“We are very proud of this! We are nobodies, we have no money, nothing!” Tommaso Cacciari, from a group calling itself No Space for Bezos, told the BBC.
“We’re just citizens who started organising and we managed to move one of the most powerful people in the world - all the billionaires - out of the city.”
The wedding kicks off later this week, and has a star-studded guest list of the rich and famous that is rumoured to include Kim Kardashian, Mick Jagger and Leonardo diCaprio, as well as several of the Trumps.
Ironic. Venice was built by people like Bezos.
Nothing was ever actually built by people like Bezos.
Nothing was ever built by a person on a computer.
Don’t diminish his work. If you want billionaires to have less influence you have to replace what they do. If you think they do nothing then you have nothing to understand.
Of all places, Venice is in the top 5 of places that cannot complain about being commercialized and rented out. Simping for Venice just shows how big the hate for Bezos is which isn’t justified when looking at the criticism:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
Where does the hate come from? He shows the limits of worker organized structures in comparison. All the unemployed could have built Amazon by themselves. The focus should be placed on finding new forms of cooperation, not on hating Bezos.
He hordes more wealth than almost anyone else in the entire world. The man could fucking cure cancer and I would still hate him and consider him a horrible person. Nobody needs or deserves that much money when so much of the word is struggling to get by. And nobody makes that much money without exploiting others.
He owns shares of Amazon, not money. If he sells those he loses his influence.
People are struggling because markets are distorted, including preventing free global movement of people. Figure out who does that before hating Bezos.
Awww poor Jeff
And that shows you don’t understand the power of “just owning shares”. It’s a whole fucking shit load better than having income or money. He can take whatever loan he wants with his stocks as collateral. He skips out completely on doing anything helpful to society whatsoever. People are struggling because of this system, yes, and people like Bezos are happily living grand off of it
Of course. But Bezos taking loans is only slightly connected to keeping people poor. As far as I know Bezos also hasn’t financed a regime change for some mining operations.
Other corporations depend much more on keeping people poor. They don’t get the attention because they are not household names. It’s not good that richness has become the measure for evil, and not evil itself.
Look up “criticism of Amazon” or anything like that and you’ll see he isn’t just a good guy who happened to make a big benevolent corporation. From antitrust practices, to design theft, especially from POC, counterfeit products, special tax deals designed to contribute as little as possible, a significantly negative effect on the environment and more. Add to that Bezos’ personal relationships with business and government leaders that are actively trying to keep people poor, including Trump. It’s not the good-guy corporation you think it is.
And yes, when you’re worth 220 billion dollars and you do nothing positive with it whatsoever, you’re problematic, bordering on evil. It’s greed. If Bezos gave a flying shit about humanity, imagine what kind of change he could actually do.
Of course. As the saying goes, there are no innocent billionaires.
Yes, that would be nice. But it totally shifts the blame away from regular people. We live in a democracy. This entire debate could have been spent on how to improve the world. If we don’t have the money, why don’t we come up with a plan and ask Bezos for the money if needed? Actually there are so much taxes that society can easily outspend Bezos.
His work, his sole accomplishment, is maximizing value extraction. That’s not nothing, it’s less than nothing because it’s a monumental net negative for the rest of society.
Maximizing value extraction is not bad as long as there is a free market. That’s what drives competition and brings prices down. Of course, employees and customers need other options for this to be fair.
Unless you organize a cooperating economy, maximizing value extraction is inevitable.
Besides, you shouldn’t ignore the work he does.
Yes it is. It is inherently exploitative.
How is it exploitative? If you get market rates for your work or pay market rates for the stuff you buy, you don’t lose in transactions.
Those who maximize value extraction optimize resource allocation and bring prices down for everybody.
Lemmy, the software you’re using right now, was built by a person on a computer. As was the operating system your computer uses to function.
As was the management structure, leadership culture and selection of markets by Bezos.
People on computers work, but so do CEOs.
Don’t diminish his work? The world could easily do with Amazon, or with an alternative/competitors/etc.
So Bezos himself is irrelevant in the discussion about important leaders. He wishes he was in that group.
You simping this hard for Bezos for free is the really sad part.
To me, the sad part is that I am not simping, but nobody recognizes that. Like a bull in a bullfight, people attack billionaires without seeing the dagger.
Especially Amazon, people could have recognized the idea and created a cooperative competitor. Bezos is a billionaire because they haven’t.
There are four options for the billionaire situation. Do nothing, organize a new party, civil war or starting competing businesses.
Hating Bezos without understanding his skills looks like the first option to me. In a world of flooding zones, that makes me wary.
People like Bezos actively prevents competitors from emerging. You equating someone who received $245,000 from his parents with any random guy who could have done the same is culpably dense. His skills are being the business equivalent of a cancer that kills its host in order to grow.
And yet, what other options exist right now?
But starting another regular company would end up with yet another billionaire, if successful. To avoid billionaires, businesses have to be structured and financed differently anyway.
Ok, Jeff
or perhaps, built by people enslaved by the likes of bezos.
keep on simpin’ serf.
Keep on serfin’ simp.
