4 ms·

Money is just a proxy for power, and there has literally never been a society where it is easier for the powerless to become powerful than it is for the powerfu

Money is just a proxy for power, and there has literally never been a society where it is easier for the powerless to become powerful than it is for the powerful to accrue more power. The "best" you can do to prevent the powerful from accruing power is consolidate all meaningful power as tightly as possible, which history teaches us is a recipe for misery.

nostrademons 11y ago
Umm, every revolution in history is an example of the powerless becoming more powerful. We (in the U.S. at least) are not still subjects of the English Crown, and indeed many people look at the monarchy as a joke these days. If you look at which families are powerful now vs. who was powerful 150 years ago, there's a huge disparity. I think that when people say "It's impossible for the powerless to become powerful", they really mean "It's very unlikely for me to become powerful", which is statistically true. Powerful people are rare - that's what it means to be powerful - and so no matter how much mobility there is at the top, the odds of any one person making it there are quite slim.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  And yet the irony is that some of the freest countries around with high HDI and GDP are constitutional/ceremonial monarchies. And then you have luxurious and prosperous microstates like Monaco and Liechtenstein which are both democratic yet retaining monarchs who actively exercise their executive powers. Then there's the controversial question of whether a monarchy's efficacy may in fact be greater than that of a republic, a topic that authors such as Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and Hans-Hermann Hoppe have explored.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    There are a lot of ironies when it comes to power. Another big one, relating to the article under discussion, is that it's by the CEO of a company dedicated to taking money from the poor and giving it to startup founders so that they may become rich. I think a lot of the confusion is because power operates as a hierarchy (or oftentimes, a graph), and each layer of the hierarchy tends to oppress the layer below it while itself being oppressed by the layer above. Hence you had poor blacks in Reconstruction being oppressed by the KKK (largely composed of poor white sharecroppers), who were being oppressed by the Northern bourgeoisie, who were being oppressed by Gilded Age industrialists who were being oppressed by populist politicians who were allied with the poor white sharecroppers. That's why you may have a monarchy with strong support from the common people: the monarchy keeps wealthy business owners in line, which keeps them from oppressing ordinary citizens. It also explains the current political situation in the U.S, where the Republican party is an uneasy coalition of wealthy plutocrats, small business owners, and poor rural religious whites, while the Democratic party is an uneasy coalition of academics, white Yuppies, unionized black factory workers, and immigrant Hispanics. The plutocrats oppress the yuppies, who offend the small business owners, who oppress the immigrants, who take jobs away from the rural poor, who discriminate against blacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Monaco and Liechtenstein function as tax havens; they effectively import GDP.
- drumdance 11y ago
  Who benefitted most from the US revolution: sharecroppers or land owners? It was an enormous risk for Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin & company, but the upside was huge. The average worker not so much. Non-landowners weren't even allowed to vote!
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    That's what I'm saying about it being virtually impossible, by definition, to raise a class of people into power. What would it even look like for the proletariat to be in power? This was the promise of the Russian Revolution, but instead, what happened was that a small group of elites (the Communist Party Central Committee) was formed to do the actual governing, and then the proletariat remained the proletariat. There are certainly examples of individual sharecroppers who attained power as a result of revolution, eg. William Few. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Few https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Few
  - walshemj 11y ago
    Some people say that the AWI was a counter revolution by rich landowners
- plonh 11y ago
  In a realized democratic or communist society, you wouldn't have powerful people. Power would be distributed
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Well, you've made a powerful argument against a position I didn't articulate. Thank you for starting out your comment with the snotty "Umm" of seeming disagreement that never materialized, I appreciate it.

nostrademons 11y ago

Umm, every revolution in history is an example of the powerless becoming more powerful. We (in the U.S. at least) are not still subjects of the English Crown, and indeed many people look at the monarchy as a joke these days. If you look at which families are powerful now vs. who was powerful 150 years ago, there's a huge disparity. I think that when people say "It's impossible for the powerless to become powerful", they really mean "It's very unlikely for me to become powerful", which is statistically true. Powerful people are rare - that's what it means to be powerful - and so no matter how much mobility there is at the top, the odds of any one person making it there are quite slim.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
And yet the irony is that some of the freest countries around with high HDI and GDP are constitutional/ceremonial monarchies. And then you have luxurious and prosperous microstates like Monaco and Liechtenstein which are both democratic yet retaining monarchs who actively exercise their executive powers. Then there's the controversial question of whether a monarchy's efficacy may in fact be greater than that of a republic, a topic that authors such as Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and Hans-Hermann Hoppe have explored.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  There are a lot of ironies when it comes to power. Another big one, relating to the article under discussion, is that it's by the CEO of a company dedicated to taking money from the poor and giving it to startup founders so that they may become rich. I think a lot of the confusion is because power operates as a hierarchy (or oftentimes, a graph), and each layer of the hierarchy tends to oppress the layer below it while itself being oppressed by the layer above. Hence you had poor blacks in Reconstruction being oppressed by the KKK (largely composed of poor white sharecroppers), who were being oppressed by the Northern bourgeoisie, who were being oppressed by Gilded Age industrialists who were being oppressed by populist politicians who were allied with the poor white sharecroppers. That's why you may have a monarchy with strong support from the common people: the monarchy keeps wealthy business owners in line, which keeps them from oppressing ordinary citizens. It also explains the current political situation in the U.S, where the Republican party is an uneasy coalition of wealthy plutocrats, small business owners, and poor rural religious whites, while the Democratic party is an uneasy coalition of academics, white Yuppies, unionized black factory workers, and immigrant Hispanics. The plutocrats oppress the yuppies, who offend the small business owners, who oppress the immigrants, who take jobs away from the rural poor, who discriminate against blacks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- pjc50 11y ago
  Monaco and Liechtenstein function as tax havens; they effectively import GDP.
drumdance 11y ago
Who benefitted most from the US revolution: sharecroppers or land owners? It was an enormous risk for Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin & company, but the upside was huge. The average worker not so much. Non-landowners weren't even allowed to vote!
- nostrademons 11y ago
  That's what I'm saying about it being virtually impossible, by definition, to raise a class of people into power. What would it even look like for the proletariat to be in power? This was the promise of the Russian Revolution, but instead, what happened was that a small group of elites (the Communist Party Central Committee) was formed to do the actual governing, and then the proletariat remained the proletariat. There are certainly examples of individual sharecroppers who attained power as a result of revolution, eg. William Few. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Few https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Few
- walshemj 11y ago
  Some people say that the AWI was a counter revolution by rich landowners
plonh 11y ago
In a realized democratic or communist society, you wouldn't have powerful people. Power would be distributed
oldmanjay 11y ago
Well, you've made a powerful argument against a position I didn't articulate. Thank you for starting out your comment with the snotty "Umm" of seeming disagreement that never materialized, I appreciate it.