this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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The existence of billionaires is not a problem.
I agree with you about subsidies and public ownership. Coal etc shouldn’t get subsidies without public ownership. That’s not the discussion being had though, which is the futileness of Australia going “net zero” and how all it’s going to do is bankrupt us, line Chinas pockets, and make us their bitch.
The existence of Billionaires is the most diagnostically relevant symptom of the inevitable terminal nature of capitalism. Capital exists to accumulste in ever more dense focii until it is all owned by the smallest number of people. The way to prevent that is governance, unfortunately governments are susceptible to the power of capital so over time they fail to acts against the interest of capital.
If we had started on "net zero" as soon as the problem of climate change became apparent we would have had a smoother transition, every day we delayed we ensured that it would be a more traumatic process but we let the ultra rich muddy the waters for decades and now it's going to involve some pain.
If we had gotten ahead of renewables and kicked off our own manufacturing base in the 90s we could have been ahead of the game, instead we let a bunch of rich fucks get away with robbing us blind.
I had a guy the other day tell me it's a myth that fossil fuels are depleting because they aren't really fossil's they are just some mysterious exudate the Earth generates, so we can drill and mine forever as it will never go away, oh and all the changes in the weather are just made up as we sat in shorts and T-shirts with the air conditioner on in Tasmania in the last full week of April.
I can never figure out why people get so up in arms about China when the USA owns a fuck load more Australian land and business. Let's face it, the US knows they don't need to use lube or ask permission to fuck us and they are at least as bad as China in almost every respect. The main difference I see is that in China the billionaires are owned by the government, in the USA it's the other way round.