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I think about this from time to time and I suppose everything is cyclical in the end. Most of us would have been some peasant in the feudal age and when it get

I think about this from time to time and I suppose everything is cyclical in the end. Most of us would have been some peasant in the feudal age and when it gets really bad it always ends in a revolution of some sort. It's just on a global scale and timeframe now. As more of the population feels the effects of inequality they won't appeased by just fancy toys and shiny things, they will want change by force. My only solace is I'll probably be long dead by the time that happens.

colechristensen 2y ago
There is always an exponential distribution of wealth, it isn’t rational to argue against it. What needs argument is what the exponent is.
- carlob 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure wealth doesn't follow an exponential distribution. Power law, log normal or stretched exponential or maybe some sort of generalized Zipf.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    This, for the sake of argument, is not an important distinction.
    - carlob 2y ago
      I disagree, if anything we need to know what the distribution is before we make such sweeping claims. While pretty much every country has an income tax, which means that we knows fairly well who makes what, there is no equivalent for wealth. Most wealth distributions are estimates which get progressively worse as we near the top percentiles, because really big wealth is very mobile and international. So yeah before we say: "it always looks like this, it's just about what the parameters are", we need to measure it and have a clearer idea of what it looks like in different societies otherwise we won't be able to decide what the desirable parameters are like.
    - j7ake 2y ago
      Don’t use technical terms like “exponential distribution” and then say the technical details like what distribution it is does not matter. Doing so conveys sloppy thinking while pretending to be rigorous only on the surface.
- catlifeonmars 2y ago
  Why is there an always an exponential distribution of wealth?
- tankenmate 2y ago
  Just because there is a power law relationship doesn't justify having such a steep curve. Flatten the curve, the rich should pay more tax. The alternative is returning to a feudal gilded age where there are a very very small cabal of asset owning lords, a very small class of scribes for the lords, and then a sea of serfs.
- m000 2y ago
  You make it sound like some kind of natural law that we have no saying over. It isn't. The whole concept of wealth accumulation is entirely human-made, and influenced by what the society is willing to tolerate.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> just on a global scale and timeframe now And nuclear. We have yet to see our first nuclear civil war.
- signa11 2y ago
  ‘they irradiated their own people ! ?’ _very_ slightly edited from its original.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    …I’m blanking on the sourced though I know it.
    - tobyhinloopen 2y ago
      Resident Evil?
    - dutchCourage 2y ago
      Google to the rescue, it's from Star Trek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPBzj90Su8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPBzj90Su8A
ninetyninenine 2y ago
It’s different this time around. The sheer complexity of society makes it hard to ascertain exactly the true nature of the situation. People who voted for trump aren’t even aware he’s part of the problem of wealth inequality. They aren’t even aware wealth inequality is the problem. At worst we will get an angry mob stampeding the White House with no real direction or objective. Are rich people the problem or is it the government? They may have a feeling "something" is wrong, but they aren't sure what it is or who to blame, or they may think that nothing is wrong and life is just hard.
- piva00 2y ago
  Not only complexity per se, I'm firmly on the camp of Byung-Chul Han's take on the lack of unifying narratives in the contemporary age. Living through the information age I do subscribe to his views of information being only additive, incapable and incomplete to form overarching narratives for us to hinge on. Recommend the read of "Psychopolitics", "The Crisis of Narration", and "In the Swarm", those books eloquently described feelings I've had since the social media boom of mid-2010s. We are living through a data totalitarianism, missing overarching concepts in the noise of never-ending additive data that never concludes into a larger concept for us to grasp, just pure bombardment of more information without having any respite to put all of that together in a sense of deeper knowledge, to understand the world we are actually living in.
  - stoneman24 2y ago
    It’s possibly a clear strategy (“flood the zone”) by some people to cause the conflict and confusion. I read recently a comment that in media “sex used to sell but now rage and outrage are more effective”. Start the fire and exploit the situation for their own benefit. So many people outraged but very few offering any context or insightful suggestions. Assisted by social media insane demand for controversy and dispute ( even without bad actors tweaking the algorithms), there seems very difficult for the sane rational voices to gain attention.
    - piva00 2y ago
sigmoid10 2y ago
The population might not be happy, but they don't have the means to change it. Revolutions don't happen when people are mad, they happen when the ones who can afford armies and equipment sense the possibility of coming out on top. 250 years ago George Washington could have financed the entire Revolutionary War out of his own pocket and he still would have retained two thirds of his wealth. Instead he put the losses on top of the public debt, became the leader of the new nation and enjoyed no longer having to pay taxes to the British for the economic output of his slaves. Today we can see the same thing happening again with different rich guys' names. But the poor will not benefit this time either. When things get bad for average people, it's just an opportunity for other rich guys to take the reigns.
