| ▲ | Stitch4223 2 hours ago |
| > Perhaps the danger is not 2008, 1999, 1973 or even 1873, but 1789. 1789 was the year of the French Revolution [1]. The rest are years with financial crises. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution |
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| ▲ | avidiax an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| The French Revolution is no longer possible. The surveillance state plus wealth mobility means the wealthy will be in New Zealand before anyone erects a guillotine, and the people that would foment a revolution are heavily surveilled and infiltrated. |
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| ▲ | ProllyInfamous 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | My attorney's advice to me was: >>"PL, don't build a guillotine" PL> "I'm going to build a guillotine; be my lawyer and give me advice as if it's going to be built." >>"... don't make it entirely functional." PL> "It's going to be built functional." >>"... hmm ... use a bicycle cable lock to add a safety to it – lock&key. But remember that my original advice was not to build it in the first place." ---- Exhibit Z | |
| ▲ | c1sc0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Are you sure about that? Tech cuts both ways & asymmetric drone warfare has become cheaper than ever … how hard it is it to sink some yachts or down some jets? | | |
| ▲ | hparadiz an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I could only relate to this stuff in my 20s but now I just don't care. Maybe it's cause I went from < 200k net worth to over 1M in that time. I've seen the country I was born in collapse in my lifetime. I saw my grandparents give their entire life to that country only to be left destitute. I saw my parents come to America with literally $0 and after thirty years I watched them become millionares by simply getting up and working hard. This idea that people will rise up and replace what we've got now with better is part of the problem. You literally do not know how lucky you are to live in this time because you are living in the middle of a golden age and don't even realize it. Because when you're in the middle of a golden age it feels normal. And for some reason there's an entire population of folks like you that wanna FAFO while they are living in literally the best time ever to be a human being. I'd sigh but I'm not surprised. | | |
| ▲ | Nursie 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > I watched them become millionares by simply getting up and working hard. If it was that easy, every office cleaner or bank clerk would be a millionaire. > living in literally the best time ever to be a human being Sure, but we're also watching the rise of a new oligarchy, and their latest innovation appears poised to put a lot of people out of work, making their lives materially worse. | | |
| ▲ | hparadiz 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It literally is. People just have no discipline or skills with money. Go on the fire subreddit. 25k saved per year is a million after twenty years with a modest very conservative amount. And if you can double that with a spouse you're looking at a million in only ten years. People who stretch that to 20-25 years end up with 3-5 million. | | |
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| ▲ | Henchman21 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or take some data centers offline. | |
| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | Retric an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | New Zealand is zero defense vs a large populist uprising, especially one taking place in New Zealand. That’s the thing social structures like money and nations only mean something when the masses decide they mean something. Billionaires only get a vote by convincing other people what to believe. | |
| ▲ | gamerslexus 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's kind of true: > ... federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists. > This new effort follows President Donald Trump's National Security Presidential Memo 7, which instructs the Department of Justice to target anyone holding “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” and "anti-capitalism” beliefs. https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti... To be fair though in the times of French Revolution the surveillance capability was really basic compared to today, the tech capability to organize protests was lower too. Which one prevails? We know that in PRC and maybe Russia it's surveillance, but what about US? | |
| ▲ | mvdtnz an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | You know New Zealand has borders right? And guillotines (or the makings thereof). | | |
| ▲ | defrost 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Hey, don't leave out the New Zealand Navy having an entire two frigates and an oiler. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xUYbI64QHI | | |
| ▲ | mvdtnz 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Your theory is that the billionaires will escape popular uprising by forcing their way into a sovereign nation, and that that nation won't rise up against them? Why wouldn't we? | | |
| ▲ | defrost 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Your theory is that .. That'd be _your_ strawman that _you_ typed. In the factual world, how many non NZ born billionaires already have residences in New Zealand? |
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| ▲ | ProllyInfamous 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | We just need to make enough crowdsourced guillotines as if to make global escape impossible. My workingclass neighborhood is already getting pretty hungry. |
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| ▲ | somenameforme an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Inequality and other such issues are universal, the French Revolution was not. What was unique about the French Revolution is not even that the government bankrupted themselves fighting wars and then tried to refill their coffers by sharply increasing taxes in a fashion that disproportionately affected the lower classes, but that this was all paired alongside widespread crop failures that sent the cost of food skyrocketing driven widespread food scarcity. The average person couldn't care less, at least in terms of action, how much money somebody else has. If people have food in their belly and a roof over their heads, you're only going to draw out radicals. And in modern sharply divided societies those radicals will be framed (probably accurately) as being disproportionately made up of one side, and the other side will oppose them all their might and widespread public support behind such opposition. So there will never be a popular revolution in a place like the US in its current divided state. The most probable scenario by an overwhelmingly wide margin is 'nothing', but the only other possibility would be a civil war. And I do think that's possible, but the chances are extremely remote. It would require something very extreme like one side trying to ban the other side from political office. We've probably been closer than some might expect, but we're now probably much further, rather than closer, to those times and outcomes. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_Revolution... |
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| ▲ | BurningFrog an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The French Revolution was an orgy in mass murder that led to the slaughter of millions in the Napoleon wars. It really need to be romantizied much less! |
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| ▲ | IndeanCondor an hour ago | parent [-] | | It was a coalition of monarchies, so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule, that began the bloodshed and invaded France. Blaming the Revolution for the Coalition wars is just bad history. In case you didn't notice, the Revolution won. All contemporary republics fundamentally inherit from the French Revolution - you're surprised that the systems of govt honour and romanticize it's progenitors? Aside, if bloodshed prevention is your only barometer for history, supporting the Coalition view of events is even sillier, because the Bourbon Restoration directly led to the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, which was yet more bloodshed. Almost as if unjust systems are fundamentally untenable... | | |
| ▲ | sarchertech an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > In case you didn't notice, the Revolution won. All contemporary republics fundamentally inherit from the French Revolution “Fundamentally inherent from”
is such a broad statement that it’s difficult to argue with, but the US constitution predates the French Revolution. > so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule If the monarchies of Europe were so terrified of a single country rejecting the divine right to rule, why did many of them assist the United States, hinder Britain, or remain neutral in the revolutionary war? | |
| ▲ | Svip an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | That is a bit of revisionist history: conspiracy theories gripped the revolution, and a lot of them thought Marie-Antoinette was already organising an Austrian invasion of France (since she is Austrian), so rather than wait for the supposed inevitable to happen, France attacked first. And that's what made the coalitions form. Not that they liked the idea of a Republican France, but before France attacked, they were unlikely to do anything about it. |
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| ▲ | dwabyick an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Oh it’s definitely starting to feel like 1789 vibes. The oligarchs have taken too much, too fast. |
