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Bill Gates says a 3-day work week where 'machines can make all the food and stuff' isn't a bad idea
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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I'm more on the side of Marx's character mask argument on people like Bill. That's why I can make shitpost comments like mine even without liking him all too much.
Can you give me a summary why character masks make this cutesy billionaire shit ok?
I’m not confident enough in my knowledge about Marx‘s ideas to be arguing about that.
I think I got a grasp on the basics, capitalism creates societal positions like owners and workers, and Bill slipped into the mask of an owner.
But to me that does not mean that humanizing the billionaire class is a good thing. I’d rather say it makes it a worse thing, as it takes away incentives for lower classes to change the system and get rid of the owner class. How do we get anywhere close to equality if people see good ole Bill and Daddy Elon, instead of the ruthless oligarchs that they are?
But like I said, I don’t have a good grasp on this theory so would be happy to be corrected/have it explained to me ;)
It's not like I'm a scholar on the subject or anything, but to my mind the key thing you said is "changing the system". That's the prerequisite for achieving a more just society. You can hate on the owner class all you want, simply getting rid of them will not necessarily overthrow societal power relations. New billionaires will rise, capitalism will not die along with the last rich white dude.
I would even go so far as to say that hating on the owning class kind of deflects from analyzing the contradictions and ideologies produced by capitalist societies themselves. This especially shows in certain sorts of reactionary political movements, who have no problem with capitalism as long as it feeds their nationalist ambitions instead of some globalist billionaire jet-set often described as Jewish.
My comment wasn't really aimed at humanizing him, I only wanted to poke fun at him although I can see where you're coming from.
Thanks for the answer, definitely is an interesting perspective! I’ll look more into the masks. And I wholeheartedly agree on the part about reactionaries using these kind of strategies. Something just throws me off about the weird folksy way we see a lot of these guys… be it Daddy Elon or Uncle Bill or Cowboy Jeff, framing them as quirky characters in the reality tv show that is our news media distracts from the real issues that each of those guys represent.