Billionaires Are Lying Shamelessly to Convince Us To Destroy Our Government
Billionaires Are Lying Shamelessly to Convince Us To Destroy Our Government
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy do not care whether the stories they tell about agencies are true. They’re useful for whipping up hostility to government so that regulations can be cut and the rich can do what they want.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gaurenteeing that's exactly what we will do. Hopefully i be mostly dead.
wow big take there sir
You really think those fuckheads are going to kill their cash cow?
Yawn. We are letting it happen. Remove them or else.
they can't even tie their own shoes
The government has attacked me and my people throughout my life via the war on drugs using the "justice system".
Kind of hard to be invested in a organization like that.
You think big companies are going to treat you better once law and order is out of their way? You're going to face more hardship than ever before.
While frustration with the status quo is understandable, abandoning the mechanisms of government only cedes power to those who are already disproportionately influencing it—special interests and billionaires. The government, flawed as it may be, is still the primary tool, and often the only tool, for enacting systemic change. By participating—through voting, organizing, and holding leaders accountable—citizens can challenge the status quo and push for reforms that better reflect the collective will.
Change doesn't come from disengagement; it comes from working within and improving the systems that already exist. To give up on these mechanisms is to forfeit the opportunity to make meaningful progress.
An enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Are you crazy enough to be implying that your own government is your enemy? Public administration is necessary to any kind of social coordination and the reason you were able to leave that comment
Yeah, takes like this are crazy. Is the government my enemy? In the sense that we're spiraling towards a fascist regime with an incoming administration that has members who have literally called for "a genocide of trans people," absolutely.
But that's an issue of the government falling apart due to the kinds of people who would be the warmongers lording over the Libertarian paradise that most of these people call for with their PMC, not because the government simply exists. And this branch in particular is one of the ones doing the most to protect the common person from those same warmonger wannabes.
Without branches like this, companies would be dumping chemical waste upriver of towns again.
Yes. Pick up a history book, study the constitution, the bill or rights, and you'll see that the founders were also crazy enough.
The billionaires in this country may have many monopolies but the US Government has the monopoly on violance. Counter to what Starship Troopers would lead you to believe, all power is derived from violence.
You are also wrong about public administration being necessary for social coordination and again you only need a history book to see this.
As an Anarchist I also hate the government, however this will not bring anything good. Maybe in a best case scenario they could destroyed the government and then accedently destroy themselves but thats useless without a complex network of left wing organizations that could replace the government.
I don't hate the government but I understand that we aren't friends. I don't hate billionaires or businesses but I understand that they aren't my friends. When it comes to the most dangerous entities, it's governments first, then businesses and billionaires.
Nazi Germany was a government. Volkswagen and IBM were companies, and one of the wealthiest people in that place and time was Friedrich Flick. Friedrich was a shithead but Nazi Germany didn't join the Friedrich fan club, instead Friedrich joined the Nazi fan club. Hitler wasn't trying to be a CEO or a millionaire he was reaching for government power.
