To me it increasingly seems like there's no version of reality where doing anything will solve the problem, unless you're one of the special few people who can influence the world. The violence is a sign of that. Average people don't do things like these, but when they start feeling helpless, the most unstable people of that society that don't have anything to lose will start acting more erratically. If there's no pressure relief, these actions propagate and will become more common and normalized. This is driven by desperation, not strategically weighing the pros and cons and what impact it'll have on society or what have you.

▲

mbgerring 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We invented something called “democracy” to fix this, and then we allowed enough wealth to accumulate that the wealthy just bought it and nerfed it.

We went through a cycle like this once before in U.S. history, and the amount of violence it took to correct the overreach of organized money was not 0.

▲

kazinator 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That was a design feature of democracy all along, not a bug.

▲

remarkEon 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Democracy stops working when no one can agree on what the problem even is. Your comment is one that implicitly condones these kinds of attacks because it’s part of some kind of “cycle” repeating itself, and ah of course we’ll see more violence before the issue is “corrected”. We may even need it!

A little disturbing to be quite honest, though I suppose this is what happens when a generation takes “eat the rich” not as a LARPy political slogan but as a real call to action.

▲

croon 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Describing something does not equal condoning something. Whether GP is correct in assessment or no, they are describing a pattern they see, as an observer. I don't see a value judgment in their language unless I'm missing something.

Whether they are correct or not I'm not going to weigh in on, but I will make the claim that figuring out why something happens is the best way of preventing it from happening again.

▲

heylook 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This has been the historical cycle for as long as we have records of human history. Power begets power and greed. Eventually either everyone else reaches a breaking point and "eat the rich", or an external group takes advantage and eats everyone. Then we try again.

	▲	ethbr1 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed. Anyone who thinks democracy isn't punctuated by economically-redistributive violence hasn't been studying history. Based in the simple fact that humans will not cede power/wealth willingly once they gain it. Ergo, violence (either state or individual) to effect a new balance. Which isn't to legitimize violence, but is to say that stripping away a population's ability to effect change by being violent, if enough of them choose, is more dystopian than some violence. Fix the issue: don't complain about the symptoms.

▲

xg15 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are a LOT of stages between "resigning and doing nothing" and "deadly violence" that have some effect.

Demonstrations are a start, though they seem to be more useful for networking inside a group and forcing the press to pay attention to some matter. Decision makers can easily ignore them.

What's less easy to ignore are strikes, especially general strikes, as e.g. port workers in Italy threatened during the total blockade in the Gaza war.

▲

roryirvine 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not just strikes: go-slows, work-to-rules, using whatever power you have at whatever level to act more ethically.

Also: disinvestment, boycotts, public shunning, adverse publicity, picketing, blockades.

Start small, increase the pressure over time, be clear about what you're doing and why.

	▲	ben_w 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Given what AI has always been about, since well before LLMs, go-slows and work-to-rules aren't going to help, they'll just speed up transitions to AI. The disinvestment, boycotts, public shunning, adverse publicity, picketing, blockades, I can see those working. Certainly seems to have an impact in the video game news I see.

▲

lores 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Those only work as long as legislators have shame, or there is a significant faction that can use the provided legitimacy to redistribute power away from the elites towards the people. That's not the case at a national level in the US right now.

▲

duxup 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Isn’t violence just “no I get to be one of the few not them”?

Even then I don’t they they get a lot of choice as far as results go.