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Lots of people our age feel like the world is bad and unjust and destroying current civilization through revolution will result in a just and good society. The

Lots of people our age feel like the world is bad and unjust and destroying current civilization through revolution will result in a just and good society. These people are idiots who aren’t aware of the death and destruction this will cause and things will likely be much worse after.

mordae 4y ago
As are the people who assume revolution means killing or taking. I can easily imagine a revolution where people merely stop selling their time and instead start demanding to be included in the decision making processes and have an equal share of outcomes.
- badpun 4y ago
  I can’t imagine that. It would require tremendous amounts of global voluntart coordination and discipline, all happening in a bottom-up fashion. Humanity is hopelessly bad at this, that’s why all significant revolutions were imposed via force and not peacefully.
- WJW 4y ago
  The answer to that could be as simple as "no", after which those people would either need to re-start selling their time, starve, or resort to the killing and taking that is usually associated with revolutions.
revolvingocelot 4y ago
Either that, or they're history buffs. What precipitates the redistribution of wealth, historically? Some kind of gigantic disaster -- war, famine, plague, social collapse. There's never been a time when the oligarchs/monarchy/landed-gentry just calmly gave up their temporal power after listening to reasoned socioeconomic arguments. It's always been some sort of calamity. You might find that those idiots are indeed aware of the consequences, but perhaps they look at a longer sequence of consequences. Unrelatedly, have you ever heard about the way pre-colonization Natives handled forest fires? [0] They, thanks to oral tradition, understood the necessity of allowing -- ensuring -- that smaller, controlled forest fires happened regularly. Not only to provide resources for their society, but also to ensure that the inevitability of a fire didn't bring outsize consequences. Our deployment of modern monetary theory, [1] I mean modern forestry management, isn't actually supported by the long view that the Natives took, but does make briefly-considered sense to the layperson. "Fire's bad, right? Everybody knows what a house looks like after it's been on fire, and that's bad, so we should stop all the fires." I don't think those people are idiots, but perhaps they should reconsider their position regarding fire's rejuvenation properties. [0] https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/indigenous-fire-management-and-traditional-knowledge https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/indigenous-fire-management-and-tr... [1] Huh, I don't know why I typed that at all. After all, we're talking about forestry
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Modern forestry thrives where controlled burns are allowed to repeatedly impact the same forests for the benefit of those never burned. The burned forests never fully recover, and the thriving forests grow taller by comparison. Perhaps, the old ways are better, but the oral tradition that spoke of the unity of man and the imposition of serfdom as sinful has been ignored, forgotten, and derided. Hopefully, no one sets those tall trees alight out of spite.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > Either that, or they're history buffs. What precipitates the redistribution of wealth, historically? Some kind of gigantic disaster -- war, famine, plague, social collapse. You're mistaking redistribution for destruction... Sure, things are technically more equal if everyone becomes homeless. But there wasn't really a redistribution...
  - makomk 4y ago
    A lot of people who think along these lines, especially younger people, don't think of wealth as something that can be created or destroyed at all. They just believe that there's some fixed amount out there, and that if ordinary people don't have enough that must be because the super-rich have stolen their fair share and need to be brought down a peg. The very idea of wealth that can be created is seen as a lie spread by the super rich to conceal their theft. (I do wonder if part of this is that a lot of people are too young to have seen their societies become substantially better of as a whole, unlike previous generations.)
    - glogla 4y ago
      I think you can in theory believe that wealth can be created - but also at the same time be convinced that modern heavily financialized[1] economy does very little of that. Add to that how a lot of people have seen their societies become substantially worse of as a whole - yes, iPhones are awesome and modern cars are safer and so on, but instead of having a union job you pee in bottles in Amazon warehouse, and instead of buying a home you are forever renting a studio apartment. The Simpsons titular family of one high school educated guy with house and three kids on single income went from "typical boring dude" to "impossible dream" over the course of one or two generations, after all. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization
glogla 4y ago
Yes. Destroying the world will kill me. But it will kill Elon Musk as well. Perhaps even in a gruesome and funny way. If I was considering existence not worth it, it might look like a good trade.
- newsclues 4y ago
  What a revolting comment.

