Inequality and other such issues are universal, the French Revolution was not. What was unique about the French Revolution is not even that the government bankrupted themselves fighting wars and then tried to refill their coffers by sharply increasing taxes in a fashion that disproportionately affected the lower classes, but that this was all paired alongside widespread crop failures that sent the cost of food skyrocketing driven widespread food scarcity.
The average person couldn't care less, at least in terms of action, how much money somebody else has. If people have food in their belly and a roof over their heads, you're only going to draw out radicals. And in modern sharply divided societies those radicals will be framed (probably accurately) as being disproportionately made up of one side, and the other side will oppose them all their might and widespread public support behind such opposition.
So there will never be a popular revolution in a place like the US in its current divided state. The most probable scenario by an overwhelmingly wide margin is 'nothing', but the only other possibility would be a civil war. And I do think that's possible, but the chances are extremely remote. It would require something very extreme like one side trying to ban the other side from political office. We've probably been closer than some might expect, but we're now probably much further, rather than closer, to those times and outcomes.
That’s incorrect, in fact, fairness and equality is one of the few universal social contracts that are valued in every culture on earth (though lived/implemented differently).
And I would argue that’s one of the key differences that separates humans from animals. Humans have an intrinsic desire for things to be fair.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
So you're still looking at 43% of every pay packet. And 50% of full-time workers will be paid less than that.
This is beyond discipline and much more than simply getting up and working hard, and more like living in self-imposed poverty, putting on hold anything resembling building a life, buying a house etc.
The fact is putting away $25k a year is the reserve of the privileged, not something achievable just by getting up and working hard for most people.
LOL, what are you going to do? Sit at the end of Northrop field and fly a swarm of drones into the engines of a G6 traveling down the runway at over 100MPH? No way a handful of drones are going to get sucked into a jet engine at that speed. Or do you mean engage a PJ in a dogfight at 40000 feet? I suspect if drones could down a jet, we would have heard about it coming out of Ukraine by now.
The reason we don't do these things is because the jets would come crashing down onto someone's home or place of work. That UPS jet that crashed last year when the engine detached on takeoff killed a dozen on the ground. Nobody is going to drone attack a private jet because the innocent would get killed by the dozen.
The original comment was made in relation to guillotines, popping unoccupied jets on the ground isn't what the commenter I was replying to was referring to. Taking down an occupied jet without using a sidewinder missile is a different capability.
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."
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.
> ... 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.
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?
It's laundered through data brokers and 3rd parties, but with ICE subpoenaing reddit et Al for people that shit post about ICE online, do you really think we're that far off? Especially if the person shit posting is in the US on a visa?
I know what you mean, just saying relative to French revolution, they not only had no such surveillance tech but also no such tech for organizing protests and stuff. Which one tops which in US?
It was a coalition of monarchies, so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule, that began the bloodshed and invaded France.
Blaming the Revolution for the Coalition wars is just bad history.
In case you didn't notice, the Revolution won. All contemporary republics fundamentally inherit from the French Revolution - you're surprised that the systems of govt honour and romanticize it's progenitors?
Aside, if bloodshed prevention is your only barometer for history, supporting the Coalition view of events is even sillier, because the Bourbon Restoration directly led to the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, which was yet more bloodshed. Almost as if unjust systems are fundamentally untenable...
> In case you didn't notice, the Revolution won. All contemporary republics fundamentally inherit from the French Revolution
“Fundamentally inherent from”
is such a broad statement that it’s difficult to argue with, but the US constitution predates the French Revolution.
> so terrified of the prospect of even a single popular republic rejecting the divine right to rule
If the monarchies of Europe were so terrified of a single country rejecting the divine right to rule, why did many of them assist the United States, hinder Britain, or remain neutral in the revolutionary war?
That is a bit of revisionist history: conspiracy theories gripped the revolution, and a lot of them thought Marie-Antoinette was already organising an Austrian invasion of France (since she is Austrian), so rather than wait for the supposed inevitable to happen, France attacked first. And that's what made the coalitions form. Not that they liked the idea of a Republican France, but before France attacked, they were unlikely to do anything about it.
Oh, the good old reflex that is activated in panic situations but never realised. Then the revolution was from capitalists against kings. Now the former are already in power with their servants (CEOs) and there is no alternative. So no change, no revolution.
The average person couldn't care less, at least in terms of action, how much money somebody else has. If people have food in their belly and a roof over their heads, you're only going to draw out radicals. And in modern sharply divided societies those radicals will be framed (probably accurately) as being disproportionately made up of one side, and the other side will oppose them all their might and widespread public support behind such opposition.
So there will never be a popular revolution in a place like the US in its current divided state. The most probable scenario by an overwhelmingly wide margin is 'nothing', but the only other possibility would be a civil war. And I do think that's possible, but the chances are extremely remote. It would require something very extreme like one side trying to ban the other side from political office. We've probably been closer than some might expect, but we're now probably much further, rather than closer, to those times and outcomes.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_Revolution...