Hacker News Reader

Comment by notjoemama | Hacker News Reader

When exactly will world leaders realize that this new wave of military research is risky enough to destroy them in their wealthy gated communities? Do they actually have to die and take a percentage of life on this planet with them before they can agree to some form of of altruistic peace agreement? Even if they have escape islands, I think too many people have seen Mad Max and that never ends well for the leaders.

View on HN

Current economic and political systems reward baseless confidence, believing you are better than others (and speaking and acting that way), and hubris.

So maybe it makes sense that our political and economic leaders have false confidence that "everything will be fine, it always has been for me".

I think they are more confident that most of the people in society believe in the same hubris. They can all point to some class of people that are lower than them. Don’t underestimate the power of that kind of motivation on the masses.

The classes of people on the bottom are usually not numerous nor educated enough to cause a real issue. And if you get really lucky, the hierarchy is somewhat based in ethnicity. People will fight vehemently to support such structures.

Taking advantage of these sorts of motivations has worked to organize and control human societies for millennia. There is absolutely no reason for elites to think it will fail now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com