- ty6853 2y ago
  And now we're paying 10x the fraction of our gdp as the early non war days. The feds are bleeding us dry to line they and their corrupt friends pockets and their public debt.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
    If we got rid of the federal government, and things didn’t break put into war or anything, would the issue be solved?
    - ty6853 2y ago
      No nothing will 'solve' it, but it may attenuate it in some states. Although moving from size in early days to zero is your own strawman.
      - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
        I guess my issue is more that I feel like you’re looking in the wrong direction here. Imo the government’s behavior, which I don’t think is quite as egregious as you’re making it out to be, is primarily downstream from other things (notably the interests of money). I asked that question because I don’t think that getting rid of the federal government would help people very much at all.
tokioyoyo 2y ago
Global average age is higher than it has ever been and it keeps climbing. My stupid take is, we will continuously live in unprecedented territories for the foreseeable future, because needs, wants, abilities, thinking style of humans change as they age.
- raziel2p 2y ago
  do they? can you give some examples?
  - tokioyoyo 2y ago
    Think what your priorities were when you were 15, 20, 25, 30 and so on. Personally for me, my priorities have been different at each stage. As I got older, I had more things to lose, loved ones to think about, deeper connections and etc., which made me more mindful while making specific decisions. I’m not saying that at the age of 30 (current global median age), every one of the same age think the same way. But it is different than what one would think at the age of 20. I’m sorry, I don’t know how old you are, but I’m sure if you look back, you can think of examples in your own life too. But again, it’s just a stupid thought that I live with, and try not to compare current affairs to something in the past for that reason.
    - phkx 2y ago
      I don‘t get which implications you derive from the changing needs over one’s life. In all of those phases, safety and health of yourself and beloved ones are likely at the top of your needs. Is there a contradiction to your ideals when you were young (unless you went all in on YOLO)? edit: Maybe it’s about the inclination towards uprise/revolution which might result in oppression and danger for those you want to protect. In that case: I don’t see why some kind of apocalyptic revolution must be part of the cycle mentioned in the top post. Maybe I’m still naive, but I still have hopes that we will get to sustainable terms on this planet.
      - tokioyoyo 2y ago
riffraff 2y ago
That is the argument made by Piketty in his book. It's not so much "inequality is evil" (tho he surely think so), but rather "inequality breeds catastrophic revolutions".
alephnan 2y ago
The difference now is globalism and that the rich have private jets to take them to safe havens. People's wealth were more geographically locked and tied to land back then.
wolvesechoes 2y ago
"they will want change by force" Won't happen in a society where elders are more numerous than young. In the past it required a lot of young males thinking they have not much to lose, but they are becoming extinct. Old people won't revolt, middle-aged fathers that need to think of their children and mortgage won't revolt.
- zuppy 2y ago
  Yet, my mother and my grandfather participated in the Romanian revolution, where real bullets have being shot against the people. I was almost 8 years old and I will be forever grateful for what they did. There is no other way, there is nobody else to help you if you accept what is happening. It's not on the same level, of course, but my anecdotal experience does not align with what you said. You can't fight lawless with law, but you can at least protest.
  - wolvesechoes 2y ago
    Obviously when I use universal quantifiers, even implicitly, it is easy to find counterexamples. Of course there are individuals that are willing to sacrifice even when old. But don't you think that your (grand)parents may have been more motivated due to having children and grandchildren? Now, why an old, childless lady or man, living on pension, would take risks, especially when they lived their life watching things taking shape? Again, some will act on principles they believe in, but such people are always a minority. And I doubt people in age of your (grand)parents constituted a bulk of protesters. I am from Poland. When mass workers protests were happening under communist regime, age median was under 30 yrs. Today it is over 40 yrs. Even excluding other aspects (like liberal ideology taking a firm hold here, and real economic growth that happened since), people today are much more complicit, and much less willing to take direct action, even if today's government is much less likely to beat you to death in jail.
    - anal_reactor 2y ago
      I was thinking about this and honestly, I would be more willing to take action exactly if I were old, simply because I'd have less to lose. Sucks to get life sentece at 20, doesn't change much when you're 80.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
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rorytbyrne 2y ago
I highly recommend taking a dynamical systems class, if you ever get the chance. It's shocking how many seemingly unrelated things just "make sense" when you know what a limit cycle is and how bifurcations work.
hliyan 2y ago
I believe the ancient greeks called this anacyclosis https://anacyclosis.org/portfolio/what-is-anacyclosis/ https://anacyclosis.org/portfolio/what-is-anacyclosis/ For a more snappier version, see this video by a former professor of history, university of Wisconsin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqsBx58GxYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqsBx58GxYY
- disqard 2y ago
  An excellent resource! Thank you for sharing this.
mirekrusin 2y ago
