It's the idea that class warfare will get us anywhere good that's brutally naive at this point.
And finally, why do you think class warfare can’t get us anywhere?
Have you seen any history at all? This has never worked.
Cohesive, trusting societies get much further than ones that are at war with themselves. Even so, cohesion and trust are nice-to-haves.
Tech progress and GDP growth has meant that the world's poor live better lives, decade after decade, for many centuries now.
I assure you there are virtually no rich people cackling, monocles and cigars in place, over the fate of the poor.
When the working class unionizes or vote for more rights, this isn't warfare - as long as it's fair-minded and pragmatic rather than idealogical. The same goes for the rich.
Regarding people with other backgrounds and interests as evil sociopaths / socialists is where the problem comes in.
When those interests come at the expense/lives of other people, it is [1] [2].
> I assure you there are virtually no rich people cackling, monocles and cigars in place, over the fate of the poor.
Correct, their theatrics are even dumber than that [3].
---
[1] "House Republicans Push Forward Plan to Cut Taxes, Medicaid and Food Aid" - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/us/politics/congress-tax-...
[2] "Sanders on GOP Medicaid cuts: ‘Thousands and thousands of low-income and working people will die’" - https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5302085-bernie-sanders-r...
[3] "Musk waves a chainsaw and charms conservatives talking up Trump’s cost-cutting efforts" - https://apnews.com/article/musk-chainsaw-trump-doge-6568e9e0...
By definition, 1% of the world's population is 80MM people, so your "hundreds of millions" statement bares your ideological slant more than you may realize.
"temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is a term that bares your ideological slant, which I hope and I'm sure you realize. But that you pose our ideological differences as a problem is bizarre. You do realize the world contains left- and right-wingers, and that probably 90% of the population is somewhere in the middle, right? And that this is OK? Or do you insist that everyone see things 100% as you do?
Also, who said only the 1% is rich? If I say it's the top 2% then we're well into the hundreds of millions, no? And what about all the rich people who were alive in the past, can we not use their attitudes for our discussion too? And what if we pick a numeric cutoff to be considered rich, or a qualitative one?
It's a relatively common term in discussions around inequality and the ways we conceive of its moral qualities. John Steinbeck, the famous American author, coined the term to describe a widespread phenomenon in how people justify their advocacy for pro-oligarch policies despite not having the same levels of wealth themselves. It's not ideological so much as it's an explication of the implicit aspects of ideologies expressed by others.
> You do realize the world contains left- and right-wingers, and that probably 90% of the population is somewhere in the middle...
Politics is not a one-dimensional spectrum, and no one believes it is except those whose view of politics is exclusively derived from American media conglomerates who reinforce the illusions that prop up the two-party system. Further, refusing to have opinions by first drawing a false dichotomy and then rejecting both fictitious poles is cowardly.
> Also, who said only the 1% is rich?
We live in a society that's based on certain conceptual scaffolds. One of them is the base-10 system. Divining these assumptions and using them to discuss these ideas with others is just how society works with respect to communication and discourse, it's not some massive conspiracy designed to make you look foolish. That appears to be your prerogative regardless.
That seems entirely irrelevant? Pretty sure Napoleon, Stalin etc. did too.
> one out of many hundreds of millions
That’s like saying that the president of the US is one out of many millions of politicians..
I would also classify narcissism as a void of intelligence, they cannot be honest with others and themselves. They always must be right and know everything when they are wrong and know nothing about the subject.
Lacking empathy and being a narcissist does not benefit society, only one's self interests. That is billionaire, not millionaire, Elon Musk. He is just selling the idea of "doing something good" to improve his self interests.
How many charities does he fund? How much of with wealth goes to studying the eradication of disease like cancer or parkinson's?
But don't worry, his statement from 2014 about full self driving cars are just around the corner and will help humanity reach it's peak. Just like traveling to Mars. /s
His actions actually harm society. Hungry children have reduced mental capabilities to advance in school and their futures. He choose to actively harm future generations and those he doesn't deem worthy.
Do you think poor people didn't get upset / rebellious in centuries and millennia past?
The difference now is that we have the GDP and tech to support much cushier lives for vast numbers of people.
I think you'll be hard pressed to find one where life hasn't gotten vastly better.
