526

Namedrop
Posted on August 28, 2023 by David M Willis

526 thoughts on “Namedrop”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    “or through artificial scarcity”

    [was gonna name specific things but had second thoughts about inserting keywords here]

    1. clif

      They’ve been charging Carla a daily parenting fee, paid for out of her share of the family business. In theory she could stop paying it now that she’s legally an adult, but she knows that they would take her to court and collect back interest.

    2. Nicoleandmaggie

      Usually monopoly/monopsony (the latter of which is wage theft).

    3. Quirdry Tawks

      Oh, I have no qualms with being specific. RENT. Housing units are being kept vacant to lessen the available supply. That’s why I’m about to experience my second forced move in two years.

  2. Corronchilejano

    Carla has an “adaptive” social filter.

    1. Angel

      i don’t think carla’s ever had to have a social filter/never rly ‘spared’ anyone from her honest words lol

  3. shadowcell

    Dumbing of Age Book 14: “My Parents Are Good People!” Impossible

    1. Thag Simmons

      I love this tension with Carla’s parents where they are by all impressions genuinely excellent parents for their daughter yet almost certainly responsible for more actual harm than the rest of the parents in this cast combined

      1. clif

        What harm would that be? Engineering communications devices and selling them at a price people are willing to pay?

        1. wwwhhattt

          What metals are used in their devices and how they were sourced? Who do they sell the data they’re collectung to? What are the conditions in the factories producing the devices? The pollution in their creation, use and disposal? Is trans rights their only intervention in politics? To start with some active ones anyway

        2. milu

          Lobbying, bribing, union-busting, cutting costs at the detriment of mine/factory/retail workers, collaborating with authoritarian regimes, funding research downplaying their industry’s harm, evading taxes, patenting applications of publicly-funded science, suing journalists and whistle-blowers,… idk, stuff like that maybe?

          It might help if we stopped calling them billionaires and started calling them oligarchs like they do in Russia.

        3. Steamweed

          The Rutten oligarchs.

        4. Wizard

          That would in fact be deeply unhelpful. There are profound differences between American billionaires and Russian oligarchs. Americans (mostly) helped produce something actually valuable. (Even if you don’t consider it valuable plenty of other people do.) Their effect on the economy is neutral at worst. The oligarchs are looters who got their wealth mostly through political connections and did nothing to create that wealth. They’re an active drag on the larger economy.
          Russia has vast natural resources and a reasonably well educated populace. If they had ever had a decent government the country would be fabulously wealthy. Instead they went from the tyranny of the czars and boyars to the disaster that was the Soviet Union to the current crop of gangsters.

        5. Bruno

          And they see your dreams, and feast on your screams…

          This level of self-aggrandising delusion is scary. Jesus, the politicians have you whipped.

        6. Jo_cubstar

          No kidding. Geeze.

        7. jflb96

          Oh, they got you good

        8. milu

          @wizard not gonna respond to your entire comment just the first sentence: “unhelpful” to who?

        9. modulusshift

          of the >750 American billionaires, by your reasoning 376 at least helped produce something actually valuable, worth over a billion dollars? Can you name just one? and I’d even say “helped” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, surely they must be the main contributor to their achievement if they deserve to be the main beneficiary? but I’ll allow it for now.

        10. vibewitch

          Ah yes the Russian Oligarchs that are totally different from American Billionaires because they, *checks notes* were created by American Billionaires in their own image to prop up the Yeltsin government, because shock therapy was extremely unpopular, and the electorate was threatening to elect a social democratic coalition government?? That can’t be right. It must be the Slavic Brain-Pan that hews toward authoritarianism!!!

        11. Jo_cubstar

          As a complete aside, electro-convulsive therapy has come magnitudes in terms of research progress and success rates in recent years, and I 100% thank it for being the reason I am still alive today. *shrugs*

        12. Uly

          Are you getting paid to shill for them? If not, maybe you should stop doing that.

        13. The Oracle

          Check out this cool lollipop website!

        14. HueSatLight

          Still can’t tell if this is a bit.

        15. Wizard

          Why, the nerve of those evil masterminds!

    2. Nono

      Dina’s parents seem good.

      1. Mym

        One set out of, what, thirty five?

        1. drs

          Dorothy’s parents seem good.

          Stacy seems good. And Joe’s dad seems decent as a father, if an unreliable romantic partner.

        2. Smallmoon

          additionally, Joe Sr. should get SOME social capital in that he is, as far as we know, TRYING to be a one-woman man this time around.

    3. Needfuldoer

      Lets’ face it, Carla’s parents are Rutten to the core.

      (Well, at least her dad is.)

  4. EmTaya

    I love Booster so much

    1. Freemage

      Meh. Booster’s utterly misusing the term “wage theft”, here. There’s dozens of unsavory tactics corporations use to exploit labor to gain their wealth. Many of them are quite legal. “Wage theft”, specifically, is most often used by retail and other franchised service industry companies (restaurants, big box stores, etc). This allows the company to blame the local manager or owner/operator when one of the stores gets caught skimming the wages of their employees.
      A tech giant like Ruttech is far more likely to be engaging in purely legal shenanigans such as keeping as many of their facilities as possible in union-hostile states (or countries) in order to not have to deal with organized labor.
      Booster, here, is utterly ignorant of most of the intricacies and nuances of corporate greed, and would thus likely be utterly destroyed by the senior Ruttens in any such hypothetical holiday dinner.
      Of course, this won’t happen, because Willis feels the need to make Booster win every argument, no matter how bad a case for it is made.

      1. Radiance

        Using a definition of wage theft *that* narrow is being so pedantic that you’re actually just wrong.

        Moreover, “wage theft” succinctly makes their point and fits in the panel. “purely legal shenanigans such as keeping as many of their facilities as possible in union-hostile states (or countries) in order to not have to deal with organized labor” doesn’t.

        1. MoreWLessG

          I appreciate you.

        2. Bicycle Bill

          If you play the game by the rules as they are written and enforced and manage to make a buttload of money, there is no reason to feel guilty about it.

        3. milu

          i agree with you to the narrow and literal extent that billionaire tears do nobody any good

        4. Jeffrey

          So if a rule can be profitable, it’s good. Neat!

        5. shoopdawhoop

          “As they are written” (by the wealthy)
          “and enforced” (never if you’re wealthy)
          “no reason to feel guilty” (the wealthy are pathologically incapable of feeling guilt)

        6. Freemage

          “Wage theft” = “Theft of wages”. It’s a literal, legal term. It has been studied and measured by actual economists interested in doing the heavy lifting of finding out what sorts of crap the .1% are actually up to.
          Broadening the term to mean a bunch of stuff that it wasn’t meant to cover just makes communication harder. May as well just say “Billionaires are double-plus ungood” and be done with it.
          And yes, it makes Booster pathetically easy to rebut, except that anyone arguing with Booster must first clutch the Idiot Ball with the force of a thousand Grand Moff Tarkins. This is at least the second time I’ve seen a strip where someone who disagrees with Booster suddenly does something completely inane. “Actually, my parents make sure all their employees are fully compensated according to their contracts” = “Carla wins, even if she shouldn’t, because yes, billionaires cause a lot of damage to the economy, the environment and the world, just by existing”.
          (Oh, and Booster claiming that becoming a billionaire requires such activities is also wrong; even if one agrees that the existence of billionaires warps society, it doesn’t mean that the wealth is impossible to acquire without actual malicious conduct–that just makes it lots easier.)

        7. Librain

          “Labour Exploitation”

      2. not someone else

        Good lord, it was an off the cuff joke. Forgive them for not dropping a thesis.

        1. eh, whatever

          …what makes you think Booster is joking???

        2. not someone else

          The “what if you two get married and I la problema es el capitalismo my way through every Thanksgiving dinner” part. I’m sure the actual point embedded is something they believe in.

        3. Mr D phone posting

          In this case it would be “el problema”.
          Yeah I know it breaks the quick and dirty “if it ends in a, it is a feminine word” rule but Spanish is a bongo.

        4. Nicoleandmaggie

          IIRC Ma/pa/TA are often Greek roots and that’s why irregular with the el? It’s been a while.

        5. Dante

          Latin too, actually! It comes from a formerly neutral word, and it’s one of the exceptions. Within those, the adjective/noun following them is usually masculine.

          – So “el capitalismo es…” (“capitalism is”, with its corresponding masculine article) →

          – Turns to “el problema es el capitalismo” (“the problem is capitalism”).

        6. Da Boy

          That smug smile at the end when they confirm Carla is very bothered by what they said to the point she is biting her lip and staying quiet XD

        7. Freemage

          Not a ‘joke’. A directed insult at Carla’s family. One that she is fully capable of rebutting, in part because it was phrased so poorly.

      3. june gloom

        You sound like the guy who got mad at me because I disengaged from talking to him after he used the dictionary to argue that “some exploitation of employees is good actually.”

      4. 3oranges

        Wow, do you have billionaire parents too?

      5. Pylgrim

        Pretty sure “wage theft” is being generally used for “does 0.001% of the total work necessary to run the operation, takes home 99.999% of the profits.”

        1. JRivest

          It’s not, though. Wage theft is the illegal theft of employees wages. You make them punch out during a mandatory paid lunch break, for example. The employees’ pays are only short a few dollars week to week, often unnoticeable unless the employees rigorously do the math.

          You can choose to call every example of capitalism “wage slavery” on the basis that profit goes to the owning class, but that’s what we would call hyperbole, like how we sometimes refer to the uneven power dynamics found in the workplace as “wage slavery”. We’ve had actual slavery before, and slaves didn’t have wages or even the theoretical ability to switch jobs or employers. And we have actual wage slavery, which is illegal and a big problem all of its own. It is estimated 50 billions are stolen from employees every year, and only 3 billions are recovered. Calling other forms of predatory corporate practices “wage theft” both takes attention away from an issue that deserves a lot more attention, and it won’t be taken seriously by anyone but the choir.

        2. Nicoleandmaggie

          I’m a labor economist and arguments about field-specific jargon aren’t really winning for anyone. Yes there are narrow legal definitions of wage theft but there are also more expansive academic definitions and even more expansive colloquial definitions.

          In my field monopsony is a form of wage theft and not just how capitalism is supposed to work. It’s illegal but under different laws than the narrower legal definition of wage theft. It’s theft because it’s using market power to keep wages artificially low and steals worker surplus, destroying surplus in the process and hurting the economy. From the worker viewpoint they’re still being paid less than they should be. From a legal perspective the process of theft is too subtle to be called “wage theft.”

        3. Mark

          When people use a term of art to mean something that it doesn’t mean in that art, this causes confusion: which definition are we talking about? At which point one may as well give one’s own definition in advance and make a new word for it.

        4. Nicoleandmaggie

          Pretty sure the person using it colloquially was using it colloquially and the person arguing the narrow legal definition was using the narrow legal definition. The argument was not about misunderstanding but about not accepting colloquial vs jargon.

        5. Freemage

          Humpty Dumptyism. Got it.

        6. thejeff

          I’m sure it is, but that’s the problem. Wage theft is a real specific thing and equating it with just how capitalism works makes it harder to address actual wage theft.
          And doesn’t help end capitalism either.

        7. yak

          Indeed. It’s a bit like comparing wage labor to slavery. They’re quite different, using the term “slavery” for the added emotional punch comes at the expense of understating how much worse actual slavery is.

          (yes I know wage slavery is a thing, I’m addressing the broader “wage labor is slavery with extra steps” take. Abusing your wage slave is also still illegal on paper. Slaves have no rights, not even on paper.)

      6. Keulen

        They’re not wrong. Nobody becomes a billionaire without either having been born to wealthy parents or exploiting the workers at their companies.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          There’s also the fact that wealth is not a zero sum game. The majority of wealth in the world is immaterial wealth that exists solely because of ownership of companies and their value are determined by impractical sources. The person who owns 30% of Microsoft doesn’t own a bunch of physical wealth he’s stealing from other people.

        2. Nicoleandmaggie

          But Microsoft is/was worth so much because of monopoly power.

        3. thejeff

          He kind of does though. Microsoft was notorious for predatory business practices back in the day.
          They could bankrupt a small company with a hot software product just by announcing they were going to include a competitor in the next version.

        4. Nicoleandmaggie

          Yes, that’s something companies do to keep monopoly power. Monopoly 101. Super shady.

  5. Animedingo

    Not bringing up that Charlie has SEVERE adhd

    1. cain

      Booster has accurately identified that Carla’s focus on Charlie is about herself, not about Charlie.

      1. Animedingo

        And trying to get her to remember anything specific is like leading a horse to lava

    2. eskimolos

      as someone with severe ADHD, this gives me hope that people have actually wanted to socialise with me, and I was too into seahorse lore to notice

      1. Amós Batista

        Yes, I just wish to be desired, you know? Now, I’m wishing Charlie be asked out.

        1. ADLegend21

          god I feel that so much.

  6. NGPZ

    I mean, Booster ain’t wrong. :3

    1. True Survivor

      I feel there are other ways to make that much money besides wage theft. Most of them equally or excessively unethical. The real question is if even possessing that much money, regardless of the means of acquisition, is ethical.

      1. NGPZ

        You show me a billionaire who isn’t an arrogant ass, I will show you what they do when you have your back turned. ?

        1. Angel

          twitter is canonically a thing in doa, it would make for some entertaining news stories if carla’s parents did capture elon musk and offer his head on a plate to the public. (Metaphorically speaking, for legal reasons this is a joke fbi please don’t ‘disappear’ me 8D;)

        2. Steamweed

          *sets google calendar to remind in-future to check on angel still has posts

          *sets slightly later calendar to check if angel’s posts could be just replaced by bot

      2. drs

        You can get that money by inheritance. Sam Walton’s kids got $20 billion each, I think.

        OTOH, whatever her later political flaws, and putting aside the issue the ethics of _having_ so much wealth, I feel JKR _made_ her money fairly ethically. Having hundreds of millions of people enjoy and buy your books is pretty okay. There’s still an artificial scarcity of copyright law at work; one could imagine a society that went “okay, you’ve made _enough_ money, it’s public domain time”. But it’s still pretty low on the exploitation scale.

