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#ultra wealthy
where-dreams-dwell · 5 months
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It’s almost like the Usher children *knew* they weren’t going to live long and so they intentially left no marks upon the world.
Camille’s speech about how none of the kids actually makes or does anything is so startling: here is a group of people given all the opportunities and access money can buy, all of whom have had this their entire adult life, and they haven’t used it to create or build anything.
You can almost sense Roderiks disappointment in them, in his speech to Perry. He has this hyper focus on what his ‘investment’ money will fund, and says that ‘Ushers change the world’. But outside of himself and Madeline, not one of them has.
Frederick took the money, if he ever got any, and probably funnelled it back into his house or the company. By the looks of it he doesn’t have anything other than his family and his job, so there’s nothing for Roderick to invest in.
Tammy funnelled the money into a lifestyle brand, but one that wouldn’t have her at the front and centre. She scathingly reveals to Bill that she selected him to be her husband based upon his brand and marketability, showing she was ready to create this new empire but with her pulling strings in the shadows. From the outside it probably looks like she hasn’t created anything at all and that it’s all Bill, using his wife’s money. On top of this, the running gag of her storyline is that her brand and ideas aren’t even original, but are ripped off of Goop. So she hasn’t made anything new, and if Goldbug has any impact at all it will be no different to another more successful, more well know product. Hardly ‘changing the world’.
Victorine has some medial training but she looks to be a supporting role to her partner within their clinic, in which Al is the talented surgeon who people come to see and Victorine is a kind of silent partner. So she decided to go into medical devices or smart medical tech, but she relies upon the ideas and skills of others. As Camille said ‘the mesh is the surgeons, that’s why she’s fucking the surgeon’. And her medical knowledge seems to be limited if she thinks just her word and some money will move their experiments into human trials. So she also hasn’t ‘changed the world’ she’s just found someone else who was trying to and co-op-ed their ideas. You could even argue she poisoned those ideas, as Al mentions that the pain medication Victorine has been supplying looks like street drugs and wouldn’t stand up in any medical paper or research study.
Camille is, like she said, spinning furiously and going nowhere. She looks skilled in her field (from the analysis scenes we get, and Madeleine’s signing off on her PR analysis post Perry’s death) but she works from the shadows and hasn’t ‘created’ anything that wasn’t there before. There have been PR spin doctors before and there will be more to come; Camille offers nothing new ans hasn’t ‘changed the world’ in any measurable way. From what little we see of her work she hasn’t recreated a PR agency, hasn’t trained up other spin doctors under her, hasn’t created a brand or company which will outlast her. She leaves nothing behind to show what her skills or talents were.
Leo is shot down quickly when he claims he makes games: he doesn’t, he gives money to people who do. So he too will leave little to nothing behind when he’s gone. His references to past boyfriends show no long lasting relationships in his life and he has no other hobbies or pursuits we know of. Like Camille he hasn’t created a company to help with game design, hasn’t trained up others within this field he claims as his own. Even with the gaming ‘world’ it sounds like he changed very little. Fredrick’s throw away comments about Leo’s flat reveal that Leo hadn’t even had input in the decoration or style of his own home: he just latches onto the styles, ideas, aesthetic of his current boyfriend and goes with their ideas and plans. It’s such a small tiny thing but he truly has no original ideas in any aspect of his life.
And finally Perry, who’s desperate for that start up money but clearly has no plans or ideas on how to use it. He’s had a year and his main idea is an exclusive whisky bar. Even this idea, for all its crude intentions, shows his lack of vision: he doesn’t understand that to get the reputation he claims his bars would have will take time. You don’t just ‘create’ a consequent free bar celebrating decadence and privilege overnight. Reputations take time and as Madeline asks ‘what will be different about this one’ to draw people in to begin with? Studio 54 (which he compares his club to). only operated for 3 years before closing: not the smartest inclusion in an investment pitch.
To be fair to Perry though, looking at what the other siblings did or didn’t do with their loan money it seems a bit unfair that his ‘Blow job whiskey bar’ was shot down so decisively and cruelty. Assuredly Leo’s ‘video game studio for just myself’, Camille’s ‘PR agency just for me with my two assistants’, Victorines ‘medical training and clinic where I help out other surgeons’, Tammys ‘subscription lifestyle brand ripped off from a celebrity’ and Fredrick’s ‘I’d just like to work with you Dad’ were all clearly given the green light. But Perry apparently wasn’t good enough. Maybe this was a reaction to Roderick getting the news he was dying as so he wanted Perrys investment at least to actually change something, but still. He might as well give him the money either way at that point.
