Summary
Billionaires like Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy are spreading false claims to discredit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal agency protecting consumers from fraud and abuse.
Andreessen falsely accused the CFPB of politically motivated “debanking,” despite no evidence.
This rhetoric aligns with the “DOGE” project, led by Musk and Ramaswamy, which aims to slash government regulations and programs under the guise of efficiency.
Critics warn this effort will harm public services, benefit billionaires, and push privatization at the expense of ordinary Americans.
I like how the only “increases” in efficiency they have proposed are to completely eliminate programs instead of actually making any of them better. Maybe we should adopt this same methodology to “solve” the problem of billionaires. 🤷
Well the economy would be more efficient without the capitalist class, although I get the feeling DOGE isn’t going to reccomend we switch to a Syndicalist economy.
I’m hoping for more of a “let them eat cake” kind of moment.
Remember kids, they want the government gone because they want to become the government to enrich themselves.
More accurately they want to become the oligarchy. Like in Russia.
I think this is partly why they got the stupid gomers thinking that Russia is some fantasy zone for white right wing xtian nationalists. For the oligarchs, Russia’s set up is a dream, so they have to find stupid voters to vote against their own economic interests for backwards identity politics reasons…so they make Putin out to be sympathetic towards xtians and homophobia and “whiteness” for the benefit of the rubes in the U.S.
For the oligarchs, Russia’s set up is a dream
Until they get defenestrated
Putin’s been in power for like 20 years, and despite putting the Russian people through hell these last two years and an actual coup attempt he’s still going strong. Arguably you could say things didn’t really change much even after Joseph Stalin died in 1953, aside from secession of several nations outside of central Russia, that it’s all just one big continuation of the same system.
Russia not having changed much isn’t much of a selling point. The place has always been unnecessarily grim.
I feel like you somehow missed the vast majority of context in this conversation.
The only think I’m selling is the concept that violent uprisings are rare, and just as rarely bring about positive changes. I do hope Russia overthrows Putin just because they can’t go much lower, but to think that bringing Russia’s system to the USA might bring hope of destroying the system for possibility of something else: is totally fucking bonkers.
The US is already an oligarchy. The difference between “oligarch” and “billionaire” is whether they are from Eastern Europe or Western.
You ain’t seen a real oligarchy yet.
But wait, President Musk is the edge lord Id like to be, he’s also a genius, he wouldn’t lie.
/s
Oh no, what will we do if billionaires control the U.S. government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907
And those are just J.P. Morgan.
Is your point that this is fear mongering, or that the struggle between classes has been an ongoing fight for most of recorded history?
The latter. I mean, America was founded by a tobacco company and people so weird in their religiosity, they were kicked out of 17th century Europe.
I do think we can solve the oligarch problem. So, part of me was like, “We’ve met this challenge before, motherfuckers.” It wasn’t meant to dismissive but I’m pretty sure I could open hand slap Elon Musk and 24 of his 38 kids would feel it.
Wish I had your optimism. Hand it over.
On a more serious note, I truly believe that enriching & modernizing our education system is the way to go for dethroning our billionaire overlords. We can’t just expect slap dash imploding submarines to do all the work.
I would go down there but I think that would be destabilizing. Just hang out its all good
All billionaires must go by any means necessary.
Americans will not destroy the military or the police state. We need those to do harm against our enemies and to punish the undeserving.
You don’t understand. You make them non-functional through incompetency first, then change their purpose and voila…neither.
Then you pay Elon Musk for fleets of Tesla robots that don’t work to do your dirty work 🤣
From what I’ve seen under Eric Adams in New York, you never actually lay any of these people off. You just bring in a robot that bumbles around a subway terminal until it breaks down, while a squad of officers guard it with lethal force.
Nothing new.
Americans are easy marks. Not most of our faults, we’re poorly educated by design. Critical thinking is college level here.
Few of us have any interest in being a society, any snake oil con man has to do is tell us we’ll be rich!.. Just fuck over our fellow humans first, lol, and we’ll come a running to that ballot box to literally destroy the very safetynet under our own feet. It’s quite pathetic to witness.
