Political Memes

Here's my personal fave:

20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

Exodus 21:20

The Gospel according to Capitalism

Greed is good

This one in Matthew feels relevant here too:

19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[a] destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

You joke, but that's close to how the rich see money. It's a score keeping device.

In France, they're buying medias to bring about a fascist state and using islamophobia and the fear of the enemy from within to justify an increasingly violent police state.

I guess they are bored and need to ruin something else.

In their eyes, they sort of are. “Investing” your money into stocks gives you the feeling you’re giving back to the world with it, while also giving you the feeling it’s secure, still belongs to you, and is earning you more.

Meanwhile, the people actually living this ideal create trusts for philanthropic efforts. They wave goodbye to the money completely, asking for no return but worldly benefit. There’s not nearly enough people like that in the world though.

It's not just about power. For many, it's also a way to keep score, to feel better about themselves compared to others. (Not trying to justify; it's still a sickness.)

I mean Elon Musk once scoffed and told sponsors to go fuck themselves for daring to pull their advertising from Twitter. I don't think he understood that it was business and that some businesses run by running ads paid for by sponsors.

It's like he forgot what a business was...

Although I am agnostic atheist, I do wish that heaven and hell are real so that the greedy are given due punishment in the afterlife.

Being a billionaire should be listed in the DSM as a mental illness.

Maybe you should read "saving" as "hoarding". The skeet (tweet?) Is making a point about their odd motivation to continue to accrue unimaginable wealth far beyond the point where the costs of their wildest dreams are trivial. The whole while having the ability to literally end world hunger many times over after subtracting those costs.

Thank you - well explained.

It's also interesting to think of the stocks that the various oligarchs and politicians control or own as a backdoor for institutional capture. You want Trump on your side and his administration making decisions that benefit you and your companies? Easy - just buy some of his BS stock and use it as leverage. You won't even have to push it - he'll do what you want because that's how his underdeveloped brain perceives existence - as a series of quid pro quo agreements.

Of course, it's not just stocks. He's created so many other avenues to bribe him. It's bonkers.

And selling could have important impacts on the company itself in certain situations

At least in D&D no dragon hoards that much, and the chromatic dragons have a legitimate reason for it.

The wealthiest dragon you'll encounter in any fantasy setting, we aren't talking about Shadowrun or Cyberpunk where the real life billionaires are dragons, is an ancient red wyrm. They will have 1.5 million to 5 million gold pieces of treasure. 1 gold piece is ⅒ of an ounce of gold. Therefore the absolute wealthiest dragon in all of D&D and Pathfinder is only worth about $1,200,000,000, and that is only one of them. 99.99% of all other dragons would be worth less than a billion.

The chromatic dragons have to eat their hoard just before they die. If they don't have enough gold to pay Tiamat, then she eats their souls.

Also, gold is a nice soft bed according to every metallic dragon I have encountered.