[superchroma]

To wrench the metaphor, if horses had banded together, they could have fought back against humans and seized some power and rights for themselves. Instead they were conditioned to accept their bad conditions. The same is true of humans. Most humans accept terrible indignities and injustices routinely through apathy.

[HDThoreaun]

No, horses could not have banded together and fought back. Humans have almost never accepted a backslide in quality of living. All the examples I can think of are because of short lived war time austerity.

[trealira]

Here's an example of a decline in living that persisted in the long-term, although it was a long time ago:

Britain experienced an economic collapse in the early 5th century AD after the Roman Empire left. Economic activity and urban life decided, and buildings were abandoned. Their supply chain was suddenly much more limited, and localized to specific areas, whereas before, the Roman Empire had allowed them to trade with other countries more. Their standard of living didn't really change for the next few centuries. I won't compare beyond that.

[dclowd9901]

What is your basis for this statement? We have absolutely _numerous_ examples of people throughout history receiving and accepting horrible conditions cast upon them. Even today. And as far as I can tell, we still have similar power structures that would enable those situations to continue occurring.

[HDThoreaun]

Name some examples of large, militarily powerful groups accepting living conditions that were worse than the previous generation experienced, not due to natural disasters. People have never accepted that. Sure they've had shitty living conditions, but they started shitty, they didn't get worse. Sure they've been enslaved, but the civilians in this country are heavily armed enough to fight back against a government they see as allowing living conditions to slip.

[trealira]

In many societies, the rights of women have declined from one period to the next, although I guess "women" don't constitute a "large, militarily powerful" group.

For example, in Korea during the Joseon/Chosŏn period, the status of women gradually declined due to Neo-Confucianist ideology. Women stopped inheriting property in the seventeenth century. They lost the right to intiate divorce, while men could still intiate divorce under seven grounds (disobedience to parents-in-law, failure to bear a son, adultery, jealousy, hereditary disease, larceny, and talkativeness). Widows lost the right to remarry, and were seen as inconvenient for the family. Women were forbidden from playing games, partying outdoors, and riding horses.

The decline of women's rights happened in other societies, too; I just happened to have a book about Korean history on my desk.

[didibus]

There's tons of examples:

North Korea, after the Korean war, their living conditions got way way worse than when under Japanese occupation, even though their military has improved.

Afghanistan, since it's been overtaken by the Taliban, even though they are mightier from a military standpoint, the living conditions have become worst.

The Soviet Union post WWII, they came out of it as a military superpower, but the damages from the war meant their living conditions were way worse.

[rnk]

You keep coming back to armed civilians will not accept worse living conditions. If some calamity comes, like global warming removes say the us ability to grow enough food or we run out of oil and there's not other energy sources, the guns aren't going to fix things. You are going to have a revolt against the govt because inflation is too high or China nuked us and ruined our country?

[HDThoreaun]

I thought the point of the horse analogy is that total wealth will increase but some large group of people will be so left out that their quality of living actually decreases. Like mass unemployment due to robots doing all the jobs. In that scenario I do believe there would be an armed revolt without the institution of a massive welfare state.