Straczynski: "The New Aristocracy"

Hi,

That bailout was $700B+ in one event. Yea they get a lot.

I was a small businessman/entreprenuer in a life not so long ago. I remember getting shaken down by state tax authorities- this was going on while Bass Pro Shops was getting a large tax concession from the state, at the expense of public schools.

As to the matter of the Forbes 400… I dont feel like going over the list… but as to your assertion that they were self made deserves some critique.

Again, I dont feel like going over the list but my spider sense tells me that, if you were to peel away the layers of the onion, you would find that a lot of these people were born on third base.

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Forbes 400:
#1Bill Gates: discussed above.
#2 Warren Buffet: son of a US congressman
#3 Larry Ellison: adoptive parents lost uberfortune in the Great Depression
#4&5 see: “Koch dynasty”
#7,8&9 see: “Walton dynasty”
#10 Michael Bloomberg: I’ll give you this one
#11 Sheldon Adelson: this one too
#12 Jeff Bezos: raised on a cattle ranch… A 25,000 acre cattle ranch
#13 Larry Page: not sure about this one
#14 Sergey Brin: easy 99 percenter parents
#15 Forrest Mars Jr: easy 1 percenter parents
#16 Jaqueline Mars
#17 John Mars
#18 Carl Icahn: raised by teachers
#19 George Soros: rags to riches for sure
#20 Mark Zuckerberg: yeah
#21 Steve Ballmer: 1 percenter parents
#22 Len Blavatnik: not sure about this one
#23 Abigail Johnson: president of the company her grandfather founded
#24 Phil Knight: 1 percenter parents
#25 Michael Dell: son of a stockbroker and orthodontist
#26 Paul Allen: “let’s see Paul Allen’s card.”
#27 Donald Bren: 1 percenter parents
#28 Ronald Perelman: “by the time Ronald turned 11, he regularly sat in on board meetings of his father’s company.”
#29 Anne Cox Chambers: see “Cox family media empire”
#30 Rupert Murdoch: listed in the same Forbes article literally as “Rupert Mordoch and family”

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Wow, ok…

I suggested above that many of Forbes 400 were born on third base above.

This post make me feel like a slacker.

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I don’t know any wealthy people anymore.

It’s been my experience that almost-entirely self-made individuals or mostly-self-made are more often Conservative than Liberal. The people who had to work at it: who still managed to get ahead in life on a just a high-school education, who were on welfare while they needed it but didn’t try to stay on it when the need went away: the ones I know are Conservative.

The “pat” Liberal explanation is that once someone gets ahead, they turn greedhead and wanna stay ahead at any cost. Which is sometimes true. The first time I ever made some serious money (I started a business with a partner and within 9 months of having graduated college I’d paid off my student loan and all my credit card debt) I found myself, for the first time in my life, really anxious and nervous about losing the extra I’d managed to put aside. I didn’t do “anything to stay ahead”, but I was very motivated not to lose the lead I’d managed to gain.

I did wind up losing it, by the way.

The “pat” Conservative explanation is that when someone wants what they don’t yet have, they’ll do or say anything to “raise consciousness” about the injustice of not having it, and will do everything in their power to “level the playing field” (in their favor, that is), and will side with whoever gives them the best chance of achieving that objective (i.e. field “leveling”.)

Why is it that the “haves” (and in this case I don’t mean wealthy, since I’m talking from my personal experience: my “haves” are people who own a home and own some land and have lots of kids) are hated by the “have nots” simply for being happy with what they have and wanting to keep what they have, while the “have nots” want to get what they don’t have at the expense of others, seemingly by whatever means necessary?

One editor here mostly gripes about 1st world problems. White Whines. The TSA is a big favorite. Speaking of which, you know who doesn’t bitch about having to wait in line 2 or 3 hours to get on an airplane? People who have never flown, or who don’t fly very often. Which is most of the world population. Most people would be thrilled to death to fly on a plane, even if they waited all day to do it.

I haven’t flown in 20+ years. If I waited all day for a flight to India, I’d just look at it as part of the adventure of traveling.

Other popular BB topics: Net Neutrality. The ubiquitous Aaron Swartz. The EFF. Most of these are about (big surprise) getting something for nothing, feeling entitled to getting what is wanted, regardless of who created it in the first place, or who has to foot the ongoing maintenance, a constant “I want I Want I WANT.”

The semi-constant stream of mash-up “creation” on boingboing also reflects it: something for nothing. He1 did this and she1 did that. He2 takes He1 and She2’s work and combines it and look at what he2 “made”! When in actually he2 made nothing. He2 created nothing. To say that someone, anyone “created” the Technicolor Stormtrooper helmet or a Genderswapped Ariel or the Disney Tarot is to lessen the meaning of the very word “create”. Such things could be done by algorithm. And probably ARE.

