Asklemmy

43945 readers

1034 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

269

Why do some people defend the billionaires and capitalism? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

251 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I like how these pretty neatly map to the three I gave for defending billionaires, even though they're worded very differently and probably thought of completely independently. We even ordered them the same way.

People who defend billionaires either have a vested interest, have actually bought that they’re 1000x smarter than normal people, or have some (possibly vague) abstract moral position that overrules the basic idea of fairness. Often it’s more than one.

I suppose the 1000x smarter thing isn't the only propaganda reason given, but I'd say meritocracy is by far more pronounced than inherent property rights or red-baiting in today's mainstream media. People who go with the latter two tend to learn it through personal connections.