We're inevitably creating and assembling all the pieces of the dystopian world from Manna[1], as if it were a handbook. The expectation of infinite growth and profit at all costs is going to destroy all but the very, very wealthy.
Rich people get paid for being rich when there is growth.
If real growth can't be had, fake growth (inflation and debt) will do, since it serves the same ultimate purpose just as well: paying rich people for being rich.
The beatings will continue until the growth resumes.
Too many people don’t learn from history. Especially the Rich. There was a very popular thing the French did when things got out of hand. And they were not the only only to do it throughout the history.
"There was a very popular thing the French did when things got out of hand. And they were not the only only to do it throughout the history."
People conveniently forget that the Terror soon turned against completely innocent victims and eventually led to establishment of an authoritarian military regime that set out to conquer entire Europe, creating vicious reactionary backlash from its enemies, which eventually stifled liberal thought and societal progress on the continent for two more generations.
I will take the English "let us have a non-violent gradual development" way anytime.
If Lavoisier could be guillotined because "the Republic does not need chemists", how much better do you think that programmers would fare in similar situations? There is plenty of people who resent them for just having bigger income than them. Once you run out of the rich, the mob and the guillotine will demand more victims, and neither will be particularly picky.
I never claimed it will be a great outcome. Only that the rich cannot perpetually get away with it. Revolutions often have people trying to personally benefit from all the anger and resentment. And revolutions often have innocents getting caught up unnecessarily. Minorities are also going to be blamed for their widespread discontent and they will be harmed before the rich because they are easier targets. The point being it’s not going to be pretty, and will be a lose lose situation, but it will be inevitable if the ruling class doesn’t slow down this race to the bottom.
> creating vicious reactionary backlash from its enemies, which eventually stifled liberal thought and societal progress on the continent for two more generations
Yup [1]. If you're a billionaire, you almost certainly win in the aftermath of an American violent revolution à la the French or Russians.
The country would fall into chaos while we hung our academics, minorities and upper middle classes. Then they would jet back in with foreign backing to carve up America's riches while becoming even more blazingly rich than they are under a democracy.
Academics I could see being tried and hanged. Minorities you'd simply eliminate as everyone in every nation has done throughout history. There is no need to give a trial or hanging to minorities. You just off them. (But, I guess, to be fair, offing minorities happens in almost every nation revolution or no revolution.)
Upper middle classes however? I don't know man? They're typically the ones doing the hanging. Not the ones being hanged. In fact, the upper middle classes were the ones most responsible for the French revolution. The upper middle classes came out of the revolution with rights, which they didn't have before. As well as a much larger share of the economic pie. They actually did the best in the French revolution as a class. And it came mostly at the expense of the poor on one end, and the aristocracy on the other.
Still, terrible times. Nothing good ever comes of a society that hangs people who are deemed too learned, and therefore, suspicious. Nor of societies that off minorities. Historically, those societies typically meet their crashes much more swiftly. Only now the crash is met with no one left to blame but themselves. Add to all that chaos opportunistic people in the middle class denouncing their bosses in the aristocracy, and even each other, out of resentment. I mean, man, you're left with a place that's probably gonna be a really good place not to be.
> Upper middle classes however? I don't know man? They're typically the ones doing the hanging
Doctors, lawyers, low-level executives. The ones with single and double-digit millions in retirement accounts and real estate value. For Exhibit A, see Mangioni: mid-level executive barely scraping into the 1% by wealth who didn’t have personal security.
> Nothing good ever comes of a society that hangs people who are deemed too learned, and therefore, suspicious
Right. This is the story of violent revolutions. The masses are told fever dreams of riches ahead. But they generally wind up poorer than before because the single track to date of revolutions that seek to depose not only the head of state but also the elite is bloodshed for the poor and evacuation for the rich.
The French Revolution began when the government tried to repudiate its debts once too often. It wasn't the peasants or the urban poor who were holding the bonds. Once the revolution really got going, many things changed. But an Austrian historian remarked that men are very attached to their goods, and that the Jacobins fell more because of their assignats than because of the guillotine.
> was a very popular thing the French did when things got out of hand
The French arisocracy mostly survived the Revolution not only with their lives but also their riches. Those that lost lands partly had them restored under Napoleon and the Bourbons. The degree of their survival is so great that it's debated whether the nobility benefited from the Revolution [1].
Today's rich and their wealth are more mobile. Idiots fantasising about violent revolution are mostly digging their own graves or playing into the hands of oligarchs unhappy with the democratic status quo.
We could debate, but when things go out of control, they go out of control fast. Talking about this example specifically, this is Bangladesh. It’s been less than a year when the country stood up against the government, the PM had to flee to save her life and despite the military initially try and squash the protests, gave up very quickly. At the end of the day, they are normal people with families too.
What are a few factory owners going to do against thousands of workers who are completely fed up? They are losing their jobs any way, what is stopping them from burning the factory down? This is a country where violence is not unheard of.
In your own context, if everyone is paid less, worked more and then eventually out of a job, there will be no one left to buy stuff from Billionaires. A concept Henry Ford understood really well, but Wall Street doesn’t.
