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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

If I were to guess - the manifestation of statistics like this are how revolutions are ignited.

Except poverty rates are dropping astronomically and are the best ever. More people than ever have access to food, water (this will unfortunately likely significantly change negatively in the next decade), electricity due to investments in infrastructure and technology. People in poor countries have access to extremely cheap smart phones and unlimited information at the tips of their fingertips so the chances of upwards mobility are higher than ever in the 3rd world.

Previous barriers to upwards mobility such as race, ethnicity, caste are constantly being improved. Health, especially in Africa, has significantly improved.

We are at the height of society. In the developed world everyone no matter who you are has access to free food (SNAP), water, shelter(HUD, public housing, section 8), the entire world's information (library), healthcare (Medicaid- regardless of what politics keeps saying anyone making under 17k a year has FREE comprehensive Healthcare), education (free public schools for 14 years, heavily subsidized community colleges). Goods cost less than ever due to globalization, global economy is at its peak surpassing 2007. Unemployment is near an all time low.

Only manufactured revolutions can occur and only in the non developed world

You've just stated nearly every popular soundbyte that are typically used to justify whatever is currently happening in the global economy. I think most of them are pretty biased and misleading and I believe it's basically propaganda.

> poverty rates are dropping astronomically and are the best ever

I know there are papers which "prove" this but it's actually very hard to measure reliably. And the "best ever" part is almost definitely not true. We only have good data since after industrialisation and I think there are very good reasons to believe that colonialism and industrialisation made people a lot poorer in the first place, which they might lately be finally slightly recovering from. Either way, more people being one notch above starvation and abject poverty is not really a great success. I don't know how fast the definition of poverty changes. Is it fast enough to keep up with rising costs of living?

> People in poor countries have access to extremely cheap smart phones and unlimited information at the tips of their fingertips so the chances of upwards mobility are higher than ever in the 3rd world.

If you think that being able to read some tweets can get you out of poverty, you really don't get how poverty works. The people in these places need ownership over the value of their work. Most investment and therefore ownership in the developing world is not in the hands of the global poor, that's why they're poor. And we want them to stay poor because it allows us to extract the 80% of the wealth, as Oxfam has estimated. Just look at how much money goes out of Africa versus how much is going in:

http://blogs.ubc.ca/grsj102wm/files/2016/11/maxresdefault.jp...

Clearly, people from the first world are stealing massive amounts of the profit from local labour and resources. They do this via privatised ownership, which is the descendant of colonialism and was built into the predatory aid and lending policies of institutions like the world bank and IMF.

> Previous barriers to upwards mobility such as race, ethnicity, caste are constantly being improved.

There are plenty of regions where this is just not true, e.g. in parts of the Middle East. The economic crises people are facing have resulted in some groups doubling down on divisive beliefs.

> In the developed world everyone no matter who you are has access to free food (SNAP), water, shelter...

You must never have been in the kinds of circumstances where you actually had to rely on these programmes to live or you would never be so impressed with them.

> Only manufactured revolutions can occur

This is the one thing you are probably right about but I believe it's because so many people buy into this fabricated narrative of progress. We have also been stripped of more power relative to our rulers than ever and are completely alienated from each other with no way to successfully organise a mass movement with which to revolt.

What will happen when this revolution comes to exist?

Something like Russian Revolution

да

well, I think things like brexit and Trump are desires for some kind of significant change. I think there's likely going to be a big disconnect between what people think will be better and and what actually is better, but I think we will see more push towards things promising bigger changes.

There won’t a revolution as the 1% are smart enough to decapitate the 99% by “inviting” the smartest 0.1% into the club (they make great son- and daughter-in-laws).

Meritocracy is hard to fight.

It's silly to say that the 1% are there from hard work, family fortunes apparently don't exist in that fantasy. Also you're forgetting that the armies of the 1% are made up of the 99%, all the money in the world has done nothing to stop the most powerful people in the world in history once the 99% have revolted, by definition there's no power stronger than that. See every revolution in history.

Too bad the 1% is protected by police forces, and courts, in pretty much every major Western jurisdiction? This isn't changing any time soon.

That's kind of the point though, even if the army and police didn't revolt, they're crippled by the lack of services produced by the civilians. Major upheaval like this hypothetical have multiple times in history crippled even the most well equipped amred forces because of the nature of the revolt. Guns are only 1 part of defence, and every time there has been a populace under the rule of a government/system that they refuse to exist under it has either been overthrown or in the process of being so. This is an easily verified fact by looking through history, governance requires at least a majority of the populace to consent to it.

I do think capitalism has issues (mostly excessive compound interest'ing on massive wealth) but I don’t think there ever will be another round of redistribution of wealth. A global wealth tax I could see happening in the next 50 years, but then again, seems like it would be a hugely unpopular thing to do.

I think that automation is going to contribute massively to wealth inequality in the next few decades, and I think that not considering the destabilising risks of such centralisation of wealth is short sighted. People will only for so long tolerate getting the short end of the stick whilst the massive amounts of wealth for the wealthy balloons.

I don't know if a "redistribution of wealth" will ever be seen, but I do think the fundamental system we operate on in this day and age will need to be radically altered to prevent discontent

Where did I say the 1% got there by hard work?

Previous revolutions have been led by very smart people who were excluded from the 1% club. There has not been a revolution in a society where the poor or middle class very smart are admitted into the ruling class.

"Meritocracy is hard to fight."

If think we live in a meritocracy you are delusional.

We do for the 0.1%. The current system is very good at identify the smartest people whatever their background and bring them into the 1% club.

As for everyone else, well...

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