        JKR’s even given a lot of her money away. Given her political leanings, we might prefer that she bought yachts instead…

        1. True Survivor

          Good point.

        2. Mano308gts

          Wage theft remains wage theft, even when the one getting rich isn’t directly responsible for it.

          JKR got rich because she got too much money from each copy of each book sold, on average, while the printing-house employees worked minimum wage jobs.

        3. Ferret

          While that is true, it’s also fair to say that JK is not unethical for having made the money that way because she wouldn’t have had control over the production of the books and merch being wage theft. The publishers, absolutely, but not the woman herself.

          Obligatory: Fuck TERFs.

        4. drs

          Is an author making $1000/year from royalties also committing wage theft?

          AIUI authors don’t make that much per book sold. Like maybe $1 per hardcover. JKR’s just lucky enough to have been popular so she moved a whole lot of books.

          (I’m simplifying. Also merchandising and movies. But I thinks she got at least very rich on books alone.)

        5. Tisiphone

          There’s committing and being complicit. Unfortunately, we’re all complicit in wage theft if we make passive income, because that money comes from somewhere and that somewhere is profit (which is by definition theft from laborers). But, while an author is complicit in wage theft, the publishing house is committing it. And also the author is being stolen from by the publishing house, because they’re only receiving a percentage of the work’s value in return for creating the work in the first place. Turns out capitalism is just a big ole wacky web of abuse!

        6. drs

          With ebooks 100% of your money can go to the author.

          “they’re only receiving a percentage of the work’s value in return for creating the work in the first place.”

          You’re not being consistent. You’re saying the author’s royalties constitute wage theft from book-making employees, but the author receives a percentage precisely because the publisher uses the rest to pay those employees (as well as itself, as profit) along with the suppliers of paper and such.

          Actually it’s the _bookstore_ that conventionally receives your money, using that to pay its employees, landlord, and profit, before handing the rest to the publisher to pay its employees, distributor, profit, and author. While you might quibble about the ‘profit’ parts, most of the money is recompensing people for labor or materials, which is not theft from the author.

        7. BBCC

          The point about the ebooks 100% going to the author is definitely not always (or even usually) true. Usually the platform those ebooks are on also takes a cut, because they have hosting costs and employees to pay too. I guess if the author uploaded it to their website that could be true but that’s definitely not the norm for getting ebooks. Authors usually earn about 15-30% of an ebook sale (15-30 cents on the dollar).

        8. thejeff

          By all means attack JKR for her transphobia, but claiming her wealth is inherently dishonest because she made money from books while printing house employees made minimum wage spills over onto every author – the vast majority of whom are nowhere near rich

        9. A wilting lily

          I’m not trying to blame authors here, but as an aside; there are plenty of failed capitalists, failure to make money of the backs of others does not exonerate the one’s that succeeded. Is she to blame for how printing businesses work when she first used their services? Not really. Did she still get that money because of unethical briskness practices that she now has the money fix and does nothing about? Yes.

          If you have that much money and are not using it to undo the harm of your industry than you are definitively complicit. I can’t expect starting authors to change the world, but I can blame any who get rich and don’t immediately spend that money undoing the industry’s harm.

          As a sidenote, transphobia is far from the only bigotry she has a problem with, it’s just the only one she is really loud about.

        10. Wizard

          The number of people capable of running printing and binding machinery is pretty large. The number of people capable of writing stories millions of people want to read is much smaller. Do you think it’s unethical that a hospital janitor gets paid less than a heart surgeon?

        11. Taffy

          Do you think it’s unethical that the kid who mows my grandpa’s lawn gets paid less than a lorry driver?

        12. milu

          Do you think it’s unethical that literally the same job pays like 100 times less in Bangladesh or Myanmar than it does in the US?

        13. HueSatLight

          The number of people as capable as being CEO of major corporations as actual CEOs of major corporations is enormous.
          Capitalism doesn’t reward ability. Capitalism rewards capital.

        14. Random832

          what if i said yes?

          the perceived need for doctors to be highly paid is largely downstream of high education costs and the liability system*, both of which are problems in their own right.

          *in a more just world, people who are harmed in a medical setting – or most settings, for that matter – could be directly paid by the government without having to have a court adjudicate that someone who has money is at fault.

        15. Dara

          And she’s used it to build a massive and enduring hate campaign against trans people, one which has already spread to bi people and will spread to all of us.

          She’s using her money to destroy people’s lives – and not even just on an individual level, but as a class of people. She’s a sponsor of proto-fascism, specifically aimed at trans people, specifically in a way that is the biggest current on-ramp for the literal fascist movement we’re all dealing with right now.

          If this is what an “ethical” super-wealthy person does, fuck all of them.

        16. drs

          I wasn’t saying JKR is a good person. But her _gaining_ the wealth seems fairly ethical. Lots of people throwing money at her because they liked her stories.

          I dunno how wealthy Terry Pratchett was, but the web says he sold 80 million books, so he’s probably in the tens or low hundreds of millions. Still pretty rich, and he _was_ a good person. If he’d been more popular he could be in JKR territory too.

        17. HueSatLight

          Pratchett left 11.4 million pounds in his will, about 14 million US $ at today’s rate, that’s not important, we could say $20 million dollars. The difference between $20 million and $1 billion is .98 billion.

          Carla’s parents didn’t write mediocre books glorifying boarding school, slavery, and wizard cops. We’ve seen “ride sharing”, drone delivery from warehouses, tablets (I think), and motorcycles.

        18. Queezle

          I was really offended when I read “mediocre books” but then I kept reading and realized you were talking about Potter and not Discworld. So I am good now, mediocre seems fair,

        19. Taffy

          It’s okay, I also get offended when I read a mediocre book. Those things ain’t cheap, and if they’re unsatisfying it’s hard not to feel put out.

        20. Ana Chronistic

          I just want to point out for no particular reason, I have been reading a LOT of mediocre books as of late, on purpose, bc I get them on the cheap (dollar store/free library), mostly so I can fill my Goodreads account with opinions

        21. Ana Chronistic

          (@Taffy on that since it’s not threading)

        22. RowenMorland

          Did it glorify wizard cops, or wizard paramilitary forces?

        23. Mark

          The cops aren’t wizards. And there ain’t much glory in the Sam Vimes stories. I mean: have you read what they say about Cpl. Nobbs?

          The Discworld set has four streams of thought, I’d say: (1) wizards have weird problems; (2) witches have different weird problems; (3) “a policeman’s lot is not a happy one” (the Night Watch); and (4) civilization is complicated (the Moist von Lipwig stories). I might find some glorification in there if I use tweezers and a strong magnifier.

        24. milu

          pretty sure they were talking about the Terfy Potter series

        25. HueSatLight

          cops are paramilitary.

        26. HueSatLight

          Harry grows up to be a wizard cop. The paragraph break meant I’m addressing a different argument.

          Paragraph one: addresses claim that Terry Pratchett was practically a billionaire.

          Paragraph two: addresses claim Carla’s parents became billionaires maybe in the way that JKR got her wealth (which is possibly over a billion dollars).

          Like if you’re thinking, “wow, this reference doesn’t sound like Discworld at all,” please consider that it isn’t a reference of Discworld.

        27. Dara

          Yeah, you kinda were.

          “I feel JKR _made_ her money fairly ethically. Having hundreds of millions of people enjoy and buy your books is pretty okay…”

          I was reasonably tolerant of this part, despite the anti-Semitic tropes in her work, but then y’had to go here:

          “JKR’s even given a lot of her money away.”

          Given it away to help funnel people into fascism by ramping the living shit out of anti-queer hate, starting but by no means stopping with trans people.

          [goose meme]”Giving it away FOR WHAT”[/goose meme]

          Yeah, she’s also given money to less horrible things, even to some good things. But she’s kind of dedicated her public life and real amounts of money to trying to drive LGBT people out of existence starting with trans people, and phrasing it as she’s “even given a lot of her money away” is, to put it mildly, a defence of her and of what she does.

          And I’m not buying it. So I repeat:

          If this is what an “ethical” super-wealthy person does, fuck all of them.

        28. Just an Armadillo

          I implore you to take a step back, take a breath and calm down. You are being extremely aggressive at somebody who has already made the same point you did, just in far fewer words. Drs pretty clearly implied that it would have been better if Rowling had been spending her money on frivolous bullshit, which means they don’t approve of the causes she supports any more than you do.

          The only point drs was making was that selling books is not inherently unethical. They did not say anything to support Rowlings beliefs. So let’s not attack them for a viewpoint they never actually supported, okay?

        29. Dara

          I’ve said my piece. I’m done.

        30. drs

          What exactly did you think I meant by

          “JKR’s even given a lot of her money away. Given her political leanings, we might prefer that she bought yachts instead…”

          ?

        31. Yumi

          It’s pretty clear to me that you weren’t supporting JKR and her specific uses of her wealth. It does make me think of some points about the super-rich– namely, the idea that an ethical billionaire would not *stay* a billionaire. I remember remember that back in the day, when I still admired JKR and didn’t know how much she wanted people like me out of existence or have a good grasp on issues with her books, there was news about how she was no longer a billionaire because she had given so much of it away, and that seemed really cool.

          JKR’s net worth has hovered right around the $1 billion mark for a while, from my understanding. If Carla’s parents are multibillionaires, as seems to be implied, that’s significantly more that they’re making and holding on to.

        32. thejeff

          Though to be somewhat fair, most industrialist billionaires have most of their wealth in the actual companies they own. Often in stock that would likely collapse if they tried to sell too much of it.
          They can’t really give most of it to charity in any practical way. They could sell off the company and donate the proceeds, I suppose.

        33. Angel

          if only we could all be nepo babies/get inheritances lol.

          ppl always use the phrase ‘trust fund kids’ with disdain, but i’m surprised more parents (at least the ones that plans on/wants to have kids) wouldn’t set up something similar, or at least a trust fund, or saving a bit every year and handing a bank account with a decent size with a well adjusted upbringing so they can handle their safety net responsibily

        34. LiamKav

          As with all things, it’s not a binary but people take it like a binary. Every parent wants to help their kid. I’m sure if one of DW’s kids wanted to grow up to be a cartoonist, his dad would help him. Maybe he helps out by inking DoA when DW is in his 60s. Would that make him a nepo baby?

          (To clarify, I am absolutely not defending rich kids being put in charge of things they are unqualified for because their parents own the company. But it’s also ridiculous to think that no patent will help their kids out, especially if they want to go in to a similar field of work.)

        35. BBCC

          Well, like you said, the problem is getting into positions they’re wildly unqualified for that they did not earn. An artists teaching their kid to draw and ink comics and that kid helping out with them and eventually taking them over? Fine. The CEO’s kid who has zero actual day to day experience being made an executive despite not knowing fuck all about the company? Yeah, I’d treat that kid and their parent with disdain too.

        36. Angel

          well, there might be some ‘middle’ class parents who would leave behind a house in the family or a bit of life insurance in a will but yeah i imagine most parents would try to do something if they know they won’t be around after a certain age

        37. thejeff

          Most parents don’t have a fraction of the money needed to set up any meaningful trust fund.
          In general, they’re far better off setting up a college fund and using that to pay as much as possible of their way through higher education, so the kid has a better chance of earning more themselves without being burdened by college debt.

        38. BBCC

          You can’t accumulate a billion dollars without someone or the environment being exploited down the line. In JK Rowling’s case, a lot of that was probably down to labour conditions and wages in the print houses, on sets, and making the game systems and tvs and phones the games are on and in sourcing for things like paper. Those things aren’t her fault, but it’s unlikely she’d accumulate a billion dollars without those things being in place. Millions? Almost certainly. You can earn millions of really popular art like books, especially with royalties, without exploitation of others or the environment being anywhere in your supply or labour chains. Again, that may not be the fault of the author but you’re still not going to be able to get a billion from it. More ethical than some other billionaires doesn’t mean it’d be possible without that exploitation somewhere.

        39. thejeff

          The thing that bothers me about this argument is that if you’re putting that on her head, how is it not equally on the head of every other author? Even the ones who aren’t making billions. They’re still profiting from the labor conditions and wages in the print houses – not the sets and games and things unless they get real lucky.
          How can anyone earn even millions from books, without making use of the same labor chains the billions come from? Or even making a modest living as an author? They don’t have special “exploitation” print houses for the rich ones.
          We’re sliding into that “but you live in a society” argument, but kind of from the other end.

          Or am I missing something?

        40. Dante

          JKR, may she rest in piss, first got her millions out of a media circus around her books. Which, fair, she got wildly popular and sold a lot of them – But back in the day she was a product, too.

          Her fortune, though? She grew it through turning her intellectual property as capital (still fair), selling it to multinational companies (hm), and the continuous investment of her assets so she’d turn them into a media empire that diversified from movies to toys to theme parks and a multiplicity of products in between. The lion’s share of her earnings wasn’t coming from her books far before the series was over. I’d know! I used to legit love them.

          And then she redeemed nazis, killed the only gay character in the books, glorified cops… And a decade later she’d start putting that money at the service of actual real-life policies that want me and mine gone. Putting the onus of her capital on the ghastly conditions of the labor chain in the print houses is a mistake. Her wrongs are in everything she had control over… And they’re no small thing.

        41. Dante

          As a counter example, I’d put Neil Gaiman, who is a flawed human being and has, like any writer who expects to live off their craft, made deals with the devil(s).

          Despite this, the man is committed to advance the LGBTQ+ and other leftist messages as much as he’s allowed within this framework, to get the actors (all workers, truly) from every series he’s an executive producer of a fair, unionized, wage, and is now in the front lines with the WGA strike.

          That’s one wildly successful dude, and his career started in the 90’s. Still not a billionaire.

        42. BBCC

          You’re looking at it as a matter of fault. It’s not. It’s just a fact you can’t make a billion without exploitation somewhere down the line. Some authors might work for a really good, ethical publisher whose print house does pay a fair wage and have ethical labour practices but that author probably won’t become a billionaire. If they sell a fuckload of copies, they might become a millionaire.

          I never said it was JKR’s (or any hypothetical billionaire’s) fault, only that they would not be able to become billionaires if this was not the case. It may not be easy but it is hypothetically POSSIBLE to become a millionaire without exploitation, with obvious ‘depending on the industry and specifics’ caveats.

