Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scapeghost | Hacker News Reader

If you haven't noticed by now, the world is a plutocracy/oligarchy.

It hasn't been about nations for a long time, but the rich and powerful people who influence them. Many of them aren't even elected officials.

See Trump and Russia, Saudi Arabia and Khashoggi, the American citizens beaten up by Erdogan's bodyguards on American soil, the UAE and Sheikha Latifa, American corporations kowtowing to China, the US ambassador's wife who got away with murdering a UK teen, Jeffrey Epstein and his private island of underage prostitution for the cream of society's crop, and the many other cases where the personal whims of the elite few override sovereign laws.

Those people literally have access to everything that human civilization has to offer, and they're not going to ruin their playground.

View on HN

Hasn't it always been like this though? At least nowadays they don't claim to just be better humans (nobility).

Indeed, the ruling class never stopped ruling.

But this is the first time in human history, when they can go anywhere, do anything, to anyone, at anytime, without having to worry about national borders etc.

Money is the universal differentiator now, and anybody of any nation or race can have it.

Until you piss off someone else who also has money, then connections come into play, then the might of arms.

This comment seems strained. A history book would neither back up the claim about unfettered travel, nor the claim about corruption.

The parent comment actually seems reasonable to me. It really wouldn’t take much escalation for a trade war to turn into a shooting war between, at least China and America.

> A history book would neither back up the claim about unfettered travel, nor the claim about corruption.

I don't think any ruler would have been able to easily hop to another continent on a whim for an orgy with a wide selection of sex slaves and be back home by next dawn, before the advent of instantaneous communications and jet planes.

The point was that the people who command nations have access to a previously unprecedented level of luxury which would be ruined if the world wasn't largely at peace.

Ah, okay. I thought you were referring to well-defined borders, and strict border controls. Both these were generally lax before the 20th Century.

I don’t see how this poses much of a safeguard, in any event. If millions of Chinese wind up starving due to a trade war, for example, a shooting war is almost inevitable.

> I don’t see how this poses much of a safeguard, in any event. If millions of Chinese wind up starving due to a trade war, for example, a shooting war is almost inevitable.

It doesn't.

A shooting war has already commenced by the CCP in Hong Kong because they refuse to acquiesce to the dominion of the PRC's illegal dictates, so what you should be worried more about creating a 'shooting war' is China's economic turmoil (much by the machinations of the CCP/PRC) having a spill-on effect outside of its borders than within. Moreover, a correction is long over-due, just to be clear, the US shouldn't be a super power anymore, either; nor should any nation if we've seen what they do with said power.

While I agree the World is under a kleptocractic-plutacracy, the emergence of the Nation-state was only ever just that; there was no 'Golden era' of the State, it was only forced down the serf/peasant class' collective throats and legitimized under a thinly-veil scam called an election process which promotes division and mob-justice. One in which can be altered/manipulated in masse and in certain cases outright removed as it sees fit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com