Back to Aristocracy. The author opened the door so I’ll walk through it. Who are the peasants? Who are the serfs? Certainly no one on this thread.

Do you all think that the genuinely poor, the genuine “have nots”, the peasants and serfs of America and of the world, distinguish between Bill Gates, Cory Doctorow, and you, the reader? They do not.

This isn’t class war. This isn’t about any phoney-baloney “aristocracy”. This isn’t a battle of the haves and the have nots.

What masquerades as “class warfare” nowadays is a battle of the haves and the have mores.

The Have Nots, the Have Nothings, use library computers or school computers, if at all. The only TED they know is TED FM, or some dude named Ted. They don’t care about 3D printers. They eat fast food because it’s cheap and keeps them from being late to work. They don’t give a fuck about Lessig. They live next to, work with (and for) guys just like Rob Ford.

The amount of entitlement and privilege seen on BB every day is just astounding…

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thanks for calling me a liar on the basis of nothing whatsoever

He didn’t call you a liar; he said you didn’t bother to try. And you just confirmed that.

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@MT​Head I said I couldn’t read the article. He said I didn’t try, implying I didn’t tell the truth. You said I confirmed I didn’t try, which is also false since only after clicking the link did I see it was on facebook. So that’s 2:0 for the guys who attack the person and not the argument.

@Bobba​Boosh Did we move the goalposts from inheriting money “the old fashioned, Medieval way”, to anyone who had a lawyer as a parent is a 1 percenter and didn’t make their own fortune? This is exactly the sort of hyperbole I was talking about in my original post. The fact Bill gates had well off parents doesn’t change the fact he didn’t inherit his fortune. Ditto for Bezos and a whole bunch of people on that list. They made their own money. There is no shame in getting some assistance from your parents, by the way. There are of course those who did inherit, but they seem to be a minority on the list and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if today there are less inheritors on this list than, say, 50 years ago (and certainly 100).

Yet here you are…

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True but don’t pretend you’re “self-made” if your elite class parents paid for things for you, made sure you had the finest education, and possibly even gave you the money to start your business (and the political or financial connections).

Tell that to the guys here in Oakland who just want to get a job.

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I see BB’s popular themes as areas where people are fighting against Neoliberalism and the idea of:

each according to his wealth, not according to his needs”.

Net Neutrality is like The National Health System in the UK - it’s paid for, it’s not free. However, it is distributed, roughly, based on needs not wealth.

Neoliberalism is moving us towards a market for everything:

  • Create a market for carbon credits, rather than set laws to stop carbon emission; treat each consumer as knowing they are buying for pollution as well as electricity when they select a power utility provider.
  • Nothing should be free; the idea of The Commons is a bad idea.

It’s not something for nothing. It’s often things we all owned, or no-one owned, that we find are taken away and suddenly owned, controlled and restricted by someone else.

Depressingly, Neoliberalism seems to be winning.

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…except in this story, everybody dies at the end anyway

After I die, I want to be a corporation.

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And yet it’s these 1st-world problems that get used as a club on 3rd-world people, and third-class first-world people.
There are enough people in the world to be concentrating on all the problems, 1st, 2nd and 3rd world. We don’t all have to focus on a single problem until it’s solved and then move on to the next one. We can have people picking at them all simultaneously.

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I learned a splendid new word the other day: Plutogogue - one who favours the wealthy or their interests or attempts to present them to the public in a favourable light.

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I’m looking at the Forbes 400 richest people in the US15. I got bored after the first 30 or so, but most of them seem to be self made.

I’m looking at the same list and 4 of the top 10 are inheritors of the same fortune and didn’t start their company and only one runs the business (Waltons -Walmart). Another Two the Kochs inherited a small oil company from their father before turning it into a huge oil company. From 10-20 there are 3 members of the Mars family.

In any case - outside of these extreme examples its very clear that income has become extremely skewed and social mobility has declined. This isn’t

easily refutable hyperbole and generalizations, at best.

It’s demonstrable economic fact. Indeed I’m guessing that this missive has been prompted by the bestselling Piketty book that lays out the facts in shocking detail.

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jive: swing music or early jazz.

jibe: to be in harmony or accord; agree

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There are several more definitions of ‘jibe’ than that. And I’m not sure about that one; I’d go with jive, personally.

I always find this fascinating. It makes me wonder what was posted.

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Jive doesn’t have a meaning which makes sense in the context.

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Not a libertarian here, but looking from the outside, there seems to be little difference between both parties.

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Mod note: Stop the offensive name calling and stay on topic.

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Religious Fanatic, yes, but fascist? If you have any evidence to back that up I would be interested to see it.

Do you actually mean authoritarian? That would also be true but nothing unusual at the time, the exception being the likes of the Levellers who wouldn’t get into a more powerful position until 40 years later.

(This was supposed to be a reply to @BobbaBoosh, but it was too early in the afternoon)