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Comment by neonsunset | Hacker News Reader

Unsure why the post is downvoted, this point of view is really interesting. Could you link some reference materials to explore this more?

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I think the topic is quite nebulous but I recall some articles on these issues here on HN that reached the front page. I recall something about historical ratio of the non-working elites being about the same and societies crumbling over that threshold.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction

I am downvoting because the comment acts as if it's a mystery where all the wealth gains in productivity have gone.

It is NOT a fucking mystery, and I'm outraged that so, so many people are or act oblivious to the obscenely obvious cause. (Since it's not actually obvious to everyone, thanks to shit education and propaganda, the uber-wealthy have hoovered up the gains in productivity and kept it to themselves.)

It's very clear by looking at the numbers [0], and it's outrageous to ignore this factor and blame a slightly older population.

[0] - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforc...

And no one cares about your diatribe or outrage.

The point is that there is always an elite or wealthy class, pick which group you like best.

Always, for all time this is what happens in society. Don't care about your one example of some communist paradise that was great.

>The point is that there is always an elite or wealthy class, pick which group you like best.

Citations required

I do not agree whatsoever, just because you don't have the imagination to come up with a better system for organizing labor and resources doesn't mean it isn't possible

How would you organize labor and resources such that there is no elite class? How do you enforce whatever rules are required and ensure that those enforcers don't become the elite themselves (if nobody else..)?

I'm not holding my breath. As of yet, no one has had the imagination. This has become a fav piece of rhetoric by ancoms who believe complex supply lines, infrastructure and essential services could be maintained, let alone improved upon, with a "flat hierarchy" society doing away with representative democracy. No one can take that seriously. The universe hates a vacuum and you can be sure that, as in the past, if goons have an opening to seize power under the guise of Communism, with their party being the only legitimate, then they will. Removing checks and balances will do that.

Citations aren't required, a basic knowledge of history, though, that is required and what you lack.

The idea, your idea is that there's a way to tell everybody what to do to make all the things work and everyone will follow the plan and like their spot in it. You lack the imagination to recognize individual will let alone the fact that society works because there are millions of experts making choices everyday. No central planning board to 'organize' 'labor' can accomplish that or house the knowledge of these individuals

So what, giving up so easily on problem so obvious is usually done by people who are well off and actually have to lose, or those who for some basic reason don't understand they are also the ones getting fucked over (ie patriotism can push folks easily in very stupid positions and in the same time make them feel good about their actions).

If you traveled a bit around the world, maybe you could see that nothing is binary, and neither is this topic.

Elites always exist in some form, yes. They do not always have to be so disproportionally distanced from rest of population like in US, not in democracies, not so untouchable. There are tons of countries, ie in Europe who are managing this in much better way.

The wider problem/situation I see is that US is much more everybody-for-themselves-and-fuck-the-rest because it maximizes direct incomes of few (ignoring how much they will spend on ie healthcare or education of their kids, these 2 can easily wipe out aby gains for middle/upper middle class), rather than living in actual modern society.

The logic of 'contributing back and improving place you live actually comes back to you too and creates something better for future of you/your kids' somehow didn't click in US that much. I saw first hand rather primitive knee-jerk reactions in ie bible belt in US that equate well working society with socialism, (I guess phonetical step not too big, logical though much bigger) and well that's communism and you should be deported/jailed/shot on spot.

Its evidenced by many comments here. People are well off and the system has worked for them so we see the attitude of "it's working for me, fuck everyone else who didn't work the way I did or wasn't born into the right circumstances"

People that have never been outside of the US think they are living rough. They also like to compare their living with only the most egalitarian societies in the world instead of 'the world'. Odds are pretty great that you live in comfort everyday. Your concerns then get to be centered around all the material things you lack. And, odds are great you've never had to sacrifice much of anything. Nothing real. You would never commit to working in a place you didn't want to go or taking a bad schedule because you, right now, want everything. You deserve it, don't you.

That's the attitude that, unfortunately, will also be found in America.

So, for those that have worked, have sacrificed, we aren't interested in hearing the solutions posed from a homogenous society of one distinct culture and obvious problems with irregularities or deviations from the norm.... Here's looking at you Nords

The problem isn't that wealthy people exist, the problem is what percentage they get. It makes a big difference whether the top 1% own 10% of the wealth or 50% of the wealth, for example.

That could fix a lot of issues if you just look at America in isolation. The truth is though, even with the insane wealth distribution in America, the middle class here still makes a good amount of money. I regularly see people on here scoff at low six figure salaries. Those salaries are virtually impossible in many parts of the world and the only reason they're so easy in America is because we are exploiting developing nations the same way the ultra wealthy here are exploiting us. If we actually tried to redistribute the wealth that the ultra wealthy has accumulated, it would go to developing nations and not the hackernews crowd.

I guess you can read “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” by V.I. Lenin to explore the topic more

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