Makes you wonder if some kind of underground market would form that ignores billionaires, whether that's a commune or local government establishing a new local currency, that would cause the primary currencies (USD, BTC, etc. to further inflate itself out of existence).
When the leader starts shooting the people, they lost the country for good. The outcome is either they become a closed-autocratic/dictatorship country or the leader will be ousted super quick.
I'm not sure what my username has to do with anything, or why the combative tone. It's intended as a thought exercise, if a revolution in the spirit of the French revolution were to happen today, with the surveillance at the government's disposal, how quickly would it be justified legally (declared terrorists) and neutralized. The more time passes, the more technological advances are used for mass surveillance and propaganda, the less likely it seems.
there is a presumption on your part, that control of the net, is absolute
revolutions of the past,have all included some control of the press
and we can see, everywhere, the frantic efforts to
control the net, and digital currency
the old axiom of "control the press and the mint, and they can have the rest" is now bieng put to the test, internaly and externaly.
the truth bieng that the level of control now possible, real realy realy, is cramping everybodys
style, and so the forms of protest and revolution
are evolving, and matching the wierdness, insanity for insanity, there IS absolute control , but there is no sure way to describe what exactly is bieng controlled, no revolutionary symbols,check
no calls to kill the leaders,check billions of worky workers, worky working, check, trillions of hours spent grinding out an entirely new and evolving memetic language of comunication in a vast never ending seathing quest for some meaning,
uh huh.
The only presumption I'm making is that technological superiority rests with governments when it comes to implements of surveillance and violence and will likely continue to widen the gap. There's also another somewhat related consideration -- it would be a lot harder to get a military unit of citizens to fire against their fellow citizens than it would be for some operator somewhere to push a button to deploy the murder drones.
What did the French revolution do to the rich? The French revolution was a bourgeois revolution that gave more power to the bankers, merchants, factory owners, etc. who had previously lacked rights. The san culottes ultimately didn't get ahead.
They are only rich because we value what they have. What's the difference between a US dollar and a square of toilet paper? One is more rectangular and has a guy's face printed on it.
I sympathize but am extremely frustrated at this defeatist idea.
Yes they run it, but only because people in general fail to coordinate around some other way of doing things. It's coordination plain and "simple". The rich doesn't run the world. They tell people what to do and people run the world as they command because there seems to be no better alternative.
Why have we stopped trying out better ways to coordinate? We somehow have come to believe that mass coordination outside of corporations can't be improved upon.
> Why have we stopped trying out better ways to coordinate?
To a large extent because somehow "that serves no purpose", "any alternative is a scam" and "blockchain evil" propaganda have been very effective in an environment where greed has been distracting too many from the damn point.
We need to relearn and establish new ways to run perpetual and huge coordination efforts outside of corporate systems and government without fear or greed as necessary driving forces.
The first step is to start trying ans honestly explore options.
> greed has been distracting too many from the damn point
I also suspect that another factor is ever increasing acceptance of the immutability of debt. When most people are stuck in debt they have to keep running in the treadmill.
Imagine if there was a non-blockable way for everyone to vote on a universal debt cancellation event - "Should we all just from now on ignore any debt incurred before today? ¤ yes, ¤ no".
A one-time debt reset would be a great experiment, but without also resetting who owns the businesses and who doesn't, the same people would eventually be back to the same levels of debt. You need to correct the derivative and the second derivative.
The costs of better coordination -- defecting from the status quo -- varies from moderate to lethal. It's not free. There are a lot of people working on coordination though.
Thiel is the one trying to collapse the government and bring about techno feudal ancap where him and his cronies own everything in a butterfly revolution no?
Because the people who can coordinate this are working 9-5 jobs, (or 2 or 3 minimum wage gigs), have families and/or kids, and don't have a whole lot of time or energy to organize when so much of it goes towards surviving. Or have a lot to lose by rocking the boat.
Vs the rich people, who can set aside a million, or ten million, or whatever, and pay people to propagandize on their behalf. A million bucks a year can pay 10 people to work full time and go on cable news programs to be "interviewed", or write think pieces in newspapers, or spread misinformation on social media.
And yeah, its defeatist. I don't know how we overcome this until people are fed up enough to prioritize it, and are willing to stick their necks out.
I get this but I'm not really talking about making sacrifices or having people who don't have time spending a lot of it. I'm just wondering why not even those that seem to have a lot of time and mental fortitude seem to discuss or be able to come up with alternative ideas that people pick up and can work with.
This is a bit of an aside but why is this rich-bashing so endemic to modern Western society, even at the highest levels? To be clear I'm not asking if the rich are evil or not, I am asking why are there movies with hundred-million dollar budgets, whose entire message is that the 'rich are evil'?
Why are there leftist newspapers 'fighting for the little guy', staffed by 1%ers, and owned by billionaires?
Why is the cookie cutter young adult dystopia book, sold by the millions, about a bunch of poor kids in a dystopian capitalist society?
Consider the pervasive narratives those people are reacting to: that people who are wealthy/powerful are better humans. Being poor is often seen as a moral failing, whereas people who are wealthy are attractive, intelligent people. In some cases, "better" is even meant literally, like this well-known, only partly tongue-in-cheek new Yorker article (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rich-people-rea...) or the British class system.