      3. Dante

        Ok ok (y’all) feel free to ignore if this is inappropriate. But I’ll reply seriously because, special interest:

        Setting aside the (very important) means of acquisition and all: The accumulation of wealth to the point billionaires do actively harms the economy.

        It takes money out of circulation, drives inflation and artificial scarcity; and all in all sets a “goal” that keeps companies focused in an idea of permanent growth, which is something the universe itself it’s opposed to (entropy is a thing). To support this, they engage in neocolonialism, ecocide, and tax evasion. And at these levels of wealth, money stops being money and it becomes a game of numbers and status; while the rest of the world takes the material consequences.

        It’s not a matter of arrogance, niceness, or the old noblesse obligue (“we’re so good we could do a little philanthropy for our lessers”) – Since the question is about keeping that level of capital, and ethics, my answer would be no.

        1. eh, whatever

          It takes money out of circulation, drives inflation

          Taking money out of circulation should drive deflation…?

          an idea of permanent growth, which is something the universe itself it’s opposed to (entropy is a thing).

          I can’t see how permanent growth is feasible any more than you do, but it’s not physically impossible except in an isolated system – one that neither matter nor other forms of energy can enter or leave. The sun shines, so we’re theoretically good on Earth for a good long while.

        2. Dante

          It’s ok, maybe I should’ve gone with longer definitions. For starters, there can be more than one cause/effect relationship that can be known as “inflation”.

          What I had meant with my comment: The rich accumulate wealth not only as money but as assets, and this is what we know as “capital”. If we’re talking about measurable currency, this accumulation means the end of the line for that money – It is not in circulation anymore.

          Inflation isn’t so much about “more money doing the rounds” than “currency has less purchasing power”, and its relationship with the rise in the cost of living + offer/demand. A government may attempt to correct this lack of purchasing power by adjusting the numbers and printing cash, because if you need five coins instead of two to pay for the same sandwich then it follows more coins will be needed around. But in the meantime, the people who’d taken the coins fully out of circulation and caused the problem still have them.

          PS: When I mention entropy, I’m absolutely talking about the Earth’s natural resources – far too many of them non-renewable. If we’re talking about an economical system that demands permanent growth, we are an isolated system.

        3. Mark

          Of course it’s still in circulation. The banks lend it out. The dreadful billionaires spend it on Champagne and caviar, or something; or they invest it in a new business. You don’t become a billionaire by letting money sit idle. It’s the people who bury cash in a coffee can who are taking it out of circulation.

        4. Dante

          Man, I really needed the laugh. Thank you for this moment of humor and decompression in an otherwise realistic, depressing thread.

        5. Opus the Poet

          The primary cause of inflation post-pandemic is corporate greed/profits. Previous cycles of inflation profits went down as inflation continued in excess of 2 economic quarters, but this cycle profits not only remained high but grew quarter to quarter, at least for the first year after the pandemic which was when I quit watching because I already suffer from depression.

          So yeah, billionaires are causing inflation to make more money while also acting as a drag on the economy

        6. Dday

          I don’t disagree that many economically powerful people are guilty of abusing that power and performing destructive acts, but I don’t think what you are describing is quite how it works. Billionaires don’t *have* billions of dollars in liquid cash in a big, sealed off pile they can swim in like scrooge mcduck. (If they did, it would effectively increase the market value of that currency and drive down inflation for people that use it.) They *own* what can be valued at billions of dollars worth of various assets, usually stocks. Warren Buffet and Michael Bloomberg got in on the ground floor of the companies they started, gathering a lot of stock when it was worth nothing. Now, people who buy stocks are theoretically prepared to buy their stock at very high prices, so they are theoretically valued in the billions, but the billions of dollars they are “worth” don’t actually exist as money.

          Imagine for a moment if all the billionaires tried to stop being billionaires, cashing out their stocks and giving away the currency. If all the billionaires actually tried to cash out all their stock, it would likely cause a massive, panicked run and extreme havoc in the market, and those stocks would probably be greatly devalued before enough buyers could show up with enough cash to purchase it all. The sellers would still be sitting on very, VERY large piles of cash, and if they subsequently tried to swiftly push all of that currency into the economy so they could stop being a billionaires, that actually would drive up inflation astronomically.

          These people certainly wield a lot of power, power that could easily be abused, which is why it’s important for them to face a lot of scrutiny and accountability. But I actually think the term “billionaire” is sort of fanciful, as its based on abstract market speculation rather than real money. What I’m saying is that the phenomenon of people that we call billionaires existing doesn’t affect the economy in the way we often envision, like dragons sitting on piles of stolen gold, causing poverty by existing. Closer to Dr Manhattans, floating around with gigantic amounts of power, potentially positive but we have to hold out hope they don’t do something explosive.

        7. Dante

          No, it does not exist as liquid cash but as assets, which was something I said in my second comment indeed, and why I speak of capital instead. Truth to be told, the stock market isn’t something I was prepared to start discussing in detail tonight – Maybe if I re-read some stuff first. What I can say, though:

          A traditional within-the-system solution to this problem isn’t possible, precisely because of the possibility of hyperinflation. Though the “money” of billionaires may exist more in the realm of abstraction than the physical, which does render the coins/sandwich analogy a little simplistic, it’s disingenuous to pretend the capital it represents is hypothetical – Precisely because the power their wield isn’t only political but an ugly ourobouros of the political and economical feeding into each other. Multinational companies actively cause fluctuations in the international market in the same way natural causes or drastic events like wars would, and this international market affects, in turn, the economical behavior of the nations around the world. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. None of this does, and that’s the point

        8. Dday

          Well, I sure hope I didn’t come across as disingenuous. I’ll clarify that I definitely believe that people valued in the billions have gigantic amounts of power and influence, and I’m not particularly here to be their protector or cheerleader. Like I said, anyone with that much power needs to face a lot of scrutiny. I do think the way economics works is kind of fascinating and have something of a hobbyist’s interest. Sorry about my long-ass post, I think I got wired up on too much coffee last night.

        9. Dante

          Naw, don’t worry! My interest in the topic is more on the sociopolitical side than in the economical and I’m kinda pretty passionate about it, so I have zero problem in admitting I could’ve misinterpreted you. It was 4:31 am here when I wrote my reply :3

        10. Pylgrim

          You’ll note that those people (and their sycophants) often use the “stock money achsually doesn’t exist!” whenever they are criticised about their wealth or when it comes the time to pay their taxes. But then they go to the bank and use that stock money as collateral for a loan for COLD HARD /VERY REAL/ CASH to use however they want (often in ways that will easily gets them much more money), which basically constitutes a withdraw of money which apparently “doesn’t exist” (with a few extra steps).

        11. Dante

          Absolutely! “Hypothetical money” still affects the economy and can be used as a collateral for credit like you say, and/or in the buying or selling of further assets. Entire countries going into external debt are a good example of how this works in the negative as well!

          A lot of the holes in the comprehension of this can be filled if people get to familiarize with the concept of “capital” instead of just “money”, and of zero-sum games. Upwards in the thread there was a discussion in the correct usage of “wage theft” as if Booster was saying the only way to become a billionaire is through this, rather than giving an example among many.

      4. MoreWLessG

        There is no such thing as a billionaire who made their money without exploitation of poor people. Full stop.

        1. Mark

          And there’s no such thing as a wage earner who made his money without exploiting a business owner. So?

        2. milu

          that’s a funny equivalence you’re making, wait not funny, what’s the word, starts with f too

        3. HueSatLight

          Can’t tell if temporarily embarrassed billionaire is intentionally advocating slavery or is making a false equivalence to say its unfair to criticize robber barons.

    2. AlexaSpuds

      I think booster is wrong but not unintentionally, they’re just purposefully misidentifying the situation to make it seem like Carla’s got a crush on Charlie when it’s obvious she doesn’t, it’s basically just an advanced form of a “haha you have a crush on her” joke

      1. eh, whatever

        It’s… not obvious at all.

        1. milu

          Carla actually said “as if!” to the suggestion that she likes Charlie! She’s made it VERY clear she doesn’t like her! I mean ”””like””” her!

      2. clif

        I don’t know that she does, but it isn’t clear to me that Carla hasn’t got a crush on Charlie.

  7. Yotomoe

    https://imgur.com/a/C8puBQh

    1. NGPZ

      Oooo goodie! A Carla pic!!!!

      As usual, fantastic work Yoto!!! ?

    2. Cholma

      That’s a really good Carla, Yotomoe! Thanks for sharing.

    3. bemisawa

      Very nice!

      *enthusiastic golf claps*

      *the sort rich people understand*

    4. PirateTawnee

      Magnificent, as always thank you Yoto.

    5. EpochFlame

      excellent art!

    6. Angel

      she looks like she’s going to happily knock someone’s lights out lol

    7. ollie

      oooh, she looks good in your style!

    8. Mym

      The only character we should be drawing: center of the universe: Carla

  8. Thag Simmons

    Sickos.jpg

  9. Sirksome

    I mean we don’t know the Ruttens so they technically exist in a state of being both terrible and not terrible until viewed.

    1. Nono

      So far things point to them being good, since they fought hard for Carla to be recognized as trans and also made her a little Ultra Car toy as a kid.

      1. Dean

        The Rutten’s seem to be good parents, but no one ever became a billionaire by handing out free hugs.

        1. Nono

          Well not in a post-covid world! You think sterilized hugs pay for themselves?

    2. Thag Simmons

      We know they were great for Carla. Extremely supportive and when push came to shove they fought a long term legal battle to protect her abulity to transition.

      We also know they’re the billionaire owners of a massive multinational tech and manufacturing company, so realistically probably tied into a lot of deeply unethical shit

      1. StClair

        this :/

      2. Laura

        At the very least, in the mines mining the raw materials for all the tech stuff they made.

        1. clif

          That would be similar to the mining that went into the tech stuff you are volentarily using to access a web comic?

        2. pygmypenguin

          you are very intelligent

        3. Opus the Poet

          I knew what this was before I clicked it…

        4. Laura

          Love that comic! x-D

        5. Laura

          Exactly! ?

        6. The Oracle

          You drive a car, so you can’t criticize the manufacturer. That’s how it works, right? Rich industrialists get to shape the entire landscape of our lives and then when our society is nice and dependent on their products (cars, phones, Fleshlights), we don’t get to take issue with the fact that every Ford vehicle contains “20% less orphan marrow than last year”? Maybe question why the number was able to go down to begin with?

        7. Laura

          I love that response, Oracle. Made me laugh. 😀

          But don’t worry, it’s cool, though: I respect the critique. I live nowhere near as simply and harmlessly as I would like to. As Walt Whitman said, “I am vast. I contain multitudes.”

      3. Angel

        even if they aren’t snooty wealthy ppl with the same attitude as jens’ parents and more ‘down to earth’, it’s still possible for ‘unethical’ work issues to happen under their nose and hid under the rug unless it’s somehow monitored/micromanaged to where they’re aware of every single little thing (which would also invade privacy as well)

    3. Angel

      i imagine booster’s also done their research too so most of the surface level and reasonable, non conspiracy sounding ‘agreed upon’ opinions most ppl have on them might be teh general consensus for their rep

      (And unlikely at this stage but it would be interesting if tehy somehow fund amazigirl’s vigilanteism)

      1. Vegetalss4

        I don’t think Booster have done much, if any research on them specifically.
        Their opinion seem much more based on some general osmosis base level awareness of them. They might not know more about the Ruttens than we do (tech-billionaires with a big company named after them, Carla’s parents).

        Their critique’s are “billionaire tech industrialists” and “Anybody who has THAT much money…” rather than anything more specific they have done/been involved in.
        It seems like a general judgment on billionaires mainly involved in the tech industry, rather than something specific to the Ruttens.

        Now get me right, their critiques being generic rather than specific doesn’t make them wrong, but it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that

    4. Keulen

      We know the Ruttens are good to their daughter, but that doesn’t mean they’re good to the people who work at their business.

      1. Mark

        It also doesn’t mean they aren’t.

  10. Nono

    Well not where I was expecting this to go, but sure, let’s throw in ‘eat/defend the rich’.

    1. Angel

      i wonder if ruth and jen’s parents have ever met tho they’re probably at diff ‘levels’ of rich lol.

      we know carla’s parents have used their resources to help her so maybe they’ll get a bit more of positive credibility if they started up some trans charity or so (even if some ppl would say they’re only doing it for tax /pr reasons but whatever amount of extra support there is in the world would be nice)

      1. Shade

        I imagine if Jennifer’s family is “old money” they probably don’t think too highly of the Ruttens even if they are richer than them. Never underestimate snootiness.

  11. DarkoNeko

    “thanksgiving” that’s big USA thing, right ?

    1. NGPZ

      I think so. A big feast right before a battle royal at malls referred to as “Black Friday”. The former originally started as a Puritan Christian tradition iirc

    2. Sean Smith

      Yeah, it’s typically celebrated by having a big dinner with extended family.

    3. Thag Simmons

      We do one in Canada too, but yeah. It has it origins in early english settlement of North America so I’m not surprised it’s less of a thing overseas

    4. tim gueguen

      There’s also Canadian Thanksgiving, which is in mid October versus November like the US version. It also doesn’t involve a story about Indigenous people and “Pilgrims.” But it is an excuse to cook a turkey.

    5. Uly

      Yes, but you’re allowed to do it too. It’s mostly an excuse for a four day weekend, a big dinner with the family, and possibly a football game if your family is athletic. (We do American football, of course, but you do you.)

      Who *isn’t* thankful for those things?

      The most important thing is the handprint turkeys. The meal can vary according to cultural heritage – and often does – but as far as I’m concerned it’s not turkey day without handprint turkeys. Other people have other views, but they’re objectively wrong.

    6. Angel

      i do like turkey but shame they don’t rly sell it moer outside that season, i wouldn’t mind hte occasional turkey leg being sold at a chicken shop but iguess most ppl would find it a pain to prepare a whole turkey (i know you buy sell partial legs tho) if you’re not already a foodie that uses the oven a lot ot begin with

      1. Mark

        I don’t know where you live but, around here, you can usually find at least a few turkeys in the store at any time of year. Not to mention ground turkey between the ground beef and the ground not-meat.

