#caustic

You can tell Bezos's argument for 50% paying zero income tax was good exactly because Hasan Piker disliked it: to the extent that communists are echochamber pseudooccultists (many such cases) the public mood shifting in their direction makes the public/private separation less maintainable. The idea of you as having secret wisdom is attractive and being the source is profitable, so the problem leveraged being addressed in some way is experienced as threat and so as unpleasant, if that's your position (I recently found interesting the output of Claude Opus 4.8 Max[Effort setting: bottom left if you're using the app] when asked "How might a theory of nociception be articulated with autistic sensory sensitivities as the type example?", which harmonized well with everything I already believe).

As much as I have a desire for Jeff Bezos to fall down the stairs (I was unhappy to hear 'we're injuring our workers so quickly the labour pool's being exhausted', for one reason), Amazon is clearly well-constructed, and used because it's useful (not to mention, 'booka warehouse & ship well, and having everything available would let us dominate necessarily-having-only-so-much-range physical-premises-bookstores' is an insight I was irritated to not have had before it was pointed out, living in a post-Amazon world). Not buying things on Amazon despite Amazon having them cheaper demonstrates wealth, because it is helpful to people in general to have more money and more so the poorer you are, and burning money on a point of pride is an obvious vice (esp. IF YOU FUCKING TELL PEOPLE ABOUT THIS: AM I SUPPOSED TO FALL TO MY FUCKING KNEES AND START SUCKING? I WOULD'VE HAD TO LEND YOU MONEY LESS FREQUENTLY IF YOU'D DEALT WITH THE REALITY OF YOUR SITUATION, FRIEND WHOSE YEARLY INCOME WAS MORE THAN 150% MINE EVEN AT THE TIME. WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU GET OFF? [uh, love you, even so, but that was irritating]).

An example: the arrangements that make a family home a good asset are the ones that raise homelessness rates. The return of that asset flows from the immiseration of those unable to purchase property, and suppresses productive investment: that people later to purchase a house must spend yet more to become homeowners is the way the gains to current homeowners are realised, so the pricing-out of the less-wealthy is a necessary effect, meaning the marginally-less-able-to-accrue-wealth being driven to the streets is an inevitable consequence.