You're buying something of value and you might be underestimating or overestimating the value of that thing but you're still getting the thing. Specifically you are buying ownership in a company.

That's not gambling. You don't get paid based on the outcome. You get paid based on the relative value of the company.

Now if that system isn't working very well for you no shit, we have been deregulating markets for the last 50 years what the fuck did you expect? But that's not a problem with the underlining system that's you refusing to do the maintenance the system needs to function properly. If you stop changing your car is oil it's going to break down.

Gambling is when you are paid based entirely on whether a predetermined outcome happens or not. That is definitely what gambling is. You do not own anything. So you only get paid if the event happens. And there is a specific event that has to happen for you to be paid. That is gambling.

Even without the context we all know who I'm talking about.

I bring it up because dear God this administration is corrupt and in light of the subject of this comment what the hell was anyone expecting?

I think the real problem is about 25% of the population of any given country or dyed in the wool assholes.

From there all you have to do is push people to enough desperation that their brain stop working right. People under enormous amounts of pressure don't suddenly get better or smarter. They make bad decisions and they make more of them.

Like believing a famous pedophile who bankrupts everything he touches is somehow going to reduce the cost of groceries. Somebody who can think straight knows better than that.

It could also just be money laundering. I've seen several of these absolutely enormous thefts and they're so large that it's basically impossible to get away with it. You can't move hundreds of millions let alone billions of dollars like this and not have it be readily traceable.

If they catch the guys who did this then yeah we will know but if they haven't caught these guys in a few months then it's either North Korea or one of the other nation states or it's just money laundering. Honestly the money laundering could easily involve nation states like Russia or Iran or North Korea.

I know of no one who uttered the word that "capitalism is the root of all problems"

However, is that an actual point making the many posts speaking of end stage capitalism, or is from OP "With capitalism we are rushing off the side of a cliff."

not If you demand specific wording, no - I saw no such exact wording. But unless you are new here, there is a lot of hate heaped on "capitalism" Especially towards one particular country where there is a narrative that said country is run by capitalism. It isn't

Well, let's look at the country in question. Here in the USA we are not living under capitalism. We have a combination of corporatism, with a lot of socialism effects tossed in.

There are many benefits for people of low economic means. Free phones, free laptops, Heating oil assistance, low cost internet, section 8 housing (if you are not an American, Section 8 is a program where a low income person pays a small amount, perhaps a couple hundred dollars a month for their apartment and the Government picks up the rest) WIC- Women, Infants, & Children program giving free food. Medicaid for children and many adults. Medicare, Social Security disabled benefits for adults, and children, even Social Security benefits for children of older parents. We have food Stamp programs, we have free transportation for poor and retired people, including personal pickup and delivery for people living in areas not served by regular public transportation.

This does not sound to me like Capitalism in any shape or form.

These are things that don't get mentioned much. At one point in the past, I provided cites and links to all of this. It varies by state, but even deep red states have these programs.

You tell me. Should there be a maximum allowable salary? How do we make a completely level playing field? Force the driven not to work?

I have to note, I was born in poverty, and worked myself up to around top 10 percent. Zero help. Put myself through college, built a salable skillset. Doing 6 figures in retirement. So I'm probably in the group who need penalized for success.

So how do we deal with the driven vs the non-driven? How do we deal with those who build something? I built my money through frugal living and saving while young and then at around 50, really hit my stride. Waited until interest rates were down, then bought a house that's below what I was approved for, and paid it off in less than 15 years. Kept saving and investing. Don't want to turn this into Ol's financial classes though.

And I'm astute enough to know that not everyone is going to do that. But in the modern parlance, I am the bad person, and they must have the same economic resources as I do. So yes, I've been told I was part of the problem.

Now I might not be the brightest person in the room, but my experience has been that while some are whining about how bad it is that only some people have money, that the proper gestalt is a level playing field, I would propose that it really isn't possible to make that level playing field. Mainly because of different abilities and individual drives.

What do we do with the "obscene" rich, and the poor that are not driven or mentally capable on the other end. I've personally shown that with drive, a very poor person can work their way up that ladder. Takes hard work and financial smarts. No, not everyone has that combo. And here in the land people love to hate we have a way to help the people that might be stuck on the lower end of the economic scale, and don't really care about rising any further. I support such a system.

Now your solution for a level playing field?

You go to the right schools and you meet the right people and you get to pretty much do whatever you want. And you get into the schools because your parents get you there and their parents got them there.

If the working class had half the solidarity of the Epstein class we would live in a Utopia

It's not a product it's capital. It's not something you sell the people it's something you use to make things.

It's a labor saving device. Automation. In other words a job killer.

There are studies that clearly indicate that factory automation is responsible for approximately 70% of the Lost middle class jobs since the 1980s.

We have been automating away high paying jobs as fast as we can for decades and AI is just another extension of that.

The Epstein class doesn't want to sell you products. They don't want to have you as an employee. They look back at the Kings and emperors of old and say, that should be me. I shouldn't be dependent on consumers and employees.

They are planning a new world and you're not part of it.

And because nobody gets it unless I say it this way, like George Carlin said it's a big club and you ain't in it.

For some reason one Carlin says that everybody understands but when I explain it it's right out the window.

Well, to clarify, since we're. worried about communism versus capitalism, the US is in no way shape or form capitalism. It is a mixture of corporatism and (cover the kid's ears folks!!) socialism. Don't believe it? Tax dollars, quite a few of them in fact, go to things like free laptops and smartphones for the low income, subsidized fuel oil, medicare, medicaid, free food for Women, Infants and Children as well as Food stamps, Section 8 housing, where low income people pay a very small amount per month, while the Government pays the rest. When you are in a 2000 dollar apartment and paying 200 dollars a month, government is picking up the tab. Free or very reduced internet. Free buses for the poor and retired people. If you live in an area without bus service, you can call and get a free ride and return. May older and poor use this service to get back and forth to doctors and other appointments. This even in some very red states.

