At least we have ad blockers…
To be fair, they’re not geniuses, they’re sociopaths, often with a hearty sprinkling of nepotism.
So of course they’re hoarding resources and pillaging. They don’t think the rest of us are actual people, and we only exist to be exploited.
They’re actually stupid. Being born into that amount of wealth means one never actually deals with any material consequences and therefore never actually learns any lesson ‘the hard way’.
The advertisement based economy is incredibly flawed and it irks me daily that this is our timeline.
Edit: Added link to op ed
Your wage is paying for those ads.
That innovation makes them the smartest people possible in their view. And they did find an infinite money hack. All it costs is every fiber of their souls.
all billionares are a policy failure. 60% of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, monopolies, and cronyism.
They are not superheroes, benevolent gods that are here to help humanity, save that shit for the movies.
Nah, this is the natural, logical outcome of capitalism – a profit based society will always reward sociopaths.
Captialism doesn’t exist outside of the law. Yes, rules are easy to break, so to are fines easy to pay when they are mere slaps on the wrist to corporate giants, and yes sociopaths are rewarded. But that does not make sociopaths the logical outcome. Otherwise, all people supporting capitalism would be the same.
I say, excess creates the conditions for making amoral behaviour normal. Take away the excess, put a cap on how much one company can take home as profit, reward merits and hard work, but don’t let wealth be hoarded to absurd levels, like NVIDIA becoming the worlds first $5 Trillion company.
I’ll admit I’m pretty stupid, this is just my belief. I used to think capitalism was the problem, but really, humans are fallible, prone to vices, and maybe not able organize grand social order, imo.
The only people I can forgive for becoming billionaires are people who inherit or win a big lottery prize.
But in both cases, if they remain billionaires, they’re immoral and have no place in society.
Cyberpunk literature has been around for decades. They called it pretty accurately.
God they nailed it. Dystopian architecture crumbling for everyone else while billionaire CEOs live in giant mansions and party on yachts. While the working class is bombarded by sex and gambling ads.
Truly this is fucking hell.
I don’t think they called it. I think these techbros don’t have any ideas of their own so they’re just taking the worst ideas authors could come up with and calling it their own. None of their companieshave actually made anything new. They just throw a shiny coat of paint on what science fiction has warned us about.
“This story can’t stop me because
I can’t readI’m too rich”From the hit novel “don’t build the torment nexus?”
Slap an ad spot on the Nexus and 2 more on the Torment and watch those green candles.
“Surely they wouldn’t have written it if they don’t want us to build it.” -dumb rich fucks
“No I did not finish the book, or learn of the consequences of the torment nexus. It just sounded neat” -dumb rich fucks
They also made a digital corporate yes-man
The most successful aren’t that much more intelligent than average. Their path to success isn’t their unique intelligence.
Hey that’s not exactly fair. They are also emitting all of the CO2 AND making this the fascism timeline!
And polluting the water, killing the trees and animals.
Illegal cabs, illegal hotels, exploitative delivery services ! Great innovations definitely
And some of those don’t even make money.
The invention isn’t yo sell ads, it’s to offer a service to manipulate the mass. Making them buy things is just to extract a bit of money, making them vote a certain way, making them want to look a certain way, donate a certain way, hate a certain people, defend a certain way of life. All that is really what’s making them rich with their innovation.
This sounds like whoever drives them to do this is interested in more than just money, so what is their motivation? If it were that simple, could we just infiltrate and replace this secret cabal, who would then drive the billionaires to do good?
Just think about all the good a really dedicated billionaire could do. Of course nearly all of them have “charities”, but most of them are tax doges or just a really small fraction of their wealth goes into them or they are just there to paint them in a favorite light.
One of their favorite “cheats” is the following: donate all your wealth to a charity you created and have 100% control of. Charity is tax exempt and you simply control the wealth of the charity instead of your own - still doing everything you did before, but now without taxes and you can claim that you are a GREAT philanthropist.
You might have some duties as a charitable organization, but since you can choose where the charity is located that is probably not a problem.
That and making our products break so we have to buy new ones, and making it illegal to unbreak them.
Their innovation is that they have stolen all our data, yes… But to fail to notice that they’ve used it to leverage influence and political favours to make themselves the most wealthy and powerful people on earth is blind.
