mandates were more the province of politicians, although some of them were also doctors.
Gerry · December 8, 2024 at 10:07 am
There is not one single human endeavor that ensures that everyone has the same outcome.
We all die.
Divemedic · December 8, 2024 at 10:39 am
Even then, the means, timing, and method is different for everyone. Some die in their sleep and never know that death came and took them, while others die while fighting for breath in terror that they are drowning in their own body fluids. Still others die only days after being born, some die in accidents, and others are killed by their fellow man.
Noway2 · December 9, 2024 at 12:45 am
On a lighter, but somber note, I referenced this thread on another forum I am a regular of, but didn’t link directly out of respect to that forum. This post reminded me of an annual thread, of which I’ve started the last two years called the year XXXX gardening thread. There was a member who went by the name “Reel Doc” who posted a lot about gardening and gave tons of advice. In 2022 he went to work in his garden, sat down in his chair, and passed away. Undoubtedly, exactly where he would want to be when the time came.
Just a passing thought, that maybe we should all be so lucky.
Dan D. · December 8, 2024 at 10:53 am
I don’t know who this Mikel Jollett clown is but clearly just a soft brain. How about this – since $1 billion is arbitrary and founded on base-10 math let’s just make it $6,999 and include him as well. If his argument is substantive then the value is irrelevelant and he can also help with schools and health care.
SoCoRuss · December 8, 2024 at 11:52 am
I agree to a point. But the issue is the rich, powerful and connected ALWAYS get off with absolutely no penalty. People are maybe finally getting tired of seeing there IS NO JUSTICE for normies in the FUSA? Look at your post, you use the legal system name vs justice system. You realize that also?
AS for lawsuits using our “LEGAL” system that’s the same as Taxing or fining corporations. Corporations don’t pay taxes and they don’t pay lawsuits awards, their customers do that. So any financial penalty just gets passed onto the customers. The CEO’s and board of directors and their families don’t go to prison for murder or poisoning people or lose all their wealth.The little guys get fucked no matter what.
I’m truly surprised more of these rich fucks haven’t gotten removed by greaving family’s. Maybe if they had some true FEAR that they and their families can be gotten to at any time, maybe things would get somewhat better.
But if that started happening the Congressional whores would jump up and make them a protected group also.
Nothing is going to get better until people at least try to force the issue, if they wont then nothing will ever get better and its over. Maybe that’s actually the best answer for us and the world. The MAGA messiah isn’t the answer either, look at his cabinet picks, same neocons different day. He stills loves him some vax jabs but no one seems to remember that little topic. I wonder if the family’s that lost loved due to that poison remember it, funny eh? The repubs allowed a bunch of house elections to get stolen late so the house will be tied up with a almost even split. So they can only whine how they cant get anything done this time. But wait until the next election, we will fix everything. Funny how that happened.
Nothing has ANY HOPE of getting better until people start to take actions to force the issues. If you accept that truth and decide on a action responce then maybe we have a chance….
Steve · December 9, 2024 at 11:06 am
“Corporations don’t pay taxes and they don’t pay lawsuits awards, their customers do that. So any financial penalty just gets passed onto the customers.”
Yes and no. It’s more subtle than that.
Prices are what they are because that’s what a sufficient number of people are willing to pay. Prices beyond that reduce sales as some people who used to be customers either switch to a cheaper alternative or decide they don’t need that kind of thing in their lives anymore. That’s why companies can’t just set any old price. Apart from patent holders and the like, they can’t set prices at all. It’s the classic supply/demand curve stuff.
The marginal consumer is usually the lower on the totem pole. Upper middle class doesn’t really care that much if the price of televisions or streaming services goes up, they have enough discretionary income to cover it. It’s the guy taking part time jobs to put food on the table for his kids that has to do without.
So, yes and no, Customers either pay the taxes and fines, or they do without. And both types are made the lesser for it.
Robert · December 8, 2024 at 12:26 pm
Health Insurance is basically an extortion racket protected and controlled by the government.
