10 ms·
The sickle and hammer looking real interesting now.
by delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
The sickle and hammer looking real interesting now.
- shermantanktop 1y agoIt surprises me that the monied elite seem to have so little awareness of what happens when they keep winning.
- newswasboring 1y agoPlease give me an example of what happens. Edit: before someone throws very strong platitudes at me again, I would like to see real-world examples. Because at least in my lifetime there have been zero consequences for people in power. Edit 2: I've been banned from replying to this thread (lol, talk about power of the state). I guess I didn't define my acceptance criteria properly. But I thought it would be clear that the goal should be uplifting everyone not just shift the money around to someone else. That is what most of the revolutions mentioned in the replies are.
- throwawayoldie 1y agoSome very close haircuts.
- newswasboring 1y agoWhen was the last instance of this in the last 100 years?
- mosburger 1y agoNicolae Ceaușescu comes to mind? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu#Death EDIT: One could argue whether the United Healthcare CEO assassination meets the criteria, too.
- throwawayoldie 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia#Derg_era_(1974%E2%80%931991) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia#Derg_era_(1974%E2%80%... comes to mind. So, even if you weren't factually incorrect as well as smug, what's your actual point?
- ModernMech 1y agoThey're the ones trying to bring back feudalism. If they want feudalism, things are going to get... well feudal. The lesson I've learned in the past decade is that people have not changed, at all. People will act as medieval as their circumstances allow.
- shermantanktop 1y agoWhen it goes on just a little too long, it can result in the French Revolution and 1917 and the election of populist candidates with unexpected consequences. So sure, not a given, but it’s a risk that goes up as conditions get worse.
- newswasboring 1y agoFrench revolution I can still see as consequences but Bolsheviks just took land and gave it to the new nobelity (the state).
- kergonath 1y agoThe goalposts somewhat shifted, here. The original point was > It surprises me that the monied elite seem to have so little awareness of what happens when they keep winning. What happened is that the Russian elite ended up dead or penniless in exile. What happened after that is not really relevant to the lot of the blind elite of the ancien régime.
- dragontamer 1y agoThe period after the initial French Revolutions includes a period with an Emperor Napoleon and also a period where King Charles is restored to power. It's like a century of struggle before that whole situation resolved.
- achierius 1y ago> just took land and gave it to the new nobelity (the state). This is unsubstantiated by historical evidence. No new class of "hereditary bureaucrats" emerged to replace the nobility; there was remarkably high movement between workers and officials, and even up to the very end of the Soviet Union, high officials were former day workers who had worked their way up the ranks.
- kergonath 1y ago> Please give me an example of what happens. It’s easy to forget after 80 years of stable western democracies, but brutal equilibrium shifts do happen. There was a revolution every ~20 years in Europe between 1789 and 1917. And even during the 20th century, the history of much of the world is full of coups, revolts, and uprisings. See all the revolutions in ex-soviet republics, the Arab spring, etc. So you can pick and choose between the American independence, the French Revolution, the revolutions of 1848, the Commune, and the soviets, to give you just a couple of examples for which you can find some documentation easily.
- geraldwhen 1y agoModern police and military gear is so advanced that revolution is unrealistic.
- ElFitz 1y agoMaybe. But a modern revolution also doesn’t need physical violence. People in power only have power in so far as others believe and enforce it. The emperor has no clothes.
- kergonath 1y agoIt does not help when part of the military sides with the revolution. Which happened to some extent in just about all of them. It’s never just normal people against the army. Soldiers also have families suffering just like the others. They also see what happens to them when they leave the military and become part of the underclass again. There is a spectrum between not following orders efficiently to just ignoring orders and then open mutiny.
- johnnyanmac 1y agoIf they want to try their hand and unleash the first American genocide in history, that may be the cost for people to wake up. too many cameras and live uploading about to bury hundreds, maybe thousands of citizens being shot down in cold blood.
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- ben_w 1y ago> I would like to see real-world examples. Because at least in my lifetime there have been zero consequences for people in power. Liberia (1980 coup & 1989–2003 wars): Americo-Liberian elite overthrown by indigenous-led coups; cyclical elite purges, executions, and exiles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Liberian_coup_d%27état https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Liberian_coup_d%27état Argentine Military Junta (1983): generals faced prosecution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_the_Juntas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_the_Juntas Philippines – Marcos Family (1986): Ousted by "People Power"; Ferdinand Marcos fled, family assets frozen, political exile: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/06/17/Judge-orders-Marcos-assets-frozen/9517519364800/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/06/17/Judge-orders-Marcos-... Romania – Ceaușescu Regime (1989): Ceaușescu and wife executed after rapid regime collapse; party elite purged: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_and_execution_of_Nicolae_and_Elena_Ceaușescu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_and_execution_of_Nicolae... Rwanda (1994): Hutu elite responsible for genocide overthrown by Tutsi-led RPF, the attempt to seek justice overwhelmed their legal system so hard that it was itself criticised by Amnesty International: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Aftermath; internationally, there were also trials and convictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_Rwanda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Tribuna... Iraq (2003)/Libya (2011): External forces happened, Saddam Hussein got hanged, Muammar Gaddafi's death was the kind of thing people make laws to stop soldiers from doing. And this year, that health insurance CEO who got assassinated, didn't they get their own legal strategy carved onto the bullets or something like that?
