Too many people don’t learn from history. Especially the Rich. There was a very popular thing the French did when things got out of hand. And they were not the only only to do it throughout the history.
People conveniently forget that the Terror soon turned against completely innocent victims and eventually led to establishment of an authoritarian military regime that set out to conquer entire Europe, creating vicious reactionary backlash from its enemies, which eventually stifled liberal thought and societal progress on the continent for two more generations.
I will take the English "let us have a non-violent gradual development" way anytime.
If Lavoisier could be guillotined because "the Republic does not need chemists", how much better do you think that programmers would fare in similar situations? There is plenty of people who resent them for just having bigger income than them. Once you run out of the rich, the mob and the guillotine will demand more victims, and neither will be particularly picky.
Yup [1]. If you're a billionaire, you almost certainly win in the aftermath of an American violent revolution à la the French or Russians.
The country would fall into chaos while we hung our academics, minorities and upper middle classes. Then they would jet back in with foreign backing to carve up America's riches while becoming even more blazingly rich than they are under a democracy.
Academics I could see being tried and hanged. Minorities you'd simply eliminate as everyone in every nation has done throughout history. There is no need to give a trial or hanging to minorities. You just off them. (But, I guess, to be fair, offing minorities happens in almost every nation revolution or no revolution.)
Upper middle classes however? I don't know man? They're typically the ones doing the hanging. Not the ones being hanged. In fact, the upper middle classes were the ones most responsible for the French revolution. The upper middle classes came out of the revolution with rights, which they didn't have before. As well as a much larger share of the economic pie. They actually did the best in the French revolution as a class. And it came mostly at the expense of the poor on one end, and the aristocracy on the other.
Still, terrible times. Nothing good ever comes of a society that hangs people who are deemed too learned, and therefore, suspicious. Nor of societies that off minorities. Historically, those societies typically meet their crashes much more swiftly. Only now the crash is met with no one left to blame but themselves. Add to all that chaos opportunistic people in the middle class denouncing their bosses in the aristocracy, and even each other, out of resentment. I mean, man, you're left with a place that's probably gonna be a really good place not to be.
Doctors, lawyers, low-level executives. The ones with single and double-digit millions in retirement accounts and real estate value. For Exhibit A, see Mangioni: mid-level executive barely scraping into the 1% by wealth who didn’t have personal security.
> Nothing good ever comes of a society that hangs people who are deemed too learned, and therefore, suspicious
Right. This is the story of violent revolutions. The masses are told fever dreams of riches ahead. But they generally wind up poorer than before because the single track to date of revolutions that seek to depose not only the head of state but also the elite is bloodshed for the poor and evacuation for the rich.
The French arisocracy mostly survived the Revolution not only with their lives but also their riches. Those that lost lands partly had them restored under Napoleon and the Bourbons. The degree of their survival is so great that it's debated whether the nobility benefited from the Revolution [1].
Today's rich and their wealth are more mobile. Idiots fantasising about violent revolution are mostly digging their own graves or playing into the hands of oligarchs unhappy with the democratic status quo.
What are a few factory owners going to do against thousands of workers who are completely fed up? They are losing their jobs any way, what is stopping them from burning the factory down? This is a country where violence is not unheard of.
Why do they need to, they'll just have the government print more money and give it directly to said billionaires.
I mean why bother resist against a tyrannical government right? sheesh. Relevant username.