You must log in or # to comment.
Listening to Behind the Bastards, I’ve learned that there is a direct line between Trump and the alt-right to Nixon, with a very heavy rest stop at Reagan.
Almost every shitty thing you can think of has its roots in Reagan.
Goes back to Wilson at least. Probably could argue that Jackson and Polk didn’t really help things.
Fuck Wilson. Among other things he has done in his life, the first movie shown in the white house was birth of a nation kkk propaganda.
That’s just one of the lesser evils he committed IMHO. He used the office of the presidency to re-found the KKK segregate the federal government, and erect a ton of statues of traitors
Owning class don’t like free solutions. Simple enough.
I never understood why the owner class didn’t transition to renewable energy, especially solar.
If you corner that market you will make trillions, especially if you can push the fossil competitors out of the market. You already have the capital to fully research everything from materials science to construction/deployment techniques. You have the petroleum resources for manufacturing (of which some, at least these days, are still needed). And unless the sun stops shining you just take in money as long as you maintain the product, far cheaper and messier than the mass scale of oil refinement and fuel these days. It’s more infinite money than leveraging unrealized gains for rolling loans.
Why are they so obsessed with the current status quo? Too much work? Too much risk? Someday the oil will run out…
Corporate boards have resulted in enough businesses that could having someone highly invested in petrofuels having the power to stop them
In Florida, power companies love solar, so long as it’s them using it and selling it to you. If I put solar on my house, FPL successfully lobbied for a law stating I need a million dollar insurance policy payable to FPL for any accidents AND home insurance can deny hurricane coverage if there are roof panels on my house.
Fuck everybody and everything in this greedy ass state
What the fuuuuuuuuck?
Camping solar/mobile gear is the solution I’m working on
Firms driven by transient investors act as entities independent from society entirely. Each one is focused only on maximizing profit to please investors; the investors, likewise, are only interested in the next quarter, because at any given time they can take their investment and sell it. They are simultaneously putting money into renewables, but only insofar as it is profitable; as long as fossil fuels (still the larger portion of energy generation in most places) are more profitable, they will put more money into it. A self-feeding cycle which starves renewables.
The thing that is sometimes misunderstood by a disdain for the owner class is the incoherence of the owner class. They don’t make plans. Even their alignments are only because of common interests (such as ‘let the ultrawealthy investors make more money from their shitty investments’), not ideology or long-term plans.
“Firms driven by transient investors act as entities independent from society entirely.”
This just made something click in my understanding of why this stuff is so awful. I feel like I already understood it before, but now I feel like that’s deeper
I think there is more to it. I think it’s more about the power. How do you control someone who has their own solar panels? Several other reasons that only sick people would think of, like wanting to kill off the plebs,so they have less competition.
They’re working on it. There was some guy going around our neighborhood schilling some solar scheme where they install solar on your house but you still pay them an electric bill.
The way I’ve seen it is that Solar Panels of quality can last for 10 years. Electric cars also need less maintenance like oil changes, mufflers, etc. So, the thought of having a system where you don’t need to re-purchase or even talk to someone that would “fix” the thing for the better part of a decade is untenable. The same reason most things are going subscription service, even if one is not needed. They need to be constantly rolling in money, or they don’t feel whole.
Solar panels last way longer than 10 years. Usually they have a 25 years warranty on them that means that after 25 years they are still producing at least 80% as much power as they were producing when new!
The thinking probably goes along the lines of:
- The oil will run out “long” after current oligarchs are dead so they don’t care
- Even if it is diminishing sooner than anticipated, would you want to be the one to tell oligarch #236311 that his oil fields and money are about to run dry, pissing him off? They’re surrounded with sycophants and suck ups who have their own money wells to run dry
- Solar and other renewables have just enough real problems with them that aforementioned sycophants can blow it out of proportion and frame them as bad investments.
Systematic capitalism plus human greed heavily incentives short term thinking
Thankfully you’re overestimating the actual number of oligarchs. There are only just over 2500 billionaires, not almost 250,000.
Still just over 2500 too many
Any number greater than zero is too many billionaires.