And I think it’s probably intended as a commentary on the ultra wealthy. Like of course people with more money than most counties have no plans to leave anything for the next generation. They have achieved their high levels of success by being solely focused upon themselves and so are honestly incapable of considering others. They are solely interested in enjoying the life they are currently living and why strain themselves to fight and build something when they don’t have to?
But it also works so well as a supernatural legacy and ironic conclusion to Roderick’s deal: he agreed that none of his bloodline would outlive him, and so none of them built anything that would.
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think4fkinonce · 1 year
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When people talk about changing things to work in favor of the poor and marginalized rather than the ultra wealthy, some knucklehead always likes to chime in "but what if I want to become rich someday? I don't want that chance taken from me!"
Trust me. The chances of you becoming rich are slim to none. The whole system relies on people struggling. That's what your insipid little dream is based on. Human suffering.
"But..but... what if I use my riches to help others?"
I doubt you will. Money tends to corrupt but even if you did, you would never ever EVER get enough money to compensate for all the damage that has been caused by the very system that allowed you to have such wealth in the first place.
Forget your stupid little fantasy of becoming the next Elon Musk. You are not special. You will never come up with an idea so genius that makes you deserving of excessive wealth. Your ego, your ideas, or even your "hard work" are not worth so much that others should have to live in squalor.
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crabtrain · 1 year
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“You know what MY pussy needs to relax after a long day in court”
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cephalog0d · 7 months
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Yeah I'm not done yet.
The thing I keep coming back to is that as much as I'm down to nit-pick things like how characters are written and plot details (and boy are there a whole infestation of nits to pick), what it boils down to is that the basic premise here shouldn't even be happening.
I get they're doing a Thing with Bruce and the after effects of Failsafe and Zur and Insomnia so sure I guess it makes sense to have him acting totally unreasonably. I'm not saying it's a plotline I'm thrilled with, but whatever. This is about everyone else.
You have half a dozen people routinely patrolling in Gotham, who've been doing it for years, who know the city and how it works, who have at least two people who are particularly inclined towards collecting and parsing data for patterns for crime fighting purposes, and none of you noticed anything amiss until Selina called and was like "Hey did you notice my neat new plan I've been doing?"
To that point, in a room full of literal canonical geniuses not a single person has thought to ask any of a dozen very practical questions that occurred to me, a non-genius reader, roughly 10 seconds after reading what The Plan was. Things like, oh, I don't know
How is this going to be a sustainable long-term effort?
For example, what happens when Gotham's wealthiest realize what you're doing and dramatically beef up their security (with tech or with actual people), making it much harder and more dangerous?
Like iirc you, Selina, have definitely had some real dicey situations as a result of your profession, and you're a lot more experienced than these people.
(Hey speaking of which isn't there a whole secret society of Gotham's wealthiest and most powerful who have access to nearly unkillable assassins? Who keeps coming back even though they keep being taken down? You think any of these people might belong to that?)
What happens when the rich folks get pissed and sic the heavily militarized GCPD on you? Don't act like they won't, I'm sure someone's squirreled away stuff from that whole Fear State fiasco.
For that matter, what happens when the costumed villainry figure out who swiped all their henchpeople and decide to object to it, presumably violently?
How many people are we talking here anyway that you're training? How many ultra-wealthy people live in Gotham? How many easily stealable things do they have sitting around to take? (As opposed to, like, other non-liquid fake assets like stocks)
How are you fencing all this anyway? Isn't that a great way to get caught? Or is everyone just stealing cash? (Or did nobody think about the part between "got the valuable thing" and "have usable money from it"?)
How on god's green earth did you ever assume this was going to end in anything other than violence?
Like of course one of your guys got killed. It doesn't matter that you told them no violence, even if they fully buy into that it only takes one panicked reaction when someone's home who shouldn't be, on either side, and there you go.
Look I get what they're trying to do. It's supposed to be a big moral quandary about whether it's right to allow some crime if it decreases other crime, the struggle between Batman being unreasonably violent and unwilling to listen and this new plan of Selina's. First of all that's a weird debate to have when everyone having it is technically a criminal to some degree. And second of all, it doesn't matter, this isn't about the morality, this is about how this plan is fucking dumb and was destined to fall apart even if Batman was still asleep and the fact that any of you are buying it just means there's a gas leak in Gotham somewhere.
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billlyharrington · 5 months
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I need Steve to tell Neil that the only reason he's not rotting in a ditch is because Billy told him not to hurt his father. If Billy hadn't, or if hr stayed silent when Steve made the request, then he would have murdered Neil in broad daylight.
