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Bill Gates calls Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians abroad ‘insane shit’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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Why is this american obsession on weighting the value of men with the money they made? Musk is an idiot regardless of his money or how he made it.
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not American, and I don't place much value on enormous wealth accumulation. I'm just acknowledging that there is a difference between gaining enormous wealth with a hefty leg up from family wealth versus doing it from scratch, like growing up in poverty for example.
You can't get that amount of money without exploitation. If you start from 0 it just means you have to actually work for it but end result is still the same.
I agree. If you started from 0 and got rich you became a class traitor.
you should define the word rich better in this context. Personally I have started to think word "rich" as negative thing, someone who has more than they need at expense of others, but I dont think that is very common way to think.
I think a lot of people don't consider the exploitation angle. Often they see someone like Bill gates as having invented windows and see his wealth as earned by goods provided that they don't think would otherwise exist. It's what capital teaches is the justification for wealth
You're right, the term is very subjective. The lower bound for me is owning multiple properties, owning a business and making money from the labour of others.
Well, its okay to make some money from others labour, as long as its fair. But way it currently works, that some business owner gets majority of the value of someones work is not okay. That is just benefitting from being on stronger position than someone else and ultimately isnt much different from taking from someone by force. Its not like you can refuse to participate as people need to have money to live.
So...anyone with a 401k
Quite a lot of americans equate money with success and ability. Elon musk must be the smartest guy because dumb people dont make money like that.
I think its reverse engineering though, americans see his worth, and work backwards claiming all his choices are genius and well thought out.
It's absolutely reverse engineering. People want to believe that the world is a meritocracy, and that means believing that those who have succeeded at meritful.
People avoid internalizing that the world is a kleptocracy, because that would mean having to confront that if they want to get ahead, they'll have to actively amd knowingly fuck other people over, and most of us are not psychopaths
People who have fully bought into the hard work+talent=success line cannot stand to have that belief shaken by realizing that someone dinner than them lucked/exploited their way to more success than they did.
Americans equal money with power, the more power you have, the more value, etc. That is basically it.
Money = Speech don't ya know.
Mo' money is a bigger voice in their system. Other countries call that "corrupt to the core".
Its not just power, its ego and success. If McDonalds started paying 30$ an hour it would suddenly be a job that signaled success, despite nothing changing about the job duties.
Thats what's happening here, elon is rich so he must be smart, and now people are jealous and emulate him. The OP is right though, money or not he's an idiot.
because maybe those american values are fundementally poisoned?