mordae 4y ago

As are the people who assume revolution means killing or taking. I can easily imagine a revolution where people merely stop selling their time and instead start demanding to be included in the decision making processes and have an equal share of outcomes.

badpun 4y ago
I can’t imagine that. It would require tremendous amounts of global voluntart coordination and discipline, all happening in a bottom-up fashion. Humanity is hopelessly bad at this, that’s why all significant revolutions were imposed via force and not peacefully.
WJW 4y ago
The answer to that could be as simple as "no", after which those people would either need to re-start selling their time, starve, or resort to the killing and taking that is usually associated with revolutions.

revolvingocelot 4y ago

Either that, or they're history buffs. What precipitates the redistribution of wealth, historically? Some kind of gigantic disaster -- war, famine, plague, social collapse. There's never been a time when the oligarchs/monarchy/landed-gentry just calmly gave up their temporal power after listening to reasoned socioeconomic arguments. It's always been some sort of calamity. You might find that those idiots are indeed aware of the consequences, but perhaps they look at a longer sequence of consequences. Unrelatedly, have you ever heard about the way pre-colonization Natives handled forest fires? [0] They, thanks to oral tradition, understood the necessity of allowing -- ensuring -- that smaller, controlled forest fires happened regularly. Not only to provide resources for their society, but also to ensure that the inevitability of a fire didn't bring outsize consequences. Our deployment of modern monetary theory, [1] I mean modern forestry management, isn't actually supported by the long view that the Natives took, but does make briefly-considered sense to the layperson. "Fire's bad, right? Everybody knows what a house looks like after it's been on fire, and that's bad, so we should stop all the fires." I don't think those people are idiots, but perhaps they should reconsider their position regarding fire's rejuvenation properties. [0] https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/indigenous-fire-management-and-traditional-knowledge https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/indigenous-fire-management-and-tr... [1] Huh, I don't know why I typed that at all. After all, we're talking about forestry

germinalphrase 4y ago
Modern forestry thrives where controlled burns are allowed to repeatedly impact the same forests for the benefit of those never burned. The burned forests never fully recover, and the thriving forests grow taller by comparison. Perhaps, the old ways are better, but the oral tradition that spoke of the unity of man and the imposition of serfdom as sinful has been ignored, forgotten, and derided. Hopefully, no one sets those tall trees alight out of spite.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> Either that, or they're history buffs. What precipitates the redistribution of wealth, historically? Some kind of gigantic disaster -- war, famine, plague, social collapse. You're mistaking redistribution for destruction... Sure, things are technically more equal if everyone becomes homeless. But there wasn't really a redistribution...
- makomk 4y ago
  A lot of people who think along these lines, especially younger people, don't think of wealth as something that can be created or destroyed at all. They just believe that there's some fixed amount out there, and that if ordinary people don't have enough that must be because the super-rich have stolen their fair share and need to be brought down a peg. The very idea of wealth that can be created is seen as a lie spread by the super rich to conceal their theft. (I do wonder if part of this is that a lot of people are too young to have seen their societies become substantially better of as a whole, unlike previous generations.)
  - glogla 4y ago
    I think you can in theory believe that wealth can be created - but also at the same time be convinced that modern heavily financialized[1] economy does very little of that. Add to that how a lot of people have seen their societies become substantially worse of as a whole - yes, iPhones are awesome and modern cars are safer and so on, but instead of having a union job you pee in bottles in Amazon warehouse, and instead of buying a home you are forever renting a studio apartment. The Simpsons titular family of one high school educated guy with house and three kids on single income went from "typical boring dude" to "impossible dream" over the course of one or two generations, after all. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization

glogla 4y ago

Yes. Destroying the world will kill me. But it will kill Elon Musk as well. Perhaps even in a gruesome and funny way. If I was considering existence not worth it, it might look like a good trade.

newsclues 4y ago
What a revolting comment.