I would call 4 flowers hardly a ‘bouquet’ :D

Don’t diminish his work? The world could easily do with Amazon, or with an alternative/competitors/etc.

So Bezos himself is irrelevant in the discussion about important leaders. He wishes he was in that group.

Both definitions of free market (because regulations are never watertight), and the current system, result in the same current oligopily. So okay, maybe you can argue the semantics, the point remains: shouting for ‘free market’ does not solve the inherent, systemic issue of our current situation.

No, every single person would be a ‘thousandaire’.

383,000,000,000 divided by 335,000,000 is 1,143 dollars per person.

Oh, can you imagine a filibuster by Bill? Move over ‘roasts’ and specials, just tune in on Cspan!

10 billion? I can’t see how someone realistically would needs more than 10 million, but okay, let’s set the limit to 500 million. A ridiculous amount of money.

But 10 billion? That’s an unspendable amount.

(And to think we will see trillionaires (1,000,000x million) in our lifetime…)

A lot of text, but I am missing your point I think. Is it “he without sin cast the first stone”? That’s a bit of a moot point, since that means noone can ever criticize the current system. So…

They won’t, because greed doesn’t get punished. Even worse, the law protects money. And the sociopaths/narcissists/psychos are the ones getting rich (of course) and the don’t have empathy, care, or believe in ‘fair’.

Well, the current system is unsustainable. See history. So if you don’t care now, somewhere in the future you will. You can’t keep ignoring the problem hoping it goes away.

Capitalism = free market. Unfortunately. The current system works perfectly. It is not sustainable and the rich get corrupted more and more, but that’s capitalism for ya.

Fair? What’s that? That doesn’t exist in nature or in greedy man. Fair is a societal construct. Paper beats rock, money beats fair.

Ah, I see. Thanks for taking the time to explain!

The spoiler could be handy if people keep asking you questions like I did.

Okay, I’ll bite:

Why are you putting a by-nc-sa 4.0 copyright disclaimer in your posts? Does that actually limit/grant anything?

Serious question, I don’t understand.

Why say “unalive” here on lemmy?

Not very stable indeed. Since ‘Kok’ (2002!), NL has had 1 cabinet come to full term (Rutte II I believe). In 21 years 8 goverments. 1 full term of 4 years, so 7 in 17 years. Elections every 2,5 years on average :/

But hey, at least NL is not Belgium :D

“Going to shit”, really?

NL is one of the best countries in the world. Yes we have some challenges, e.g. stikstof or crappy goverment (e.g.toeslagenaffaire), but common, don’t be soo fatalistic.

And yes, live is getting very expensive. Which is the result of the late-game capitalistic piramid scheme we live in. That sucks, sure. But that is not solvable any time soon. Especially not by NL :D

Don’t worry, the headline is too sensational. (Which is a pet peeve of mine anyway: headlines should be objective. I can make up my own mind please)

He didn’t win a majority. He won’t form a goverment. If he does, he will be powerless in the coalition. If he does get to make laws, they won’t pass the senate (called “1ste kamer” in NL). And if he does, the government will fall anyway (which is a Dutch tradition anyway).

So a lot of ‘outs’ :)

No worries!

Don’t worry. He didn’t win the majority. Headline is too sensational.

The Netherlands has always been a centrist, or even socialist, country. That won’t change.

In fact, this could be a blessing in disguise: let him try to form a goverment. He won’t. And if he does, he will fail making policies/laws that are too far right anyway. And then after a few years, the coalition will fall apart. And we will vote again. And then he will lose this temporary win again.

I am 0% worried.

Please don’t confuse The Netherlands with Germany. In NL they speak Dutch (“Netherlandish”), in DE they speak Deutsch (German).

Confusing? Yes. But it is what it is.

(And don’t get me started about Holland vs. The Netherlands :) )

Same in Dutch: azijnzeiker (azijn = vinegar, zeiker = pisser). So that one does translate well (but not to English :))