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I think it's more comforting for people to believe that there are a handful of evil, mustache-twirling villains, sitting in a smokey room, plotting and directin

I think it's more comforting for people to believe that there are a handful of evil, mustache-twirling villains, sitting in a smokey room, plotting and directing their henchmen to carry out a conspiracy. "There are only a few bad guys, and the rest of us are just doing what we can," they can say to feel good about the world. It's a lot more scary to admit that there is no evil puppet master running things, and it's simply that the vast majority of people in leadership positions are just awful people, acting independently, but aligned with the rest of the awful people, intent on doing whatever it takes to make line go up and to the right.

hyghjiyhu 11mo ago
The mature perspective is that there isn't one big conspiracy. There are many small conspiracies.
danaris 11mo ago
Honestly, I wouldn't even couch it as the majority of leaders being evil: it's that the systems they lead, and that we all operate within, are poorly constructed, broken, or outright corrupt, and need a concerted effort on all our parts to fix them so that they actually work for everyone, rather than funneling wealth and power to the already-wealthy and already-powerful by default. And that's genuinely hard! Just by the nature of things, it is much, much easier to create a system that reinforces existing power structures than a system that works to subvert them and give more power to those who have little.
- spwa4 11mo ago
  Why not take the simple result from economics? The bigger the economic union, the bigger the inequality. Transforming small European countries, without even harmonizing minimum pay laws and social rules, into the EU, was always going to concentrate wealth to an enormous extent. One might even say that given the EU's history as an organization, this has always been the intent of creating it in the first place, not an accident.

hyghjiyhu 11mo ago

The mature perspective is that there isn't one big conspiracy. There are many small conspiracies.

danaris 11mo ago

Honestly, I wouldn't even couch it as the majority of leaders being evil: it's that the systems they lead, and that we all operate within, are poorly constructed, broken, or outright corrupt, and need a concerted effort on all our parts to fix them so that they actually work for everyone, rather than funneling wealth and power to the already-wealthy and already-powerful by default. And that's genuinely hard! Just by the nature of things, it is much, much easier to create a system that reinforces existing power structures than a system that works to subvert them and give more power to those who have little.

spwa4 11mo ago
Why not take the simple result from economics? The bigger the economic union, the bigger the inequality. Transforming small European countries, without even harmonizing minimum pay laws and social rules, into the EU, was always going to concentrate wealth to an enormous extent. One might even say that given the EU's history as an organization, this has always been the intent of creating it in the first place, not an accident.