I'd assume there's a lot of people here who are rich. And the ones who are honest with themselves probably have enough capacity for self-reflection that they aren't rich because they've worked for it.
There's a lot of hard working talented, and well-compensated people here. But that alone doesn't make you rich, merely well-off. What makes you truly rich is investing your wealth in stocks, real estate, or being in the right place in the right time, which is the difference between the guy who built the core systems at a successful startup, and the guy who owns a significant stake of it (which might be one and the same).
But being rich isn't earned in the sense that you work hard for it, you might need savvy, connections, luck, and need to fight others for money, but I'm sure most honest rich people wouldn't describe themselves as their money being the result of their hard work.
And this is for self-made people. People who inherited wealth are even less responsible for their success.
>I'd assume there's a lot of people here who are rich.
You should define what you mean by rich.
Colloquially, when speaking of 'eat the rich' its typically a reference to people with net worths exceeding 25 million or more with substantial cash generating assets there in[0].
Rather than some SWE's making 250-500K a year and perhaps retire with 5-10 million in assets with smart investments over the course of 20-30 years. This gets edged down into 'upper middle class'. Sometimes the term. 'Well off' is used (somewhat nebulously) to refer to people in that bracket.
Of course there are exceptions, but these seem to be the common trends in these discussions.
Therefore, I ask again, what exactly do you mean by rich? Because the most colloquial definition is unlikely to be common anywhere, even on HN
[0]: Whether folks realize it or not, this is approximately where the real difference between 'well off' and truly wealthy start to set in. It differs a bit by state (in the US) and country, but its a decent enough approximation for this conversation.
> Where do you observe the promotion of the absurd narrative that says that the rich are better humans?
This is kind of like asking where one observes the promotion of the absurd narrative that white people are better people. It's rare to get an explicit source, but you have to benefit from it or be willfully blind to it not to believe it's there.
For one example of a reasonably explicit source, a very loud voice in the US agreed that those who benefits from government services are "the parasite class" (https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-reposted-meme-120...). Leaving, therefore, only the wealthy, who (so the narrative goes) impose no burden on others, to be the virtuous, non-parasitic class.
Dunno, to me it's quite obvious the rich (as in the asset generating wealth owning) class are the parasitic ones, almost by definition - after all they get mony for doing nothing.
Them being 'better' in any sense of the word is weirdly orthogonal and juvenile statement.
It doesn't matter if you are a breatthakingly handsome hardworking genius, or you are an ugly imbecile - it's about what assets you own - the whole notion of being better on benchmarks of what humans consider better is irrelevant.
Well, you could look at the examples provided, any of various historical (and modern) class systems, great man theory, do a quick search (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/05/08/new-...), read self-help literature (e.g. rich dad, poor dad), and so on. It might be harder to find media where that narrative isn't either present or intentionally absent.
And just because something is present doesn't mean it's an intentional or complete narrative being promoted by the author. This is simply an idea that's virtually omnipresent in Western societies, like the acceptance of capitalism or the system of colors. Things that challenge these sorts of deeply assumed ideas often seem like attacks on society itself. If you want an author who intentionally addresses it, Ursula Guin has made it a big focus of her works (e.g. Omelas, the hainish cycle).
The idea of prosperity gospel is strong in the US, it doesn't take much more than looking at US elections and seeing the religious poor voting for Trump and using "because he is rich" as one of the reasons for it.
This also ties into Milton Friedman's "everyone runs on greed" idealisms that permeate capitalism.
I think some of this is because you don't live in the US and get to see behavior like this daily.
Yes, I guess I'm not seeing it as many of you do because I live in a society with different values.
Curiosly, in Argentina a popular belief is that "nobody became rich by working" and variations. Being rich here is seen as either the result of luck (born rich) or corruption.
Haven't spent much time outside of the West have you?
If you had, you would know that this practice is not West specific. Heck, spend more than a day in any African or Asian nation and they'll tell you all about how the rich and powerful are the root cause of all their problems.
I'm thinking it's human nature. Looked at from the perspective of human nature, it does kind of make sense. That's why politicians on the left and the right tend to say, "Look at that rich guy! He's the problem!" They just point at different rich guys and gals. They do so because it works to win them power.
Because the idea of class interest being split along easy to understand lines like billionaires versus everyone else or rich people versus poor people is a fallacy. In the real world your economic interest relies more on exactly how you make your money, in what industry, in what region, what your assets are, etc, etc. A teacher in California might have close economic interests with billionaire group X and a truck driver in Wyoming might have close economic interests in line with billionaire group Y.
Everything else is just propaganda to try and give a compelling narrative to these unintuitive groups. Because what we are actually talking about is essentially a classification problem in highly multi-dimensional space there really isn't a coherent narrative. The only way the propaganda narratives make sense to you is if you have shut down your critical thinking skills. Being confused means you aren't a brainwashed partisan.
In Argentina leftists newspapers and media are paid by the main populist party (peronism) to promote the anti-rich ideology. Ironically all peronist leaders are super rich.
They want to advance statism, and to keep getting richer by using privileges they have thanks to the State.
