[IIIIIIIIIIII]

Revolutions require organisation - very good organisation. All you'll get from ordinary workers is, possibly, a riot, quickly subdued.

You are also up against an extremely well-organised and well-armed government, but that may not even be the most salient point:

A lot of people for very good reasons do not want to see the government overthrown. They know the result will only be worse. Our societies are far too organised and interconnected over large distances, with all their widely distributed and interconnected creation of everything from basic food to almost all goods except for the most primitive ones.

Only if you can fully replace a government with a new one could you have a "revolution". So, elections and parties still are the best option. I think they actually work too, it's just that there is very little successful effort in organizing something better. Yes of course there have been plenty of attempts, but they all fail even more than the current system: None of those attempts manages to get enough people "on board", and they scream and insult everybody they don't like - so they are no improvement at all (not even mentioning the wild and unrealistic ideas they usually have).

For example, I think an alternative new movement would have to start calmly instead of yelling loudly. The latter only attracts the crazies, while the thinking people are pushed away. So, no mass demonstrations against this or that, "being against" is not a good start for the alternative. Instead work on what and how things should/could work instead of working on how to best insult and score points against the "political opponent". Or, if you start talking about revolutions I will assume your main goal is destruction.

By the way, I would posit that many people who are "greedy" are that way because of the environment, not because "that's what they are". Soooo many people, with advancing age, grow disillusioned. In particular, I know quite a few medical doctors who got into the profession with idealism - but now they actually sell "BS" to people who want it. From homeopathy to network marketing stuff like (branded) vitamins or "energy mats". Of course they don't believe in any of it, it's just that they have given up and now go with the flow.

[colorint]

Those are all good points. I should say that I don't really believe in "greedy people," or more broadly, I don't believe that people have stable personalities that can be described in that sort of way. I was talking about greed as a, let's say, institution.

That said, I was talking about revolution specifically as a failure state of unbounded greed. It has been bad enough for that in the past, and revolutions have been successful at deposing governments, even if they don't always produce the best follow-on state. The postwar era has generally seen western governments be successful at economic stability, but that's becoming less true over time. That said, there are some vestiges of economic control still in effect (that is, "stabilizers" like unemployment and Social Security) that stopped the global financial crisis from getting unbearably bad. But keep in mind, the last time we saw overthrows of major western governments was the Great Depression, so the more economic policy looks like the conceits pre-Keynes "Classicals," the less your moderating arguments work out.