[Nasrudith]

You clearly don't understand psychology at all. Rule by fear has a major downside that Machivelli warned about. If you keep people under threat all the time, as soon as the threat fails and you can no longer point a gun at your head they preemptively kill you and feel good about it.

Threatening violence to get what you want always ends with you being out-violenced by a bigger thug.

[mannanj]

This is how alpha chimps function in their tribe. They resort to war and violence to prolong their rule, and it works for long enough, thats all they need for the cost-benefits to be worth it on their side.

In humanity, being the alpha chimp, you can actually just run away from the tribe with all your wealth instead of outright die and form a new identity and start a life elsewhere and change your last name and go somewhere not well known, and if you and your family does this for enough generations you are forgotten.

I think this might explain the rotten apples at the tip-top of our industrial/societal wealth classes. I think they are these people, played out over generations, having somehow survived the system that used to make it impossible to do this when at the chimp level (or even medieval maybe, maybe this new form of evasion only arose in the industrial age).

[BugsJustFindMe]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/alpha-male-a...

[mannanj]

Okay sure. What other concept or label would you recommend I use to describe a leader in a tribe?

[well_ackshually]

It's only by fear if they don't understand how to restrain themselves. Behave well with all your wealth, and nothing will happen: it's the same reason why wealthy patrons of art and craftsmen were at least respected, and why things ended poorly for robber barons.

And no, I do not believe that Musk's flabby arms or Bezos' shiny head are a threat of bigger violence to me anyways.