What are the feds gonna do? Arrest John Harrington's son? The son of the man who has every cop in his pocket?
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gowns · 11 months
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i love that the trajectory of tom and shiv's relationship is like. you show me respect, i'm disgusted. you trust me, i think you're naive and stupid. you degrade me? now you get it. now you can have access to me. it took a minute for tom to figure that out. shiv is repulsed by his sweet speech on the stairs (underscored with the unexpectedly sentimental music, a move that reminded me of twin peaks and its tribute to / ironic remove from soap operas). but flicking her ear? talking to her like he talks to greg? biting? yeah. that's it. i'm reminded of logan roy, who demands to be roasted; then is disgusted at the weak attempts at insults. or kendall, who is spurred into actually giving a great presentation from being chewed out by karl. these roys need to be hit below the belt to function.
the ongoing cycle of degradation that is the foundation of capitalism... even when you're at the top you can't function without the degradation.... and that's why the figures who have power subsume all satire... they thrive on it... the king needs the jester... !!! "humiliate me!" it's the libidinal thrill of knowing you're trying to hurt me but i still have the upper hand!
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mrs-trophy-wife · 7 months
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gothicprep · 1 year
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whenever i tell my mom that i got a certain amount of money back in a tax return and how i'm happy about that, she's always like "that's bad actually, because that means they were taking too much money from you and..." i do not care. i have money. i got my personal little stimulus check. my biden benjis. this information means nothing to me.
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theowlseye · 9 months
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I hope OceanGate gets sued into the ground. The lack of regulation on these things is wild. Like I hope this sets a precedent to change regulations on vehicles of all kinds.
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hood-ex · 2 years
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Wait a damn minute. Remember how Bruce planned to reshape Gotham and then The Court of Owls sentenced him to die? Well Dick is doing the same thing in Bludhaven but on an even larger scale. You can't tell me the Owls wouldn't feel threatened by that.
BuT tHe OwLs aRe iN GoThAm. Baby, they're everywhere. Plus, Gotham and Bludhaven are both in New Jersey. Trust me, they would give a shit, especially when it concerns someone like Dick who double-crossed the Parliament of Owls and severely fucked them over.
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grendelsmilf · 9 months
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do people think that succession just happens to be about fox news.... do people not know how themes work. what
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cathedralcomic · 10 months
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Have you ever thought about what changes there'd be/how the characters would fit in the world if the cast of Cathedral were humans instead?
oh yeah! it would be pretty heavily different. a lot of timeline things would need to change since humans (obviously) age slower than cats. the entire concept behind the setting would have to change as well.
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spoonietimelordy · 5 months
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talking about money, in France we have this class in between the middle class and rich people which I don't feel like exist in English despite most mildly famous people being part of it. We call those people "aisé", it's not the high end of being middle class, it's above that, but it's not rich rich yet. Rich people will always be fine, they will always have the money to live comfortably even if they loose a lot of money to a bad investment. That's what separate them from "aisé" people, "aisé" people do not live pay check to pay check, they can own multiple house and go on vacations multiple times a year without a thought, but they also can loose it all. I'm putting in this category people like doctors and owners of successful companies who don't come from generational wealth, as well as a lot of nationally famous actors, those kind of people.
To me, a really poor person, those people fell rich, because they are in comparison to me. But I feel like the distinction is important because those people are not the people who hoard money, those people are the ones who actually can loose everything in a blink. And putting those people into the same socio-economic category as rich people (without even talking about ultra-rich people), reinforce the idea that rich people have worked to deserve their money and that they're not that rich actually. And it's because we lump together 2 different social class. And yes it's easy to confuse those 2 because they often interact and are in the same circle, but economically they're not the same.
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selestiials · 13 days
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one of these days, i will write a thing on how sybell and rolph's plotting expresses itself in a modern setting. surprise, it's textbook politics of respectability.
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watermelinoe · 1 year
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girlie is having a meltdown abt terfs or whatever but i just wanted to say i don't think rich people even buy dove products, this just looks like a hoarding issue
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kitkatabasis · 10 months
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I’m considering working on a Dracula retelling where Dracula is British and (pardon my MCU reference) sort of a Thor: Ragnarok Hela-esque figure trying to bring back “the Good Old Days” of open British imperialism, but I keep getting stuck at how to translate the parts of the plot that rely heavily on Dracula starting on a separate continent (the language barrier, the travel time, etc). basically this is just a little bit of venting/place for suggestions if people want to
feel free to ignore
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