Summary
Billionaires like Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy are spreading false claims to discredit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal agency protecting consumers from fraud and abuse.
Andreessen falsely accused the CFPB of politically motivated “debanking,” despite no evidence.
This rhetoric aligns with the “DOGE” project, led by Musk and Ramaswamy, which aims to slash government regulations and programs under the guise of efficiency.
Critics warn this effort will harm public services, benefit billionaires, and push privatization at the expense of ordinary Americans.
I like how the only “increases” in efficiency they have proposed are to completely eliminate programs instead of actually making any of them better. Maybe we should adopt this same methodology to “solve” the problem of billionaires. 🤷
Oh no, what will we do if billionaires control the U.S. government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907
And those are just J.P. Morgan.
Is your point that this is fear mongering, or that the struggle between classes has been an ongoing fight for most of recorded history?
The latter. I mean, America was founded by a tobacco company and people so weird in their religiosity, they were kicked out of 17th century Europe.
I do think we can solve the oligarch problem. So, part of me was like, “We’ve met this challenge before, motherfuckers.” It wasn’t meant to dismissive but I’m pretty sure I could open hand slap Elon Musk and 24 of his 38 kids would feel it.
Wish I had your optimism. Hand it over.
On a more serious note, I truly believe that enriching & modernizing our education system is the way to go for dethroning our billionaire overlords. We can’t just expect slap dash imploding submarines to do all the work.
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Americans will not destroy the military or the police state. We need those to do harm against our enemies and to punish the undeserving.
You don’t understand. You make them non-functional through incompetency first, then change their purpose and voila…neither.
Then you pay Elon Musk for fleets of Tesla robots that don’t work to do your dirty work 🤣
From what I’ve seen under Eric Adams in New York, you never actually lay any of these people off. You just bring in a robot that bumbles around a subway terminal until it breaks down, while a squad of officers guard it with lethal force.
Nothing new.
Americans are easy marks. Not most of our faults, we’re poorly educated by design. Critical thinking is college level here.
Few of us have any interest in being a society, any snake oil con man has to do is tell us we’ll be rich!.. Just fuck over our fellow humans first, lol, and we’ll come a running to that ballot box to literally destroy the very safetynet under our own feet. It’s quite pathetic to witness.
Then we’ll spend decades kneeling in front of them waiting for golden showers of prosperity, when we’re not at one another’s throats out of the zero sum mindset this herp derp land of rugged individualism propagates.
Our hyper individualist, disdain for the very concept of society is gallows hilarious. It’s like bragging that we’re conditioned to let one another drown. Yay? Got to hand it to the marketers on that one.
I agree with you. Quite a lot. And yet… Rugged individualism can also make a person want to think for themselves and not herp derp with the uneducated masses. I’m just saying American individualism can, uh, in certain cases make one more prone to collectivism.
I am the result of that type of backfiring, got fed right wing propaganda about rugged individualism and the founders as a kid. Turns out that that can backfire heavily into making someone who wants to be left alone, wants to tar and feather people, and thinks some type of collectivism is the best way towards that.
Fun fact, my grandmother finds my politics annoying which makes sense given the fact she fed me the propaganda but doesnt generally argue my points since I have pointed out that she is the fucking base source of them. She copes and thinks its cause of school and not the fact that she held up violent revolutionaries and our bastard ancestors up on pedestals.
You reap what you sow, amirite? Even if sometimes you don’t know what you’re sowing.
Yep, dont really know what she expected though since our ancestors while bastards were historically progressive and the founders were violent revolutionaries including the weird internal infighting. I do wonder how many “conservative” men are like me and are just surrounded by idiots, ive met a few who completely dropped the act once I said some distinctly non conservative terms like syndicalism, armament of the masses, and bougie bastards so its certainly higher than one would probably expect.
That may be a real thing, but also we’re at this weird place where modern “conservativism” is getting morphed into a sort of semi-anti-authoritarian movement. It’s unfortunate though that the sentiment is getting co-opted by grifters rather than channeled into actual progress.
Yeah its making it weird, though I do know for a fact most of the reds in sheeps clothes ive found were lefties surrounded by idiots. But yeah a couple sub groups of conservatives seem to be going into a conserve against authority and corporations, which while a good first step in theory they are also wrapped up in false trad bullshit. I cant wait to read the sociological books on this era in a decade.
Here’s an interesting article I read recently somewhat related to this topic: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/30/the-deep-historical-forces-that-explain-trumps-win
Like specifically how/why anti-authoritarians are somehow teaming up with grifter billionaires as of late.
