crumbshot

It would be done by statute. The only grounds necessary would be that Parliament is sovereign.

Of course, it would need a majority in both Houses, and in practical terms would require popular approval too.

> Some are bringing up points on wealth and for me that feels like it stems from envy which is also pretty ugly.

This idea that criticism of wealth must be just down to envy is really quite a tired stereotype.

It makes even less sense when there's a hereditary class of people whose wealth and power is constitutionally guaranteed and, as we've discovered, who use corrupt means to maintain this by intervening in the lawmaking process to neutralise threats to their income.

It's not envy to realise that there must be a better system than this.

As I understand it, it is quite possible to do this within the rule of law. To avoid the monarch refusing to enact this, it would need to be done in two stages:

1. A new Royal Assent Act, that makes assent automatic upon a bill passing both Houses. Assuming this in itself receives assent, it would remove the monarch's power to veto or refuse a bill (a power that hasn't been used for over 300 years anyway).

2. A Republic Act, that transfers all powers, abolishes the monarchy, strips them of their wealth, exiles them, etc.

Where is the debasement here?

Removal in what sense? Are you seeking clarification on why the monarchy should be abolished, or the benefits of imposing exile?

I'm not advocating for that, if that's what you're implying.

"Targeted for removal" wasn't intended as a euphemism for death squads or anything like that.

It's a model of monarchical disposal that has been successfully used by Germany, Greece and Romania.

Letting them stay and keep all their vast wealth would risk allowing them continued influence.

Also, the birth of the United Republic should involve a peaceful transfer of power, so doing this in the French style is completely out of the question.

Indeed, and they should all be targeted for removal.

One of the key problems in many human societies is that most of the wealth and power ends up concentrated in the hands of the undeserving few, who use it to further enrich themselves and their families, at the expense of everyone else.

The underlying issue is that they intervened in Britain's lawmaking process for their own personal benefit.

It is of course not the only reason to abolish the monarchy. Just one more for the list.

If you're suggesting a purge of the wealthy upper classes whose income is mostly derived from unproductive rent-seeking, then yes, I agree. Good idea!

Corruption amongst other members of the upper and ruling classes is not a good reason to avoid dealing with the most undemocratic of them all.

Also, the wider principle is that there shouldn't be an untouchable hereditary ruling class at all. It's an absolute nonsense.

Abolishing the monarchy would also obsolete the Sovereign Grant, so all the surplus income from the Crown Estate would go to the state without the royal family leeching their cut.

That said, there are some Duchies that are privately owned. In my opinion, these should be seized by the state during the establishment of a republic - if we're going to abolish the monarchy, we need to go the whole way and strip each member of all their inherited wealth too.

It's the very least they deserve, and would provide a much needed clean slate for New Britain.

> I've tried to explain to a lot of people the amount of influence and control that the monarch actually holds. I'm not sure that this is such a bad thing.

She used her powers to get an exemption from transparency laws with regards to her personal wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que..., and Charles did the same to ban his tenants from purchasing freeholds: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/prince-charl....

This constitutional corruption of our laws by the most privileged family in Britain is indeed a bad thing, and one of the many reasons why the monarchy should be abolished.

Also, every member of the royal family should be stripped of their wealth and exiled.

I read it as a lament that our economies are so vulnerable to the actions of a relatively small number of large corporations. Including the idea of certain entities purportedly being 'too big to fail'.

Not sure if that was the intended connotation though.

This is far too low. A fine large enough to destroy the company (as was effectively done to Purdue) would have been the only palatable outcome. And even more importantly, legal repercussions for all their employees who were personally responsible for this.

All this settlement achieves is 'a cost of doing business', as they say. It's not punishment or deterrence. McKinsey and other companies like them will do similar in the future, and simply pay it off, again.

I think it is, and it's also a useful conversational marker.

As soon as someone starts complaining about "woke" and "SJWs" and "cancel culture" and so on, I know I can just switch off and disengage, as anything they have to say on the topic will be some reactionary bullshit they're parroting at me.

Their suggestion of creating a brand new competing social media network is not a realistic solution to Facebook treating its workers badly. Your suggestion of just creating some AI to do all the work is similarly unrealistic.

> What your scenario changes is that the labor supply gets to be much more selective about the job they take.

Indeed, that's the point: to move away from the current system of the wealthy coercing and exploiting the not-wealthy.

> If you want mods to earn more create a social network and pay them more.

This is an entirely unrealistic and unhelpful suggestion.

No that just ends up redirecting your browser to google.com with the search query, it's equivalent to going there and typing it in yourself.

Which if you were to give up Google Search, is something you wouldn't be doing (or would have blocked).

> Google Search (including via DDG)

DuckDuckGo doesn't use Google Search, so you'd be okay there.

But if both Apple and Google remove your app from their stores, at least Android has a fairly straightforward method for your users to install it straight from your website.

For iOS your users will have to sign it themselves (but still via Apple, who could block that too) with their own developer account, just to get a time-limited install. Or, even worse, use a jailbroken device to work around all this.

On Android, it's still much easier to install apps from outside Google's app store (just change the "install unknown apps" setting, download the .apk file, and open it) than it is on iOS.

> At that level of wealth, most of the money doesn't actually exist. It just represents control.

I agree, and that's part of the problem as well.

But also, to use your example of Bezos, he cashes out a few billion dollars of shares per year for his own personal gain. All while Amazon's workers (whose hard work enabled him to do this) are being treated so badly.

I don't think that was the main thrust of their comment, which comes across as mostly a selfish appraisal of a perceived risk to their riches ("only be worrying about who's about to take it from you or whether your assets are going to be worthless in the next financial crash"), rather than concern about others.

Interesting, but also disgusting. No-one should be a billionaire.

Having that much wealth and power concentrated in the hands of such a few is a societal sickness.

They're effectively stealing a disproportionate amount of our world's resources for their own pleasure, at the expense of everyone else.

> Now, you can be making a couple million a year and only be worrying about who's about to take it from you or whether your assets are going to be worthless in the next financial crash.

Are you being serious? If you're lucky enough to somehow be paid a couple of million dollars per year, you could work for a small few years and retire without any financial worries at all.

That's an absolutely massive salary, and I don't understand how someone could be getting that amount of income and have any reasonable grounds to be worried about their financial situtation.

The climate catatrosphe that looms upon us all has been caused by individuals and organisations using resources as they wish.

What we've ended up with is a planetwide tragedy of the commons - and free markets aren't going to solve this. They can only continue to exacerbate it.

This is a decent, well-cited article on the subject: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

It summarises the differences in global greenhouse emissions between various types of food, and the contributions of the different sources of these emissions - farming, transport, land use change, and so on.

You provide a good example of this sort of rationalisation: the benefit to the individual is highlighted, the collective harm is ignored.

Probably the same way most people rationalize consuming the flesh of slaughtered animals, despite the massive negative environmental impact that has, and the better alternatives that are available.