4 ms·

It's just a matter of time before people revolt, we went from something like 1:6 employee:employer comp ratio to 1:400 (and much more for a lot of companies, up

It's just a matter of time before people revolt, we went from something like 1:6 employee:employer comp ratio to 1:400 (and much more for a lot of companies, up to 1:5000+) If we could harvest energy from the hardcore early capitalist theorists rolling in their graves we'd have infinite energy at that point

walkhour 4y ago
What does a revolt look like? People can live in unimaginable conditions and not revolt. The idea that if things get bad enough "people" are going to do something about it can just occur to someone that hasn't seen enough of the world.
- lm28469 4y ago
  CEOs getting insane pay doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can't use the "trickle down" economy as a proverbial carrot when people can't put gas in their car or heat their home while Bezos&co buy a new yacht every other day > The idea that if things get bad enough "people" are going to do something about it can just occur to someone that hasn't seen enough of the world. Or I'm French, who knows ;) Continue selling ports to China, continue selling sport clubs to Qatar, apartments to Emiratis, continue to delocalise industries to third world countries to save on labor, continue to force people into precarity, to force them into shittier and shittier jobs while asking them to work longer hours and retire at 67 for less and less quality of life. I'm telling you, at some point people won't have anything to lose and heads will start rolling
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    Last time heads were rolling in France people were starving.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      Well we have 10m people living under poverty, even armed with forks and spoons they'd take the Elysee in a day. Even the 42 000 homeless children living in France could take care of it
      - ttoinou 4y ago
        Poverty definition is a relative definition. Hence you're measuring inequalities, not wealth
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        lm28469 4y ago
        Well that's what the discussion was about in the first place wasn't it ? The inequalities between CEOs and workers grew, one side lives in absolute poverty, the other in absolute opulence The poor are still too poor to live properly and the rich are too rich to count, that's not how they sold us capitalism is it ? Wasn't it supposed to even out inequalities ? Money trickling down to the poorest ? Why are there still people in ultra advanced countries who can't afford to heat their home ? > Poverty definition is a relative definition. Criteria such as: "can't afford clothes" "can't go out with friends/family at least once a month due to financial reasons" "not having access to internet" "can't pay water/electricity bills" "can't heat apartment above the minimum temperature determined by the law" "can't afford one week of vacation out of their own place" "can't afford meat/fish every other day"
        Firmwarrior 4y ago
        Our patron saint has this to say about it > For example, let's attack poverty, and if necessary damage wealth in the process. That's much more likely to work than attacking wealth in the hope that you will thereby fix poverty. [9] And if there are people getting rich by tricking consumers or lobbying the government for anti-competitive regulations or tax loopholes, then let's stop them. Not because it's causing economic inequality, but because it's stealing. [10] > If all you have is statistics, it seems like that's what you need to fix. But behind a broad statistical measure like economic inequality there are some things that are good and some that are bad, some that are historical trends with immense momentum and others that are random accidents. If we want to fix the world behind the statistics, we have to understand it, and focus our efforts where they'll do the most good. http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html
    - orwin 4y ago
      If you mean the last revolution, this is wrong. The last successfull French revolution (1830) had nothing to do with starvation. Even the 1871 revolt didn't had much to do with what and how to eat. We killed factory owners for far less than an empty stomach. But at the time, we understood that the police was really representing the business owners (landowners, industrialists) more than the government and put their crimes not on the individual, but on the hand that lead them. I feel like this understanding is coming back in the US.
  - zokier 4y ago
    Problem with the idea of heads rolling is that it doesn't really achieve anything. Let's hypothetically say you just stormed the parliament and slaughtered all the members there. Then what? Install military junta? That requires actual military backing, and doesn't exactly have great track record. Hold new elections? Attacking democratic institution seems unlikely strategy for winning seats, and if you think you can win that way then why did you need violence in the first place?
- klyrs 4y ago
  I'm not sure about a revolt, but this is what we're seeing: People mobbing into stores, grabbing things off the shelves, and just walking out. Sleeping in tents in massive encampments, turning parks and sidewalks into shanty towns. Pissing and shitting on the street in broad daylight. The richest are driving up rents and housing prices in cities. Gas is increasingly unaffordable, driving up cost of living in rural areas. People who cannot keep up will find other solutions. It might not involve guillotines, but the US has more guns per capita than anywhere else in the world. edit: what I've described above is not a revolt, per se, but it is revolting.
api 4y ago
Populists have so far been able to focus all that anger at immigrants and LGBT people.
- lm28469 4y ago
  Because they're part of it, the other side of the coin, what we need is a new coin
- tomp 4y ago
  You got it the other way round. After the 1% protests, media started publishing social justice articles to divide & conquer the population. The percentage of woke words like “racist”, “sexist” and “gender” rose rapidly!
  - JustSomeNobody 4y ago
    Because billionaires own the media and they don't want anything to affect the status quo.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    It’s eminently clear that identity politics is the name of the game across the political spectrum.
    - sanedigital 4y ago
      Sure, but if we're talking about co-opting the anger around wealth inequality, that particular fight ended with Occupy Wall Street becoming Black Lives Matter.
      - germinalphrase 4y ago
        I actually disagree somewhat. A great of MAGA rhetoric was/is about elites abusing their positions at the expense of regular folk. Trump was viewed as an insider telling people the truth about how the sausage gets made.
rosnd 4y ago
Why revolt when your quality of life keeps increasing? Some fucked up obsession with "fairness"?
- lm28469 4y ago
  Who's quality of life ? Having a 4k TV and a smart fridge doesn't balance the degraded day to day working conditions, pays, longer hours, later retirement Quality of life peaked somewhere in the 90s in the west, now it's all non essentials, people are giving up on the idea of owning their home and retiring healthy, &c.
naasking 4y ago
> It's just a matter of time before people revolt Trump was the first warning sign IMO, and some are still not taking it seriously, blaming the voters themselves for being so dissatisfied with the status quo that they would take a chance on someone like that.
- krapp 4y ago
  >blaming the voters themselves for being so dissatisfied with the status quo that they would take a chance on someone like that. It is the fault of the voters. Especially after it was obvious Trump was just a grifter who couldn't care less about the common man, and they voted for him again because they were scared of the immigrants and black activists with whom they should have had class solidarity. And it will still be the voters' fault when they vote for him a third time in 2024, based on whatever batshit QAnon lunacy their conservative truth-bubbles drip into their eyeballs. And Trump wasn't the first warning sign by any means. Arguably Occupy was the first warning sign in recent memory. We don't recognize that because the current narrative is that "the left" supports the status quo of the elites, neoliberalism and capitalism while "the right" are the anti-capitalist, anti-statist underdogs.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > It is the fault of the voters. Especially after it was obvious Trump was just a grifter who couldn't care less about the common man You mean like most other politicians? > and they voted for him again because they were scared of the immigrants and black activists with whom they should have had class solidarity This racist trope is propaganda. Also, "class solidarity" is not a thing anymore thanks to the dominant parties who have been squashing it for over 50 years. > Arguably Occupy was the first warning sign in recent memory. Occupy didn't accomplish anything, it was a weak protest. Electing Trump definitely accomplished something and proved the discontent runs deep and can affect the cushy established class. Then came the messaging about baskets of deplorables and ultra-maga threats to democracy.
  - esarbe 4y ago
    Voters in the US have very little actual influence when it comes to national politics. Yes, they have one final vote, but their vote is highly distorted due to systemic issues, like e.g. first-past-the-post. There are 300 million people in the US. How come the voters only get to make a binary decision? Simple; because the two parties have designed everything so that the voter only gets to make that decision. So, I'd say that blaming the voters is a bit short-sighted when it comes to a quasi-aristocracy like the US.