    7. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      It also has a bit of a reputation as a locus for family conflict because people with, ah, “differing views” on family conflicts, politics, social issues etc. fail to remain civil for the sake of family and get into ghastly fights.

      Including things like revealing that you are not the straight cishet person they thought you were, or bringing a date they not approve of, etc.

      (Not saying all families have such problems, but if they do Thanksgiving is where they are likely to crop up if they do.)

    8. zee

      Idk man all I know is that’s when I do half my online Christmas shopping

    9. Mturtle7

      Yup. Started out as a Christian Colonial thing among certain communities that sort of got mixed with various other “harvest festival” traditions (despite being celebrated in late November, of all times), then President Lincoln made it a federal holiday in the 1860s to promote American cultural unity (relevant b/c of the Civil War at the time), and this whole highly specific mythology and set of traditions eventually formed around it after that.

      The main tradition, as other commenters have noted, is having a huge turkey dinner with your extended family, usually with various traditional autumn foods from New England, like cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. There’s also this whole story about Puritan colonists in New England sharing a friendly dinner with the native Wampanoag as friends and allies, a story which was rather bizarrely and cheerfully celebrated by white people throughout the nation at the time without the slightest bit of self-awareness or reduction in their raging bigotry against Native Americans. The story has thankfully gotten quite a bit more controversial in recent decades, and now most people just kind of try to put the embarrassing history of the holiday behind them, and focus on the more general messages of gratitude and togetherness. And also having really awkward conversations with extended family that you only see cordially once a year, as Booster is referring to here.

      Interestingly, “having a big turkey dinner with family” used to be more of an iconic Christmas tradition, but Thanksgiving sort of supplanted the other holiday in that respect. I honestly have no idea why.

  12. Joe Moose

    That was a hella burn, Booster.

  13. Bootshivers

    Booster continues to be my favorite.

  14. Doopyboop

    Sweet of Booster to look out for their sister. I actually do trust that Carla’s parents are on the up and up at least, and despite their concerns, in the end this is a choice that’s ultimately left up to Charlie and Carla.

    1. Thag Simmons

      Carla’s parents own a massive tech company with their name on it that seemingly does everything. Phones, Cars, Uber-style apps, high grade lasers. I’d be shocked if that company isn’t neck deep in a lot of deeply unethical shit

      1. Doopyboop

        I’m not going to debate the hypothetical business ethics of fictional characters and a business they own and can only shruggity shroo and point to one of the few things we know which is that they donated thousands of dollars towards a Democratic candidate. We can also potentially surmise, from the fact that they live in Indiana, that maybe they’re not as massive as say, google or Apple. Certainly big, but maybe not billionaire. Maybe they are indeed the rare ethical rich person who got where they are by being good people, and are big into philanthropy. Maybe they don’t do any of that and Carla’s just biased towards her parents.

        Maybe it’s maybelline.

        1. drs

          Booster calls them billionaires right here. And it’s come up before.

        2. Doopyboop

          Booster has also postulated the idea of Carla and Charlie getting married despite Charlie not even knowing Carla exists. Booster is talking in extremes.

        3. Sirksome

          The thing is that a billion is such a ridiculous sum of money that it’s beyond reasonable ethics. Even if the Ruttens are completely innocent in intentions the fact they have accumulated that amount of wealth is wrong because so many others deserve and could benefit from it.

        4. Thag Simmons

          We know they make motor vehicles and smartphones, which effectively requires large diversified multinational operations. They made the cover of TIME magazine

          They’re an Indiana-based company but they’re clearly a big fucking deal, and they’re outright stated to be multibillionaires

        5. Doopyboop

          Alright have a nice night Thag.

        6. Thag Simmons

          yeah this came off meaner than i intended, sorry

      2. Dante

        If they make phones they’re already in cahoots with mining industries (most of lithium mines are in third world countries, and a lot of the silicon ones are too) for the chips and batteries. Uber depends on an exploitative model with drivers that technically aren’t workers, and operates first at a loss to monopolize cities while not paying taxes, before driving prices up again.

        I’m glad they support their trans kid, it gives them and Carla depth! I’m super interested in her storyline now /o/ But yeahhhh, “good billionaire” is an oxymoron…

        1. Miri

          “They met at university, bonding over shared concerns surrounding environmental and social concerns from discarded high tech items being shipped to developing countries overseas, and slum workers, often minors, working to recover the rare metal components. These discussions grew into what became their dissertation project work, and then their parent company: clean, safe methods to recover those metals for reuse.

          “Other research projects they have done has meant that their tech is highly modular and most times hardware issues and upgraded can be easily fixed by swapping out damaged or outmoded components – they have found a way to make attractive, high tech gadgets that will stay up to date for decades. Again, damaged and outdated components can easily and safely be broken down.

          “Even in states with at-will employment, Rutteck are keen to ensure strong employee rights, with contracts, unions, and pay well above the minimum wage. From warehouse to research lab, their workplaces are rated among the happiest in the country”

          – Possible wikiquivelant page excerpt, not written by Carla ?

          Although we do know there’s quite a few drone workers at their warehouses so maybe fewer humans in which case possibly there’d be a negative article/paragraph on redundancies, but if I’m right then really good severance packages, options to retrain in other areas, etc.

        2. Sirksome

          Is this actually true?

        3. NickG

          I mean it’s as true as anything else we know about them other than ‘Love Their Daughter’ and ‘Have A Shit-Ton Of Money’.

        4. clif

          But the important thing is that we can all feel morally superior to large companies that do terrible things while completely ignoring the fact that we enable the terrible things by buying their shit.

        5. Taffy

          The large companies doing terrible things are trying their very best to muscle out the smaller companies who do slightly better things, though. That’s one of those terrible things they do. They pay less, so they can charge less, so their shit is the most viable purchase for more people, especially in areas where they have a bigger hold on the market.

          For example, I’m posting this via Spectrum internet. Spectrum is fucking terrible and keeps getting worse and more expensive. They’re also the only ISP in town, so I don’t have the option to buy someone else’s shit. I’m only “enabling” them because there literally isn’t another option for this basic utility that decides whether or not I get to eat, this month.

          I don’t see any value in treating it as some sort of character flaw if I feel like I’m probably less of a scumbag than the person/people in charge of Spectrum.

        6. milu

          it’s so weird. Do you think people here are arguing against technology? no. we think the way the social structure surrounding the production and diffusion of these technologies is fucked.

          and “vote with your dollars” is an extremely undemocratic and biased metric, as i shouldn’t need to point out

        7. Miri

          Only if I can will things into being in other people’s fictional universe’s that I’d like to exist in our reality?

          … I mean, it’d be really cool, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

          But if it does turn out to be true I will try to work out how to hone making my imagination coalesce into reality in our actual real reality coz that would be a pretty amazing superpower so long as I’m not having intrusive or snarky thoughts and can control exactly which thoughts should become reality…

        8. Dante

          That would be a beautiful story. Unfortunately, the real world itself is organized in such a way it’s literally impossible to turn over enough profit to make a billion (let alone several) while keeping ethical practices. The wage gap and unfair taxation (or tax evasion) alone means it’s not ethical anymore.

          I give you kudos on trying to address some of the harder to fix concerns of the commenters about mining rare metals for microchips and forced obsolescence, since they have to do with third world countries and ecocide; apart of those that have to do with workers’ rights! Now, all of this said…

          Where did they get the capital to get started with this company? :33

        9. Miri

          I ‘unno, didn’t think that far ahead. Do you not get to waste university resources as a student, building something really cool, then patent it? Sell the original for a lot to somebody really rich. Build two, faster and with reasonably little waste because they know what they’re doin, so the thing on their own dime is therefore cheaper. Sell them for nearly as much. Repeat, negotiating a discount as a repeat customer with cheaper material goods. Start researching scaling up the operations…

          Elves and shoemaker style but without magical beings breaking into your place of business and residence to work for free, who can stitch better than you but are nonetheless delighted to be paid in homemade clothes…

      3. Needfuldoer

        I think the most charitable take is to assume much of the deeply unethical shit started after the company grew too large for them to oversee every day-to-day action their department heads manage.

        Given the DoA timeline, they’re probably one of the few late-90s, early-2000s dot com bubble companies that survived and thrived. (They’re probably too young to have started in the 1980s tech boom.)

        1. thejeff

          But we’re assuming the “deeply unethical shit” just because it’s a large company. If that’s inevitable, then they’re still responsible for allowing it to grow.

      4. Mark

        Ah, yes: “Fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts-guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.”

        1. milu

          “oh no! anti-megacorporation-CEO prejudice! why won’t the SJW army do something???!!!” *wrings hands*

        2. Dante

          They gotta be trolling, it’ ok. I refuse to believe in their existence :33

        3. milu

          frankly, i’ve been having a lot of fun today

        4. Dante

          Same!! I’ve been loving this discussion, and both learning stuff and hoping that whatever I can add to it is useful for others too.

          … As for the trolls, they’re so ridiculous I can’t take them seriously at all. How’s them boots taste, right?

        5. milu

          i mean they’re not all trolls, some are perfectly civilized regulars (hi Mark, hi Clif) they just start sounding like trolls when this subject comes up because shilling for the super-rich without sounding either out of your mind or trolling on “just asking questions” mode, well, it’s hard. probably more effort than it’s worth, but y’all do y’all

  15. poofdepoof

    FYI @willis you seem to have accidentally used “his” instead of “their” in the alt text

  16. Dante

    Booster, I love you. You did go for the Marxist one-liner, kept your poker face, and then dropped it to reveal… You’d played her like a kazoo.

    Carla has a crush, omg.

    1. Angel

      i assume charlie knows most of boosters beliefs more or less but it’d be funny if she was even more on the extreme end on anticapitalism and such (well not to the point that she’d still not own a nintendo switch and other practical stuff but it would be quite amusing)

      1. Dante

        We Live In A Society [/Meme]

        Even my man Karl speaks of recreational/leisure activities being a right of the proletariat, ok :’33

    2. AlexaSpuds

      I really don’t see the crush here, this is just a funny advanced kindergarten “haha you want her attention so you like her” joke, she’s shown 0 indication of being into her besides being annoyed she ignores her, you’re just following the similar “Mary is shitty to Carla so she must be into her” logic Billie and Ruth followed for a bit like 6-7 books ago, just without Mary’s hate speech being in play

      1. Dante

        The latter was a joke, which a good deal of the comments section (and the subtext, and the alt-text) has been making since Carla appeared to get Booster to tell their sister she exists. I’m not sure the logic holds? ^^;;

        Either way, even if it’s not a crush, I still wanna know what comes out of this interaction.

  17. Marvelman

    Did we already know Carla’s parents are rich?

    1. Nono

      Well yeah, Carla namedropped them right after pieing Mary in the face.

    2. Cholma

      uh, yes? They own the tech company that makes Carla’s phone, and she wears a leather jacket with the family/company name on it. (or did she give that to Sal?)

      1. BBCC

        Sal’s came with her motorcycle. Carla got one so she could match Sal.

        1. Doopyboop

          And Sal’s motorcycle came with a Rutten jacket because it had a Ruttech motor in it.

    3. Angel

      it would be mildly amusing if booster was still “Well, they’re still techies even if they aren’t rich” (tho idk if there’s any kinda stereotype of tech experts individually being dicks as opposed to “Big Tech” mistreating/overworking their employees)

      1. Aelfwine

        So he’d be opposed to not just capitalist exploitation, but the entirety of technological civilzation?

        Sure it might be funny, but it’d make Booster into either a bigot or a luddite. Not cool.

        1. milu

          Luddites were labour organizers using sabotage to get attention while also petitionong and organizing marches. Their opposition was not merely to better machines replacing workers, but also to regressive taxation, unaccountable government, bosses’ brutality, the lack of a minimum wage and child labour.

          The british government made machine-breaking a capital crime and sent the army.

        2. Uly

          The Luddites weren’t against progress, they were against skilled wages being taken away from skilled workers.

        3. Yumi

          Booster uses they/them pronouns– and if they went this direction, I think they’d either be back-pedaling or, yeah, stereotyping Big Tech people as assholes. But that wouldn’t be the same as just condemning all technology.

  18. Nono

    Did Willis just refer to Booster as ‘his’ in the alt-text?

    1. Samantha

      I thought booster had no real issue with he pronouns just preferred they. Was booster ever strict about it.

      1. Nono

        Booster is introduced by they/them. Joyce slipped up once and immediately corrected herself, and they went ‘hmm.’

    2. Taffy

      It says “has”

      1. a/snow/mous/e

        I’m guessing the alt-text originally said “his twin” but has since been changed to “their twin”. Considering poofdepoof pointed out the same thing, it seems more likely that Willis changed it than two people misreading it.

  19. StClair

    ABAB

    1. Wack'd

      booster’s blood type

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Isn’t that a Genesis song?

      1. Needfuldoer

        Is it anywhere?

  20. Twig

    Hey wait I think the alt text slipped up on Booster’s pronouns?

    Also in relation to the actual strip: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

  21. Mr. Random

    Hovertext has “his”?
    Does Booster use he/they? I can’t remember.

    1. Queezle

      I am pretty sure they do not. When they were new I used “he” for them once, and I still feel bad about it.

      1. Queezle

        aaand it is changed. Looks as if it was just a mistake.

      2. Wack'd

        as a fellow they/them i hate how often i fuck this up

        1. Queezle

          I did get a lot more used to they/them pronouns since then. I mostly use it online, because a)offline people are scary and exhausting and b)In my native language the “they/them” thing does not work. Because “sie” is used as third-person plural, third-person singular female and second-person singular formal.
          We do not really have established gender-neutral pronouns, except for neo pronouns, but I think it is harder for people to accept those. And very few people use them.

        2. Pergola

          You can communicate politely and grammatically without ever using pronouns. But now they have become signal flags.

        3. thejeff

          In theory, but communicating politely and grammatically without ever using pronouns is more difficult and awkward than communicating politely and grammatically without ever using pronouns appears at first glance.

        4. thejeff

          Like, try doing so for a couple of posts.

