[avidiax]

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.

[c1sc0]

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?

[hparadiz]

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.

[Nursie]

> 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.

[hparadiz]

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.

[Nursie]

Median net wage in 2023 the US is $43,222 as per https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html

You're talking about median earners putting away more than half of their pay.

If we look at full time workers that may go up to about $1200 per week or (after federal income tax) about $57k per year - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf

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.

[hparadiz]

The average household income in the US is $83,730 and the median is $121,000.

It's also irrelevant. The average is weighed down by students and retirees. If you look at only people in their peak earning years (40-50) then the median jumps further.

But thank you for the comment. It perfectly exemplifies the attitude of most Americans. Born on third base and feeling entitled to blow their entire paycheck every month and then still asking for hand outs.

[bluefirebrand]

> 25k saved per year is a million after twenty years with a modest very conservative amount.

Close to 25% of people in America only make 25k a year. Forget saving that much

You are wildly out of touch with the average person and their struggles to think that 25k saved per year is even remotely achievable for most people

[hparadiz]

I dunno why people keep bringing this up as some sort of gotcha. You don't save for retirement based on your average. You do it during your peak earning years. Which are far above average. And most households have more than one earner. So even a 5% savings based on a median 84k household yields over 750k in 20 years.

Like it literally is that simple.

[Henchman21]

Or take some data centers offline.

[zzgo]

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.

[cherry_tree]

A quick google shows news articles and even videos of Ukrainian drones destroying Russian planes.

[zzgo]

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.

[ProllyInfamous]

My attorney's advice to me was:

>>"PL, don't build a guillotine"

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."

----

Exhibit Z

[Retric]

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.

[gamerslexus]

It's kind of true:

> ... 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.

https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti...

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?

[fragmede]

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?

[gamerslexus]

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?