walkhour 4y ago

What does a revolt look like? People can live in unimaginable conditions and not revolt. The idea that if things get bad enough "people" are going to do something about it can just occur to someone that hasn't seen enough of the world.

lm28469 4y ago
CEOs getting insane pay doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can't use the "trickle down" economy as a proverbial carrot when people can't put gas in their car or heat their home while Bezos&co buy a new yacht every other day > The idea that if things get bad enough "people" are going to do something about it can just occur to someone that hasn't seen enough of the world. Or I'm French, who knows ;) Continue selling ports to China, continue selling sport clubs to Qatar, apartments to Emiratis, continue to delocalise industries to third world countries to save on labor, continue to force people into precarity, to force them into shittier and shittier jobs while asking them to work longer hours and retire at 67 for less and less quality of life. I'm telling you, at some point people won't have anything to lose and heads will start rolling
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Last time heads were rolling in France people were starving.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    Well we have 10m people living under poverty, even armed with forks and spoons they'd take the Elysee in a day. Even the 42 000 homeless children living in France could take care of it
    - ttoinou 4y ago
      Poverty definition is a relative definition. Hence you're measuring inequalities, not wealth
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - lm28469 4y ago
        Well that's what the discussion was about in the first place wasn't it ? The inequalities between CEOs and workers grew, one side lives in absolute poverty, the other in absolute opulence The poor are still too poor to live properly and the rich are too rich to count, that's not how they sold us capitalism is it ? Wasn't it supposed to even out inequalities ? Money trickling down to the poorest ? Why are there still people in ultra advanced countries who can't afford to heat their home ? > Poverty definition is a relative definition. Criteria such as: "can't afford clothes" "can't go out with friends/family at least once a month due to financial reasons" "not having access to internet" "can't pay water/electricity bills" "can't heat apartment above the minimum temperature determined by the law" "can't afford one week of vacation out of their own place" "can't afford meat/fish every other day"
        Firmwarrior 4y ago
        Our patron saint has this to say about it > For example, let's attack poverty, and if necessary damage wealth in the process. That's much more likely to work than attacking wealth in the hope that you will thereby fix poverty. [9] And if there are people getting rich by tricking consumers or lobbying the government for anti-competitive regulations or tax loopholes, then let's stop them. Not because it's causing economic inequality, but because it's stealing. [10] > If all you have is statistics, it seems like that's what you need to fix. But behind a broad statistical measure like economic inequality there are some things that are good and some that are bad, some that are historical trends with immense momentum and others that are random accidents. If we want to fix the world behind the statistics, we have to understand it, and focus our efforts where they'll do the most good. http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html
  - orwin 4y ago
    If you mean the last revolution, this is wrong. The last successfull French revolution (1830) had nothing to do with starvation. Even the 1871 revolt didn't had much to do with what and how to eat. We killed factory owners for far less than an empty stomach. But at the time, we understood that the police was really representing the business owners (landowners, industrialists) more than the government and put their crimes not on the individual, but on the hand that lead them. I feel like this understanding is coming back in the US.
- zokier 4y ago
  Problem with the idea of heads rolling is that it doesn't really achieve anything. Let's hypothetically say you just stormed the parliament and slaughtered all the members there. Then what? Install military junta? That requires actual military backing, and doesn't exactly have great track record. Hold new elections? Attacking democratic institution seems unlikely strategy for winning seats, and if you think you can win that way then why did you need violence in the first place?
klyrs 4y ago
I'm not sure about a revolt, but this is what we're seeing: People mobbing into stores, grabbing things off the shelves, and just walking out. Sleeping in tents in massive encampments, turning parks and sidewalks into shanty towns. Pissing and shitting on the street in broad daylight. The richest are driving up rents and housing prices in cities. Gas is increasingly unaffordable, driving up cost of living in rural areas. People who cannot keep up will find other solutions. It might not involve guillotines, but the US has more guns per capita than anywhere else in the world. edit: what I've described above is not a revolt, per se, but it is revolting.

