The problem with billionaires and never ending growth isn't largely the vast amount of accumulated wealth. The problem is that weather was generated by depriving people of their health and livelyhood.

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use their influence to maintain an underclass by fighting against government policies that would help lower-class people become middle-class.

See deprive people of their health and livelihood

Engywuck

That's really deep /s

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in my head these are the same things but im glad you were able to arrive at this conclusion nevertheless

𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍

We are not a post-scarcity society, so wealth is still a zero-sum game. For someone to have more, someone else has to have less.

The accumulating wealth is the problem, until we (if ever) achieve post-scarcity.

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Depends on what we are talking about. Wealth in the form of oil? Maybe. Wealth in the form of housing, no.

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Since you're thinking about these things, you might also want to think about why individuals should be able to dictate what happens in the economy at all? Billionaires can't exist without owning large swaths of the economy, and by owning large swaths of the economy they directly and dictatorially control a major part of the lives of thousands of people.

Why shouldn't the economy be democratized? Why shouldn't workers decide what to work on, and how to organize their work? Why shouldn't the economy be cooperative instead of competitive, do we need winners and losers? Why can't we just share our techniques and resources? Wouldn't we all be better off?

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This hardly qualifies as a showerthought. Better moderation, please.

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I think the answer is we still use some dated heuristics. Some time in the 1800s when industrialization started to manifest people decided ok the right and wrong ways to do things. People then added on and kept adding on. Unfortunately for us this process is only additive and we never take away or reconsider large over arching norms that don't fit with all the advancement we've achieved.

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This is the way things have always been. Going all the way back to the days of Bronze Age kings who post the laws in the town square and everything was punishable by death or dismemberment.

But in a lot of ways we’re a lot better off than the poor people were back then. Look at all the electric appliances, heating and cooling, transportation, fresh produce and spices from all over the world, fresh meat and bread… Even if you’re working at Starbucks and can barely afford to pay rent on your 1 bedroom apartment you still have a ton of luxuries a Bronze Age king could only dream of.

Now am I saying things are great and that we should stop complaining? No. Of course not. But we shouldn’t let our desire for change prevent us from appreciating what we have. That road leads into the dark tunnel of depression and mental health crisis.

People use all kinds of clichés to try to deliver this last message. “Touch grass” is a popular one. The problem with them is how trite and condescending they are. That’s not what I’m about. If you are suffering because of these broader issues then my wish for you is to find some joy in something simple that you have right now.

It’s easy to look at a guy like Elon Musk and just boil over with rage. Here’s the dirty secret about him (and other billionaires like him): he’s not happy. He’s addicted to winning. It’s a totally self destroying compulsion. Same goes for Jeff Bezos. You can see it in the failure of their relationships. They’re like real life Walter White.

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Not universally, and not always. Even in the Western tradition there were free self governing cities.

I don't have the time and energy to elaborate and have the inevitable subsequent debate, but it's defeatist and unhelpful to say that hierarchy and oppression have always defined human existence. We need to demand more.

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Nowhere did I say we shouldn’t demand more. You can be angry and wanting for change without letting those feelings overwhelm you and driving you to despair. If you are arguing that people really should be depressed and suicidal because of things in the world outside them which they cannot change alone then you are wrong. No one should be letting the news affect them so deeply as that.

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We can agree on that, certainly. The line between mental self-preservation and complicity in a harmful system can be thin, but you're generally right.