We are living in feudal system at the moment. Amazon, cloud providers and everything seems to be subscription based nowadays - as Yanis Varoufakis calls it "techno-feudalism". We have system which funnels unimaginable amounts of money to few overlords, it'll keep reinforcing itself creating more and more contrast with time. Open source everything seems to be the only answer if you ask me.
- vineyardmike 2y ago
  I love open source as much as the next guy, but unless you consider mortgage or rent a subscription, then I don’t think that it’s really a primary issue for most people today. That said, the subscriptions do keep growing. But, in fairness, most cloud services have ongoing cost to the business, so ongoing consumer costs make sense.
- graemep 2y ago
  People do not understand subscriptions. I little a month looks cheap. They do not understand the technology or the economics. If you are a landless peasant you know if you are being too heavily taxes - you can see how much the land produces. People have no idea whether they are overpaying for food at the end of a long supply chain, let alone for technology. Another factor is when you are paying for many things, its only worth worrying about the most expensive as the others are relatively trivial. Compared to housing and utilities the rest is hardly worth thinking about.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  Comparing access to entertainment with access to food is disingenuous.
globular-toast 2y ago
There is reason to believe this time might be different. Individuals can't revolt. It takes a critical mass which is only achieved via organisation. Why do you think privacy is forever under attack? The way we are going, future generations won't even have this option.
begueradj 2y ago
Nowadays is different from the feudal times you referred to. Because the majority of us are brainwashed by the media. When the brain is chained, there is no hope for a revolution.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >Because the majority of us are brainwashed by the media. I disagree, people were even more brainwashed in the past since their only source of information was what the church and the king would tell them (Plato's cave allegory) while now you have a plethora of independent unbiased sources of information plus leaks and whistleblowers out in the open to thanks to the internet and social media. Sure, you have a lot of fake news and propaganda today form the mainstream and social media, but back then it was all exclusively fake news and propaganda, as only the ruling elites had the truth and they'd never share that with the peasants, while any peasantry who dared speaking the truth that went against the official narrative would be punished for heresy. That's why Europe spent so much time in the dark ages and the advent of freedom of thought also brought in the Renaissance era. >When the brain is chained, there is no hope for a revolution. I disagree, people in the west today have a lot more freedom of information and freedom of speech than in the distant past. Well, unless you live in the UK or Germany where the police arrests you for posting a meme online about a politician, try to ban encrypted chat and sources of information they consider "hateful" in order to control the narrative and restrict the population to only vote for the entrenched establishment.
  - notadoomer236 2y ago
    Our information environments are socially engineered. Reddit for sure. Major news sites. Etc Or do we only do that in other countries?
ken47 2y ago
Not saying that the ultra-wealthy have the right to be tyrants, but "peasants" of today's age have a quality of life that is orders of magnitudes better than peasants in the feudal age. This simple truth seems to get lost so easily when talking about inequality in a vacuum.
- phkx 2y ago
  Then we might have reached the point to discuss whether it’s enough to lift the worst-off to some minimum where they can survive or whether we’re in a position now to also enable participation on broad scale. Right now it looks like wealth is self-enforcing. Across certain thresholds, you can get an expert or have the network to help with your taxes, legal issues, investment strategy and so on. Maybe you even inherited it all from your parents. There are certainly prominent counter examples of people who crossed these thresholds with their own hard work. The majority of people does not.
  - ken47 2y ago
    That is in the hands of the ultra-wealthy class. What is the goal of enabling people to cross these thresholds? Who does it benefit?
netfortius 2y ago
To me the question now is rather individual level related, instead of mass organization and action: what is threshold beyond which one - while having lost job, health[care], housing, social services and maybe even family member(s) - decides that s/he won't have absolutely anything else to lose, to then "pull a Luigi" on someone who s/he may feel responsible for his situation? Then iterate from 1 to n -> where would "n" make a real difference?
datadeft 2y ago
The peasant had to pay 20% tax and had free housing and food and worked half the amount of hours / year that we work. And they got revolutions. What does it tell about us?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  > worked half the amount of hours / year that we work Source? I have some doubts about this claim. Are you sure this doesn't simply measure one form of labor while ignoring another?
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    There’s a pretty good discussion of this at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/i4igt7/did_people_in_the_past_really_have_more_leisure/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/i4igt7/did_p...
  - datadeft 2y ago
    Not really. Check out that reddit thread it goes into details about this topic. It has surprising details.
chii 2y ago