> I'm not asking if the rich are evil or not, I am asking why are there movies with hundred-million dollar budgets, whose entire message is that the 'rich are evil'
Well, not the only possible but one extremely simple answer to the second question is "they are evil" to the first. You can't separate them like this.
> Why are there leftist newspapers 'fighting for the little guy', staffed by 1%ers, and owned by billionaires?
What newspaper does this describe? None of the major newspapers are significantly left of the democrats, a center-right party globally. Jacobin? Mother Jones? They don't quite fit your description. Genuinely do not know what you have in mind here.
> None of this shit makes sense to me.
Like look around man it's not hard to figure out. Even if you like this I don't think it takes a huge amount of wisdom to perceive why some would not.
all of these enabled by a clear application of distance-abstraction
how can the "ultra wealthy" be so evil? they don't even know it, they purposefully do not want to know. they have a thing for being ignorant about whence their wealth comes and how it's handled. all they care is they get the best of everything
by my account's handle I should make this funny some how but not today.
It's useful to think of -The World- as a gigantic factory. But instead of producing products, this factory produces billionaires. The raw materials that go into the factory are money, energy and a few privileged people, the output from the assembly line are billionaires, and the waste product discarded out the back are the worn-out and no-longer-efficient minds and bodies of common workers. If you look at every significant policy decision that gets made in any country (regardless of government type), you will see that they are all in service of keeping this factory running.
At least people here pretended to have ethics before. Now mass surveillance and creating AI to suppress dissent in our countries. We’re breaking the encryption of apps that laws have made weakened. Just tow the line until we’re not able to talk about it.
MailChimp is owned by Intuit who is a massive lobbyist responsible keeping the tax code complicated along with HR Block and I'm sure had a hand in getting IRS Free File killed since they have been trying to do so for years.
> “Buyers are particularly pleased when they see such automation in place,” Shahid told Rest of World. Automation cuts labor costs while improving production, leading to better margins for Urmi, he said.
I'm not against automation. It's wonderful, and can improve production and accuracy, and relieve workers of having to perform certain tediously repetitive tasks. The problem is that _all_ of the benefits of automation are reaped by the shareholders, not the workers. Companies could add automation and keep their workers, leading to a happier workforce who can produce with less pressure assisted by automation. But instead, automation is used to _replace_ workers to reduce labor costs, and _increase_ pressure on the remaining workers.
It's not the application of automation that is destructive to society, is the distribution of the benefits of automation that is destructive. It could be used as a force for good, but no, we choose to instead use it as a force to accumulate wealth for the few at the expense of the many.
> her target had increased by 75% after Nidle [monitoring] was installed in 2022. ... Although her workload had increased, her earnings remained static until November 2023, when the government raised the minimum wage ... She has stopped using the bathroom to keep up
Companies will increase workloads at will but only raise wages when forced to by the government (which is why regulation is so important).
> Each machine could replace between one and six workers, and the largest factories surveyed anticipated cutting 22% of their workforce
What are all these workers going to do?
This relentless pursuit of profit is destroying our societies.
Go in to work every day assuming that today is your last day there, because one day it will be. The sooner you believe this, the sooner you will be at peace. Additionally, always be thinking about, and potentially even working on, the next chapter in your life.
That doesn't square with the rest of the article which says that companies didn't raise wages until the government raised the minimum wage, and that wages are still only half of what the unions say are needed.
> workers, union representatives, and academics told Rest of World that wages have increased only because of worker protests, and not smarter factories
> Automation is how all industrialized countries got rich.
Automation is how industrialized countries increased output and GDP, and it's how shareholders got rich. It's not how workers got rich (because they didn't).
I did it because the original title was too long. However, it’s not unusual for news headlines to omit conjunctions, articles, etc. It can definitely sound odd if you’re not a native speaker.
We're inevitably creating and assembling all the pieces of the dystopian world from Manna[1], as if it were a handbook. The expectation of infinite growth and profit at all costs is going to destroy all but the very, very wealthy.
1: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
The world is run by the rich, for the rich.
Rich people get paid for being rich when there is growth.
If real growth can't be had, fake growth (inflation and debt) will do, since it serves the same ultimate purpose just as well: paying rich people for being rich.
The beatings will continue until the growth resumes.
Too many people don’t learn from history. Especially the Rich. There was a very popular thing the French did when things got out of hand. And they were not the only only to do it throughout the history.
"There was a very popular thing the French did when things got out of hand. And they were not the only only to do it throughout the history."
People conveniently forget that the Terror soon turned against completely innocent victims and eventually led to establishment of an authoritarian military regime that set out to conquer entire Europe, creating vicious reactionary backlash from its enemies, which eventually stifled liberal thought and societal progress on the continent for two more generations.
I will take the English "let us have a non-violent gradual development" way anytime.
If Lavoisier could be guillotined because "the Republic does not need chemists", how much better do you think that programmers would fare in similar situations? There is plenty of people who resent them for just having bigger income than them. Once you run out of the rich, the mob and the guillotine will demand more victims, and neither will be particularly picky.