Every single time during the leaps of technology that brought tech progress and GDP growth there needed to be some kind of workers' revolt or the threat of it to actualise poors living better lives. Every leap in progress of systemic quality of life for workers came through class war: revolts, general strikes, mass protest, organized labour, etc.
Why do you think now it's different?
The common thread of workers' lives improving is free markets, not revolts.
Wikipedia has articles on the larger actions like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1835_Philadelphia_general_stri...
The rest of the US was primarily agricultural, and did not have major strikes until later, but the improvement in the lives of those people who lived there was not because of free markets. Their lives improved because of the immense natural resources that were literally being given away free to people to cultivate and exploit, after the Native Americans were subjugated and removed.
> The rest of the US was primarily agricultural, and did not have major strikes until later, but the improvement in the lives of those people who lived there was not because of free markets. Their lives improved because of the immense natural resources that were literally being given away free to people to cultivate and exploit, after the Native Americans were subjugated and removed.
The same thing at the same time happened in Central and South America, yet prosperity and uplift never happened.
What's the difference? Free markets in the US. Unfree markets in Central and South America.
Japan, S Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong have no natural resources, but when they turned to free markets, it's boom time for their economies.
> and may be the least important
It's the only common thread. I provided numerous examples that refute the requirements you listed.
> Japan
Japan's pre-war industrial economy was not an economic powerhouse. Their soldiers were very lightly equipped. They built a handful of capital ships, and when those where sunk they couldn't be replaced. Curtis LeMay resorted to area bombing of Japan because their heavy industry was a collection of homes with drill presses (LeMays' characterization) so there weren't concentrated industrial targets.
What's the excuse for S Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong?
Have you noticed that when China gave up on collectivism and turned to free markets, suddenly they became a very prosperous world power?
Yes, people preferred to immigrate to the US. Why would that be? Because it is free market and hence a land of opportunity, unlike any place else at the time.
China has an enormous population, but did not become prosperous until, again, free markets.
Likewise, your claim that China's economy is practically synonomous with free markets is laughable. Yes, they have capital markets and allow entrepeneurship, but it is still one of the most heavily planned economies with the most government intervention in the world.
Drop the "free market" sloganeering and you might touch on reality.
The 19th century closed on December 31, 1900, right? Do you disagree with that? That the 20th century began on 1/1/1901? Not in dispute?
I would say we're at 124.5 years after its close today, if you really mean today. I suppose if you want to be sloppy and round up we could achieve 125, but technically, we're still, like, 7.5 months away from December 31st.
The common thread is both, not one or the other.
Free markets always result in prosperity. Worker revolts never have.
Yet again you are lost in ideology, Walter, it gets very tiring after a while, you only got a hammer and you gotta nail everything with that hammer. It's comically myopic.
I could say the same about your arguments. Labor unions simply did not affect a high enough percentage of the population to attribute American prosperity to them.
> without those there would still be slavery
Slavery was abolished due to the Union Army, not unions. I've never heard any mention of labor unions being part of the abolishonist movement.
> legalised child labour
The abolition of child labor was not the result of labor unions.
> 16h workdays
Were only made possible by productivity improvements brought about by free markets.
> It's comically myopic
What's funny is all these learned academics who overlook the glaringly obvious and consistent correlation of free markets with prosperity, and keep coming up with other reasons for prosperity that aren't consistent at all.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/themine...
It's when we regard one another as evil that we start to pursue ideology over pragmatism and end up cutting off our noses to spite our faces.
I object to my original parent comment's characterizing of everyone with any form of wealth and power as being a sociopath. It's not only untrue (which is disqualification enough), but this kind of attitude doesn't serve anyone.
Yes, the workers' demands were reasonable, but they were met with warfare by the upper class who did not want to accept reasonable demands. The most extreme example is the Battle of Blair Mountain, but there are countless records of strike breakers beating and killing workers for striking and unionizing.
Their efforts were all for nothing.
The class struggle is a perspective. It points to how blind rich people are to social issues, and how blind the poor are to economic issues. These two need the struggle, gently. Without it, there is either bloody revolution or cruel autocracy.
That's as simple as it gets. Many people get it wrong.
There is a struggle between those who have power and those who don't. This displacement creates blind spots, and also vantage points.