> they will want change by force at no time has there been a good outcome from which this change made. The people who applied the force merely swapped with those who had wealth. Essentially, they wanted the wealth, and co-opted the masses to enable themselves. What we have today is relatively good. Just because you see some billionaire who have more yachts than you could ever hope to own, doesn't mean you aren't living a good life. At least the french revolution was in part about lack of food and starvation. I dont see america starving.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > doesn't mean you aren't living a good life. unless you're in the bottom 50% > I dont see america starving. True, but starvation is a pretty low bar; obesity and all the related health problems due to an unhealthy diet (because garbage is the cheapest food and what the bottom 50% can afford in the US) is the modern version of starvation
- nosianu 2y ago
  > I dont see america starving. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hunger-us-continued-multi-year-rise-2023-says-farm-agency-report-2024-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hunger-us-continued-multi-y... > Hunger reached its highest point in the United States in nearly a decade last year, with 18 million households, or 13.5%, struggling at some point to secure enough food, a Department of Agriculture report released on Wednesday said. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america I mean, sure, they are not "staring", it's only hunger...
scarface_74 2y ago
Well they may want change by force. But the rich make sure that they have people with weapons that are pacified. And in the case of the US, you have people who willingly vote against their interest by demonizing other groups.
xpe 2y ago
Ah, the pendulum / cyclic metaphor. It gets trotted out way too often IMO. The pendulum metaphor fails often; here are some examples where it cannot make sensible predictions: species level extinction; major technological shifts; the overall growth of economies (upward), the growth of attitudes around human rights. Why does the pendulum metaphor fail? It has no explanatory ability to handle non-cyclic things. Mathematically, it has too few degrees of freedom and a poor functional form. How often does the pendulum argument make a testable prediction? Is there a prediction of _when_ something will happen? Is there a scientific study (or even statistical analysis) of the underlying factors? The pendulum argument often serves as some kind of wishful thinking; just wait, it says, and things will (somehow) “swing back” to the middle. For a while, at least, until there is some kind of overreaction. Enough. Let’s call bullsh-t on this vague metaphor. There are better ways of thinking. (In contrast, the statistical concept of “reversion to the mean” is a mathematical fact. Using it when observing real world data helps us assess the nature of the underlying statistical distributions.)
ozim 2y ago
Absurd. Inequality doesn’t matter really nowadays. There will be no revolution as most of people are out of poverty despite what narration on the internet is. Living conditions as today day poor person are immensely better than 18 or 19th century peasants. Whoever has billions does not affect me having running water in faucets and me enjoying life. Warm water is not all there is to life but it is a lot.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  > Whoever has billions does not affect me having running water in faucets and me enjoying life. Whether or not people are in subsistence poverty is not the only measure of a functioning society. It's great that extreme poverty is going down, but let's not declare Mission Accomplished just yet. The existence of billionaires might not affect your running water, but it does distort the market and negatively affect how much everything around you costs, from housing to healthcare to groceries. The existence of billionaires also affects your share of power in democracy. A billionaire is right now, running amok, griefing workers and tearing down institutions. All because his billions bought him the power to do that. You might change your "billionaires existing doesn't bother me" Enlightened Apathy if they one day kill a government service you rely on or decide your job must end because they need double digit stock growth again this year.
  - mlrtime 2y ago
    You are stating these things as facts, however I have not seen a single rational thought on why Elon/Bezos/... existing makes others suffer MORE, taking into account that the poorest now are objectively better off than in the past. The delta can increase and QOL across all incomes increase (albit different rates). If the people here just want 100% equality, just state it as intention.
  - ozim 2y ago
    The U.S. holds the top spot with 813 billionaires - there are 340 Million people in the US - I don't think their mere existence has any impact on weather my local grocery sells more expensive bread or tomatoes. I think people should stop fetishizing billionaires one way or the other.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
What is a world war- then a flaring off of revolution. Send the peasants to fight somewhere, buy another 30 years of stability aka a generation of peace from the wheel of strife for the price of sacrificing all the people popping up everywhere.
GuB-42 2y ago
Inequalities by themselves are not really a problem. I don't care about other peoples palaces if I can live comfortably in my small house. In fact, if said palace is well maintained and tasteful, it can make for a beautiful landmark everyone can enjoy seeing. It only becomes a problem if people are miserable, the palace stops being a beautiful landmark and becomes a symbol of oppression. Back to stocks, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the top 10% owning 87% of the stocks (in the US, because apparently, the rest of the world doesn't exist...). The stock market is risky, that's really a thing for those who have all their basic needs covered and can afford to lose big. Owning stock i.e. investing in companies is also among the most best things to society the rich can do, compared to, say, building palaces for themselves. All that to say that if some causes are worth revolting against, I just don't think inequality in stock ownership is one of them.
eddd-ddde 2y ago
Shouldn't that be the opposite of solace? My solace would be change happening in _my_ lifetime.

