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Old 02-05-19, 07:30 PM   #1
August
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Default I'm the 0.0001%: My Confession

There is lotta truth here:


Quote:
Income inequality in the US celebrated its 50th birthday last year. Having declined steadily after World War II, 1968 began a 50-year winning streak. Few are cheering, though, because concentrations of wealth are dangerous. People controlling huge amounts of money can use their buying power to push us all around. Hence billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett are much in the news on the receiving end of public opprobrium.
I’m happy about that. It keeps the pitchforks pointed away from me and my even greater piles of dough. Mark and Bill are comfortable, to be sure, but the really rich are in another league. There are about 500 of us with spending power to make Zuckerberg’s eyes bulge. He may have $56 billion, but it’s mostly on paper in Facebook stock, and it took him decades to acquire. His entire net worth is merely pocket money to people like me: we spend that much every two weeks.
I don’t normally talk about the vast sums at my disposal. I’m more often leading the mob denouncing the rich. But I wanted to get it off my chest, and I feel I can confide in you not to spread it around.
How I Put Food on the Table

I’d better start with the basics: I’m a politician. My job is to oversee public services like roads and police.
You may think mine a mostly passive job—the humble public servant faithfully channeling the Will of the People and doing his best to effect it in a difficult political environment.
But the truth is I’m an entrepreneur just like Zuckerberg. To advance my career I must find a problem people worry about—or can be persuaded to worry about—and then convince them I’m a better bet to solve it than the other candidate. I scour Twitter for the outrage of the week. I look for industry missteps I can claim to solve by hiring regulators.
Like other entrepreneurs, there are no limits on where I can look for problems to “productize”; I don’t have to stick to just the roads and the police. In fact, if I did I’d be out of a job quickly because my field is brutally competitive. Anything is fair game: the public hazard of unlicensed florists. Reckless dispensation of plastic straws. The pet rescuer menace. The low hanging fruit is long picked; to keep putting food on my table, I have to get imaginative.
I make it sound like a burden, but finding causes to champion is the easy part of my job, and thundering about them in the news is great fun. “Six million seniors are being deprived of meals!” I’ll scream. “Democrats want to give undocumented immigrants cars!” All the attention and theatrics of being a professional wrestler, without the bruises.

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/...px6f8Xibf-nlfA
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Old 02-06-19, 07:43 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by August View Post
There is lotta truth here:
Indeed. Brilliant approach by the author, perfect illustration of why I say big state and deep state and the caste of career politicians and supporting bureaucrats must be gotten rid of at all cost. Thanks for setting this up.

If one does not turn insane these days, one is not normal.
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Old 02-06-19, 07:52 AM   #3
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Interesting website, though also inviting me to disagree on some, but still... A world of total agreement would be boring.

Have never seen this being used in an English-speaking place, thus always had posted my own - inapt - translation. - And now I find it here:

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/...d-hitlers-rise
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Old 02-06-19, 08:01 AM   #4
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Billionaires don't troll internet forums for self aggrandizement.

The 99% should not allow politics and public service in general to be a career option. Term limits are our friend. Hopefully the true megalomaniacs and power mongers will not waste their time if they can't feed at the trough forever.

As the poster stated above, it's time to for us pions to wake up and see how detrimental it is to "our" way of life to allow these public servants to regulate their own wages, to freely choose the way they wish to manage "us" and of course laugh all the way to the bank using rules and shortcuts available to them but not the masses.
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