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Yet there's incentive structures that push it forward. It's a classic example of us being dragged along by incentives and emergent patterns against our individ

• N_Lens 17d ago
  I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.
  • datsci_est_2015 17d ago
    And yet they still hold immense power to make our lives shittier. It is far easier to destroy a functioning system than it is to build one from the ground up
    • throwitaway222 16d ago
      And yet the lives of everyone on this board has never been this comfortable in the past.
      • ux266478 16d ago
        Do we live in different worlds? I can't think of a single meaningful way my comfort has increased in the past 25 years. In fact, with the rise of the homeless and mental health crises, the encroachment of more and more people who have no business touching computers into cyberspace, the increased relevance of flash mob power on the internet, I would say my comfort has been actively degraded on a fundamental and significant level. On a broader timescale, we can take a look at the fact that goods which were designed to be affordable and mass-produced have been elevated to refined luxury goods, like the Herman-Miller Eames, as an indicator that material standards have fallen very far. Not the least of which because of an ever-dwindling labor share of capital (beginning in the 1970s), which silently impoverishes working households and degrades their comfort while being completely invisible to an uncareful eye on paper. Much of the major boons of comfort were established prior to the transition to shareholder capitalism. Things like e-commerce, IoT, online banking, these are for the birds. Meaningful advances are things like HVAC and refrigeration, ubiquitous motorized transport, electrical lighting.
        • godelski 16d ago
          I believe the parent is implying that we sit uncomfortably at home, silently, rather than uncomfortably marching through the streets, demanding. Yet, I say that while uncomfortably sitting in my home, typing on a screen
          • ux266478 16d ago
            Mass demonstrations are common and frequent, more than ever. The thing is that these are mild pressures at best. What came from Occupy Wallstreet? The George Floyd protests? The No Kings marches? Anti-ICE demonstrations? They're not nothing and we should continue to have them and participate in them, but we have to recognize them as what they are: background radiation. On their own, they don't affect change or bring about course correction. We clearly need something more, people inside of these institutions, sharks who are going to fight and win against the entrenched powers on their home turf. There's a very limited pool of people who are capable of doing that.
            • godelski 16d ago
              Plenty has come from all those things. But it's those in power who want you to feel like those are fruitless endeavors. That's why their strategy is to overwhelm. Good news takes time to be received and by then your focus will be on something else. But I promise you if you look them up you'll find real progress. It may not be as much as you want, but that's a different thing. Progress is made by small and successive steps. So the strategy to upend progress is to interrupt those steps and make them feel as small as possible. Don't fall for the trap > We clearly need ... sharks I am afraid of sharks, just as I am scorpions. It is in their nature to draw blood. Bloodshed should be the last resort. By putting sharks in power is the problem with the current administration. Replacing with a different shark doesn't reduce attacks, it just changes targets. If sharks must be used, they must be well contained.
            • bethekidyouwant 16d ago
              There are not more mass protests these days at all… (to ops point)
      • AngryData 16d ago
        There are plenty of people on this board that aren't $200K+ software engineers. The median pay for my local area in the US is $35K at best, assuming it has risen the last few years.
  • paulryanrogers 16d ago
    > The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands. But only within their minds. They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped. Plenty of people make the choice to stop acquiring, stop increasing their wealth, and stop having more everything (kids, houses, cars, pets, hobbies, etc). It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires. These people also have much more leverage to change the world in substantial, albeit often short lived ways. My family has been hurt by the DOGE cuts. Hopefully it's not a permanent injury. Yet it's very real.
    • GarnetFloride 16d ago
      Isn't it like that old story about catching monkeys. You hollow out a gourd with a small hole, tack it to the ground and put a nut in it. The monkey can get its hand in but not out with the nut in their fist. The human can walk over and leisurely whack the monkey because the monkey can't let go. They act just like drug addicts. More's the pity. They can change but they don't seem to understand that rock bottom is a tough place to be.
      • FlowingRiver 16d ago
        The Monkey trap is a very powerful analogy. It is looking like we are venturing into harder times these new few years for various reasons, as such one has to wonder what things you are still clinging to that can be let go and what is still worth handing on to. Hopefully we don't have to make those choices but it is always handy to keep in mind.
    • MentalM 16d ago
      > It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires. If we talk about US, your statement is outrageous hypocrisy. Median income world-wide is less than 50 cents per hour. Average American person "who have no choice" could start working for like 30+ times more at any moment they want and choose any US government they want. And how much money from this 30+ times more they have "donated or paid enough taxes" that their several dollars per hour "would be distributed far and wide"? Zero. So we are talking about insatiable appetite of Americans, not Billionaires. Because average American person has literally the same choice you are talking about, and literally choosing "having more everything" instead of "distribute far and wide".
• hkpack 17d ago
  Well said, I have exactly the same thoughts. However, overcoming these forces is something people did successfully in the past. I think right now we are just in a cycle of mass confusion caused by the technological revolutions, which prevents us to see clearly (as it happened in the past as well). Without alignment we just drift by natural forces of a system in place in whatever direction. When we adapt and if the world survives, this should not be an issue. The problem of billionaires is that they are one level below from the top in abstraction of a society. They are required to play by the rules of the state designed by someone else, and they lack the knowledge and experience to go one level higher and think about the policies and rules for society itself - and this is much harder than doing business, and requires completely different skills. Because of these factors, we see them being able to hoard wealth but unable to influence the system in any positive way, except for the ones which the system was already designed for (create jobs, innovate, etc.)
  • godelski 16d ago
    Honestly, my worry is that the longer we put it off the more likely any revolution or change will happen more chaotically. It should be organized, with strong leaders. But if that fails, I think Reverend King has a famous quote about the unheard. And I think that ends up being chaotic and bloody. I don't want that, I hope we've evolved enough to do transitions of power peacefully, or at least as peacefully as possible
• Varelion 17d ago
  Hold on. Panama papers. Epstein files. CointelPro -> NSPM-7. There absolutely, without a reasonable doubt, is a conspiracy of the elite -- the billionaire class.
  • danielmarkbruce 16d ago
    The idea that all billionaires work together is hilarious. No real adult could possibly believe such nonsense.
    • Varelion 16d ago
      Any adult who has been paying attention has no doubt that enough of the elite do collude to call the duck a duck.
      • danielmarkbruce 16d ago
        In the real world it's hard enough to get 5 people on the same page about anything. The idea that dozens/hundreds of people with billions of dollars who are in business against each other in many cases are secretly colluding with any effectiveness is a joke. If they were, zuckerberg, larry and sergey would have been squashed in the 90's/00's by the elite of the time. Sam Altman would have been crushed years ago. Obama or Trump would have been put in their place, probably both. Look at all the billionaires all of a sudden kowtowing to Trump. The billionaires just got beat real bad in NYC. Billionaires just don't have much power. This isn't a movie.
        • godelski 16d ago
          This seems to contradict itself. You first claim that there's no organization but then you claim billionaires have no power because of the more powerful above them. Hierarchy is organization, so which is it
          • danielmarkbruce 16d ago