To help our poor billionaires I will take one for the team and help them reduce their burden, for a small administrative fee, I will take ownership of 10% of their fortune, I’d imagine there are several other people who gladly would agree to help in slmilar ways.
I’d obvously vet my clients based on their fortune:
A bilionaire with a fortune up to 9 billion, then I’d manage to deal with 10%
But at 10 billions to 99 billions, I could only manage to deal with 1%
Also, I would disperse the money, sharing it with the world, while at the same time gathering cameras, computers, and other things I enjoy, thus ensuring that the wealth is not just collected, but actively used and taxes are paid.
Then as the funds I have been tasked with reducing are gone, I am able to accept a new client for this most noble of task.
I was often in charge of lighting the grill when I lived at home with my parents, we used a hot air gun to light the grill, and it worked really well, we never used lighter fluid, just hot air, and during the process you easily see flames comming up from the burning coal.
Failing that, I used to be an active member of a herritage railroad with steam trains, looking into the firebox of a steam enging you clearly see the coals burning.
Where the fires were was around the North and North East of Scotland. Coal man used to come round in a truck, filthy black from the coal, load up the bunkers. I remember it being very messy, sooty, but it was less smokey than the peat fires, though coal didn’t smell as nice. There is something really nice about a real fire, though they’re not clean. I doubt many of any of those houses have now, gas came along and there was a lot of change.
So many thoughts on this. I’ll try to parse some out, one post at a time.
Part of the problem is the standard of legality. Late-stage capitalism is defined by the state serving the ownership class rather than the public. It’s why the state cares very little about wage theft, or addicts dropping dead from opioid overdose, or homeless freezing to death in sub-zero Minnesota but are arresting immigrants who are otherwise well-behaved (and paying their taxes) or raiding repair shops that fix iPhones without an Apple authorization. It’s why media agencies are so worried about piracy even as they try to lay off their development teams if they can be replaced with AI software.
Laws and the legal system work for the ownership class, not the public. Any legal efforts to strip billionaires of their wealth, or even reduce their profits is going to quickly get neutered. This is why the protections afforded by the fourth, fifth and sixth amendments of the Constitution of the United States have been thoroughly gutted with carve-outs. It’s why asset forfeiture is not only a thing, but takes more from Americans than burglaries.
And this is why law enforcement is already attacking mutual aid organizations based on licensing issues, because it’s not actually illegal but facilitates other threats to the ownership class, such as labor actions. There is no rule of law in the US. Your rights go only as far as your lawyer’s means to enforce them, and if you’re depending on a public defender, they just don’t have the time or funding.
The ownership class will (according to Marx) tremble before a communist revolution because we will have ruled out all other alternatives, though we may try a fascist autocracy and a massive genocide machine to dispose of all the underclasses, first.
And that’s the problem. The Holocaust was legal too. Leaving workers hungry and cold to the elements during the Great Depression was totally legal, and at the time communism as per the Soviet Union was looking pretty good to those of our great grandparents who weren’t Carnegie or Rockefeller. This is not our first rodeo. What the state likes (id est, what is legal ) is not a fair moral standard. Nor is what religious ministries like (id est, what is sin ). We have to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, and if we’re willing to die for our pacifistic standards when law enforcement decides we are intrinsically unlawful
This is why some are arguing the climate crisis warrants resorting to violent sabotage (say, blowing up oil pipelines) since the alternative is to let industry pollute us to global catastrophic risk (of extinction). If you want a sustainable civilization, if you want wealth and power distributed fairly, if you want a public-serving government, then you’re going to have to give up on lawful action. And if you want to stay within the confines of law, you’ll have to give up on equality, a functional state or a future.
Great reply, thank you. OP points out that the situation appears hopeless and I often leave feeling that capitalism has truly captured all the regulators and is now free to grind all value out of society. Assume we get a decent amount of the population on the same page what is the next step? Is there no room for reforms? I have a feeling that only when public discussion consistently prioritizes human well-being above all else can any progress be even attempted.
I’ve done some blacksmithing as a hobby. The two most common ways of heating the metal are a gas furnace and a coal forge. The forge normally has some sort of forced air coming from the bottom to feed the fire. The coal starts burning real smoky like, but then turns to coke and burns hotter the more air you force through it. Typically you pile some coal around the sides of the fire so it converts to coke then you scoop it into the fire as needed. Also it produces a waste product called clinker that builds up at the bottom of the fire at the tuyere (the nozzle or grate the air is forced through). It’s kind of like stone or metal and it needs to be cleaned out to keep the fire going.
While growing up my family’s home had heating stoves capable of burning both wood and coal. While we primarily burned wood, coal would sometimes be used, particularly on nights when it was really cold out as it tended to burn hotter and usually burned longer than wood of the same volume.
Charcoal for cooking on a grill is most frequent and normal. (Yes, I know charcoal briquettes are not pure coal, but some do contain coal as an additive).
Because of schooling and work, I’ve seen it burned in power plants and burned it myself in a laboratory setting (comparing bituminous to anthracite to others). My sister volunteers at a historical blacksmith shop, they have a couple different demonstration furnaces and one burns coal. There’s also a steam engine demonstrator that runs on coal, but they don’t fire that one up very often.
When I was a little kid, so young my memories are very hazy, i was taken to see the sod house my great grandma grew up in before it was torn down. They used coal for heating.
A lot of homes where I grew up still had coal fires, so yes, a lot, but its been a long while since I have seen a coal fire. Charcoal as the other commenter said i still see regularly on bbq’s .
Charcoal isn’t coal. There are several types of natural coal and charcoal, and they all have slight differences in density and chemical composition; so they probably all look a bit different when burning. Just like how different brands and types of charcoal can also look slightly different when burning (such as one kind throwing off sparks while it ignites and another that doesn’t).
I’ve never seen natural coal burning. But I’ve seen at least 3 types (not just brands but actual differences in how they are made) of charcoal burn, and they all give quite a different “show” as they do.
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