Then we’ll spend decades kneeling in front of them waiting for golden showers of prosperity, when we’re not at one another’s throats out of the zero sum mindset this herp derp land of rugged individualism propagates.
Our hyper individualist, disdain for the very concept of society is gallows hilarious. It’s like bragging that we’re conditioned to let one another drown. Yay? Got to hand it to the marketers on that one.
I agree with you. Quite a lot. And yet… Rugged individualism can also make a person want to think for themselves and not herp derp with the uneducated masses. I’m just saying American individualism can, uh, in certain cases make one more prone to collectivism.
I am the result of that type of backfiring, got fed right wing propaganda about rugged individualism and the founders as a kid. Turns out that that can backfire heavily into making someone who wants to be left alone, wants to tar and feather people, and thinks some type of collectivism is the best way towards that.
Fun fact, my grandmother finds my politics annoying which makes sense given the fact she fed me the propaganda but doesnt generally argue my points since I have pointed out that she is the fucking base source of them. She copes and thinks its cause of school and not the fact that she held up violent revolutionaries and our bastard ancestors up on pedestals.
You reap what you sow, amirite? Even if sometimes you don’t know what you’re sowing.
Yep, dont really know what she expected though since our ancestors while bastards were historically progressive and the founders were violent revolutionaries including the weird internal infighting. I do wonder how many “conservative” men are like me and are just surrounded by idiots, ive met a few who completely dropped the act once I said some distinctly non conservative terms like syndicalism, armament of the masses, and bougie bastards so its certainly higher than one would probably expect.
That may be a real thing, but also we’re at this weird place where modern “conservativism” is getting morphed into a sort of semi-anti-authoritarian movement. It’s unfortunate though that the sentiment is getting co-opted by grifters rather than channeled into actual progress.
Yeah its making it weird, though I do know for a fact most of the reds in sheeps clothes ive found were lefties surrounded by idiots. But yeah a couple sub groups of conservatives seem to be going into a conserve against authority and corporations, which while a good first step in theory they are also wrapped up in false trad bullshit. I cant wait to read the sociological books on this era in a decade.
Here’s an interesting article I read recently somewhat related to this topic: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/30/the-deep-historical-forces-that-explain-trumps-win
Like specifically how/why anti-authoritarians are somehow teaming up with grifter billionaires as of late.
The problem is that there is no alternative. The two parties are just this same process at two different speeds and slight amount of decorum. People forget that Jimmy Carter was our first neoliberal president and Clinton cemented this all being bipartisan and passed the things that were seen as too far right for Reagan (NAFTA, the crime bill, was going to SS privatization until Monica Lewinsky distracted from it…). Liberals hate Trump because he is being too crass and clumsy while doing this. Democrats would rather do the same thing more slowly and with more excuses and obfuscation.
Rich people are like other rich people, more than they are like their fellow countrymen, or ethnic group, or religious group. Anything a billionaire says is good for “everyone” needs to be understood in that light: the “everyone” they see are “all the people I associate with”, meaning “other rich people”.
All you have to do is convince the ignorant, unwashed masses that you’re speaking for them, not about them, and they will let you have whatever you want.
People don’t want policies. They don’t even want demagogues. They want a set of jingling keys in front of their face. That’s what they’ll pay attention to.
Doesn’t matter, had shinies.
But wait, they’re all wearing Tshirts instead of suits on these podcasts. Are you saying that doesn’t mean they’re one of us?
And the Tankies and Anarchists both are cheering them on despite bullshitting to themselves that they’re opposed to the Billionaires.
A planet overfull of people in the Age of Information and we’ve got Billions of fucking Rubes.
Dude, this is a socialist publication and “tankies” have hated Musk before he explicitly tied himself to Trump and made liberals hate him. What are you talking about? After Clinton, the liberal orthodoxy had been that Reagan had a point with small government and deregulation.
USA based news outlet Current Affairs has a MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY. Harvard graduate Nathan J. Robinson voted for Clinton and abhors Trump with every fiber in his being.