Rich people are like other rich people, more than they are like their fellow countrymen, or ethnic group, or religious group. Anything a billionaire says is good for “everyone” needs to be understood in that light: the “everyone” they see are “all the people I associate with”, meaning “other rich people”.
But wait, they’re all wearing Tshirts instead of suits on these podcasts. Are you saying that doesn’t mean they’re one of us?
All you have to do is convince the ignorant, unwashed masses that you’re speaking for them, not about them, and they will let you have whatever you want.
People don’t want policies. They don’t even want demagogues. They want a set of jingling keys in front of their face. That’s what they’ll pay attention to.
And the Tankies and Anarchists both are cheering them on despite bullshitting to themselves that they’re opposed to the Billionaires.
A planet overfull of people in the Age of Information and we’ve got Billions of fucking Rubes.
Gaurenteeing that’s exactly what we will do. Hopefully i be mostly dead.
wow big take there sir
You really think those fuckheads are going to kill their cash cow?
Why bother with the middleman?
~Bezos
Because as it stands right now there are rules to be followed to get maximum payout. After the orange fuckwad is seated that could change but only time will tell
Sometimes history shows oligarchs breaking stuff to make more money for themselves: trade patterns, movement of people, social safety nets, previous methods of doing business.
I think we all got so used to the modern times that it’s hard to image this still happening, but on a bigger scale.
Or, it could be mostly empty threats now, designed to manipulate the markets. We saw Trump scares during his last term in office, particularly near the end, that would deliberately scare enough people to make bank in stocks and bonds. Scaring a nation is very profitable.
Probably both types of things.
they can’t even tie their own shoes
The government has attacked me and my people throughout my life via the war on drugs using the “justice system”.
Kind of hard to be invested in a organization like that.
The CFPB and the DEA are a wee bit different, though. You can be angry at the latter and still want the protections of the former.
sorry, ml users only deal in absolutes when it fits their narrative.
I used to be on the ml server until I got fed up with the arbitrary moderation, so I try not to generalize.
…I try not to generalize.
You think big companies are going to treat you better once law and order is out of their way? You’re going to face more hardship than ever before.
While frustration with the status quo is understandable, abandoning the mechanisms of government only cedes power to those who are already disproportionately influencing it—special interests and billionaires. The government, flawed as it may be, is still the primary tool, and often the only tool, for enacting systemic change. By participating—through voting, organizing, and holding leaders accountable—citizens can challenge the status quo and push for reforms that better reflect the collective will.
Change doesn’t come from disengagement; it comes from working within and improving the systems that already exist. To give up on these mechanisms is to forfeit the opportunity to make meaningful progress.
An enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Are you crazy enough to be implying that your own government is your enemy? Public administration is necessary to any kind of social coordination and the reason you were able to leave that comment
Yes. Pick up a history book, study the constitution, the bill or rights, and you’ll see that the founders were also crazy enough.
The billionaires in this country may have many monopolies but the US Government has the monopoly on violance. Counter to what Starship Troopers would lead you to believe, all power is derived from violence.
You are also wrong about public administration being necessary for social coordination and again you only need a history book to see this.
I’m not from the US, so I don’t care about your founders.
History books, and biology as well mind you, actually say that the actions of a group of individuals working together have more power than those of individuals working alone, and in any coordinated effort there is a subsection of the group that takes care of the whole and marks the pace. Throughout history the civilizations that managed to thrive and leave their mark were those whose governing body was efficient and effective, and there’s no denying that. You may be able to wrangle your friends and coordinate them without a specific administrative role, but try doing that with a group of people surpassing the hundreds of millions and you will have a problem.
In this instance, US history is more relevant than your opinions.
For some reason it doesn’t surprise me that you don’t believe in history beyond 1776
Most of the history that comes to mind predates 1776, which makes sense.
Stopping your historical studies before things like the end of chattel slavery and the start of the industrial revolution seems like a bad idea. You might have missed one or two significant events.
Ooooh nice, an enlightened Libertarian, and one that thinks that Americans are special, unique little snowflakes, different from the rest and immune to the rules that have historically governed the entirety of humanity for millennia
The article is about the US.
And this thread is about governments in general, and their necessity in enforcing these social contracts you’re referring to.