        5. Yumi

          I’d also argue that going out of your way to avoid using the pronouns someone has requested you use for them means you are not, in fact, communicating politely.

  22. NGPZ

    RE: Alt-text,

    What? Booster has he/him pronouns? pika pika? 😮

    1. NGPZ

      okie, looks like I’m not hallucinating that alt-text after all

      1. NGPZ

        hehehe looks like Willis fixed it ?

  23. BBCC

    I mean, *I* would like seeing that Thanksgiving.

    And oof, this discussion on billionaires will go real well.

    1. Angel

      be fun to see that play out, most ppl don’t get the opportunity to call out billionaires to their faces (this could’ve easily gone another way where carla rejects her parents money/help in a Britta way lol)

  24. AeromechanicalAce

    So does this mean Trolling Carla (Non-transphobically of course) Counts as Class War?

    1. Wack'd

      i’ve known enough trans women with wealthy parents to know that unless you have another massive source of income, you’re not necessarily rich yourself

      i mean carla likes her parents and so probably isn’t at huge risk at being cut off or withheld from or whathaveyou, but, like. you don’t automatically inherit your folks’ class position

  25. Wack'd

    suddenly realizing that since carla is jewish, there’s good odds that–regardless of how unethical her parents are in reality–there’s almost definitely a bonkers number of ghastly conspiracy theories circulating about them

    1. Nono

      Since when was Carla established Jewish? I think the only ones that were were Joe and Ethan.

      1. Wack'd

        and dorothy

        carla being jewish hasn’t come up in the comic but has come up on twitter

        1. RassilonTDavros

          And also Rachel, I think.

        2. 3oranges

          And maybe partly HITLER! But those sources were not well researched.

        3. Thomas

          Party Hitler is not a cast member.

        4. Mark

          But it would be an interesting name for a rock band.

    2. Dante

      Oof. I had no idea of that 🙁 Don’t follow Willis twitter. Between this and Carla being trans there has to be a staggering amount of content only dogs can hear… And even more that’s fully mask-off.

      It’s going to be A Ride if he decides to explore that angle.

      1. Dara

        No one should be on Twitter anymore.

        1. Dante

          Ffff I avoid the fash pit but holy shit.

          I wanna do a violence o_o

        2. Dara

          Despite living through the “But it’s so tasty!” era of straight “allies” continuing to eat at Chick-Fil-A when they were openly spending corporate money at scale to end our families and marriages, I’m still deeply appalled that people have chosen to stay and drink at the Nazi Bar.

          Again.

          I mean, it’s literally why he decided to go ahead and buy it. Sure, in the slightly longer run, he wants to make his idiotic “Everything App,” but what that “everything app” includes is what he’s already made out of Twitter: an alt-right disinformation and propaganda fountain.

          People go off about how “bad he is” at all this, and admittedly he’s not on his best game here, but all his major decisions make perfectly good sense if you just recognise his real and obvious intent.

          And yet.

    3. Thomas

      Carla is Jewish because Ultra-Car was built by Joe & Rachel, who are both Jewish. Since Ultra-Car has Jewish parents, so has Carla.

      1. Leorale

        That’s tenuous. Can’t she please just have some Jewish ancestry but not consider herself affiliated with any particular religion? Like she’s a fun character and all, but I’m really not eager to claim a billionaire as my Jewish rep.

        1. drs

          https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1342244711847899136

        2. Thomas

          I’d say she’s as Jewish as someone who has Joe & Rachel for parents. So probably not very religiously Jewish. Although I don’t know much about Rachel’s stance on that. Your most specifically religiously Jewish rep/reb is probably Yeshua from Shortpacked!

          I agree that it’s tenuous, but this how it works. Anything that applies to Ultra-Car that can reasonably translated to a human being is a trait that carries over to Carla. Homo-romantic asexuality for example. Interestingly, her Dutch ancestry is mostly there because Willis needed a last name that incorporated R-U-T and Rutten fit the bill.

        3. Thomas

          Evidence on Rachel being Jewish is very thin, incidentally. Nothing on Walkypedia. Mostly her first name & hair color fit the bill & her Walkyverse association with Joe does the rest. I’m willing to be mistaken, but I come up with nothing.

        4. NickG

          Rachel’s mother is called Adinah which is an OT name if that’s any indication, but then so is Ruth and Ms.Lessick isn’t jewish.

        5. Thomas

          Technically speaking not OT, but the apocryphal Book of Jasher (Ch. 28, v. 28), which names Adinah as the mother of Rachel & Leah, which is fitting.
          – https://sacred-texts.com/chr/apo/jasher/28.htm

          Anyway, the name comes from Jewish tradition instead of straight from the Bible, which seems to suggest that Adinah’s parents were Jewish. Still not very conclusive, though.

        6. Wack'd

          carla’s not a billionaire

          her parents are

          she might become a billionaire if she takes a nepo job or gets an inheritance but until such time as that happens she still has a way out

  26. True Survivor

    Rule of Acquisition 211: Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don’t hesitate to step on them.

    1. Needfuldoer

      I see you are a poster of culture as well.

    2. Pergola

      Hollywood saying: Be careful who you step on on your way up the ladder of success. They will be waiting for you on your way down.

    3. Dante

      [Applause]

  27. Kyrik Michalowskk

    Maybe I’m the only one, but I think Booster is being an ass.

    Don’t worry Booster, the first time you say something like that I sincerely doubt you will be welcome in the future. You might think it is cool and hip to have no social filter, but it isn’t, and unless you have a damn good reason for doing so, people will stop inviting you anywhere.

    Also while I think the fact that there are billionaires while workers get shafted isn’t fair, that doesn’t make every rich person an asshole. Some were assholes in the past, and have changed, while some are still assholes. However you might feel about them, the fact remains that many rich individuals donate money to charity, and regardless of whether they did it for tax purposes, or not it is still helping a charity.

    1. Nono

      Oh Booster’s definitely being one. They’re also going ‘well yeah I also have no social filter, so you’re gonna have to deal with it’.

      That said, I think they know this is exactly the level of smug asshole that Carla operates at most of the time, and they know enough about her to hit a subject that she would actually drop the pretense and be defensive about.

    2. Wack'd

      i’m sure all the people who mine lithium, work in warehouses and assembly lines and retail stores, and drive their own cars as taxi services, are very grateful, when they go back to their shoebox-sized apartments to chow down on ramen after a twelve-hour shift, that at least the fact that they make $7 an hour allows the ruttens to occasionally give a fraction of a percent of their billions of dollars to the ronald mcdonald house

      1. Kyrik Michalowskk

        What part of “Also while I think the fact that there are billionaires while workers get shafted isn’t fair…” did you miss? I don’t know anything about Carla’s parents, or whether they screw people over. What I do know is that being rich doesn’t automatically make you a shitty person.

        Do I wish money was more evenly distributed so that people are paid fair living wages and have disposable income? Yes. Do I wish more rich people did their best to help others? Yes. Do I think being rich means you are less valuable as a person? No. Do I know how to make changes like this? No, but I do know that insulting people is not a great way to convince them to listen to you.

        1. Wack'd

          i didn’t say anything about you in that comment!

          i also don’t think anyone is “less valuable as a person”. but you are a “shitty person” or an “asshole” if you commit wage theft, which billionaires definitionally do, since it is not actually possible to accumulate billions of dollars without underpaying (in an ethical sense if not a legal one) for the labor of others

        2. Thag Simmons

          Do you know how much a Billion is? How much a company like theirs would have to do to have the scope and influence it does.

          Literally the only reason it’s even theoretically possible for these characters to be good people is because this is ultimately a cartoon and the author can say they did it ethically if they want to, but that doesn’t mean it’s realistic.

        3. DrunkenNordmann

          It’s basically the Batman problem – the most unrealistic thing about Bruce Wayne is that he’s a rich person actively trying to be ethical (potential ethics debate about vigilantism aside).

        4. BBCC

          See, I can put up with it in fiction because suspension of disbelief but if we’re going there in story then WE’RE GOING THERE.

        5. Uly

          I’m really not sure that being a vigilante is ethical.

        6. Taffy

          Screw ethics. Dress up in a cool costume and beat up druglords, it’s not even morally grey.

        7. thejeff

          In reality it isn’t.

          Super hero comics aren’t reality, in so many more ways than the screams of the tortured laws of physics.

        8. milu

          like their high-tech gizmos that never BSOD??? that shit’s ridiculous

      2. dalniente

        This is really well-said. I hear “but rich people give to charity!” way too often, and I have a hard time expressing succinctly why that’s not an excuse or an absolution. Gonna be borrowing this.

        (Ever wonder if maybe we would need fewer charities if those same rich people would just pay their employees a comfortable living wage? ?)

        1. DrunkenNordmann

          The reason rich people give to charity is because they can write it off for tax reasons.

          It’s just another means to maintaining their level of wealth.

        2. Shade

          Its also how they launder their reputations as we can see here, an amount of money that’s meaningless to them and probably a smaller percentage of their wealth than any donation you might have made gets them people making arguments like this.

      3. Mano308gts

        100% spot on.

        There are no ethical, nor moral, billionaires.

        Millionaire? Sure. Multimillionaire? Maybe. Mega-millionaire? Nope… But billionaire? Absolutely not.

        Even the person who’s a billionaire simply by inheritance is actively choosing to not disperse their fortune, while knowing full well that their fortune could ease the suffering of myriads of people. Perhaps the only exception is someone who has begun and is in the active, proven process of actually dispersing wealth they received through inheritance- in other words, someone who is using the money they have control over to improve the lives of others.

      4. HueSatLight

        Remember when Bill Gates and Warren Buffet gave away “all their money” and somehow they’re richer now?

    3. True Survivor

      You are right, Booster is being a butt. Regardless of whether or not Carla’s parents are good people or terrible monsters
      1) That shouldn’t impact Carla’s viability as a partner (sins of the father, much)
      2) You don’t just respond to a polite request for a favor with an insult to a person’s parents.
      3) Carla doesn’t really have friends. She is largely seen to be a loner, ever on the periphery of her social circles on the rare occasion she is not holed up in her room. Her parents supported her when many others in the public lime light, would have tried to push her down and cover her up. They are likely everything to Carla. Insulting them to her face is not cool. Maybe Booster thinks she needs to hear these things about them, but that was not the time, place or tone.

      1. Wack'd

        it’s never the time, place, or tone in this comic. everyone should always be nicer

        also we reliably see carla hanging out with sal, marcie, and malaya, even playing roller derby with them on a regular basis, so like. she’s not a friendless loner who needs to be handled with kid gloves, at least at this point in her life

        also also what part of this request has been “polite”

      2. Queezle

        If someone who barely ever talked to me, unless they need/want something from me and started our interaction by calling me the wrong name and then made that “request”, I would not be inclined to consider it “polite”. And unless I thought they would be someone my sibling wanted to meet/know I would also not be inclined to help out. Not for the reason Carla has given at least.

      3. Shade

        This was not a polite request.

      4. Reaver

        Carla, polite? lmao when?

    4. Thag Simmons

      Booster’s being mean but this is a subject where a bit of meanness is warranted

      1. Kyrik Michalowskk

        Being truthful can sometimes hurt people, but Booster isn’t just sitting here spouting uncomfortable truths; they are sitting there insulting Carl’s parents.

        1. Taffy

          Good.

        2. Thag Simmons

          Not without provocation

        3. HueSatLight

          yes, someone might feel insulted by an uncomfortable truth. That’s the uncomfortable part of it.

    5. drs

      There’s a strong argument to be made that if you’re actually a good person, you would give away enough wealth to not be a billionaire any more.

      $100 million is enough to spend $1 million/year for 100 years. Or to generate $600,000/year in after-tax income even if you put it in a 1% savings account. For a family of 3, $300 million. For smarter investments or a less rich lifestyle less. To keep holding onto $1 billion is to say you deserve that much wealth more than others who are suffering.

      1. thejeff

        But if you’re a billionaire, most of that wealth is usually in the companies you own. It’s not just sitting around in a bank account.

        From what we can guess, for the Ruttens to get down below a billion, they’d almost certainly have to sell off their company (And then give the proceeds away.)
        That’s a huge deal and assuming they’re even vaguely ethical by business standards could easily lead to worse abuses happening.

        1. milu

          Depending on the amount of control they have on their company they could:
          – defang their patents (CC-BY-NC licence?)
          – help set up workers co-ops in their various factories and transfer ownership to them
          – sell their various companies for symbolic amounts to public bodies (who will at least be slightly more accountable, and if they do it piecemeal that’s one less monopoly out there)
          – leverage their power over antisocial markets (eg Uber) to push regulations (even just not lobbying against regulations and being transparent with their figures and practices would be quite unprecedented)
          – and many more outside the box ideas possibly.

          I mean, they might get assassinated or thrown in jail or something, but my point is, there are certainly options.

          The fundamental issue, as Chomsky explained to a mainstream journalist who claimed he didn’t censor his opinions: “if you had different opinions, you wouldn’t have that job”.

          A more fundamental issue to my mind is that we even care about how ethical individual oligarchs are. The oligarchy is the problem. i find Booster’s frankness refreshing, but hurting the feelings of billionaires and their families with blunt truisms is not, in itself, political activism. In the context of this being a cartoon, i approve of that tagline but also i would love to see actual activism being represented.

        2. thejeff

          There are certainly things they could do, but it’s far from as simple as “you’ve got enough money to live on comfortably, just give the rest of it away.”

        3. milu

          That is true, and i thank you for prompting the insight that for those of us who aren’t extravagantly rich, this is the “wrong” framing of the problem (not gonna write that essay nuancing what i mean by “wrong” Just now)

        4. milu

          thinking about this some more, for some reason.

          actually you make a very good point, and one that should be obvious, and it makes me suspicious of how easy and natural it feels to say about corporate renters “just give away your money” like that’s a sensible solution to the problem of billionaires.

          but as you say, that’s not how it works. that’s actually kind of buying into the billionaire class’s own propaganda that they (the individual people whose names are on the bank accounts) actually are worth X billion dollars.

          no. the whole point is, they’re parasites. they siphon wealth off by reorganizing society around their profits and blue-pilling us into believing this is normal.

          the point is, the workers are doing real things (well sometimes), the oligarch’s signatures aren’t. we shouldn’t worry about what they could be doing with their billions, but about when we stop pretending like any of it’s theirs to begin with.

