[ethbr0]

It's fairly easy to take the racial pieces out of this and talk about it in abstract.

What you're losing when you kill / expel the wealthy (whomever they are) and expropriate / redistribute property is cultural investment in institutions.

In that people may feel the previous system was unjust, but they nevertheless believed in it. That belief (aka trust) takes generations to build.

Revolutions which violently dislocate institutions don't replace them with alternatives: they start from zero.

This has profound growth consequences when, for example, it takes four+ decades for people to trust the legal system again. Or banking. Or anything.

[baud147258]

another point I remember being made on the aftermath of successful revolutions was how revolutions tend to select leaders which are ill-suited to rebuild the institutions after they have won

[ethbr0]

To some degree, revolutions feel like the primary / general election distinction.

In that the things you have to say and positions you have to hold to inspire people to revolution, are ill suited to post-revolution rebuilding.

Which is probably why it's rare: you'd need someone who's self-aware enough to hold both views, talented enough to have both skillsets, and politically astute enough to navigate that pivot with their colleagues and constituents.