I never claimed it will be a great outcome. Only that the rich cannot perpetually get away with it. Revolutions often have people trying to personally benefit from all the anger and resentment. And revolutions often have innocents getting caught up unnecessarily. Minorities are also going to be blamed for their widespread discontent and they will be harmed before the rich because they are easier targets. The point being it’s not going to be pretty, and will be a lose lose situation, but it will be inevitable if the ruling class doesn’t slow down this race to the bottom.
> creating vicious reactionary backlash from its enemies, which eventually stifled liberal thought and societal progress on the continent for two more generations
Yup [1]. If you're a billionaire, you almost certainly win in the aftermath of an American violent revolution à la the French or Russians.
The country would fall into chaos while we hung our academics, minorities and upper middle classes. Then they would jet back in with foreign backing to carve up America's riches while becoming even more blazingly rich than they are under a democracy.
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/650418
Hmm.
Academics I could see being tried and hanged. Minorities you'd simply eliminate as everyone in every nation has done throughout history. There is no need to give a trial or hanging to minorities. You just off them. (But, I guess, to be fair, offing minorities happens in almost every nation revolution or no revolution.)
Upper middle classes however? I don't know man? They're typically the ones doing the hanging. Not the ones being hanged. In fact, the upper middle classes were the ones most responsible for the French revolution. The upper middle classes came out of the revolution with rights, which they didn't have before. As well as a much larger share of the economic pie. They actually did the best in the French revolution as a class. And it came mostly at the expense of the poor on one end, and the aristocracy on the other.
Still, terrible times. Nothing good ever comes of a society that hangs people who are deemed too learned, and therefore, suspicious. Nor of societies that off minorities. Historically, those societies typically meet their crashes much more swiftly. Only now the crash is met with no one left to blame but themselves. Add to all that chaos opportunistic people in the middle class denouncing their bosses in the aristocracy, and even each other, out of resentment. I mean, man, you're left with a place that's probably gonna be a really good place not to be.
> Upper middle classes however? I don't know man? They're typically the ones doing the hanging
Doctors, lawyers, low-level executives. The ones with single and double-digit millions in retirement accounts and real estate value. For Exhibit A, see Mangioni: mid-level executive barely scraping into the 1% by wealth who didn’t have personal security.
> Nothing good ever comes of a society that hangs people who are deemed too learned, and therefore, suspicious
Right. This is the story of violent revolutions. The masses are told fever dreams of riches ahead. But they generally wind up poorer than before because the single track to date of revolutions that seek to depose not only the head of state but also the elite is bloodshed for the poor and evacuation for the rich.
Today's rich are betting on being able to get to their private planes and to their panic bunkers in New Zealand before the rabble catches them
The French Revolution began when the government tried to repudiate its debts once too often. It wasn't the peasants or the urban poor who were holding the bonds. Once the revolution really got going, many things changed. But an Austrian historian remarked that men are very attached to their goods, and that the Jacobins fell more because of their assignats than because of the guillotine.
> was a very popular thing the French did when things got out of hand
The French arisocracy mostly survived the Revolution not only with their lives but also their riches. Those that lost lands partly had them restored under Napoleon and the Bourbons. The degree of their survival is so great that it's debated whether the nobility benefited from the Revolution [1].
Today's rich and their wealth are more mobile. Idiots fantasising about violent revolution are mostly digging their own graves or playing into the hands of oligarchs unhappy with the democratic status quo.
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/650023
How quickly do you think those people would be declared terrorists and neutralized in 2025?
We could debate, but when things go out of control, they go out of control fast. Talking about this example specifically, this is Bangladesh. It’s been less than a year when the country stood up against the government, the PM had to flee to save her life and despite the military initially try and squash the protests, gave up very quickly. At the end of the day, they are normal people with families too.
What are a few factory owners going to do against thousands of workers who are completely fed up? They are losing their jobs any way, what is stopping them from burning the factory down? This is a country where violence is not unheard of.
That's a fair point. I was thinking in my own context and not that of the Bangladeshi worker.
In your own context, if everyone is paid less, worked more and then eventually out of a job, there will be no one left to buy stuff from Billionaires. A concept Henry Ford understood really well, but Wall Street doesn’t.
>but Wall Street doesn’t.
Why do they need to, they'll just have the government print more money and give it directly to said billionaires.
Makes you wonder if some kind of underground market would form that ignores billionaires, whether that's a commune or local government establishing a new local currency, that would cause the primary currencies (USD, BTC, etc. to further inflate itself out of existence).
When the leader starts shooting the people, they lost the country for good. The outcome is either they become a closed-autocratic/dictatorship country or the leader will be ousted super quick.
That depends on if they make use of drones to achieve their goals.
why dont you tell us, nazgulsenpai?
I mean why bother resist against a tyrannical government right? sheesh. Relevant username.
I'm not sure what my username has to do with anything, or why the combative tone. It's intended as a thought exercise, if a revolution in the spirit of the French revolution were to happen today, with the surveillance at the government's disposal, how quickly would it be justified legally (declared terrorists) and neutralized. The more time passes, the more technological advances are used for mass surveillance and propaganda, the less likely it seems.
there is a presumption on your part, that control of the net, is absolute revolutions of the past,have all included some control of the press and we can see, everywhere, the frantic efforts to control the net, and digital currency the old axiom of "control the press and the mint, and they can have the rest" is now bieng put to the test, internaly and externaly. the truth bieng that the level of control now possible, real realy realy, is cramping everybodys style, and so the forms of protest and revolution are evolving, and matching the wierdness, insanity for insanity, there IS absolute control , but there is no sure way to describe what exactly is bieng controlled, no revolutionary symbols,check no calls to kill the leaders,check billions of worky workers, worky working, check, trillions of hours spent grinding out an entirely new and evolving memetic language of comunication in a vast never ending seathing quest for some meaning, uh huh.