        5. thejeff

          That’s some of it, but it’s also a shift from “the system is a problem”, to “these specific people are the problem”.
          Yeah, they’re parasites, but the system inherently generates parasites. The solution isn’t taking out the current set of parasites (except as collateral damage), but changing the system to keep it from generating them. Or at least limiting them more than it can now.
          I do kind of think they’re inherent to human society and will arise however we try to restructure, which is why I’m suspicious of slogans like “end capitalism” as solutions.

        6. Nicoleandmaggie

          One of the roles for government is to break monopolies and to put systems in place so natural monopolies can only do minimal damage. Capitalism works best with fetters. Some socialism makes economies more efficient and increases welfare. Political decisions like citizens United hamper the government’s ability to care for anyone but the super wealthy.

        7. milu

          i mean. “end capitalism” is a very vague slogan and if that’s your entire politics you will be in pretty motley company. but capitalism is a historical system (historical process would be a better way to think of it i think)

          it’s not just about bad actors existing, sure, there’s game theory % chance that any given social structure will generate its own antisocial behaviour.

    6. Uly

      the fact remains that many rich individuals donate money to charity, and regardless of whether they did it for tax purposes, or not it is still helping a charity.

      The wealthy donate a smaller percentage of their disposable income to charity than the poor do – and a lot of their favorite charities mostly benefit themselves. I like the Met Gala as much as the next person, but every penny spent there is a penny not going to City Harvest.

      If you’ve got more wealth than you could use up in ten lifetimes, you’re stealing from the poor. No amount of charitable donations will make up for that.

      1. NGPZ

        ????

      2. not someone else

        This is also ignoring the whole system of how charities and NGOs are often deeply displaced from the people on the ground and rven the good ones are set up to patch the holes in the system that billionaires directly benefit from and often fund, and how it has been proven scientifically multiple times that the best way *by far* to help people get stable long-term is to cut out 95% of the organization and just hand them significant amounts of money with no strings attached.

        1. Taffy

          Yeah but if I have the money to fix an entire town’s problems and then I use it to fix the entire town’s problems, I won’t have all that money anymore! It’s much better to invent new problems, pay people so little money I’ll never even notice it’s gone to do the most basic patchwork possible, make sure they’re barely trained and constantly exhausted, and then pay even more money (but still not enough that I’ll ever notice it’s gone) to prevent people’s attempt at solving the new problems. I could also spend a lot of money (still unnoticeable amounts to me) to basically create a circus that hands out free food at semi-regular (but still not actually helpful) intervals, and put my name and face all over it so everyone knows what a great person I am for deigning to use my vast personal wealth to “help” a “good cause”.

        2. Uly

          Yes, but that involves trusting poor people to know how to spend their own money.

    7. Angel

      i’m sure ppl as famous as carla’s parents have been confronted about their wealth before but so far we wouldn’t know their public stance on things but other than it being mentioned that carla is a part of it, ppl haven’t said anything particularly ‘shady’ about ruttech even if not also overly positive, unless it’s such a monopoly that their stuff iseverywhere and barely any alternatives.

    8. HueSatLight

      no, billionaires do not donate to charity. They pay a pittance for a public relations boost. The “tax purposes” is just them cheating more. Tax them until they are no longer billionaires, and use the money to right some of damage they’ve done to society. miss me with “oh no these poor billionaires are good at heart, won’t someone think of the billionaires feelings? They give the equivalent of a penny to a charity of questionable effect, that makes up for destroying society. I guess there’s no policy anyone can think of to correct the problem of a few people hording all the money, shrug emoji.”

      1. thejeff

        You can’t really tax the owners of a large corporation until they’re not billionaires. Their wealth is mostly the corporation.

        Theoretically you could create policies that would break up large corps or prevent them from growing past a certain size, but that’s a lot more complex than just taxing rich people.

        1. HueSatLight

          yes, trust busting, that’s something we used to do.

      2. HueSatLight

        * caveat: MacKenzie Scott might be giving to charity for real. As soon as she had full say over what to do with her money she’s been donating at a significantly higher rate than other billionaires. She’s still a billionaire, so we’ll see.

    9. Dr. Sharks

      A billionaire is someone who can lose 99.9% of their wealth and still be a millionaire. The amount of good that could be done with that 99.9%, while still affording its previous owners a life of luxury you or I will probably never see, makes the act of failing to stop being a billionaire monstrously immoral.

    10. PedanticJerkass

      the fact remains that many rich individuals donate money to charity, and regardless of whether they did it for tax purposes, or not it is still helping a charity.

      Just gonna leave this here.

    11. eh, whatever

      You might think it is cool and hip to have no social filter

      Have you considered the possibility that Booster really doesn’t have a social filter, that all their attempts to develop one have failed? That they’re not pretending not to have one, but really don’t have one?

      I don’t know if that’s the case, obviously, but I can’t see how the possibility can be excluded from what little we know.

      1. Dante

        Booster gives me serious autistic vibes. They’ve got the vocabulary and the enbyness (?) but even more than this…

        They want so badly to get people and have friends they’ve tried to study what makes others tick and how they interact. There’s a certain dissociation to it that reminds me of Dina applying the scientific method to pants euphoria – And while they can do as good a cold read a first year psych major can… they super not stick the landing on horizontal relationships. I’m maintaining until my dying breath that day they got introduced at the dorm was all about being so excited to do the party trick they thought they were legit being asked to do they didn’t read the room.

    12. smolgrlboi

      Carla was being a self-righteous jerk and Booster just handed it back to them. Can’t take the heat etc etc etc

    13. Mturtle7

      From what I’ve seen, “[X] is being an ass” will literally never not be an opinion shared by at least a few other vocal commenters on this website, regardless of who [X] is or what they are doing in the current comic!

    14. Mark

      It’s not just you.

  28. Spriteless Aunty

    Wow booster just doin a classic exercise in empathy here. Who does they think they is, healthygamergg?

  29. RassilonTDavros

    OOOH, this is gonna be a really painful argument to read, I can already tell.

    We’ve never really gotten that much backstory on Carla up to this point, but I’m willing to bet there was a time in her life when her parents were the only people she knew who were willing to stand up for her and respect her identity. And it’s clear that she idolizes them a lot. And now Booster, taking on Mike’s modus operandi of poking at things others really wish would stay un-poked, is actively calling the heroic image they’ve built up through what Carla has said about them. Because let’s face it, there really is no such thing as an ethical billionaire.

    This is going to get nasty.

    1. StClair

      quite possibly. it’s definitely going to get real, in a way that Carla’s protestations up to now have not.

  30. Nono

    Going by the theory that Booster doesn’t actually believe that, they’re just being a smug ass to match Carla, and they hit a topic that they know Carla will actually drop the smug facade for to ‘test’ how passionate she actually can be.

    It’s a ‘will you be good enough for Charlie’ test.

    1. Dante

      Considering Booster is a latine enby from a small town in Indiana, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do believe what they’re saying. They’re just also testing Carla on behalf of Charlie.

      They contain multitudes that way (?)

      1. DrunkenNordmann

        Nevermind that “you can’t be (super-)rich while also being 100 % ethical” isn’t really a fringe take either, especially among youther people.

        1. StClair

          Dorothy had a very similar statement thrown in her face recently, and it broke her pretty good.
          Now it looks like it might be Carla’s turn.

  31. Chaucer59

    Oh very nice. And how’d they get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. If there’s ever gonna be any progress…

    1. Angel

      hopefully ppl dont’ get taken advantage of it to an extreme but i’m sure there are ppl growing up who got praised for going ‘above and beyond’ during school and end up being workaholics but even at an amazing pay it’s not rly worth burning yourself out mentally/physically even if there is a price point that’d make you do more than the bare minimum.

    2. Dante

      I’d been nervous about going too political in the comments section today… And now I’m delighted to see so many people with these takes, seriously.

    3. Andrews

      If only we could be an anarcho-syndicalist commune, and take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week

      1. Andrews

        Someone kindly made a comment quoting Monty Python but everyone is arguing over capitalism instead of following their lead. This feels like a mistake to me

        1. Dante

          Love that line! It’s just kind of The Dream for me sdkjgkls

          Someone also quoted Star Trek. Beautiful surprises, both of them :33

  32. DailyBrad

    Ah, hitting one of Carla’s few actual weak points: she loves her parents very much, and is actually quite proud of them.

    1. Wack'd

      carla loves to see a girlboss winning

      …assuming one of her parents is a girl, which i don’t think has actually been confirmed, but it’s statistically likely

      1. Nono

        Could be both!

      2. NickG

        Young Carla refers to them as Mom and Dad in a Patreon strip (the one about whether her custom Ultracar toy’s missiles conform to safety regs) but it could still be both in theory.

    2. Angel

      yep one of the downsides of “actually liking” your parents probably means you have rose colored glasses as well

      that said hopefully they aren’t intentionally malicious. wonder if they’d still count as ‘unehthical’ if they created some invention/software that rly took off and someone gave them like a billion as a contract to start their own company/make more stuff or would that still count as unethically earned if another billionaire pays them

  33. morhek

    Alright Booster, you were wavering with me for a little while but I’m back in your court.

    For now.

    1. Wack'd

      i’m the jester in booster’s court

      1. Schpoonman

        Booster would make a fantastic King’s Wit.

        1. Dante

          And look great while doing it, too!

    2. Angel

      well, they’re doing it for the benefit of their sister and not seeing carla as an ‘opportunity’ to flex their psychoanalysis skill on, if it ends up being a side effect that might be even better

  34. HueSatLight

    They could have inherited it, from the mysterious origins of wealthy Dutch families, don’t look up Dutch East India Company, West India Company.

    1. Mark

      Eh, someone’s grandparents could have bought Norelco on IPO day.

  35. PirateTawnee

    As far as I can tell Carla is more horrified at the the thought of awkward thanksgiving conversations than the idea of marriage. That’s something that I’d enjoy smarter people than me picking apart.

    1. Angel

      yeah it does look more like a fear response than rage tho i’m pretty sure she will yell at buster like “you’re wrong my parents are the best” or like maybe encourage them to make working conditions better if they happen to be terrible (but even at a top of the company i’m sure some stuff would slip through the cracks)

  36. Taffy

    More importantly than the “rich people bad” #discourse, why would this lead directly to marriage? I feel like a few steps have been thrown in prison.

    1. Dante

      I think Booster went like “what would be the most extreme logical conclusion of them getting together? Staying together forever?” to probe how serious were Carla’s intentions.

    2. Bash

      I think Booster is messing with Carla, based on their face in the last panel.

  37. Responder

    Yes, yes please, that is what I want.

  38. shrub

    So what exactly is the amount of wealth someone can have before its decided they must have done bad things to get it?

    1. drs

      It’s more about how you get the wealth. The greater the wealth, the more likely it is to have been shady, but I commented earlier about how it’s hard to blame JKR for selling hundreds of millions of books that kids enjoyed. Or top athletes: there might be a lot to say about pro sports, but it’s hard to blame a baseball play for being paid a lot.

      People who get paid a lot tend to be siphoning off already intense cash flows (finance, real estate) or profiting from government restriction of supply (medicine; US doctors are _very_ well paid compared to even other rich countries.) Techies don’t have licensing and coding itself can be clean, but the companies paying the nice salaries are often up stuff.

      I don’t have a set number, but there’s only so much you can earn from Just Working and not underpaying employees or profiting from Already Unethically Rich People or just getting lucky on commissions.

      (If real estate values go up 10x, real estate agents making 6% get 10x as much money, despite doing the same amount of work.)

      1. shrub

        This is why I don’t like judging people based on their financial status

        I mean Carla’s patents might be bad people but I’d like to see evidence of it first

      2. Mr D phone posting

        Personal bug of mine is that if what you’re doing is completely fine, but the people who pay you are dirty and that makes you dirty by association? Then nobody is clean.

      3. thejeff

        There’s also the uncomfortable fact that most of the things the really rich do to get really rich are also exactly the same things much smaller employers do. If the basic complaint is capitalist exploitation – profit being the difference between the value of the worker’s work and what they’re actually being paid, that exists at the corner store as well as the mega corp.
        The difference is scale and it’s the scale that makes the billionaires.
        Which isn’t to say that some of the rich don’t do much worse, but so do some of the lower level business owners.

        Like with the authors thing (not to defend JKR on her transphobia), an author who has a huge best seller and gets rich, isn’t doing anything different than an C-list author who’s barely eking out a living. The printshop and warehouse workers are being treated exactly the same in both cases. The authors are probably even making the same percentages (at least at first) – one just scales up because they sell far far more copies.

      4. HueSatLight

        US doctors don’t get paid even close to a billion dollars. Betsy Devos has 17 yatchs. I promise your PCP does not. A plausible bad turn of events could make them destitute in a few short months.

    2. HueSatLight

      A billion USD is past that line.

      1. Mark

        Please show your work.

    3. Alongcameaspider

      When you have enough for your family to love comfortably for the rest of their lives but decide that they need more money anyway

      1. drs

        Pedantically, that’s the point at which _having_ the money is a bad thing. _Getting_ the money is potentially different.

      2. shrub

        So a billion is fine then if that’s what you think you need to live comfortably then

        1. Taffy

          What, are you uncomfortable eating anything that’s not gold-plated? Gotta sleep on a mattress the size of most people’s living rooms to be comfy? Can’t drive a car that wasn’t hand-made at the North Pole by Santa’s snobbiest elves? Have reservations about a house with less than 20 rooms, all cleaned daily by a workforce that would make a swanky hotel blush?

          No reasonable person needs that to love comfortably. There’s only so much gold and rare Peruvian badger hide you can put on things before it’s just stupid.

        2. Taffy

          Live* comfortably, not love. Billionaires are incapable of love, they only see life as a series of monetary transactions.

        3. RocketRelm

          I’d be curious to see what scientific study you can cite or rule of biology states that a sufficiently rich person is “incapable of love”. I really like studying things like this and I’m absolutely interested.