colechristensen 2y ago

There is always an exponential distribution of wealth, it isn’t rational to argue against it. What needs argument is what the exponent is.

carlob 2y ago
I'm pretty sure wealth doesn't follow an exponential distribution. Power law, log normal or stretched exponential or maybe some sort of generalized Zipf.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  This, for the sake of argument, is not an important distinction.
  - carlob 2y ago
    I disagree, if anything we need to know what the distribution is before we make such sweeping claims. While pretty much every country has an income tax, which means that we knows fairly well who makes what, there is no equivalent for wealth. Most wealth distributions are estimates which get progressively worse as we near the top percentiles, because really big wealth is very mobile and international. So yeah before we say: "it always looks like this, it's just about what the parameters are", we need to measure it and have a clearer idea of what it looks like in different societies otherwise we won't be able to decide what the desirable parameters are like.
  - j7ake 2y ago
    Don’t use technical terms like “exponential distribution” and then say the technical details like what distribution it is does not matter. Doing so conveys sloppy thinking while pretending to be rigorous only on the surface.
catlifeonmars 2y ago
Why is there an always an exponential distribution of wealth?
tankenmate 2y ago
Just because there is a power law relationship doesn't justify having such a steep curve. Flatten the curve, the rich should pay more tax. The alternative is returning to a feudal gilded age where there are a very very small cabal of asset owning lords, a very small class of scribes for the lords, and then a sea of serfs.
m000 2y ago
You make it sound like some kind of natural law that we have no saying over. It isn't. The whole concept of wealth accumulation is entirely human-made, and influenced by what the society is willing to tolerate.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> just on a global scale and timeframe now And nuclear. We have yet to see our first nuclear civil war.

signa11 2y ago
‘they irradiated their own people ! ?’ _very_ slightly edited from its original.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  …I’m blanking on the sourced though I know it.
  - tobyhinloopen 2y ago
    Resident Evil?
  - dutchCourage 2y ago
    Google to the rescue, it's from Star Trek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPBzj90Su8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPBzj90Su8A

ninetyninenine 2y ago

It’s different this time around. The sheer complexity of society makes it hard to ascertain exactly the true nature of the situation. People who voted for trump aren’t even aware he’s part of the problem of wealth inequality. They aren’t even aware wealth inequality is the problem. At worst we will get an angry mob stampeding the White House with no real direction or objective. Are rich people the problem or is it the government? They may have a feeling "something" is wrong, but they aren't sure what it is or who to blame, or they may think that nothing is wrong and life is just hard.

piva00 2y ago
Not only complexity per se, I'm firmly on the camp of Byung-Chul Han's take on the lack of unifying narratives in the contemporary age. Living through the information age I do subscribe to his views of information being only additive, incapable and incomplete to form overarching narratives for us to hinge on. Recommend the read of "Psychopolitics", "The Crisis of Narration", and "In the Swarm", those books eloquently described feelings I've had since the social media boom of mid-2010s. We are living through a data totalitarianism, missing overarching concepts in the noise of never-ending additive data that never concludes into a larger concept for us to grasp, just pure bombardment of more information without having any respite to put all of that together in a sense of deeper knowledge, to understand the world we are actually living in.
- stoneman24 2y ago
  It’s possibly a clear strategy (“flood the zone”) by some people to cause the conflict and confusion. I read recently a comment that in media “sex used to sell but now rage and outrage are more effective”. Start the fire and exploit the situation for their own benefit. So many people outraged but very few offering any context or insightful suggestions. Assisted by social media insane demand for controversy and dispute ( even without bad actors tweaking the algorithms), there seems very difficult for the sane rational voices to gain attention.
  - piva00 2y ago

sigmoid10 2y ago

The population might not be happy, but they don't have the means to change it. Revolutions don't happen when people are mad, they happen when the ones who can afford armies and equipment sense the possibility of coming out on top. 250 years ago George Washington could have financed the entire Revolutionary War out of his own pocket and he still would have retained two thirds of his wealth. Instead he put the losses on top of the public debt, became the leader of the new nation and enjoyed no longer having to pay taxes to the British for the economic output of his slaves. Today we can see the same thing happening again with different rich guys' names. But the poor will not benefit this time either. When things get bad for average people, it's just an opportunity for other rich guys to take the reigns.