The only presumption I'm making is that technological superiority rests with governments when it comes to implements of surveillance and violence and will likely continue to widen the gap. There's also another somewhat related consideration -- it would be a lot harder to get a military unit of citizens to fire against their fellow citizens than it would be for some operator somewhere to push a button to deploy the murder drones.
What did the French revolution do to the rich? The French revolution was a bourgeois revolution that gave more power to the bankers, merchants, factory owners, etc. who had previously lacked rights. The san culottes ultimately didn't get ahead.
Russia 1917 a better example,
They are only rich because we value what they have. What's the difference between a US dollar and a square of toilet paper? One is more rectangular and has a guy's face printed on it.
> The world is run by the rich, for the rich.
I sympathize but am extremely frustrated at this defeatist idea.
Yes they run it, but only because people in general fail to coordinate around some other way of doing things. It's coordination plain and "simple". The rich doesn't run the world. They tell people what to do and people run the world as they command because there seems to be no better alternative.
Why have we stopped trying out better ways to coordinate? We somehow have come to believe that mass coordination outside of corporations can't be improved upon.
> Why have we stopped trying out better ways to coordinate?
To a large extent because somehow "that serves no purpose", "any alternative is a scam" and "blockchain evil" propaganda have been very effective in an environment where greed has been distracting too many from the damn point.
We need to relearn and establish new ways to run perpetual and huge coordination efforts outside of corporate systems and government without fear or greed as necessary driving forces.
The first step is to start trying ans honestly explore options.
> greed has been distracting too many from the damn point
I also suspect that another factor is ever increasing acceptance of the immutability of debt. When most people are stuck in debt they have to keep running in the treadmill.
Imagine if there was a non-blockable way for everyone to vote on a universal debt cancellation event - "Should we all just from now on ignore any debt incurred before today? ¤ yes, ¤ no".
>everyone to vote on a universal debt cancellation event
Just look at the student loan forgiveness debacle. It seems our population would sooner vote in capital punishment for not paying debt.
It's also why the US never votes to fix health care. "I suffered a terrible system, therefore the next generations must, too." Crab bucket mentality.
A one-time debt reset would be a great experiment, but without also resetting who owns the businesses and who doesn't, the same people would eventually be back to the same levels of debt. You need to correct the derivative and the second derivative.
> the same people would eventually be back to the same levels of debt
Well there's always the option of periodic debt cancellation. Such ideas are not untested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_debt_relief
The costs of better coordination -- defecting from the status quo -- varies from moderate to lethal. It's not free. There are a lot of people working on coordination though.
> There are a lot of people working on coordination though
Where? Genuinely curious.
> Where? Genuinely curious
Thiel, for one.
Thiel is the one trying to collapse the government and bring about techno feudal ancap where him and his cronies own everything in a butterfly revolution no?
Because the people who can coordinate this are working 9-5 jobs, (or 2 or 3 minimum wage gigs), have families and/or kids, and don't have a whole lot of time or energy to organize when so much of it goes towards surviving. Or have a lot to lose by rocking the boat.
Vs the rich people, who can set aside a million, or ten million, or whatever, and pay people to propagandize on their behalf. A million bucks a year can pay 10 people to work full time and go on cable news programs to be "interviewed", or write think pieces in newspapers, or spread misinformation on social media.
And yeah, its defeatist. I don't know how we overcome this until people are fed up enough to prioritize it, and are willing to stick their necks out.
> don't have a whole lot of time or energy
I get this but I'm not really talking about making sacrifices or having people who don't have time spending a lot of it. I'm just wondering why not even those that seem to have a lot of time and mental fortitude seem to discuss or be able to come up with alternative ideas that people pick up and can work with.
This is a bit of an aside but why is this rich-bashing so endemic to modern Western society, even at the highest levels? To be clear I'm not asking if the rich are evil or not, I am asking why are there movies with hundred-million dollar budgets, whose entire message is that the 'rich are evil'?
Why are there leftist newspapers 'fighting for the little guy', staffed by 1%ers, and owned by billionaires?
Why is the cookie cutter young adult dystopia book, sold by the millions, about a bunch of poor kids in a dystopian capitalist society?
None of this shit makes sense to me.
Consider the pervasive narratives those people are reacting to: that people who are wealthy/powerful are better humans. Being poor is often seen as a moral failing, whereas people who are wealthy are attractive, intelligent people. In some cases, "better" is even meant literally, like this well-known, only partly tongue-in-cheek new Yorker article (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/rich-people-rea...) or the British class system.
You're only questioning one half of these ideas.
I'd assume there's a lot of people here who are rich. And the ones who are honest with themselves probably have enough capacity for self-reflection that they aren't rich because they've worked for it.