        4. Schpoonman

          https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduces-compassion/

          https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/does-wealth-rob-brain-compassion/618496/

          This is not directed specifically at you, but holy shit it’s exhausting watching people defend capitalism in this comment section. We get it, you’re sociopaths who would happily kill us all by hand one-by-one for the penny and moment of entertainment it might bring you. Would you please lock yourselves in a room and toss the key out the mail slot so the rest of us have a chance to stop the planet from burning down?

        5. Schpoonman

          To be clear, I’m not advocating killing you like you want to do to me. You’d be fed, watered, excersized, even entertained.

          But I’m so over listening to thinking rational people watch us barrel off a cliff and trying to reach over and floor the accelerator.

        6. Taffy

          Fuck off. 🙂

        7. milu

          Yes! Do please fuck very off @shrub and @RocketRelm. Like what’s your damage that people venting at obscene wealth requires fact-checking seriously

        8. Taffy

          “I’D bE cUrIoUs To SeE wHaT sCiEnTiFiC sTuDy YoU cAn CiTe Or RuLe Of BiOlOgY sTaTeS-” I’d be curious to see how much donkey jizz you can gargle at once, but sadly neither of us is gonna get what we want.

        9. shrub

          Well that’s not a nice thing to say, you must be a billionaire

        10. Taffy

          That’s almost an intelligent thought. Keep trying and you’ll get there one day, dumb-dumb.

        11. NGPZ

          #PragerUmoment ?

        12. The Oracle

          It just so happens that such a study really does exist. Here’s a really good video essay that covers it.

      3. thejeff

        So at that point, you shut down your company and fire all your workers?

        1. Taffy

          More reasonably, you could simply not do the whole “I gave myself a $25,000,000 bonus this year, using the money I saved by not paying my workers a fair wage” song and dance. It’s really easy, I do it every day.

    4. Derek

      it’s literally impossible to have more money than some countries’ entire GDP without it being blood money in some form.

      I think what trips people up is the difference in magnitude between millions and billions. One can become a millionaire “accidentally” by winning the lottery, writing a best selling book, becoming a famous actor or athlete or inventing a new technology. By accidentally here I mean that such a person perhaps was not trying to become rich, but they struck good luck and became a millionaire.

      You can’t, you really can’t, become a billionaire without some of that money coming from wage theft, destruction of the environment, literal slavery or shady stock market manipulation.
      Some billionaires inherited their wealth, which in a lot of cases means they’re still benefiting from the type of colonialism that was tied to genocide

      1. Alongcameaspider

        I think a good way to demonstrate scale is to compare a million seconds to a billion seconds

        A million seconds is a little under 12 days

        A billion seconds is over 30 years

        If we want to go up to a trillion seconds that’s over 30,000 years

        1. HueSatLight

          Around a million days ago, the Upanishads were written, the first emperor of Japan is said to have been born, and city of Rome was founded.

          Around a billion days ago, we were Australopithecus. Australopithecines?

  39. Bash

    As expected this is absolute gold.

  40. DashWallkick

    Carla running into the most intoxicating thing an arrogant person can hit; a wall. Charlie refuses to give her attention and she’s driven to lust-insanity by it.

  41. Reltzik

    …. I predict this interaction is going to go exactly perfectly, with no speed bumps whatsoever, and that Booster will suffer zero pie-related repercussions for it.

    1. Taffy

      Unfortunately, I think you’re right about the pie.

    2. MM

      I feel like Booster stands a better chance of seeing the pie coming than most. Assuming they don’t let Carla land one just to try and get it over with, although I’m not sure that would satisfy Carla.

    3. The Oracle

      I don’t think Willis is brave enough to write a scene where Booster gets cream pied by Carla, no matter how funny we all know it would be.

  42. AlexaSpuds

    People are just missing the forest for the trees by starting a discourse about the irrelevant wealth comment when it’s obvious Booster is just fucking with Carla cuz she’s a dick, they know that she’s got no romantic interest in their sister, she’s just annoyed and Booster wants to rub salt in the wound on her ego.
    There’s been 0 interactions between the two girls that show any form of romantic affection, and I have big doubts there’s any sexual tension since Carla was ace in the Walkyverse and probably is also ace in this universe too, Booster saying there is romantic tension doesn’t automatically mean there is any, they’re a smartass, not Nostradamus.

    1. not someone else

      The trees look cool, though. There’s a lot of moss on this one.

    2. HueSatLight

      Carla is definitely interested in Charlie. She doesn’t do romance, or hasn’t done romance anyways, in a typically recognizable way. https://www.dumbingofage.com/yuppers/

      1. StClair

        I’d forgotten this strip, and was going to make a “throw a toy at her head” (ala Walky) joke.
        Pies are better.

      2. Schpoonman

        This paints the whole Mary/1812 Overture thing in a weird light.

        1. HueSatLight

          There’s different kinds of pie to the face.

    3. The Oracle

      But a fictional character said words in an order that formed a sentence and then I read that sentence. That’s called “breaking the fourth wall”.

  43. Bruno

    This is the most I’ve ever liked Booster.

    1. Icalasari

      No kidding, this was an AMAZING comment from them!

    2. MegaBee

      Same.

  44. Alongcameaspider

    Booster is 100% right here and I wonder if Carla has ever actually had to confront that fact about her parents

    They may be great to her but they’re bad people in all the ways required to become billionaires

  45. Amós Batista

    OFF, crazy idea: A lot of times, I feel really dumb for not understand what a strip is saying. But there’s days, like today, I literally know what each one will say even before finishing read it.

    This strip is very well written. Or today I’m paying more attention.

  46. Axel

    even if they became billionaires in a shockingly ethical way, they’re still wealth hoarding

    1. Schpoonman

      The thing is that no person’s labor is worth the money per hour it would take to become a billionaire in a reasonable amount of time.

      Earning $3600/hr (one dollar a second) puts you at a million dollars in 11 days. 11,000 days is 31 years. Unfortunately, under capitalism money begets money which can be used to buy political influence and siphon even more money from the people they tread on to make their riches in the first place.

      1. The Oracle

        $1/second for the next 31 years, no legally mandated half hour breaks for every eight hours scheduled to keep me from making that sweet cheddar cheese 24/7? Sign me the fuck up, I’ve got some really neat ideas for where to spread that cash.

      2. Axel

        sorry, I didn’t mean to imply it WAS ethical, just that even if that were the case, sitting on the money isn’t

  47. Icalasari

    slow clap Good job Booster!

    1. Bash

      I am, and have always been, on Team Booster.

      1. Dante

        It’s so damn refreshing to see the commentariat loving and cheering on them. I loved Booster from the start, but tonight, tonight I was fucking proud.

  48. Suet

    Screw resurrecting Copernicus because of heliocentricity, it’s time to facetiously say “The parents are Rutten to the core!”… albeit the realization that a ton of the hard-hitting topics involve Carla in some form

    No Filter vs. No Shame… BEGIN

  49. Da Boy

    Ooof, stabbing her where it hurts, huh Booster?

  50. Carla's #2 Fan

    Okay they’re certainly not wrong, I just love Carla. Tbf, I’m well aware my gal is flawed.

    Also, Amazi-girl ref in QC today! 😮

  51. ktbear

    I love that Carla chose to defend her parents rather than deny any possible romantic feelings towards Charlie. Theres hope for this ship after all.

  52. Martin Smith

    I’m not an American and as such Thanksgiving is a bit of a vagueness to me. Is spending (part of) it with your sibling’s parents-in-law a thing?

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      In practice it is often the main family reunion in the US, when all the kids, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins get together. Christmas is the only competition for family get togethers.

      But Thanksgiving is explicitly secular and doesn’t have the “Peace on Earth, Good Will towards Men” vibe.

      While it supposed to be about happiness and togetherness, in practice conflicts can flare up because of old family feuds, things people have been trying to avoid talking about, politics, disagreements about social issues, etc.

      Coming out as being LGBT, or coming with a lover that others in the family will not approve of, causing a huge fight is a bit of a cliche.

    2. Taffy

      Thanksgiving is a shitty holiday that people only celebrate out of social obligation. Nobody likes it, they just like eating food they could have eaten at any time of the year anyway. The “let’s not fight, it’s [holiday]” meme can die at any point.

      1. Bryy

        Same reason I dislike Christmas.

        1. Taffy

          See, I’ve got less of a problem with Christmas personally, because my family gives each other endless shit at all times, so we’re all used to just saying what we’re thinking to/about each other. We can incorporate subtle burns into our gifts, everyone understands it’s all in good fun, and if one of us says something really fucking stupid, the rest of us just dogpile that person until they knock it the fuck off.

          Really, any form of forced, helpful-to-nobody politeness goes against how I was raised, and Thanksgiving (for some unknowable reason) has more of an association with that crap than Christmas does, for me.

    3. thejeff

      “sibling’s parents-in-law” would actually be kind of weird.

      More commonly, you’d see a married couple switch between the parents yearly. (or some other complicated schedule).
      In this case I’d expect Carla & Charlie with the Ruttens one time and with Booster and their parents another.

      Maybe if Carla and Charlie were hosting, then you’d get both sets of parents and at least some of the extended family?

      1. MM

        Booster’s probably assuming a couple of billionaires who at least want to give the appearance of being decent people will at least invite the in-laws to join them.

        1. thejeff

          Why?
          At least on a regular basis. Sure, they’ve got the money to afford it, but that’s not really the point.

          It kind of assumes that Booster’s family doesn’t have their own extended family with their own gathering.

  53. rowanmikaio

    Great coincidence that today’s comic is “Namedrop” considering today’s Questionable Content references DoA and even mentions Amazi-girl by name in the… alt-text?

    1. Mark

      Great, yes. Coincidence? Hmmm.

  54. Cloud

    I mean, booster isn’t wrong

    1. shrub

      Unless we see evidence to the contrary Booster probably is wrong

      1. Da Boy

        Booster probably only says it to annoy Carla.

        1. shrub

          That is probably correct

        2. Da Boy

          I mean just look at that smile at the end, they are having so much fun with this. Xd

  55. Laura

    …Would anyone be up for a game?

    …Anyone here remember when “millionaire” was considered the height of riches, and “a million dollars” had the same connotation as unlimited wealth?

    So here’s the game:

    What would you do with a million dollars?
    OR:
    If you had a million dollars, what’s the most likely way you would have gotten it?

    1. Laura

      It’s related because Carla’s parents are billionaires

    2. shrub

      Technically speaking I am a millionaire but if I wanted a millionaire dollars I’d have to sell everything of value I own so that’s part two answered and to answer the first question I’d buy back everything thing I just sold (or a replacement) becau

      Sorry its not a very exciting answer

      1. shrub

        Or pay the author to have an edit function on these boards…

      2. Laura

        That’s a very realistic answer! Very pragmatic, and exactly what I meant — that “millionaire” doesn’t mean now what it used to mean.

        (I used to have such lofty ideals of all the good I could do in the world if I had a million dollars…)

        1. Zaxares

          Indeedy. I too am technically a millionaire, but most of that is basically tied up in the value of my house along with some life insurance/retirement plans. These days, being a millionaire basically just means that you are middle to upper-middle class. It doesn’t actually mean you’re rich anymore.

          And while Booster’s kinda being an ass here, he’s also not wrong. I know of not a single billionaire who didn’t either inherit their wealth, or they acquired it either through borderline/outright exploitative means or tax evasion measures. (Those who fall into the latter category often argue that what they’re doing is just “reducing their tax liability through legal means”, but I also note that not a single one of them is ever proud enough of it to declare it openly to all and sundry. They always want to keep it hidden or quiet. So if it’s all above board, why are you so reluctant to let others know about it, hmmmmm?)

        2. Laura

          So true! At least be an OPEN tax cheat! ?

    3. OnyxIdol

      I’d quit my job

      1. Laura

        Cool! What would you like your time to be like or to have in it, rather than your job?

    4. MegaBee

      I’d pay off my own debts. Then I’d pay off my immediate family’s debts. After that, work on the debts of some friends. Then I’d start fixing up the house, get a new car, an e-bike, various quality of living stuff. The debt fixing comes first, though.

      1. Laura

        Wow… you read my brain. That was my own answer EXACTLY! ?

        1. Laura

          …Only my own debt and hubby’s medical expenses would taken up the majority of it, before the e-bike and home repair.

          …But, now that the eligible disability onset date for an ABLE Account (allowing people on public benefits to save money without financial penalty) is rising from 26 to 46 (as of 1/1/2026), I would LOVE to set up and contribute to ABLE Accounts for a couple of close friends. *Sigh.*

          …A young man whom I care for as if he were my nephew is homeless right now, and a childhood friend whom I love as a brother is ill and in prison. A lady friend from my youth is also facing homelessness. So there are about 3 or 4 people whom I would love to be able to help set on solid financial footing… if such help would be helpful or welcome or even feasible.

    5. Taffy

      I’d do what any good person would do, and distribute it to as many of my people as possible. Probably with certain caveats, like they have to let me pay off their debts so they wouldn’t spend it on dumb shit and still be in debt, asking me for even more money later. Nowadays it wouldn’t stretch as far as it really should, but I’d do what I could to un-dig the hole. Probably squirrel some away, too, just so I’m not completely broke by the end of the whole thing. Wouldn’t quit working to actually earn money though, or at least I’d do my best to invest it wisely so I could passively gain more over time.

      1. Laura

        Smart choice! That’s always my concern when I bail out friends financially… it never seems to help them in anything other than the short terms. Wish I could help them more long-term.

        1. Taffy

          More specifically, I’ve seen what my friends spend their money on. $200 on Yu-Gi-Oh! booster boxes that aren’t going anywhere, and then a couple days later it’s “I don’t have the money for gas or food”. Shopping/gambling addictions are no fuckin’ joke, y’know? Whether it’s their fault or not, I’d hate to basically waste thousands of dollars trying to help a friend, just to wind up helping Konami.

        2. Laura

          So true!

    6. Needfuldoer

      I’d throw it in an investment account and live off the interest.

      1. thejeff

        Basically. Donate some of it. Help out some friends if they needed it. Pay off the mortgage (which is essentially an investment on its own). Invest the rest.