- kergonath 1y agoWhat is even more infuriating is that they can keep winning. They just have to stop being arseholes about it and pay lip service to wealth redistribution and social progress. It’s their winner-takes-all fuck-you-got-mine mentality that is pouring fuel on the fire
- rapind 1y agoThat's probably why "old money" doesn't like "new money". New money is crass, loud, and obnoxious. Old money knows that it's best to keep to the shadows, at least until one of their idiot kids ruins it. I think the inability for people to control themselves, while probably our greatest weakness, is also what often saves us. The greed goes too far and then there's a massive backlash (revolution). Technology is trying to neuter any potential backlash though. I mean who can be bothered with a revolution while there's youtubes to watch and AIs doing everything for you! I'm still optimistic we'll smarten up eventually.
- assword 1y ago> That's probably why "old money" doesn't like "new money". New money is crass, loud, and obnoxious. Old money knows that it's best to keep to the shadows, at least until one of their idiot kids ruins it. I suspect that’s why I’ve seen more serious monarchists than I ever have before.
- throaway5454 1y ago"old money" tended to come with the assumption that you'd operate with a bit of noblesse oblige.
- immibis 1y agoEvidence says they can keep winning without being nice. I trust evidence.
- mingus88 1y agoI’m not that surprised. To reach the level of billionaire, it’s pretty much a requirement that you abandon all empathy and ethics. What’s surprising is that nobody in their circle has educated them on the concept of a win-win. These people could be folk heros, universally loved and respected in ways buying a social media platform and banning all the haters will never accomplish.
- QuercusMax 1y agoThat's what's so incredibly stupid about the tariffs, immigration crackdowns, etc. Life is not a zero-sum game, and treating it like it is just makes it worse for everyone - unless you're the sort of person who really gets off on having other suffer worse than you.
- AyyWS 1y agoWhat society or culture survived by taking the high road? I'm reminded of Princess Leia's quote: No! Alderaan is peaceful, we have no weapons.
- mejutoco 1y agoNorway s sovereign fund seems like one instance.
- alistairSH 1y agoLife isn't a sci-fi movie.
- ben_w 1y agoThe high (moral) road doesn't preclude self-defence, it precludes sadism and zero-sum thinking.
- throwawayoldie 1y agoSwitzerland.
- rightbyte 1y ago
- LightBug1 1y agoThey've refined the art of turning the majority against themselves to an almost exquisite level.
- rwmj 1y agoThey're getting NZ citizenship & building bunkers, so I guess they do know, but believe they can ride it out.
- panarky 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein#Stein's_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein#Stein's_Law Nobody knows when. But it's useful to think about how.
- 67535272 1y ago100 million deaths, for the record.
- mystraline 1y agoNotice it was the capitalist ccountries that kept a running death count for socialist counties. Pray tell, how many people in capitalist countries died due to capitalism? None of them! It was always the individuals' responsibility! /sarcasm (Aside: we know just from the lack of access and $84k for Solvaldi alone is causing 5 million dead per year, and rising. And that's just a single hepatitis drug. And that's not even touching diabetes.)
- agent327 1y agoThere absolutely is a difference between people that die because we, as a species, cannot afford to spend the combined sum of all of our productivity on health care (which means that you will have to tell some people "no", even though they will die as a result of that), and a tyrannical dictator specifically ordering the death of people because they are a political threat to him. Maybe you feel that a pill that costs a few bucks to produce should be sold for that same price. In that case I'd like to remind you that in this case, a private company spent BILLIONS on medical research, without knowing if any of it would ever pay off. If you just take their one succesful product and distribute it for free, they won't bother trying again. How many great medicins came out of communist countries?
- suddenlybananas 1y agoPlenty of people have been murdered to defend capitalism. After the fall of the Paris commune, 30000 people were butchered in the streets. Millions of people were murdered for being communist or even just belonging to a union in Indonesia. Not to mention the fact that the 100 million figures includes Wehrmacht soldiers or terminated fetuses as "victims" of Communism to inflate its numbers. If you really think that there simply aren't enough resources for everyone, that makes the gluttony of the wealthy so much worse.