Pick up a history book
Collective action (government) is the only thing preventing you from being ruled by someone else’s collective action
That’s actually not true. See the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They’re documents that were written to guarantee and protect my rights as an individual. I was lucky to have been born in this time and place, look back or just around the world today and you will see countries without these arrangements. If you’re a US citizen and you don’t understand how lucky you are you need to travel more and read books. Get out of the city, and do it alone. You’ll see.
You were just arguing against this kind of government, but now you are all for it? Make up your mind. ‘the bill of rights’ means nothing without a government enforcing it.
In any case, this shows just how ignorant you are to the world around you. Documents protecting the rights of the populace aren’t exclusive to the US, nor were they the first to write them, look up the magna Carta, written in medieval times; or the Hammurabi code, one of the first written legal documents that protected the weak and the vulnerable.
What’s more, most countries today also have these protections written in their respective constitutions, so this whole “the US is special” talk is just propaganda you ate
The US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, in part protect the people from the government. Think about it.
Again, most countries have these protections as well. The USA is not special in this regard. Most countries have a document detailing the rights and duties of the people along with the obligations and limits to the state. And obviously, these documents are intrinsically linked to the government and would fail to prove valuable in its absence. In layman’s terms, you can’t have your bill of rights ‘protecting people from the government’ without having a government in the first place, as the mere document itself is a product of governance and part of the social contract
Ah, the enlightened libertarian
The founders would routinely rape their slaves and participated in scalping. They were day drunk all the time because one of the best ways to clean water was to make it into beer. They didn’t believe in bathing, they thought washing the grime off would let the bad airs in and make them sick.
They were day drunk all the time because one of the best ways to clean water was to make it into beer.
I need to take issue with this part because that is simply not how things worked. The ale that was being made at the time (and had been made and drunk by people for centuries before then) instead of water had an extremely low alcohol content. Even a small child would have to drink a LOT to get tipsy.
It was generally drunk the day after it was brewed, so it didn’t really have ages to ferment into a potent alcoholic drink. People did drink to get drunk, of course, but drinking small ale/small beer rather than water was not how they did it.
Largely irrelevant, if true.
It’s not irrelevant. They’re saying that the people you hold up as some kind of supremely enlightened few of a special era, were in fact products of their time who believed in a lot of silly things with no basis in science/reality, and committed many atrocities themselves.
I was a die-hard libertarian when I was 18. Then I learned a lot more about how the government actually functions. The more you know, the more painfully obvious it becomes that, not only is democratic government extremely necessary to support a civilization of our size, but also that uncoordinated government is literally impossible at scale. Try to lead a group of 20+ people in any activity and the importance of coordinated leadership will become evident very quickly.
The government that I am a part of, the society that I am a part of, actually has a problem with rape, torture, and murder. We even have a hard time, as a culture, with capital punishment. That doesn’t mean that we don’t do it but it’s a point of contention.
What you’re engaging with is known as the “association fallacy”. Here’s some homework for you, have fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
The government that I am a part of, the society that I am a part of, actually has a problem with rape, torture, and murder.
Are you sure about that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_of_Native_American_women https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny_and_mass_media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States#Public_opinion
No… I’m not. Governing people and leading people are the same thing. I’m referencing doing it at two different scales. As you go up in scale, the rules change. Things like authoritarianism, socialism, libertarianism and communism work for small groups of people, but not when you start getting into populations in the millions.
“If true” hooooooly shit you just live in a different reality, huh.
Well, you made a blanket statement.
Where do you think Jefferson’s Black descendents come from? Who do you think paid the bounties for scalps? Germ theory wasn’t invented yet, they didn’t know why beer was safe to drink or why they needed to bathe. Settlers thought it was strange how the natives would strip naked and bathe in rivers - so uncivilized! Unlike Europeans, who would bathe as little as possible as to preserve their modesty.
All of this is easily looked up.
Your idols were evil morons. Read a history book.
Unlike Europeans, who would bathe as little as possible as to preserve their modesty.
Literally just spreading grade-school level misinfo because you never progressed past that level of understanding of history, lmao.
I say “if true” and you immediately conflate this to “it’s not true”.
You people wouldn’t survive outside of your echo chamber, I’m sure that’s why you’re here. There’s no room for independent thought, nuance, or critical thinking. You repeate a narrative and jack each other off all day, it’s disgusting.
Ah yes, the independent thought and nuance of repeating the propaganda fed to you by your own government. You’re such a free thinker!
I recommend reading Lies My Teacher Told Me. Then, when you finish that, A People’s History of the United States.
But I doubt you’ve ever read even one history book that wasn’t assigned to you by a teacher.
