Hey now. That "emerald mine in apartheid South Africa" but is not true at all. He benefited from being the son of a rich white guy in apartheid South Africa. The emerald mine was in Zambia. He materially benefited from colonial rule in TWO countries.
Most of you would've failed even with those starting conditions.
If you think you can build a billion-worth company, go and do it. VC money can be secured these days with a half-assed power point presentation. You won't be owning your entire company and someone will make even more money than you, but in just some 10 years you'll make yourself and someone else a few billions. Then you'll have a billion or so in starting capital and you can go become the richest human in existence. Clearly, if you're capable of all those things, you should be already on your way to success instead of complaining on the internet.
The socioeconomic usefulness of the system allowing for such lifepaths has not been debated. Instead the message enviously pointed out that becoming rich is only possible by being rich in the first place. My argument is that if you're capable of taking less than a mil and making billions, there's a system in place already that will allow you to do just that and become famously rich in the process. So, your complaint is invalid. And you're not anti capitalism, you're just jealous.
The main thing sitting between me and being a billionaire is my conscience and moral values. I'm of the opinion that to become a billionaire you must necessarily have psychopathic tendencies.
For example: No way I could stand up on stage and bullshit my way through a Cybertruck reveal knowing it's all lies and unfinished ideas.
Not just billionaires, there's research showing that a high percentage of senior executives are likely to be psychopaths. Capitalist system selects for this behavior. People who are willing to lie, cheat, and step on others, are the ones that are rewarded and get ahead. Honest people with morals get filtered out along the way because they aren't willing to do what a psychopath would do to succeed.
I'm pro universal basic income and a 99% tax after something around a few mil of annual income. I'd generally advocate for a societal system where such wealth accumulation by an individual is impossible.
"Lefties" like you make me sick to my stomach. You can only whine your jealous tears and complain about the housing market. You're the reason everyone thinks the left are a bunch of idiot kids in colorful clothes. In a utopic communist society you'd be leeching off while whining about how everyone keeps working even though it's clearly unnecessary.
we got enough political BS all over the platform. But sure, I guess people who don't want to see repeated "capitalism bad" in every community in every post should just leave lemmy.
I'm too tired to look it up, but I remember someone saying that resilience or grit was one of the best indicators of success. Someone replied that actually the best indicator of success is if you came from wealth.
Also grit is an over hyped and under delivered construct of human cognition that really is only spoken of seriously nowadays by people trying to sell you something
grit makes me think of Bukowski novels like Post Office. Just a bunch of dudes laboring to look like they're working hard to please the boss, rather than to do the labor.
Personally grit makes me think of literal sand. Or dirt in general. It's something you wash off the first chance you get. Not exactly something to be celebrated.