There's a lot of hard working talented, and well-compensated people here. But that alone doesn't make you rich, merely well-off. What makes you truly rich is investing your wealth in stocks, real estate, or being in the right place in the right time, which is the difference between the guy who built the core systems at a successful startup, and the guy who owns a significant stake of it (which might be one and the same).
But being rich isn't earned in the sense that you work hard for it, you might need savvy, connections, luck, and need to fight others for money, but I'm sure most honest rich people wouldn't describe themselves as their money being the result of their hard work.
And this is for self-made people. People who inherited wealth are even less responsible for their success.
>I'd assume there's a lot of people here who are rich.
You should define what you mean by rich.
Colloquially, when speaking of 'eat the rich' its typically a reference to people with net worths exceeding 25 million or more with substantial cash generating assets there in[0].
Rather than some SWE's making 250-500K a year and perhaps retire with 5-10 million in assets with smart investments over the course of 20-30 years. This gets edged down into 'upper middle class'. Sometimes the term. 'Well off' is used (somewhat nebulously) to refer to people in that bracket.
Of course there are exceptions, but these seem to be the common trends in these discussions.
Therefore, I ask again, what exactly do you mean by rich? Because the most colloquial definition is unlikely to be common anywhere, even on HN
[0]: Whether folks realize it or not, this is approximately where the real difference between 'well off' and truly wealthy start to set in. It differs a bit by state (in the US) and country, but its a decent enough approximation for this conversation.
Where do you observe the promotion of the absurd narrative that says that the rich are better humans?
> Where do you observe the promotion of the absurd narrative that says that the rich are better humans?
This is kind of like asking where one observes the promotion of the absurd narrative that white people are better people. It's rare to get an explicit source, but you have to benefit from it or be willfully blind to it not to believe it's there.
For one example of a reasonably explicit source, a very loud voice in the US agreed that those who benefits from government services are "the parasite class" (https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-reposted-meme-120...). Leaving, therefore, only the wealthy, who (so the narrative goes) impose no burden on others, to be the virtuous, non-parasitic class.
Dunno, to me it's quite obvious the rich (as in the asset generating wealth owning) class are the parasitic ones, almost by definition - after all they get mony for doing nothing.
Them being 'better' in any sense of the word is weirdly orthogonal and juvenile statement.
It doesn't matter if you are a breatthakingly handsome hardworking genius, or you are an ugly imbecile - it's about what assets you own - the whole notion of being better on benchmarks of what humans consider better is irrelevant.
Well, you could look at the examples provided, any of various historical (and modern) class systems, great man theory, do a quick search (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainerzitelmann/2019/05/08/new-...), read self-help literature (e.g. rich dad, poor dad), and so on. It might be harder to find media where that narrative isn't either present or intentionally absent.
And just because something is present doesn't mean it's an intentional or complete narrative being promoted by the author. This is simply an idea that's virtually omnipresent in Western societies, like the acceptance of capitalism or the system of colors. Things that challenge these sorts of deeply assumed ideas often seem like attacks on society itself. If you want an author who intentionally addresses it, Ursula Guin has made it a big focus of her works (e.g. Omelas, the hainish cycle).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
https://www.christianpost.com/news/prosperity-gospel-on-the-...
https://oxfordre.com/religion/display/10.1093/acrefore/97801...
The idea of prosperity gospel is strong in the US, it doesn't take much more than looking at US elections and seeing the religious poor voting for Trump and using "because he is rich" as one of the reasons for it.
This also ties into Milton Friedman's "everyone runs on greed" idealisms that permeate capitalism.
I think some of this is because you don't live in the US and get to see behavior like this daily.
Yes, I guess I'm not seeing it as many of you do because I live in a society with different values.
Curiosly, in Argentina a popular belief is that "nobody became rich by working" and variations. Being rich here is seen as either the result of luck (born rich) or corruption.
That New Yorker article is not "partly" tongue in cheek, good grief. Has Reddit broken reading comprehension so badly it needed an /s?
Haven't spent much time outside of the West have you?
If you had, you would know that this practice is not West specific. Heck, spend more than a day in any African or Asian nation and they'll tell you all about how the rich and powerful are the root cause of all their problems.
I'm thinking it's human nature. Looked at from the perspective of human nature, it does kind of make sense. That's why politicians on the left and the right tend to say, "Look at that rich guy! He's the problem!" They just point at different rich guys and gals. They do so because it works to win them power.
You two have both missed, or chosen to talk yourself out of, the reality that the rich really are the root problem.
Because the idea of class interest being split along easy to understand lines like billionaires versus everyone else or rich people versus poor people is a fallacy. In the real world your economic interest relies more on exactly how you make your money, in what industry, in what region, what your assets are, etc, etc. A teacher in California might have close economic interests with billionaire group X and a truck driver in Wyoming might have close economic interests in line with billionaire group Y.
Everything else is just propaganda to try and give a compelling narrative to these unintuitive groups. Because what we are actually talking about is essentially a classification problem in highly multi-dimensional space there really isn't a coherent narrative. The only way the propaganda narratives make sense to you is if you have shut down your critical thinking skills. Being confused means you aren't a brainwashed partisan.
