Not "we", it's the billionaires.

They produce the goods that we consume. We are the ones working in their marketing department, building their online stores, streamlining consumption. Then we go home and buy stuff we don't need.

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n4r9 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

They only "produce" anything in an abstract economic sense.

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treyd 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The productive capacity for the goods we consume was built by average people. Billionaires only exist to skim off the top, and are not a required component of the process.

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nicbou 2 days ago | parent [-]

What does this have to do with the discussion?

	▲	treyd 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Refusing the above claim that billionaires produce the "goods that we consume".

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hashstring 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Honey, wake up, we’re living in the finance capitalism era. Also in this part of history, the majority of the goods you consume are NOT produced by your overlords. The goods are produced by labour. Not by speculation or by private ownership of the means of production.

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nicbou 2 days ago | parent [-]

Starting a comment with honey does not prime the reader for polite conversation. Mind the HN guidelines.

	▲	hashstring 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It’s a pretty common meme template. It shouldn’t prime a reader for impolite conversation, especially given the HN guidelines.

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6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My gas fired central heating is set to 20 degrees C. So if not 'you', then definitely 'me'!

	▲	Nextgrid 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If money wasn't an issue both of you can replace whatever polluting heating solution you have with a more environmentally-friendly one.
	▲	antonvs 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It should be surprising that so few people are willing to acknowledge this. Unfortunately, it's not.

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Arnt 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's odd, in a way — when you have a well-paying job, you have nothing from an accounting viewpoint and the owners of the organisation have a valuable asset. The skill that you contribute to the organisation is accounted for as a financial asset belonging to someone else. There are good reasons for that, the accounting viewpoint makes sense for accounting purposes.

In everyday parlance we say that you have a job and you have the skill, and in reality you actually are free to take your skill elsewhere. Your skill plays a part in the market value of your employer, but you stay or leave at your whim, the "owner" of the "asset" doesn't decide.

Those billions are IMO mostly an accounting fiction — it's better to think of it in the way that our ordinary language suggests, where your actions are yours, your skills are yours, etc. If you drive to work, that's your emissions based on your choice, it's not a choice made by someone whose great wealth is mostly an assessment of your skill and earning power.

If you build a house and need some concrete for that, CO₂ is emitted in a concrete factory, but I think it's better to regard the emitted CO₂ as a choice made by you than as emissions by the billionaire who owns the factory. Even if the accountants assess the value of the factory as a large number.

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latentsea 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Who gave them billions of dollars?

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functionmouse 2 days ago | parent [-]

Trillions of dollars worth of propaganda, lobbying & outright bribery, regulatory capture, psychological social conditioning etc say Americans don't stand a chance to change the status quo. These things are set in motion empirically, you have got to understand.

	▲	latentsea 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Trillions of dollars regular folks purchases produces billionaires.

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maelito 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No, the average US citizen destroys the planet. They would too if the economy was owned by large corporations owned by the state. Which is almost the same now that the country is run by oligarchs.