So no, it’s not a tankie publication.
I don’t really know about this imaginary “liberal orthodoxy” group you’re talking about, but they don’t have any lawmakers or voters in the USA so they’re not relevant.
Socialist ≠ Tankie
You can be in favour of dethroning capitalist oligarchs without licking dictator boots.
I said tankie, not socialist, and that user after me conflated the terms.
It is a socialist publication, MBFC still has to give it high credibility because it publishes good stuff. NJR probably voted for Hillary in the 2016 general, but was pro-Sanders and obviously, because he is leftist and “tankie” hates Trump. You are entirely delusional for saying that socialists are more likely to side with Trump than liberals. The Democrat messaging, because of their lack of positive case for themselves just relies on equating anything less than unconditional support for the party with helping Trump.
I was literally talking about Bill Clinton and centrist Democrats. Depending on the specific time, literally either the most amount of lawmakers and congressional voters or second most.
Tankie’s support Donald Trump because China and Russia support Donald Trump. Bill Clinton reversed the federal deficit while Republicans cut taxes and deregulate. You’ve been taken for an absolute fool, your entire worldview is flipped.
Donald Trump is very anti-China and Russia post-shock therapy is a far-right neoliberal hell hole. Your worldview is flipped and twisted.
Oh, reversing the federal deficit by cutting social spending, totally progressive and not far-right Reaganism. Totally opposing the Republicans rather than being right-wing and simple enough to buy into the Republican kayfabe about the deficit…
Donald Trump is Anti-Nato and a poison to the USA, if the military allied CCP and Putin were opposed to Trump they’d be insane to do so. Also, Trump vowed to stop the ban of CCP operated TikTok.
You think Trump is anti-China for what? Tariffs? China doesn’t even pay those tariffs, and the Tariffs are as wide as Canada, Mexico, and BRICKs.
And yeah, there is nothing “small government and deregulatory” about maintaining and empowering the federal government like Bill Clinton did. Moron.
Trump is very incoherent and contradictory, but his anti-NATO positions are just that he thinks that the US should be isolationist. The liberal opposition is that, lacking a positive position or vision, liberalism needs a new Cold War to define themselves purely in opposition to other nations. Russia and China are not formally aligned, but they are willing to work together and increase trade with each other out of mutual ostracization and opposition to US demonization. Same reason Iran and North Korea are in the same axis of opposition, purely allied out of mutual interest in resisting US opposition, than any other mutual ideology or interest.
The Tariffs are still harmful to China, it is an export economy. Yes the US firms pay it, but it drives up the cost and therefore reduces sales of the products, so it is still harmful to China, even if it is still not how Trump implied it works, with the Chinese government just paying money out of their treasury or whatever. Trump started the banning of TikTok in his first term. Again, he is really incoherent and stupid, and probably backing off due to his supposed support amongst internet media.
Ah yes, cutting social spending and (Bill Clinton actually did do) deregulation means that Bill Clinton “empowered” government. Republicans would never reduce social spending and regulations. Even if it reduced the deficit, and increased the police and military. That is totally different that what Republicans would support.
Gaurenteeing that’s exactly what we will do. Hopefully i be mostly dead.
wow big take there sir
Yawn. We are letting it happen. Remove them or else.
You really think those fuckheads are going to kill their cash cow?
There’s always profit to be extracted, especially from slaves.
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Why bother with the middleman?
~Bezos
Because as it stands right now there are rules to be followed to get maximum payout. After the orange fuckwad is seated that could change but only time will tell
Sometimes history shows oligarchs breaking stuff to make more money for themselves: trade patterns, movement of people, social safety nets, previous methods of doing business.
I think we all got so used to the modern times that it’s hard to image this still happening, but on a bigger scale.
Or, it could be mostly empty threats now, designed to manipulate the markets. We saw Trump scares during his last term in office, particularly near the end, that would deliberately scare enough people to make bank in stocks and bonds. Scaring a nation is very profitable.
Probably both types of things.
they can’t even tie their own shoes