There is no effective recourse in the legal system. “Go ahead and sue. We have more lawyers than you”.
Patients without insurance face “list price” medical costs which are 10-20 times what is charged to patients who have insurance. If you can pay cash, you might get a 60% discount on that “list price”, but you must be very insistent to get that discount. It is a very bad deal.
The hospitals and providers do not benefit either. They get late payments, denied payments, and negotiated payments from the insurance companies, which are far less than that nominal “list price” for procedures. EMTLA attracts a whole class of patients who never pay for anything. The entire system rewards fraud at many levels. And that is what we get.
The lack of sympathy for a murdered CEO who was running one of the worst mobs in the “healthcare insurance” industry should surprise no one. It is the usual result when a corrupted legal system offers no recourse to extortion and fraud.
Aesop · December 8, 2024 at 1:18 pm
I would agree to Jollett’s terms, provided that everyone that ever received funds from the public dole, and/or paid no federal income taxes in any year after reaching 18 years of age, was rounded up, ankle-chained in groups, and set at hard labor for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, at federal minimum wage, to earn those benefits, including the sick and disabled, and anyone unemployed, or had put in enough hours at labor to qualify for paying taxes, for each year they previously had not. Such service to include retroactive terms for those previously awarded the state’s largesse, until their full debt had been repaid in full.
It’s a lot less funny – except to everyone else – when Uncle Government comes for envious slugs like Jollett. But it would be educational. And his idiocy would be recanted, nationwide, not in hours or even minutes, but in seconds. Everyone wants to ride in the wagon, but no one wants to pull it.
The best answer to that attitude is a boot stomping on their faces, forever.
“A man who picks a cat up by the tail learns something which he can learn in no other way.” – Mark Twain
Don Curton · December 8, 2024 at 3:55 pm
“there is not one single human endeavor that ensures that everyone has the same outcome. More talented people are more successful that less talented people”
That’s a nice fairy tale you got there. Yes, in some cases it is evident that talent leads to success. But in many other cases it is something other than talent. Stuff like, who your daddy is, who kisses ass, who went to the right school. As George Carlin said, it’s a big club and we ain’t in it. Do you really think Hunter Biden is talented enough to sell artwork for millions of dollars? And yes, there are CEO’s and senior executives who are only stupid as fuck but got the job thru other means. I know, not the main point of your musings, but still.
As for the other insurance stuff, I’d love to go back to a system where I carry some catastrophe insurance for the really bad stuff and for everything else pay cash. But the current system is so tied up in knots as to be almost worthless, and it got that way so certain people can get rich off the backs of other people suffering. Like a lot of things recently, I don’t think it’s going to get better unless there’s spilt blood. It may not be right, and innocent people will die, but it’s going happen one way or the other.
Divemedic · December 8, 2024 at 8:00 pm
Note that nearly every case where there are untalented people making it, the government is involved. Companies run by morons go out of business, unless they get a bailout, which is again government interference.
oldvet50 · December 9, 2024 at 3:38 pm
And the corollary to that is if someone does become very successful, the government BECOMES very involved.
JimmyPx · December 8, 2024 at 6:15 pm
The thing that shows with people’s reactions to the CEO’s murder is that our healthcare system is badly broken. I don’t mean doctors and nurses treating people rather the way it is funded and run. It’s obvious that single payer systems like Canada and the UK suck, so does ours where we pay a fortune yet have mediocre care. Obamacare was written by the insurance companies and was a massive failure for the people but GREAT for insurance companies… profits have never been higher. It’s time for our country to look at our system and fix it. Look into how Singapore does it successfully with a mixture of government and private.
Regarding Capitalism, it is deeply flawed but it is better than any other system. You mentioned Elon Musk, he is using his money to revolutionize space and technology. Soon the Starship will be fully reusable and will cut the launch cost of stuff into orbit by 90%.
He’s also created World wide internet with Starlink. Ten years ago I went on a trans Atlantic cruise and internet connectivity was expensive, spotty and slow. Now with Starlink last year on another cruise, I was watching a Netflix movie in the middle of the Atlantic far from land.