ty6853 2y ago
And now we're paying 10x the fraction of our gdp as the early non war days. The feds are bleeding us dry to line they and their corrupt friends pockets and their public debt.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  If we got rid of the federal government, and things didn’t break put into war or anything, would the issue be solved?
  - ty6853 2y ago
    No nothing will 'solve' it, but it may attenuate it in some states. Although moving from size in early days to zero is your own strawman.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
      I guess my issue is more that I feel like you’re looking in the wrong direction here. Imo the government’s behavior, which I don’t think is quite as egregious as you’re making it out to be, is primarily downstream from other things (notably the interests of money). I asked that question because I don’t think that getting rid of the federal government would help people very much at all.

tokioyoyo 2y ago

Global average age is higher than it has ever been and it keeps climbing. My stupid take is, we will continuously live in unprecedented territories for the foreseeable future, because needs, wants, abilities, thinking style of humans change as they age.

raziel2p 2y ago
do they? can you give some examples?
- tokioyoyo 2y ago
  Think what your priorities were when you were 15, 20, 25, 30 and so on. Personally for me, my priorities have been different at each stage. As I got older, I had more things to lose, loved ones to think about, deeper connections and etc., which made me more mindful while making specific decisions. I’m not saying that at the age of 30 (current global median age), every one of the same age think the same way. But it is different than what one would think at the age of 20. I’m sorry, I don’t know how old you are, but I’m sure if you look back, you can think of examples in your own life too. But again, it’s just a stupid thought that I live with, and try not to compare current affairs to something in the past for that reason.
  - phkx 2y ago
    I don‘t get which implications you derive from the changing needs over one’s life. In all of those phases, safety and health of yourself and beloved ones are likely at the top of your needs. Is there a contradiction to your ideals when you were young (unless you went all in on YOLO)? edit: Maybe it’s about the inclination towards uprise/revolution which might result in oppression and danger for those you want to protect. In that case: I don’t see why some kind of apocalyptic revolution must be part of the cycle mentioned in the top post. Maybe I’m still naive, but I still have hopes that we will get to sustainable terms on this planet.
    - tokioyoyo 2y ago

riffraff 2y ago

That is the argument made by Piketty in his book. It's not so much "inequality is evil" (tho he surely think so), but rather "inequality breeds catastrophic revolutions".

alephnan 2y ago

The difference now is globalism and that the rich have private jets to take them to safe havens. People's wealth were more geographically locked and tied to land back then.

wolvesechoes 2y ago

"they will want change by force" Won't happen in a society where elders are more numerous than young. In the past it required a lot of young males thinking they have not much to lose, but they are becoming extinct. Old people won't revolt, middle-aged fathers that need to think of their children and mortgage won't revolt.

zuppy 2y ago
Yet, my mother and my grandfather participated in the Romanian revolution, where real bullets have being shot against the people. I was almost 8 years old and I will be forever grateful for what they did. There is no other way, there is nobody else to help you if you accept what is happening. It's not on the same level, of course, but my anecdotal experience does not align with what you said. You can't fight lawless with law, but you can at least protest.
- wolvesechoes 2y ago
  Obviously when I use universal quantifiers, even implicitly, it is easy to find counterexamples. Of course there are individuals that are willing to sacrifice even when old. But don't you think that your (grand)parents may have been more motivated due to having children and grandchildren? Now, why an old, childless lady or man, living on pension, would take risks, especially when they lived their life watching things taking shape? Again, some will act on principles they believe in, but such people are always a minority. And I doubt people in age of your (grand)parents constituted a bulk of protesters. I am from Poland. When mass workers protests were happening under communist regime, age median was under 30 yrs. Today it is over 40 yrs. Even excluding other aspects (like liberal ideology taking a firm hold here, and real economic growth that happened since), people today are much more complicit, and much less willing to take direct action, even if today's government is much less likely to beat you to death in jail.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    I was thinking about this and honestly, I would be more willing to take action exactly if I were old, simply because I'd have less to lose. Sucks to get life sentece at 20, doesn't change much when you're 80.

oldpersonintx 2y ago

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rorytbyrne 2y ago

I highly recommend taking a dynamical systems class, if you ever get the chance. It's shocking how many seemingly unrelated things just "make sense" when you know what a limit cycle is and how bifurcations work.

hliyan 2y ago

I believe the ancient greeks called this anacyclosis https://anacyclosis.org/portfolio/what-is-anacyclosis/ https://anacyclosis.org/portfolio/what-is-anacyclosis/ For a more snappier version, see this video by a former professor of history, university of Wisconsin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqsBx58GxYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqsBx58GxYY

disqard 2y ago
An excellent resource! Thank you for sharing this.

