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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Hungry starving sick people make the least effective revolutionaries.

They’re also not very good at spending money on consumer goods when they don’t have any, which Amazon absolutely needs. (Tesla needs a lot of people above average income, given their cheapest offering).

And these two giants aren’t the only places people can work. (Not enough by itself, but still a massive improvement compared to the situation leading to the French Revolution).

Super-rich as a class exists because we let them exist, but there is a reason we let them exist… and a reason we have things like the SEC and FTC to stomp on them if/when they get out of line.

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Hungry starving sick people make the least effective revolutionaries.

Surely not. Starving people are desperate people, and desperate people are always dangerous.

Fed People with most of their basic needs met and a few luxuries make the least effective revolutionaries since they have little to gain and are terrified of losing the little they have.

If that was true, nobody would’ve revolted in Europe since the potato famine (the former Stasi HQ is a short trip from me), and the potato famine would’ve triggered an immediate war for independence in Ireland rather than set one off a generation later.

Edit: before anyone suggests food shortages in DDR, based on what I saw in the DDR museum the shortages were of fancy food like coffee rather than staples like bread and potatoes.

> Hungry starving sick people make the least effective revolutionaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_riots

https://www.history.com/news/bread-french-revolution-marie-a...

https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/food-riots-and-revoluti...

History. Read it.

> but there is a reason we let them exist

Please, do tell.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_riots

One revolution in that list (France). One government resigning (Japan). One major change of policy (Egypt).

Most of the rest end in some variant of “and then lots of rioters died when the authorities put them down”.

> Please, do tell.

Because we tried these two ideas, and while both had good points, one of them turned out to be less wrong than the other:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto

TLDR: We tolerate the super rich because Adam Smith.

Illuminating. Thanks.

> Hungry starving sick people make the least effective revolutionaries.

This is true, but their visible presence and the risk of joining them often motivates the people in slightly better circumstances to become the most effective ones; the starving masses usually aren't the effective revolutionaries, but their presence often accompanies revolution for that reason.

> Hungry starving sick people make the least effective revolutionaries.

This is clearly historically incorrect.

> Super-rich as a class exists because we let them exist, but there is a reason we let them exist…

What reason is that? They exist because they are powerful, thus hard to topple. That the SEC and FTC are so ineffective (and ridiculously small pieces of the puzzle) is evidence of that.

> This is clearly historically incorrect.

> What reason is that?

How long do you have?

https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs in particular from 13:30 onwards, though the whole thing and the follow up video are both worth watching.

If you actually study history (not YouTube, history books) you’ll find starving people and human rights violations to be a common cause for revolution.

Books like this?: https://www.amazon.de/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Pol...

“and” is pulling a lot of weight in your sentence, given I’ve not made a claim about general human rights on this thread.

Also? “Common cause” is very different from “has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding”, which I consider important in this context.

No, not books like that. History books (not pop trash). Books like this:

https://www.amazon.com/French-Revolution-Enlightenment-Tyran...

Also, cf Japanese rice warehouses in early Tokyo and why they exist.

“Pop trash” sounds like you’re dismissing it out of hand because you don’t like the conclusion.

I mean, it might be, but as I’m not even claiming to be a domain expert I have to (argument from authority fallacy notwithstanding) rely on the author biographies as a proxy for how much they know.

Now, would you like to give me a brief summary of how, biologically speaking, you recon being malnourished fails to put a bunch of revolutionaries at a relative disadvantage to a non-malnourished bunch of revolutionaries?

I’m saying you need to read actual history as you seem to think that starving a population won’t lead to a revolution.

> Now, would you like to give me a brief summary of how, biologically speaking, you recon being malnourished fails to put a bunch of revolutionaries at a relative disadvantage to a non-malnourished bunch of revolutionaries?

People revolt because they have nothing left to lose, not because it’s strategically a good idea. “Biologically” speaking when you outnumber your foe 100 to 1, you have at least an advantage in numbers, but again that’s not why people revolt.

Sick, miserable people make terrible revolutionaries. Desperate and hungry people have nothing to lose. Poor people in the US are miserable, but not miserable enough to be desperate.

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