A few weeks ago some African politician was bitching that “it’s not fair” that Elon with Starlink has a monopoly. Yet they don’t say that he spent billions of his own money building the Falcon rockets and satellites and created internet connectivity all over the World.
Sorry for the long post but there IS a problem where for the last 50 years average wages have gone stagnant, people’s standard of living has plummeted yet the top of the 1% never had more money. That needs to be rectified or there will eventually be revolutions.
Divemedic · December 8, 2024 at 7:58 pm
I don’t think that it can be called mediocre care. There is such a thing as medical tourism, where people from all over the world come here for care.
I will agree that it is expensive. Part of that is our legal system- the medical care had better be perfect, or there is going to be a large lawsuit involved. Name another country where an entire family retires for life over a medical error.
Some of it is pure companies charging what the traffic will bear. Emergency rooms make a PILE of money, no matter what you hear about EMTALA causing tons of people to not pay. A head, neck, and torso CT scan gets billed at a full cash price of $100,000.
The problem is that there is no competitive system. Hospitals are a government granted monopoly.
Noway2 · December 9, 2024 at 12:39 am
I have long held that in regards to malpractice, reform is needed. Medical care is as much art as science, as is my profession, engineering. The system should be that if someone is operating within the best of intentions, within their knowledge, not negligent, not failing to hand off to a specialty when over their head, etc, I think you bet the picture even if my legal verbiage is incomplete, that hey should get immunity, much like cops do. If they are truly guilty of malpractice k then they should be personally liable and also done practicing anywhere. In short put an end to the ridiculous costs of malpractice insurance and stop covering for bad doctors.
oldvet50 · December 9, 2024 at 3:40 pm
I know this is an old trope, but doesn’t the fact that a doctor’s business is called a ‘practice’ tell you it is more of an art than science?
No name · December 8, 2024 at 9:40 pm
It wouldn’t bother me for those lucky, industrious, blessed….enough to make an empire worth billions through the genious of capitalism…..except that the vast majority of them espouse socialism, and embrace the decadence of liberalism er communism…so let’s communist their ass and co-opt their billions for the common man they so gleefully look down on….eff the lefty billionaires….burn em all down….
SoCoRuss · December 9, 2024 at 2:54 pm
Concur with No Name. It amazes me that the elites who actually worked and built something based on their talent and sweat, tend to turn into commies, not all but enough, demanding we the little guys must gave more to their failed ideals. Maybe some type of white guilt?
Just cant wrap my head around that, I do understand the trophy wife’s that latch onto them are the usual harpies that push this bullshit. But dam, if you are a Billionaire, pussy is free and all you can stand, just look at Decapio so why put up with the crap? It should be Open your mouth for the wrong reason and its fuck off and next up in line……
Divemedic · December 9, 2024 at 3:02 pm
That’s because communism is a grift. It’s intended to fool the poors into thinking that the powers that be care about them. That’s why the people in charge in communist and socialist systems always seem to be so much richer than the proles.
Aesop · December 9, 2024 at 6:58 pm
It’s a grift, but it isn’t just a grift.
Communism – exactly like unbridled capitalism – is a religion, which falsely assumes the greatest needs and aspirations of humanity are purely material, substituting that pervasive materialism for a deity, or any intangible human needs.
Which is why it’s so rabidly anti-religion.
They hate the competition.
Even atheism recognizes spiritual needs and desires, even if it denies any connection to a an actual deity.
Communism denies any spiritual component, and focuses all its energies on convincing the gullible that all their needs will be met by materialistic acquisition (exactly like unbridled capitalism), and why it always fails to deliver.
It’s also why such a system breeds oligarchs and robber-barons to a worse degree than the excesses of 19th century capitalism ever did. The true believers in both systems persist in thinking that the best things in life are things. It’s also why the worst examples in both systems are the unhappiest, greediest, and most selfish bastards on the planet, by all accounts.