In Argentina leftists newspapers and media are paid by the main populist party (peronism) to promote the anti-rich ideology. Ironically all peronist leaders are super rich.
They want to advance statism, and to keep getting richer by using privileges they have thanks to the State.
> I'm not asking if the rich are evil or not, I am asking why are there movies with hundred-million dollar budgets, whose entire message is that the 'rich are evil'
Well, not the only possible but one extremely simple answer to the second question is "they are evil" to the first. You can't separate them like this.
> Why are there leftist newspapers 'fighting for the little guy', staffed by 1%ers, and owned by billionaires?
What newspaper does this describe? None of the major newspapers are significantly left of the democrats, a center-right party globally. Jacobin? Mother Jones? They don't quite fit your description. Genuinely do not know what you have in mind here.
> None of this shit makes sense to me.
Like look around man it's not hard to figure out. Even if you like this I don't think it takes a huge amount of wisdom to perceive why some would not.
> why is this rich-bashing so endemic to modern Western society, even at the highest levels?
Because it's an easy line to buy. Hell, Trump was able to sell it! He's a billionaire!
all of these enabled by a clear application of distance-abstraction
how can the "ultra wealthy" be so evil? they don't even know it, they purposefully do not want to know. they have a thing for being ignorant about whence their wealth comes and how it's handled. all they care is they get the best of everything
by my account's handle I should make this funny some how but not today.
It's useful to think of -The World- as a gigantic factory. But instead of producing products, this factory produces billionaires. The raw materials that go into the factory are money, energy and a few privileged people, the output from the assembly line are billionaires, and the waste product discarded out the back are the worn-out and no-longer-efficient minds and bodies of common workers. If you look at every significant policy decision that gets made in any country (regardless of government type), you will see that they are all in service of keeping this factory running.
There's a startup for this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850
At least people here pretended to have ethics before. Now mass surveillance and creating AI to suppress dissent in our countries. We’re breaking the encryption of apps that laws have made weakened. Just tow the line until we’re not able to talk about it.
There are no good tech companies and never have been.
If you disagree, please let me know which companies are.
MailChimp?
A marketing company that enables mass email spam? I wouldn't say so.
that's a grim way to put it.
but I read that they're not a VC firm which is what I was trying to point at
not all email newsletters are spam, sometimes people do want to receive the emails
MailChimp is owned by Intuit who is a massive lobbyist responsible keeping the tax code complicated along with HR Block and I'm sure had a hand in getting IRS Free File killed since they have been trying to do so for years.
So no, I would not call them a good company.
Driven by large international buyers:
> “Buyers are particularly pleased when they see such automation in place,” Shahid told Rest of World. Automation cuts labor costs while improving production, leading to better margins for Urmi, he said.
I'm not against automation. It's wonderful, and can improve production and accuracy, and relieve workers of having to perform certain tediously repetitive tasks. The problem is that _all_ of the benefits of automation are reaped by the shareholders, not the workers. Companies could add automation and keep their workers, leading to a happier workforce who can produce with less pressure assisted by automation. But instead, automation is used to _replace_ workers to reduce labor costs, and _increase_ pressure on the remaining workers.
It's not the application of automation that is destructive to society, is the distribution of the benefits of automation that is destructive. It could be used as a force for good, but no, we choose to instead use it as a force to accumulate wealth for the few at the expense of the many.
> her target had increased by 75% after Nidle [monitoring] was installed in 2022. ... Although her workload had increased, her earnings remained static until November 2023, when the government raised the minimum wage ... She has stopped using the bathroom to keep up
Companies will increase workloads at will but only raise wages when forced to by the government (which is why regulation is so important).
> Each machine could replace between one and six workers, and the largest factories surveyed anticipated cutting 22% of their workforce
What are all these workers going to do?
This relentless pursuit of profit is destroying our societies.
This is how you burn out employees really fast.
Go in to work every day assuming that today is your last day there, because one day it will be. The sooner you believe this, the sooner you will be at peace. Additionally, always be thinking about, and potentially even working on, the next chapter in your life.
I am thinking Bengladesh is among those places where burning out is not an option. Time to re read the Grapes Of Wrath.
Automation is how all industrialized countries got rich. Bangladesh is now ascending up the same path.
As the article says: "Increasingly, workers are getting scarce in a country like Bangladesh, where per capita income is increasing."
That doesn't square with the rest of the article which says that companies didn't raise wages until the government raised the minimum wage, and that wages are still only half of what the unions say are needed.
> workers, union representatives, and academics told Rest of World that wages have increased only because of worker protests, and not smarter factories
> Automation is how all industrialized countries got rich.
Automation is how industrialized countries increased output and GDP, and it's how shareholders got rich. It's not how workers got rich (because they didn't).
not related to article itself:
why in HN-headlines the "and" is being turned into comma? it is very confusing most times
I did it because the original title was too long. However, it’s not unusual for news headlines to omit conjunctions, articles, etc. It can definitely sound odd if you’re not a native speaker.
The "Woman mystery death victim" one I found here is particularly good imo, a real roller-coaster of understanding and confusion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline#Headlinese
Should’ve known there was a Wikipedia article on this style of writing. Thanks :)