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Comment by th2o34u32o434 | Hacker News Reader

Typically the bankers are also often in on this.

Eg. during India's infamous demonetization, it was rumored that lots of bank-managers had struck inside-deals with politicians/industrialists to turn large hordes of cash into 'white' money. It's likely that they also used the new low-overhead 'jan-dhan' accounts to turn cash into thousands of bank-deposits.

This is not just the 'developing-world' issue; the whole of UK economy is based on such scheming done everyday in the City (and the 'out-of-jurisdiction' isles of the Commonwealth).

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All Economies work this way. See Pareto's Circulation of the Elites. It covers under what conditions Elites take each other down. And Elites go down only when other Elites want it to happen. Not because of any rule of law.

Would chairman Mao or comrade Lenin be considered elites in this case?

Of course, at least once they came into power. Violent revolutions can replace the old elites with new ones. It's still not rule of law that took down Tsar Nicolai or the early Republic of China.

In that case the original premise does not hold. If you only become an elite once you're in power, then it wasn't the elite who chose who gets to be in power... No circulation.

Yes, the previous poster was somewhat wrong. Elites can only lose power in two ways: either other elites want them taken down (the most common case by far), or a violent uprising takes them down (very very rare).

Their more important point is that the rule of law doesn't apply to the powerful. For example, a sitting president will never lose their office simply because they broke the law. They can break any law they want, as long as they have the other elites on their side.

i think it holds true that violent uprisings are "allowed" to happen by elites.

they may mutate out of control once they happen and change targets but it takes a LOT of "people in power" looking the other way/tacitly supporting them to happen in the first place.

Which elites would you say looked the other way during the French Revolution?

At the very least, France's neighboring kingdoms decided to let this play out.

This whole concept of elites giving their permission for revolutions just keeps getting vaguer and broader. It seems to explain any and everything. It's starting to sound like string theory.

I heard that ones who raise to the top of French Republic is certainly not the poorest, more like middle class at most. They are not elites though, but the quote I've heard is that revolutions are middle and upper classes exchanging so it still fits.

I think that does vary a little bit. There are some where it is very much like this, others that are more spontaneous. And it is almost always the case that at the very least neighboruing elites have to look the other way, as otherwise they can usually easily quash revolts.

And of course a lot of violent takeovers are 100% directly done by the elites, such as military coups or outside conquests.

> the whole of UK economy is based on such scheming

Excellent book on this:

Butler to the World - How Britain Helps the World's Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with Anything.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250281937/butlertotheworl...

She is/was owner of one of the biggest banks there.

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