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 36 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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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hparadiz 32 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.

	▲	Nursie 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Median net wage in 2023 the US is $43,222 as per https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html You're talking about median earners putting away more than half of their pay. If we look at full time workers that may go up to about $1200 per week or (after tax) about $57k per year - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf So you're still looking at 43% of every pay packet.

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Henchman21 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or take some data centers offline.

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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.

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gamerslexus 44 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?

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mvdtnz an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You know New Zealand has borders right? And guillotines (or the makings thereof).

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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

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mvdtnz 43 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 34 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.