Doesn't sound much like capitalism to me. I am not opposed to such things. I am not claiming that there are not some economic issues we have. But it creates cognitive dissonance in people that get their facts from our adversaries.

But yeah - there is a middle ground. Collective ownership can work as long as people understand there has a be a group of business savvy people running the business. That said, what I have seen in life is that many to most people don't actually have that savvy.

Well, how bow the communist revolution? Howbow Chairman Mao, Uncle Joe Stalin, Pol Pot. The revolution of the proletariat. Ha's that workin out for ya Comrade? The were some of teh best humanitarians amirite?

Yeah, that was the target. Doesn't men that 1750 was the sweet spot, the correct amount of CO2.

I understand that a target is needed, but that target was seriously unrealistic, requiring zero emissions from humans, and a concentrated effort of re-sequestering every bit of Carbon release of over 200 years of release. Even when the concept of radiative forcing was known, we were never going to return to 1750 levels

That is correct. All we can do is wait it out as the methane degrades to CO2, and the CO2 cycle does its work We're on a roller coaster ride at this point.

No, it isn't. It is a human aided change. There have been times in the past when there was much more CO2 in the air. Carbon was sequestered in various times like the Carboniferous, and where the final age, the Pennsylvanian, enough Carbon had been sequestered that the average temperatures on earth cooled enough to stop the large scale forest growth. Humans ended up de-sequestering much of the stored carbon, and that's why we are returning to something like earlier times.

There is a lot of proper concern over the rate of de-sequstering, and we face serious issues. And unless we do something stupid, humanity isn't likely in danger of extinction. But the planet isn't going to fail.

Very good point. One of the issues with changing lifestyles is that a "better" lifestyle is a natural goal for humans. We're hardwired for comfort. How that can be circumvented is a real issue.

As well, here we are, around 80 years into nuc plant power, and I question if we are any closer to getting it right. The Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station scandal, AKA NukeGate, shows that there is a certain contempt about nuc power advocates, with unqualified people making critical infrastructure without engineers signing off on them, parts not fitting, coupled with the Baseload Review Act, a law passed that made customers responsible for every cent of the construction. The people of South Carolina are still paying for the billions of dollars lost, without getting a single milliwatt of energy.

So in the modern age, a nuc power plant was being constructed with dangerous controls, and never generated power, although all of the sunk cost is being extracted from the customers.

Another thing not often mentioned is scalability. On any centralized power plant, nuc, gas, or coal, you have to design the plant to some maximum capacity. You go over that, and you need a new plant, or at least the equivalent of one with massive re-fitting.

With solar or wind, you can add more as you need more. Here in PA, we have a lot of places mapped out, and if we need more wind turbines in teh future, we know where to place them.

Side notes, solar installs turn out to be a haven for animals, especially birds.

We've tried making the many the boss. Turns out it doesn't work so well. Just enables the not-so-good guys rise to the top more easily.

Welcome to the human condition. People can go reeee about the governments they hate, and lay all the problems at "capitalism" a dog whistle for the USA, but that shows you are more worried about governance than the actual problem. Especially when the big four are China, US, India, and Russia. Laying this at the feet of the USA is pointless and simply wrong. We are part of the problem, not the actual problem.

And the problem is that we have a pretty big problem. We are in a bit of a positive feedback loop now, de-sequestering methane. The time to speak of tipping points is long gone. IMR&IO, the actual tipping point was some time in the mid 1980's.

So what should we do? We should understand that we have a rough ride ahead of us. We should shift to renewables, we should consider the environmental impact of the "data centers" we should stop de-sequestering greenhouse gases. We should not try quick-fixes like aerosol injection, which will simply create as many problems as CO2 and Methane, and likely be worse. A thousand years of acid rain is not good for living beings or infrastructure.

We should work to preserve as many species as possible What will we do? Probably not much of anything. People will bring their favorite axes to grind, just like we see here. The US will get blamed, and the other polluting countries will pat themselves on the back.

What will happen? Despite the political rhetoric, we are all in this mess together, and we'll be pointing fingers at each other as we have hundreds of years (at the very least) of adaptation.

But hey - maybe the archenemy of Capitalism, which is Communism, can take over and lead us to a glorious future, just like it always has. It has a perfect track record so far. And I put that sentence together to show just how silly the political axe grinding is.

You're correct, butThat's a pretty low bar. We used to get a lot of posters in PowerPoint form. You can make a decent poster from PP, but it would fall apart between the person originating the poster and our office that had a large format inkjet, where it was printed Seems the file kept track of the printer used while creating it. That wreaked havoc. If the aspect ratio was different, between the two, it would summarily stretch or squeeze. Plus some people liked using the obscure fonts coming from those cheap font sets. Never knew how those would show up. We often ended up just completely re-doing the thing. I was pressed into service doing them after we had a couple people leave in short order. I told people who wanted to make posters to just come sit with me, and I could save them a lot of time by just doing the job once instead of twice.

Point is, you can make some decent poster images with PP, but it had so many quirks that it could be a nuisance.

Sigh, Yes, it is all due to capitalism, even in countries without capitalism. Top four are China, US, India, and Russia. Thanks for letting us know that they are all capitalist countries.

Axe grinding and trying to turn every discussion into your axe to grind is silly. Can we get anyone to claim it is internalized misogyny? How about Joe Biden, or Barack O'Blama?

You aren't helping.

The only proven aphrodisiac is a man doing household chores.