        Probably have to keep working anyway, but with a lot less pressure. 🙂

        1. Laura

          And that’s what it’s about. Breathing room. The space and time to be sharing. It’s always there, but it’s hard to find.

      2. Laura

        That’s the dream! ?

        I read some CDs are yielding 6% APY now. Because of all the interest rate hikes at the Fed. Mind. Blown.?

    7. Tesset

      I’d buy tons of overly fancy box mac-and-cheese & the most expensive ketchups to put on it

      (Things that have never made sense to me about that song: ketchup on your mac and cheese!? Ketchup?! On your mac and cheese!?!? Like I love you BNL but this is a culinary crime that has baffled me my whole life)

      1. Laura

        Depends what kind of catsup!

        Curried tomato paste?
        Tomato-based cacao molé?
        Catsup is a remarkably versatile “vegetable”! ?

    8. poyo

      What would I do wil a million dollars? Aside from the usual nice things (helping friends with debt, buying my mom her dream house)

      Calico Critter room. I would have a Calico Critter room where i set up an entire Calico Critter civilization.

      how do i GET the million dollars? THAT i am not revealing online where the government can see. (it rhymes with schmilling schmillionaires)

      1. Laura

        Calico critters… I LOVE it! ?

        I, too, would gain my money by thrilling billionaires,…with the dulcet tones of my lovely singing voice! I would sing drag gospel with Flamy Grant and everyone would shower bills at my feet… ?

        1. poyo

          Marvelous, truly ??

    9. The Oracle

      I would like to say that I’d help my friends and family, but I don’t have those, so I guess I’d have to jump straight to the part where the local homeless people start having at least an okay apartment and something to eat. Somebody mentioned earlier that you do more good just handing people good money than you’d do setting up an organization to hand them supplies that are worth significantly less money (Im paraphrasing), and… Yeah, that sounds right. People can’t afford to get jobs in a lot of places, and the time and effort that go into setting up a tent to hand them to tiny boxes of off-brand off-brand Cheezits and a travel sized stick of deodorant could be used to give them a permanent address and transportation that isn’t gonna break down on them and cost them every third paycheck to constantly repair.

      Just give them the money and stuff, you don’t need a striped tent with your name on it and a bunch of publicity photos for your social media engagement, fucking narcissists.

      1. Dante

        HOLY SHIT, people do that?? Hand over tents and take pics??? That’s. That’s so demeaning??

        1. Taffy

          I think the tent is only involved because setting up an entire new building would be more commitment than a rich person would want for a publicity stunt. It probably would be set up in like a public park, parking lot, or the outside of an existing building, and then it’d be taken down once the richo was done masturbating handing out snacks.

        2. Dante

          [Insert garbled screaming here]

          What a masturbatory exercise in nothing. Like there aren’t a fuckton of studies that prove that housing with no strings attached is the best alternative to end homelessness by far, these people go “here you go, my good man, so you can starve in the streets with a personalized tent”?? How humiliating! I had no idea this was something that happened.

        3. Laura

          …I think the reference was not specifically to handing out tents for folks to live in, but instead to setting up a very big tent to provide shade for the “volunteers” handing out small bags of supplies. Those, I have seen. Special “events” where folks line up to get free stuff. Which, is arguably, even less helpful.

          I mean, distribution is often helpful, but there are some ways of distributing stuff that are more cost-effective than others. When I was on the street, I was always happy to get supplies. But getting them as part of a PR stunt might also feel a little cheap. I was usually pretty happy just to get the stuff, at the time, though.

        4. Laura

          (Some folks call it “poverty-pimping”. And in a way, it can feel like that, sometimes.)

      2. Needfuldoer

        The giver should remain anonymous, if it’s truly an act of charity.

        1. Laura

          I mean, that is true, but when it comes to certain things, like, providing free legal services, I actually have no problem with some big law firm getting some free PR out of it. Whatever it takes to get the people the help they can use… :-\

        2. thejeff

          Basically. Is it more important that the “act of charity” be sufficiently pure or should we prioritize incentivizing charity so that more is done? I’d argue the latter.

          OTOH, I’d also argue that charity is a stopgap at best and we should restructure society to make it less necessary.

        3. Laura

          Amen and Awomen and Apeople to that!

    10. Dante

      I’d ensure my family’s housing, health insurance, and retirement, along with my own (I have a chronic illness). Admittedly, my dream has always been to see the world, so I’d put a portion into that.

      But I don’t need, personally, much when it comes to living expenses. Modesty suits me well enough. Someone on tumblr once made a long, detailed post on how to make that kind of money work within the system to produce a self-sustainable, perma-regenerating amount (which is what the rich do btw); which I’d do with the specific intention to perma-pour the results into funding social and ecological projects until the revolution hopefully comes.

      That I’d pay my fucking taxes goes without saying |DD

      1. Laura

        I love that idea. I just love it.

    11. Mark

      Most likely I would have gotten it by tinkering up some useful software, making it into a product, setting up a small company to sell and service it, and struggling to keep it afloat until Oracle bought it off me for a cool million.

      1. Laura

        Wow, cool!

    12. Bo

      making a comment so good someone gives me a million dollars is it working say its working

  56. Pylgrim

    A rare Carla L. I will take it directly into my veins.

    1. Bryy

      I’m not gonna lie, I was not expecting this to turn into hardcore Carla lore.

  57. AlaninDC

    Say Booster goes through with it and tells Charlie that Carla walks the earth with the rest of us. What then?

    Won’t she just forget thirty seconds later?

    1. Da Boy

      Being forgotten seconds after you are introduced to someone, sucks when the shoe is on the other foot, eh Carla?

      1. Imogen

        Not when those shoes are made by Carla out of milk jugs.

  58. Handley Ramirez

    Booster, you keep being great. Don’t listen to the comments.

    1. RocketRelm

      Booster’s doing great according to some dumbfuck priorities. But according to a lot of others, they’re messing things up. Which is good from Carla’s perspective because being aware of said dumbfuckery so early does mean she can reasonably bail without having dug herself in deep enough for sunk cost to factor in.

      1. HoopsieDaisy

        What, being accurate and calling-out peoples’ bullshit is “dumbfuck priorities”? Get over yourself.

    2. Dante

      I think this strip has single-handedly earned Booster a lot of love sdkjsdl I’m not sure about “a lot of others”. Most of people think they’re indeed “doing amazing, sweetie”, which is refreshing af to see :’33

  59. thumb

    Carla has found her One True Nemesis

  60. Amós Batista

    Just impressed nobody has talked about Mark Zuckerberg on comments.

    1. Taffy

      It’s not like he’s got a personality.

  61. Yeet

    could be worse, one of carla’s parents could be a massive womaniser who only gave that up for his wife until she got sent through a portal into an alt universe or something and also they’re still billionaire tech industrialists

    1. MM

      It is probably somewhat easier to avoid exploiting workers when you have access to advanced alien tech, though.

  62. Alan in DC

    “I barely have a social filter”

    Wow, are you in for some interesting times once the relatively safe cocoon of college dissolves and real life comes rushing in with all its imperfections, annoyances and intolerances.

    Don’t worry. You’ll be accepted for how you present. It’s how you CONDUCT yourself that’s gonna bite you hard.

    1. Lena

      Not having a social filter is just code for being an asshole in most cases anyway. :p

      1. Pseudowolf

        Most people who go around saying they don’t have a social filter, just mean it as a way to excuse being a jerk.
        Here, though, I think Booster is just saying it to mess with Carla.

    2. Bash

      I’ve never seen anything to indicate that they’re unwilling to accept the consequences.

  63. Juanoku

    Destroyed with facts and logic

  64. Adept

    Booster’s not wrong.

  65. Aslan

    This is a good dynamic

  66. poyo

    Booster remaining the all-time MVP

  67. Bryy

    Carla makes sense now.

  68. Amelie Wikström

    Next it’ll turn out Ruttech is worth nearly 1 billion Korean won, which Mr and Mrs Rutten are refusing to cash out because they’re busy turning the company around to ethical business practices. They find the time to invent a process to remove Booster’s foot from their mouth and Carla and Charlie live happily ever after.

  69. Rabisch

    Amazing Booster. Carla is totally speechless. I would love to see those awkward thanksgiving dinner.

  70. Vigil247

    I used to dislike booster a lot. I take it all back, Booster is 100% Based.

    1. Carla's #2 Fan

      Tbf Booster was crossing some lines earlier, but has seemed to calm down. Likely getting close with Amber has helped with that.

  71. milu

    Booster is literally talking to a member of the oligarchy, and so there is a sense that their remark, within the framing of the story, is to be evaluated on the specific conditions of possibility of being an ethical billionaire.

    For the rest of us in our day to day, the issue is way more likely to be the existence of a worldwide system of wealth siphoning enforced via necropolitics of which the existence of billionaires of any kind are just one of the most outrageous symptoms.

  72. Imogen

    Skipping past the Carla Discourse to say it’s cute how defensive she is of her parents. They’ve been her only real friends growing up, and it really shows.

    1. Imogen

      I don’t really blame her for being defensive of her terrible parents. It’s quite possible her parents are extremely kind in a direct sense, and only become truly awful when encountered indirectly through their impact on the world.

      1. Imogen

        (We *can* also acknowledge that Booster may only be in the boys’ dorms because of the lawsuit Carla’s parents won.)

  73. smolgrlboi

    y’all someone can be wealthy (which always inherently means they got it via exploitation – we don’t have to split hairs about this) and still do/think/believe things that we would judge as morally or ethically “good”. That does not take away from, once again, how they got that wealth. This is an *actual* example of two things being true at once. It seems like a lot of folks want the characters to be ALL GOOD or ALL BAD and can’t seem to parse any nuance. Have fun critically thinking abuot anything you do/say/think if that’s your attitude, because I assure y’all none of us are free from contradictions.

    1. milu

      ” It seems like a lot of folks want the characters to be ALL GOOD or ALL BAD”

      possibly; is that really what’s going on here though? i think people are mostly talking about the ethics of becoming/being/remaining a billionaire? that’s not an “person good/person bad” situation, that’s a specific ethical discussion about wealth?

    2. Dante

      As far as I’ve have seen, there has been acknowledgement the Carla loves her parents because they aren’t transphobic, and have directly influenced anti-transphobic bills in Indiana. She’s an uber-rich heiress, and idolizes them for it. Doubtlessly, they’ve poured some good in the world.

      Where did the position of privilege allowing them to do this come from? Did they do it because of their daughter only? Indeed, this gives them nuance, and adds interest to the story on the whole.

      It feels like there’s a self-serving quality into it, which is still to be proven. Jacob will probably be instrumental to clearing it up, and DOA has been bringing Raidah into focus, too – while kept Jennifer’s. We’re probs about to have a discussion on class and social justice within the comic! And this makes the comment’s section conversation on wealth and ethics relevant.

      1. smolgrlboi

        oh for sure. there are some neat discussions happening on here, but there are also some folks jumping to Carla and her folks’ defense from Booster’s comments because they think Booster’s correct analysis is flat condemnation. Sure Booster was being snarky to Carla about it but they’re not *wrong* and also not calling for Carla’s parents to be, like, guillotined.

        And it reminded me of the larger trend of the comments section of getting SUPER polarized when a flawed character does a flawed thing. Some folks seem to want everyone to behave perfectly and be nice and never acknowledge the material reality of all of their inherent contradictions. This is a story, not a dollhouse.

  74. Vulcanodon

    I like to consider people who could be billionaires, but aren’t. Not many examples. A certain country star comes to mind.

  75. Yumi

    Is anyone else having a real annoying time with this site? At some point it keeps freezing up on me while trying to type comments. It’s worse on my phone, but it’s happening on my computer too.

    1. NGPZ

      No, but thanks for letting me know I’m not the only one dealing with computer problems today, just installed a new SSD and it might have fucked with the boot sequence. ?

      Hopefully afterwards I’ll destress with some cannabis and code work, rather fitting given this is the 420th comment I’m writing.

    2. Taffy

      It freezes sometimes, yeah. It also started pulling up a random webpage I’ve recently been on, covering up the entire screen, when I go to type.

      1. milu

        on my phone it does take a while to load the comments page, and longer to allow me to ctrl-f. which i’ve assumed was because of all the individual icons being fetched from gravatar or something, but yeah it’s a bit annoying

        1. Taffy

          See, the icons thing baffles me. They’re 50×50 squares, they shouldn’t be taxing enough to slow a device down.

          Another weird thing, the comment box will sometimes add a border/grid around my text while I type, and it only started within the past month or two.

        2. milu

          Listen, that server is obviously haunted. who the fuck knows

    3. Amós Batista

      Yes, and I have to hit the stop button to stop reloading the page.
      it’s possible to check if the something is taking this time, looking into debuging tools of Google Chrome.

  76. nightshade

    did else anyone notice that JJ over at questionable content made an amber/amazi-girl reference?

    1. Alongcameaspider

      I mean Willis and Jeph are friends afaik, and QC has been referenced in Dumbing of Age before (Faye was in the background of some strips)

      Makes sense that they’d reference each other’s works

    2. Amós Batista

      Yeah, in today strip there
      I wonder if I was already put the link on comments…

  77. nightshade

    erm reference today

  78. Li

    Re-reading for like the millionth time, so I figured I’d actually buy the books 🙂 just ordered 1-10 from your store.

    Thanks for all you do!

  79. Bruno

    FIRST

    1. Gilthwixt

      Bruh did you script this comment to drop ASAP and not plan for the new strip to not actually be out yet?

      1. Bruno

        No. I’m where I want to be.

    2. NGPZ

      Comment of the year award. ??

  80. TrueVCU

    Me when it’s almost quarter after midnight and the new comic STILL won’t load: jesus christ, willis

  81. Bo

    now im curious- what is the *LONGEST* comment section in Dumbing of Age so far?…

    1. NGPZ

      There’s one that had 1000+ afaik, not sure which one specifically….

      1. Bruno

        I think it’s the one where Sal points out to Walky that their parents are racist.

  82. Jonah Sanville

    while i wont get into the heated debate about how shitty billionaires are, i will say this:

    “but what if you get married and-” is such a dumb argument. you guys are all 18-21 years old. carla isn’t gonna marry charlie any time soon. chill tf out

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