mirekrusin 2y ago

We are living in feudal system at the moment. Amazon, cloud providers and everything seems to be subscription based nowadays - as Yanis Varoufakis calls it "techno-feudalism". We have system which funnels unimaginable amounts of money to few overlords, it'll keep reinforcing itself creating more and more contrast with time. Open source everything seems to be the only answer if you ask me.

vineyardmike 2y ago
I love open source as much as the next guy, but unless you consider mortgage or rent a subscription, then I don’t think that it’s really a primary issue for most people today. That said, the subscriptions do keep growing. But, in fairness, most cloud services have ongoing cost to the business, so ongoing consumer costs make sense.
graemep 2y ago
People do not understand subscriptions. I little a month looks cheap. They do not understand the technology or the economics. If you are a landless peasant you know if you are being too heavily taxes - you can see how much the land produces. People have no idea whether they are overpaying for food at the end of a long supply chain, let alone for technology. Another factor is when you are paying for many things, its only worth worrying about the most expensive as the others are relatively trivial. Compared to housing and utilities the rest is hardly worth thinking about.
Ferret7446 2y ago
Comparing access to entertainment with access to food is disingenuous.

globular-toast 2y ago

There is reason to believe this time might be different. Individuals can't revolt. It takes a critical mass which is only achieved via organisation. Why do you think privacy is forever under attack? The way we are going, future generations won't even have this option.

begueradj 2y ago

Nowadays is different from the feudal times you referred to. Because the majority of us are brainwashed by the media. When the brain is chained, there is no hope for a revolution.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
>Because the majority of us are brainwashed by the media. I disagree, people were even more brainwashed in the past since their only source of information was what the church and the king would tell them (Plato's cave allegory) while now you have a plethora of independent unbiased sources of information plus leaks and whistleblowers out in the open to thanks to the internet and social media. Sure, you have a lot of fake news and propaganda today form the mainstream and social media, but back then it was all exclusively fake news and propaganda, as only the ruling elites had the truth and they'd never share that with the peasants, while any peasantry who dared speaking the truth that went against the official narrative would be punished for heresy. That's why Europe spent so much time in the dark ages and the advent of freedom of thought also brought in the Renaissance era. >When the brain is chained, there is no hope for a revolution. I disagree, people in the west today have a lot more freedom of information and freedom of speech than in the distant past. Well, unless you live in the UK or Germany where the police arrests you for posting a meme online about a politician, try to ban encrypted chat and sources of information they consider "hateful" in order to control the narrative and restrict the population to only vote for the entrenched establishment.
- notadoomer236 2y ago
  Our information environments are socially engineered. Reddit for sure. Major news sites. Etc Or do we only do that in other countries?

ken47 2y ago

Not saying that the ultra-wealthy have the right to be tyrants, but "peasants" of today's age have a quality of life that is orders of magnitudes better than peasants in the feudal age. This simple truth seems to get lost so easily when talking about inequality in a vacuum.

phkx 2y ago
Then we might have reached the point to discuss whether it’s enough to lift the worst-off to some minimum where they can survive or whether we’re in a position now to also enable participation on broad scale. Right now it looks like wealth is self-enforcing. Across certain thresholds, you can get an expert or have the network to help with your taxes, legal issues, investment strategy and so on. Maybe you even inherited it all from your parents. There are certainly prominent counter examples of people who crossed these thresholds with their own hard work. The majority of people does not.
- ken47 2y ago
  That is in the hands of the ultra-wealthy class. What is the goal of enabling people to cross these thresholds? Who does it benefit?

netfortius 2y ago

To me the question now is rather individual level related, instead of mass organization and action: what is threshold beyond which one - while having lost job, health[care], housing, social services and maybe even family member(s) - decides that s/he won't have absolutely anything else to lose, to then "pull a Luigi" on someone who s/he may feel responsible for his situation? Then iterate from 1 to n -> where would "n" make a real difference?

datadeft 2y ago

The peasant had to pay 20% tax and had free housing and food and worked half the amount of hours / year that we work. And they got revolutions. What does it tell about us?

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
> worked half the amount of hours / year that we work Source? I have some doubts about this claim. Are you sure this doesn't simply measure one form of labor while ignoring another?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  There’s a pretty good discussion of this at https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/i4igt7/did_people_in_the_past_really_have_more_leisure/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/i4igt7/did_p...
- datadeft 2y ago
  Not really. Check out that reddit thread it goes into details about this topic. It has surprising details.

chii 2y ago

> they will want change by force at no time has there been a good outcome from which this change made. The people who applied the force merely swapped with those who had wealth. Essentially, they wanted the wealth, and co-opted the masses to enable themselves. What we have today is relatively good. Just because you see some billionaire who have more yachts than you could ever hope to own, doesn't mean you aren't living a good life. At least the french revolution was in part about lack of food and starvation. I dont see america starving.

