Originally published at: Disney heiress wrote a scathing takedown on dynastic wealth and billionaire greed | Boing Boing
…
13 Likes
Gotta appreciate her publicly sharing that the rich are indeed classist and looking to retain a caste system. They have no interest in helping anyone else because they literally believe those less fortunate do not deserve any better. Also further exposes the lie of trickle-down economics by proving that the rich will do anything to make sure their money doesn’t touch the hands of anyone, especially if it’s through the government – a system they can easily circumvent.
21 Likes
Let’s be fair - she’s not wrong, and very few of us would make different choices had we been born into a stack of cash that was designed to be passed down through the family forever. It is very cool that she’s peeling back the surface layer and examining the depths below. Perhaps her words will reach other people who haven’t examined their own motivations.
Despite the challenge of every hurdle on every horizon lately, be it Drumphettes or Covid or related blowback, it does feel like an unprecedented time of people with rights/money/everything questioning ‘the way things are’ and seeking a compass bearing that leads to good.
Topple ALL the things! But in the kindest way possible.
15 Likes
America has been steadily moving from being the class-based system it always denied it was and the race-based system that it claimed it transcended to a caste-based system (one that incorporates white supremacy). The kinds of precepts she discusses are very characteristic of such systems.
Abigail Disney proudly embraces her identity as a class traitor — which is not something I ever expected to see.
It’s a running joke amongst a lot of my more affluent liberal and progressive family members that we’re class traitors – a joke in large part because even as we sincerely call for and work for a more equitable and inclusive society, no-one is suffering any significant material consequences for being a “traitor”.
It comes with a sense of perspective and an understanding of what is sustainable and what ultimately benefits all of us as humans. It’s hard to break through the ultra-sophisticated indoctrination of the neoliberal default we’re all swimming in, especially when that indoctrination supports one’s supposed superiority. For a variety of reasons (e.g. good parents, high-quality educations, exposure to cultures and lifestyles outside the U.S.) that brainwashing can be overcome, but it’s rare since the precepts described are so ingrained in our political-economic culture as to seem (as Disney puts it) like water to a fish.
That situation in turn reduces the impact of the questions asked by Abigail Disney or Nick Hanauer about the unsustainability of late-stage capitalism in America. They are a fraction of a tiny group of actual billionaires in a country of “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”, many of whom wouldn’t even think to ask those questions (assuming they were taught to think critically, which isn’t the priority in U.S. public schools that it is in the types of schools Ms. Disney went to).
19 Likes
Her public declarations about this gross imbalance has been refreshing. It’s a great perspective well written. And… I have never seen her proclaim that she’s giving 95% of her bank accounts away right now, while she’s alive, to walk the talk. If anyone else has heard anything like this, I’d love to be hear about it.
7 Likes
I can imagine that at Disney’s Thanksgiving dinners she’s looked at as good families do with the stereotypical racist uncle…“the socialist aunt”
5 Likes
@beschizza
At the end of this post a link appears…
I assume this is ‘delivered’ on to the BB site by one of your ‘partners’
The article it leads to is a bait and switch. It talks about a ‘Bitcoin Digital’ website which appeared on Dragon’s Den and which all the dragons invested in. At the end of the article it purports to link the reader that Digital Bitcoin site, but in fact links to an entirely different Bitcoin speculation site. The only Bitcoin Digital website I found claims that there are rumours that Peter Jones of Dragon’s Den invested in them, but that this definitively not true.
Is this really what funds BB these days? Well, it seems apt for a post about wealth.
2 Likes
I think you may be onto something. My dad used to love that eye-rollish line of “if you’re not a liberal by 20, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative by 40, you have no brain.” He’s 70 now, and realizing hey, wealth and inheritance and by extension the relationship between property values and education are all inherently antithetical to the idea of meritocracy. He was told that hard work paid off and that people earned things on merit — but those idioms were passed down by a bunch of already-wealthy bastards who screwed my dad over every chance they got. (Luckily, he’s aware that Trump is the worst of those.)
26 Likes
According to Teh Wiki, she has a net worth of $120-million. While that’s a lot of money, her father Roy’s net worth at the time of his death was $1.2-billion. All things considered, I suspect she’s given away at least half of what she inherited and – given her careers in philanthropy, progressive filmmaking, socially conscious investing, and critiques like this – will likely give most of the remainder to charity once she dies.
24 Likes
I’d just report this to the moderators. I believe the e-mail address is badads@boingboing.net .
9 Likes
Reminds of the song Michael Gira wrote about his dad…
3 Likes
That’s all random chumbox stuff, yes, but we can kill specific bad ads when we’re notified. Hit badads@boingboing.net
Or! Kill them yourself forever.
14 Likes
Thanks, Rob. I’ll trust that this one will get killed.
But I do not usually see any ads on BB (I use Brave Browser with Shields up - only have to take them down to view some video content e.g. Tiktok et al) which is mightily effective at removing all the flashing, making-the-page-jump-around, overlapping-and obscuring-the-content, assorted crud.
That one looked superficially like just a.n.other blog post link - it did not present immediately as ‘advertising’. But I see now that it was - the first four panels under the ‘Trending now’ headline are ads and the next few look like genuine BB posts that are allegedly ‘trending now’. ETA I see that for some weird reason Shields are down - I must have looked at a Tiktok video very recently, on the main page, and forgot to reset it. D’oh!!
If I get suckered again I’ll use the badads address. Cheers.
5 Likes
Interesting… she doesn’t say “white”.
2 Likes
I read something recently (not having any google luck, but it was top of Hacker News a few days ago) that reported Brave’s adblocking isn’t very strict, with whitelisting for trackers, social networks and such. I don’t know much about it but if ads are getting through that might be why.
5 Likes
Perhaps - that could well be, in general, but in this case I blame user idiocy. 
If you’ve not tried Brave, I heartily recommend it. It delivers possibly the best browser experience I’ve had. Firefox came close once a dozen third party add-ons had been installed but eventually it jumped my shark (especially after several of those add-ons stopped working).
And Brave just announced their own search algorithm - it’s out in Beta. Looking forward to seeing how that stacks up against the behemoth of Google.
4 Likes
Because why does one need to point out an obvious fact?
11 Likes
Interesting. A wealthy young woman of some degree of privilege learns complex life lessons and comes out stronger, wiser, and happier while proving a thorn in the side of powerful villains. Add some musical numbers, a talking animal friend, and a romantic subplot and let’s animate it!
- Clueless Disney Exec Missing The Point
2 Likes
That reminds me of “things I was told when I was younger”. And also not young.
My grandfather told me a story when I was a kid about the “richest man in town” who was asked by a younger man how he got so wealthy. The old man says “let me turn off the light and tell you about it” - implying that one can attain wealth by saving 50 cents a month from a light bulb not being on.*
I worked in retail for the first decade and a half of my adult life, most of which was at a grocery store in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Bay Area. I would remark to someone about how cheap some of these people could be and they would say “that’s why they’re rich”. I would answer, “no, they’re rich because they inherited a shit load of money, they’re a partner in a law firm or a CEO, not from trying to save a dollar on a box of cereal with an expired coupon”
Being around the public as a young adult so much made me really make sure I looked inward so as not to be a dick. Or a cheapskate. Which is also being a dick.
*Note, I realize that the story could also be framed as a way to help someone understand the importance of not being a spendthrift. But it still irritated me.
9 Likes
i will help relieve her of ANY of those extra dollars she no longer wants.
I promise I will put them to good use. *model airplanes, vintage motorcycles, dog toys
1 Like