Steve · December 10, 2024 at 12:56 pm
@Aesop, that may be true of Marx’s caricature of capitalism, but there’s nothing inherently materialistic about capitalism. In unbridled capitalism, you can use your scarce resources to further pretty much any end you like. Most of what goes into being a pillar of the community lies in placing other ends before materialism.
And the medical profession is one of the most prominent practitioners of that — a good half of my dad’s practice was charity cases. You really don’t have doctors like that in Cali?
Aesop · December 11, 2024 at 3:38 pm
It’s true in actual capitalism too, Marx’s caricature be damned.
“Love of money is the root of all evil” and “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven” aren’t biblical typos.
People who think the best thing in life are things have their eyes on the wrong prize, whether they’re communists or capitalists.
Marx (and Lenin) were just trying to knock off religion and capitalistic profit in one throw, while actually transferring the love – and ownership – of profits to the ne’er-do-well adherents of their failed schemes, making the state both the owner of all good things, and dispenser (or withholder) of same. They’re the Grinch at the beginning of the story, and Old Man Potter throughout “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
A capitalist wants to get rich in order to enjoy the taste of steak, perhaps all the time.
The communist wants that too, but also wants the sole authority to dictate which of his acolytes ever gets to share that pleasure.
Both are greedy, but the latter is tyrannically evil.
And Albert Scweitzer is dead.
Most charity – from anyone – is crumbs for deductions and style points for looking good. One architectural detail I’ve noticed is that pillars don’t come with loudspeakers. They’re just quietly there.
The people who do anything out of true altruism are the last ones you’ll ever hear about, at least while they’re alive. They’re definitely out there, but most years, you could count them on your thumbs.
God spare me from the rich people who want to “help” society with their money. George Soros and Bill Gates are but the most recent examples of people whose deaths we’d love to mourn with a rollicking wake.
True charity is based on addressing individual need. People trying to reform the whole are simply unelected tyrants with a budget.
Big Ruckus D · December 9, 2024 at 9:25 pm
And that’s why I advocate for a policy that at the first sign of typical leftist activism (as has been done by bill gates, george soros, and countless others) by a multi billionaire, all their wealth should be confiscated and destroyed. And that means not just from themselves and their immediate family members, but also from the foundations setup in their names. I don’t even want the money redistributed to me personally, and I damn sure don’t want the government in control of it. Just burn it all so it cannot be weaponized.
The most important thing to me is that these busy body cocksuckers cannot use their near limitless wealth against me (and society at large) because they can stroke checks in amounts sufficient to be used to play God, and remake reality in their preferred image and likeness. Fuck that noise, nobody should be in a position to wield that sort of power. I want soros busted down to a fucking geriatric homeless bag man eating dog shit off the sidewalk. Actually, I’d just prefer him dead (along with his entire lineage) so he can do no further sneaky fuck meddling in our affairs.
And it is the immense wealth that enables him – and all like him – to do that. If we get rid of that method of subversion, many of our modern social and political problems disappear. The rest can be solved by continuously liquidating politicians and govt employees as the low value commodities they are, until they actually start doing the shit we demand rather than coming up with new ways to oppress us all.
Rich people who invest their money in doing something that doesn’t, at a fundamental level, seek to exert repressive control over the masses can be left alone to innovate, until such time as their ego turns them towards playing God, which is an inherent weakness of these sorts. It can only be kept in check by them knowing up front that they will suffer the harshest possible penalties for stepping out of line.
If you don’t understand the difference, Dale Carnegie built libraries that remain operational today in many older cities across the country for public benefit. George Soros broke the British Pound, got ultra left activist prosecutors and mayors elected in our major cities to our immeasurable detriment, and ruined countless countries in basically all of western civilization by arranging the importation of huge quantities of the most offensively incompatible and invasive human shit from all over the third world. There’s an big difference there.
SoCoRuss · December 10, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Thanks for the followup Aesop. You saved me a long comment, you got there first. Usually when I talk about Communism being a religion and that’s why they are so anti religion, that its competition for them,you wont believe the responses I get.