You need people to organize and give directions. People on their own are trapped in the routines they have. There will never be built something pretty like Venice without leaders. All you do by making the recognition of leadership toxic is that there won’t be leaders [that you can choose or build up] who organize a better life for you.
To add to this:
Venice is the historic city of global trade that is filled with tourist second homes. To celebrate with the inhabitants is simping on its own. The working people don’t live in Venice anymore. People who object are other rich people who feel diminished because they cannot rent the city themselves.
The elephant in the room is the introduction of the tourist ticket for Venice. How can Bezos rent the city? He must have bought all tickets for the day. Now, was the ticket introduced by his influence to make that possible? That would be something to object, not the renting itself.
Jesus Christ, this is the worst case of billionaire apologia I’ve ever seen. You are just going to town on those boots.
Edit: Great Man Theory is the worst kind of cuckoldry, you fucking simp.
Do you see what you did?
You are missing my point entirely.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
My argument is that there is no need to rely on divine leaders. Any leader could do. But for that, a climate must exist that fosters leaders so that some are available. By being toxic, the left eliminates their leaders and they end up as customers of Amazon, which they despise, but cannot change.
To be fair, his “JC vs Great man” reply was funny. Not enough, but funny.
rome conquered and enslaved millions of people. then became so beholden to consuming that they consumed themselves. Then they allied with the nazies. They are definitely very pretty people though.
The mongols surpassed Italy and rome by a wide margin, its strange how no one worships them. could it be? Could be it because they weren’t white?
keep on simpin serf. The time for emperors and kings should be over, but here we have ‘little people’ begging for the ruling class to just spit a little of their bread crumbs into their mouths. its ridiculous
As far as I know, the mongols ended slavery. That’s the big no no.
Yes, like simping for the people of Venice who are allowed to live in the pretty city.
But telling me to not simp for Bezos. Instead U should beg in style and protest for more handouts.
However, I am not simping for Bezos but pointing out the double standard for Venice.
Bezos is just one of the richest people. He hasn’t created the system. Others did and do. Focussing on Bezos isn’t helpful to understand what needs to change.
You earlier “If it wasnt for people like bezos venice wouldn’t exist!”
you now; “yeah bezos isn’t to blame its the system!”
hes part of the system, literally you are going to bat for a rich man then backing down to save face. “please spit in my mouth, bezos!” is your thesis and don’t even try to pretend anymore. I would say its you who has double standards here but its clear you have no standards.
keep licking that boot.
Yep. Dude bought the system.
In the same way that it is true that Bezos hasn’t built Venice but the workers. Bezos organizes the trading but he is just new money. His influence must be much smaller than his wealth.
Bezos organizes the trading?
he absolutely does not, he pays people to do that for him. You fool.
Ok
Hey, we got a case of oligarch bootlickin’ here!
This is the most disgusting comment I’ve seen on Lemmy. People got priced out, but we sure need leaders so lets bring more rich assholes in to fuck everyone.
The point is that if you foster the leaders yourself you are not led by rich assholes but by people that you choose and who respect you.
He is not a leader. A guy who lets empliyees die in tornadoes because he just can’t let them off work is not a leader. A guy who polices employees so aggressively that they have to pee in bottles is not a leader. A guy who funds the celebration of a technoauthoritarian state is not a leader. A guy who violates antitrust laws to stamp out small businesses is not a leader. He’s a scourge and should be shunned. He’s extremely bad for society and probably our whole species.
Yes, if you want to define it like that.
No matter how one looks at that assertion, it’s just plain fucking wrong.
Did slave owners build Venice? No. Rich Romans? Also no. Someone who isn’t a slave owner but worked all his subjects to the bone? Nope as well.
You have it backwards. Do I miss the /s?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_slave_trade
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_Venice
Bezos doesn’t come from a rich family
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
Bezos is a rich trader, like the Venetians. Compared to them he doesn’t look that bad.
Downvoters, these are facts and OP is wrong. You should’t build your convictions on lies. Find valid reasons for the things you want to do.
Venice as a city predates the independent republic by roughly 2 centuries
By your logic, Bezos built Washington, which is where Amazon started
By your logic, people visit Venice for the fisher village huts.
If you don’t see what the elite does, how can you live in an equal society? Then nobody does those things and the society crumbles or those who do become the next elite.
It’s the people who build stuff. The elites control the resources, but they don’t build shit. Ordering stuff to be done doesn’t make you a builder, just as commissioning a portrait doesn’t make you a painter.
People can come together and build big things without elites, kings or bosses sitting down and telling everyone what to do. Just because societies that greatly limit the power of the elites no longer exist, having been crushed, doesn’t mean they don’t work.
I know. I was not prepared for a .world community to demand and not oppose that way of thinking.
Fine with me.
Could. Hating Bezos instead of coming together and start building is the mental trap I try to point out in my other comments that is not accepted. Right now people need commissioning if they keep thinking the way they think, and they don’t want to hear it.
There are pockets that work, like Wikipedia or Burning Man. But they grew slowly and are not blueprints to get other projects done.
Lmao if you say so, Ayn Rand