api 4y ago

Populists have so far been able to focus all that anger at immigrants and LGBT people.

lm28469 4y ago
Because they're part of it, the other side of the coin, what we need is a new coin
tomp 4y ago
You got it the other way round. After the 1% protests, media started publishing social justice articles to divide & conquer the population. The percentage of woke words like “racist”, “sexist” and “gender” rose rapidly!
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  Because billionaires own the media and they don't want anything to affect the status quo.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  It’s eminently clear that identity politics is the name of the game across the political spectrum.
  - sanedigital 4y ago
    Sure, but if we're talking about co-opting the anger around wealth inequality, that particular fight ended with Occupy Wall Street becoming Black Lives Matter.
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      I actually disagree somewhat. A great of MAGA rhetoric was/is about elites abusing their positions at the expense of regular folk. Trump was viewed as an insider telling people the truth about how the sausage gets made.

rosnd 4y ago

Why revolt when your quality of life keeps increasing? Some fucked up obsession with "fairness"?

lm28469 4y ago
Who's quality of life ? Having a 4k TV and a smart fridge doesn't balance the degraded day to day working conditions, pays, longer hours, later retirement Quality of life peaked somewhere in the 90s in the west, now it's all non essentials, people are giving up on the idea of owning their home and retiring healthy, &c.

naasking 4y ago

> It's just a matter of time before people revolt Trump was the first warning sign IMO, and some are still not taking it seriously, blaming the voters themselves for being so dissatisfied with the status quo that they would take a chance on someone like that.

krapp 4y ago
>blaming the voters themselves for being so dissatisfied with the status quo that they would take a chance on someone like that. It is the fault of the voters. Especially after it was obvious Trump was just a grifter who couldn't care less about the common man, and they voted for him again because they were scared of the immigrants and black activists with whom they should have had class solidarity. And it will still be the voters' fault when they vote for him a third time in 2024, based on whatever batshit QAnon lunacy their conservative truth-bubbles drip into their eyeballs. And Trump wasn't the first warning sign by any means. Arguably Occupy was the first warning sign in recent memory. We don't recognize that because the current narrative is that "the left" supports the status quo of the elites, neoliberalism and capitalism while "the right" are the anti-capitalist, anti-statist underdogs.
- naasking 4y ago
  > It is the fault of the voters. Especially after it was obvious Trump was just a grifter who couldn't care less about the common man You mean like most other politicians? > and they voted for him again because they were scared of the immigrants and black activists with whom they should have had class solidarity This racist trope is propaganda. Also, "class solidarity" is not a thing anymore thanks to the dominant parties who have been squashing it for over 50 years. > Arguably Occupy was the first warning sign in recent memory. Occupy didn't accomplish anything, it was a weak protest. Electing Trump definitely accomplished something and proved the discontent runs deep and can affect the cushy established class. Then came the messaging about baskets of deplorables and ultra-maga threats to democracy.
- esarbe 4y ago
  Voters in the US have very little actual influence when it comes to national politics. Yes, they have one final vote, but their vote is highly distorted due to systemic issues, like e.g. first-past-the-post. There are 300 million people in the US. How come the voters only get to make a binary decision? Simple; because the two parties have designed everything so that the voter only gets to make that decision. So, I'd say that blaming the voters is a bit short-sighted when it comes to a quasi-aristocracy like the US.