92
Super-rich warned of ‘pitchforks and torches’ unless they tackle inequality
(www.theguardian.com)
Personally I would prefer guillotines and pikes
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
92 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22059 readers
30 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Thanks for sharing. I sure wish Trevor had stayed with us.
I just started getting into watching "the Trevor Moore show" right before he passed. Felt like wkuk natural progression from wkuk for him and Sam. I was so sad when I heard the news.
Those are more expensive and less mobile though. I guess you could put little wheels on the guillotine to solve the problem.
There was a big 4 seater type one used in Carnival Row. Something like that would help.
The super-rich respond by raising the prices on pitchforks and torches. When asked, one replies “We must always maximize profits for us shareholders!”
Something something capitalists and selling rope.
The issue with revolutions is that while they tend to get rid of old elites, they create a new class of elites out of the top revolutionaries and the cycle just starts over again. Many communist revolutions were supposed to create these theoretically "equal" societies, but they just insert in a new ruling class.
Yeah but what are the other possibilities? Let them become kings?
Theoretically, by wiping out the rich would create instability within the wealthy class, they wouldn't have the time or the means to herd the politicians to serve them or to effectively disrupt democracy.
The inheritance that kid collects would amounts to "Congratulation, you won the lottery, now what? You haven't own any corporation yet, know of anything about how to make connections with other politicians and wealthy class of people and so forth. You're pretty much on your own."
Like 70% of the time, those people wouldn't even bother with politic and would just spend the money vacationing where-ever in the world and having fun with the newfound wealth, not busy trying to disrupt democracy. People tend to be very shortsighted when they amasses huge wealth, in fact, according to some statistic, it ranges from 44% to 70% of people who gain huge amount of money end up losing it all within the next 5 years.
That amount of time would basically give the common people enough time to go about fixing the political system.
That amount of time would basically give the common people enough time to go about fixing the political system.
Common people get fixated by the idea of someone else fixing their problems. It's why America had Trump for President for 4 years. He was going to "fix" America's problems.
You cannot defeat ape behavior. We are apes. We created civilization as a system to manage resources for large numbers of people that our hunter gatherer societies could not. Civilization by its nature creates a system of elites, because you need people at the top to manage resources.
If we want true equality and still stay true to our ape programming, we would be better served by a return to small interconnected communes.
Well I disagree with you vehemently, about 90% of the problems we're facing is that almost every single problem we're trying to address were sabotaged by the rich. Wall Street protest, Mass Media making dishonest and hostile takes to disrupt any attempt we make to have a dialogue on addressing the problem at hand, and so many more. We can cooperate and come up with a better future, it is something that we have to make an effort to.
Well I disagree with you vehemently, about 90% of the problems we’re facing is that almost every single problem we’re trying to address were sabotaged by the rich.
Why did they become rich in the first place and why do they not want to give up what they have?
Ape behavior. People in general loathe to give up resources and power once they have it.
We can cooperate and come up with a better future, it is something that we have to make an effort to.
Sure. But I don't think that's going to happen. Climate change is going to make mincement out of most of us before we even begin to scarcely acknowledge the problem.
The problem with vandguardism
load more comments
(2 replies)
She said many rich people wanted to set up their own educational or health foundations without checking whether there was a need or an existing charity or government-funded programme working to address the issue.
When the rich only think about charity as a means to further their own name, it's no wonder nothing ever really gets fixed.
Not just name but tax benefits and grifting opportunities.
- Set up charity
- Transfer stock to charity. Yay! Tax write off
- Charity sells stock. They pay tax but oh well
- Charity pays founder as advisor
- Other people sending charity money? Bonus!
Surely their huge stacks of money will protect them from the bullets, right? Right???
I'm worried you may be underestimating how many bootlickers would be willing to defend a billionaire in some sort of collapse scenario
I would personally prefer to sentence anyone with a net worth of over $1B to a lifetime eating $100 bills until they've literally eaten their fortune. Show them the real value of their monopoly paper, you know?
I mean, yes, good luck getting to their closed communities and enwalled houses with panic rooms, personal bodyguards and police / law in their pockets. Did we even have any famous billionaire assassinations in history so far?
That's why they're all building bunkers. They know unrest is coming, they know they're part of the problem, they just don't care.
No doubt this will finally be what makes the rich change their ways.
I'm imagining working that event, getting paid peanuts to wait on these twits talking about how to spend the wealth they've amassed before the ones they want to "help" come and somehow take it from them.
It is just so tone deaf. Maybe they should use their wealth to change the societal structures that allowed them to amass it in the first place.
"Fools! You'll never reach us in our impenetrable ivory tower!"
And so the quest for justice begins.
Looks like we'll need something capable of launching a 90kg projectile, with a range of over 300m.
Some sort of hulk? That would be incredible.
But how can they keep getting richer and richer every year if they don't take all the money from the rest of us?
"Pitchforks and torches". Tumbrels, don't forget tumbrels!