insane_dreamer 2y ago
> doesn't mean you aren't living a good life. unless you're in the bottom 50% > I dont see america starving. True, but starvation is a pretty low bar; obesity and all the related health problems due to an unhealthy diet (because garbage is the cheapest food and what the bottom 50% can afford in the US) is the modern version of starvation
nosianu 2y ago
> I dont see america starving. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hunger-us-continued-multi-year-rise-2023-says-farm-agency-report-2024-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hunger-us-continued-multi-y... > Hunger reached its highest point in the United States in nearly a decade last year, with 18 million households, or 13.5%, struggling at some point to secure enough food, a Department of Agriculture report released on Wednesday said. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo... https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america I mean, sure, they are not "staring", it's only hunger...

scarface_74 2y ago

Well they may want change by force. But the rich make sure that they have people with weapons that are pacified. And in the case of the US, you have people who willingly vote against their interest by demonizing other groups.

xpe 2y ago

Ah, the pendulum / cyclic metaphor. It gets trotted out way too often IMO. The pendulum metaphor fails often; here are some examples where it cannot make sensible predictions: species level extinction; major technological shifts; the overall growth of economies (upward), the growth of attitudes around human rights. Why does the pendulum metaphor fail? It has no explanatory ability to handle non-cyclic things. Mathematically, it has too few degrees of freedom and a poor functional form. How often does the pendulum argument make a testable prediction? Is there a prediction of _when_ something will happen? Is there a scientific study (or even statistical analysis) of the underlying factors? The pendulum argument often serves as some kind of wishful thinking; just wait, it says, and things will (somehow) “swing back” to the middle. For a while, at least, until there is some kind of overreaction. Enough. Let’s call bullsh-t on this vague metaphor. There are better ways of thinking. (In contrast, the statistical concept of “reversion to the mean” is a mathematical fact. Using it when observing real world data helps us assess the nature of the underlying statistical distributions.)

ozim 2y ago

Absurd. Inequality doesn’t matter really nowadays. There will be no revolution as most of people are out of poverty despite what narration on the internet is. Living conditions as today day poor person are immensely better than 18 or 19th century peasants. Whoever has billions does not affect me having running water in faucets and me enjoying life. Warm water is not all there is to life but it is a lot.

ryandrake 2y ago
> Whoever has billions does not affect me having running water in faucets and me enjoying life. Whether or not people are in subsistence poverty is not the only measure of a functioning society. It's great that extreme poverty is going down, but let's not declare Mission Accomplished just yet. The existence of billionaires might not affect your running water, but it does distort the market and negatively affect how much everything around you costs, from housing to healthcare to groceries. The existence of billionaires also affects your share of power in democracy. A billionaire is right now, running amok, griefing workers and tearing down institutions. All because his billions bought him the power to do that. You might change your "billionaires existing doesn't bother me" Enlightened Apathy if they one day kill a government service you rely on or decide your job must end because they need double digit stock growth again this year.
- mlrtime 2y ago
  You are stating these things as facts, however I have not seen a single rational thought on why Elon/Bezos/... existing makes others suffer MORE, taking into account that the poorest now are objectively better off than in the past. The delta can increase and QOL across all incomes increase (albit different rates). If the people here just want 100% equality, just state it as intention.
- ozim 2y ago
  The U.S. holds the top spot with 813 billionaires - there are 340 Million people in the US - I don't think their mere existence has any impact on weather my local grocery sells more expensive bread or tomatoes. I think people should stop fetishizing billionaires one way or the other.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

What is a world war- then a flaring off of revolution. Send the peasants to fight somewhere, buy another 30 years of stability aka a generation of peace from the wheel of strife for the price of sacrificing all the people popping up everywhere.

GuB-42 2y ago

Inequalities by themselves are not really a problem. I don't care about other peoples palaces if I can live comfortably in my small house. In fact, if said palace is well maintained and tasteful, it can make for a beautiful landmark everyone can enjoy seeing. It only becomes a problem if people are miserable, the palace stops being a beautiful landmark and becomes a symbol of oppression. Back to stocks, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the top 10% owning 87% of the stocks (in the US, because apparently, the rest of the world doesn't exist...). The stock market is risky, that's really a thing for those who have all their basic needs covered and can afford to lose big. Owning stock i.e. investing in companies is also among the most best things to society the rich can do, compared to, say, building palaces for themselves. All that to say that if some causes are worth revolting against, I just don't think inequality in stock ownership is one of them.

eddd-ddde 2y ago

Shouldn't that be the opposite of solace? My solace would be change happening in _my_ lifetime.