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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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If I had a dollar for every time these types have complained about tech millionaires, I'd be a tech billionaire. They absolutely do have a problem with talented people earning lots of money and then spending it on their own personal consumption. As you can see by their complaining about Bezos and Zuckerberg and Musk.

They dislike those people because they're perceived (in Zuckerberg's case because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in Musk's case because of his culture war views, and in Bezos' case because of alleged mistreatment of warehouse workers) as culture war enemies for the mainstream left.

They don't (outside of a tiny minority of actual anti-capitalists) have a problem with Beyoncé or Michael Jordan or George Clooney or Tom Hanks or the Obamas being extremely rich. They didn't have a problem with Rowling being very rich until she became a TERF.

CEOs, executives and "the rich" in general get a lot of hate. I think the default position is that people with a lot of money are bad but they get a pass if they're part of the in-group. Kind of like the fact that they support Bill Clinton doesn't mean they're ok with powerful men banging their interns as a general principle.

In Bezos case it is about his wealth being locked in amazon stock and general fiduciary duty towards stockholders. So he both has interests aligned with stockholders and is obligated to take their best interests at heart. Unfortunately this means that labor gets the shaft. Paying the labor (especially the easily replaceable, low leverage, low wage, living paycheck to paycheck labor) the minimum and working them to the max.

That is why usually it is the state's job to put a floor on how low can you push that kind of labor.