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Comment by wilkommen | Hacker News Reader

I agree with everything in the blog post. I just think it's really hard for societies to "unfuck" themselves. I think the reason things are going in this direction is because of an increasing concentration of power among a relatively small number of people. It's hard to walk back that kind of concentration of power without societal upheaval. The only reason the gilded age in the United States ended was because of WW2 and the widespread notion that the common American deserved to share in the post-war prosperity (that they had earned by fighting a world war!). That idea was so popular and widespread that it actually happened. But it took a World War to get to that point. I hope something will happen to walk back the concentration of power that has accumulated over the last 50 years or so, but my feeble mind can't quite imagine what that thing will be.

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You've answered your own question. It is going to be a war.

War is a great mallet which destroys most of the power structures and shuffles the cards a bit. But the price to pay is atrociously high. After the war everyone will swear "Never again!", but their children's children have no idea what that means, and have no problem going to war all over again.

Yeah I guess. I hope not. I wonder throughout history, has there ever been a "ruling class" which starts to see that unless they cede a significant amount of power, there will be a war, and they will lose it, and thus they proactively decide to cede a sufficient amount of said power? I guess that's more or less the dream scenario. Cause then things get a lot better without a war. But they wouldn't even let Bernie Sanders get elected president. So it seems like we're pretty far off from such a scenario.

Britain's move to representative democracy from a monarchy is somewhat of an example, although one could argue that power is still concentrated.

Bernie lost because he got less votes and supports in the primary, twice. "Dem party leaders" were against him but the voters decided. My vote in the primary went to him, but it wasn't "secret them" who stopped him, it was voters. "Many party leaders" were against Trump but he won the first time bc he got more votes.

I think that the elites of the various countries have too much in common at this point to allow a war to happen. They would sooner team up and move to Elysium and abandon all the rest of us on earth than allow for global destruction. I think this is the future TBH, the wealthy will more and more take things into their own hands a la superyachts, NZ properties, fortified compounds, etc. The middle classes and below will face the unwelcome prospect of gradually decaying social institutions and economies until society eventually just breaks, and the wealthy wait it out then come in to sweep up the ashes, ushering in a new, far less populated golden age of humanity.

This possible outcome has occurred to me before, but it's hard to imagine a breaking of society which doesn't include the hunting-down of at least some of the rich. I don't know how they could truly escape the downfall.

I feel that nuclear weapons have made modern global war impossible. Because the powerful would not be able to escape the effects of such a conflict.

So for the first time we must now work out our differences without war. This can't be a bad thing.

Maybe that’s why the billionaires are trying to hide in space.

The Gilded Age was generally regarded to have ended about 1900. If you mean the term more broadly and less generally, it still ended in 1929, with the Depression, not with the war.

You’re right, my error.

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