- 1y ago
- simianparrot 1y agoThat's something only people of privilege in countries that never experienced what the sickle and hammer does to its people.
- Workaccount2 1y agoHaving recently come off a micro-binge of the rise of USSR and it's history, the common theme in keeping a state communist through change of leadership is "The system works great, they just didn't know how to run it properly." Then they also proceeded to just continue the devastation. The fundamental problem of communism is that everyone needs to play along, but the rewards for not playing along grow as more people do play along.
- mystraline 1y agoChinese socialism is interesting and I think works quite well. Absolutely new stuff is basically unrestricted. Go build, have fun, make money. Intermediate stuff is partially state controlled, including cost, profits, pollution, and more. Essentials are effectively state owned, cost controlled, and 'very stable'. Also, the USSR was the first time it was tried. It succeeded some ways, but failed in others.
- agent327 1y agoIt works quite well in China, assuming of course you are not so unlucky as to want to protest on Tienanmen Square. Or have useful organs someone higher up might want to harvest. Or are an Uygur. Or a Tibetan. Or live in a place downstream of a large dam. Or want to express an opinion. Oh, and you know how Nazi Germany was the first time that Nazism was tried as well? It also succeeded in some ways, and failed in others. So I guess we should excuse that as well, then?
- baconbrand 1y agoYou haven’t listed anything unique to socialism. Capitalism also works well until you’re poor and don’t want to live right next to, I don’t know, a bitcoin mining facility or something. Authoritarians are the ones running down dissidents with tanks and spinning up concentration camps, not their economic systems.
- dec0dedab0de 1y agocommunism is when you give the corporations guns.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- imglorp 1y agoWe (the US) had a very successful, carefully designed system that seems to have been an unstable configuration. It was neither hammer and sickle nor single megacorporation: it was balanced on a hill between both. The combination of (1) checks and balances, (2) separation of money, religion, corporation, and government, and (3) regulation in moderation worked pretty well for around 200 years. Monopolies and labor abuses were mostly in check. Prosperity was widely shared. Churchill might have said it's "the worst possible system, except for all the others." Around the mid 70s it started to go astray with the income gap and collection of obscene personal wealth and unchecked corporate powers. With the repeal of Citzens United, that was the end of it. We all know that playing defense against constant assault from an opponent with unlimited resources is a losing proposition. If we do manage to oust the 1%, we could in theory reset to that decision point: with a few additional constitutional safeguards to keep money out of politics, strengthen ethics barriers for all three branches, etc, we might go another 200 years.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> We (the US) had a very successful, carefully designed system The idea that it was "very successful" basically comes from ignoring things like the Civil War, and the idea that it was "carefully designed" comes from building a fiction around the output and ignoring the process that actually produced it (in no small part aided by people viewing the after-the-drafting sales campaign of the Federalist Papers as if it reflected a real coherent rationale that went into building the system rather than a marketing campaign developed for a particular audience for an existing product.)
- agent327 1y agoBecause you fancy a tyrannical dictatorship that will likely kill tens of millions of its own citizens? Do you have no historical knowledge at all? Do you just not know that, every time the "sickle and hammer" are tried, it ends in oppression, deep poverty, and mass killings?
- antonvs 1y agoThat's a pretty weak inductive argument. To substantiate it, you'd need to look at the actual causes of that apparent connection. In doing so, you'd likely find that the connection is nowhere near as directly causal as you seem to be imagining. After all, China has been following a market-based variation on a communist one-party state for quite some time. While it's certainly not the freest country in the world, today's US has started to lose any ability to claim a moral high ground by comparison (and arguably, past US couldn't either.) Your perspective may be one mostly borne of indoctrination.
- agent327 1y agoThe connection is trivial: you are upsetting an existing power system, temporarily removing all checks and balances. The new power system gets established by the aggressors, and they have absolutely no reason to hold back. At that point, human nature will simply take over. My perspective has nothing to do with indoctrination, but is instead born out of historical knowledge. Communism has been tried again, and again, and again, and each time the outcome was the same. Capitalism has also been tried, and has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system we ever came up with. The existence of the ultra-rich doesn't bother me. I wouldn't suddenly be richer if people like Musk or Bezos suddenly popped out of existence; their lives simply don't impact mine. If anything, their existence serves as an inspiration for others to try for big dreams. Many of those will fail, some will succeed marginally, and a very small number will join the ranks of the ultra-rich - because they managed to provide a service that millions of people were willing to give them money. What does communism have to offer, in comparison to that? Equal poverty doesn't sound all that attractive. Now, if you were to argue that these mega-rich people and their companies have too much power, we would have something to talk about. I see the solution to that in legislation though, not in the complete destruction of our society followed by a century-long dark age.