Classicide

The "kulak" genocide was more widespread than the wiki article implies. For example, these deportations happened in Lithuania in 1940-1953 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_deportations_from_Lit...

My ancestors went through that. They didn't die during the deportation, but my grandmother's sister (2 mo) had to be left behind, because she couldn't survive the winter trip in cow wagons. The family didn't succeed in getting her sent to them in Siberia until she was around 5 yo. The girl was "feral" when she arrived, she would eat potato peels while hiding in the corner. The family was deported because they were well off, they had some land and housed a school. They later learned that the neighbors that they asked to care for the girl, until she was sent to Siberia, were the ones that requested that my ancestor family be deported. The girl would recover into a functioning child, but would die of alcoholism at around 30 yo.

The deportations targeted those who weren't supportive of Soviet rule and those who were educated or were successful. The regime was fairly inept and relied on he said, she said testimony for information. Similarly to what happened in Afghanistan when US asked villages which of their neighbors are Taliban, unscrupulous people used the naivete of the regime to steal land from their neighbors by getting them deported. Sadly, due to loss of documents, my ancestors didn't get the land back. Many people in similar situations did get compensated in some way after USSR collapsed though.

It is not easy to articulate the effect of having your bloodline uprooted, even when it happened more than 50 years ago.

My grandfather's family went through another version of this, his father was murdered because his brother was a partisan and the remaining family went into hiding, so as to not be deported. He was around 10 yo. Kindest man I ever knew.

the rationale for dekulakization is to remove the political influence and leverage of smallholders and other people who can afford the independence to maintain principles. small business owners are a similar target today. in cold political calculus, they form a layer of influentials whose products can promote them to essential power-coalition members and force the leadership to bargain with them. see how political parties have to deal with the tech platforms for political survival today as an example. not even the CCP could survive if they threatened people's iPhones. dekulakization is the political class making sure they aren't subject to being limited by that force of popular desire. we talk about how brutal dekulakization was, but rarely why.

I saw the impact of the internet on the 90's era admin class (gov), and if you can imagine the baby boom generation people who retired instead of "using a computer," the internet was a generational class usurpation where genx smallholders in tech butted out the old establishment.

I'd estimate the main effect of AI will be to accelerate a similar generational turnover, where genx people with sunk costs in broadly moated knowledge fields (law, medicine, teaching, etc) will retire early where they can, and the remainders aren't above organizing to ban and regulate it (see mark andreesen's comments about the biden admin banning NN math the way they classified areas of physics).

I'd watch the doyennes of the EU in Brussels closely, as they have become the intl representatives of the administrative class who coordinate the reaction to any tech change that forces them to come to terms with popular desire before imposing policy. Classicide is a blunt category of ideas, but when it enters the discourse, it's worth noticing- and getting ahead of.

An economic or social class is a different thing to a race, nationality, or gender, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it is treated differently.

One can only presume that you don't mean this post when you refer to such acts of generalization, right?

I am comfortable making the sweeping generalization that people with obscene wealth are universally evil. It’s based on a very simple principle.

Imagine Superman. Literal Superman like in the comic books. He sees a person falling from a building. Of course in the comics he will save them. What if he didn’t? What if he just watched them fall? He could save them, but he doesn’t. What then? You only have to look at the other comic books, Spider—Man for the answer. With great power comes great responsibility.

When you are that wealthy, you have the power to change society with a word. You could bribe all the US congress and institute universal health care. You could build homes for all the homeless. None of them have done this.

You might say hey, what about Bill Gates and his helping with Malaria and promise to donate everything? Ok, so that’s Superman who saves some people from falling buildings, but also watches plenty of others fall. He sure is taking his sweet time. If he was sincere he would already be middle class because he would have used his vast power as quickly and effectively as possible. If the other billionaires are diarrhea, he is still poop.

In the entire history of humanity not one obscenely wealthy person has used the powers to the fullest to improve society to the maximum of their abilities. Yet, I argue they have the power to do so, therefore they have the moral responsibility to do so. The fact that they don’t makes me comfortable judging them to be evil.

Elaborate?