And then I just have to push more and talk about lots of religions being a governmental control Ideology wrapped in a religious theology to placate the masses since if God says its OK to commit savagery then its good no matter what. And if you are doing Gods work, your fine and you always have paradise/heaven to await as your reward, always after your death of course, for submitting to a controlling leadership.
Divemedic · December 10, 2024 at 3:21 pm
I agree. I would call Communism a humanistic religion, where man is his own God.
Guy · December 11, 2024 at 7:05 am
Our system is not capitalist, our banking system is a brutal cartel that has socialized every important industry in the country. Attempts to balance the system to be more in favor of American workers rather than the foreign owners of businesses is not communism, but just rational self-interest. It makes no sense to advocate for libertarian policy like removal of welfare benefits for working families and subsidies for products and services that are needed by the vast majority of people, while leaving in place our fiat system that drives up the price of the secondary factors of production for critical industries while supplying them free via forgivable loans or handouts to crony capitalists. Koch brothers/Reason/Rothbardian philosophy was a scam, a lie. Free markets for the poor while the rich use our banks as their own personal money printers.
Divemedic · December 11, 2024 at 8:14 am
I just can’t get onboard with communist ideas like handing out welfare.
It isn’t a binary decision. I don’t support government making loans to business owners, either.
If a bank wants to do so, they are a business and can do what they please.
Steve · December 11, 2024 at 11:47 am
I’m with DM on this one. There’s no good reason for government to put it’s thumb on either side of the scale. Justice is justice.
You are kind of right about the fiat money system. But having the Treasury issue a fiat money system doesn’t fix the problem. The only way to eliminate seigniorage is a wall of separation between money and state.
Someone earlier mentioned Carnegie. He was a man from before fiat, back when having large quantities of gold was very expensive to guard. You were vastly better off having your wealth in the form of factories or even libraries than building vaults and hiring armed guards. Now, not only do you not pay for protecting your 1s and 0s on some computer, they pay you!
Think about the second and third order errects…
Guy · December 12, 2024 at 9:22 am
I agree with dismantling all welfare. I think it’s important to focus on the largest drivers of inflation rather than focus on the more in our face and annoying, but also not as important, welfare for individual households before focusing on the true driver of misallocation of capital and labor which is corporate welfare.
I believe attempts to do the former without first decisively addressing the latter would result in catastrophic exacerbation of already existing social problems and potentially a collapse of the entire system, and not in a good way. Maybe I’m wrong but I just wanted to make that position clear I’m not in any way a communist, my understanding of economics comes from Ludwig Von Misses. Von Misses devoted a brief hypothetical chapter in human action to entertain the hypothetical scenario where all central banks in the world produced fiduciary media constantly at the same time and what would happen in that case. That’s now the world we live in.
Divemedic · December 12, 2024 at 10:19 am
Can you give some examples of corporate welfare? The only examples I can think of are interest free loans given to companies like GM and Chrysler when they get themselves in trouble.
Guy · December 13, 2024 at 10:23 pm
All subsidies and bailouts. They allow firms to accumulate capital and outcompete those in their industry while driving up costs for other industries that need the same inputs. I also don’t think when it comes to larger banks the money loaned is just coming from their depositors and is simply theirs to loan but is created when loaned and contributes to inflation.
$7.5 billion recently in infrastructure spending for electric vehicles from one bill on top of all the subsidies for electric vehicles themselves have driven up the cost of gasoline powered vehicles in recent years in addition to the overregulation of gas milage. Though it was long ago the effects of Cash for Clunkers can still be felt. Maybe these aren’t welfare in the sense that they’re given out explicitly to help a struggling business get by, but they’re actions taken by the government to help industries in opposition to both market forces and the best interest of the people in this country. I think it’s obvious these distortions exist across the entire economy and have the effect of driving up the prices of consumer goods.
I do admit though i have not compared the costs of household/individual welfare to the sorts of spending I’m considering corporate welfare. I perhaps incorrectly take it for granted the former is small compared to the latter and will admit I may be wrong until i research further.
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