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Yet there's incentive structures that push it forward.

It's a classic example of us being dragged along by incentives and emergent patterns against our individual wills and better judgement.

People think it's a conspiracy of the elite, but the last part of your message is true and it makes me wonder to what extent everyone is being dragged along by everyone else and nobody can stop because nobody can stop.

I mean if I were a multi-billionaire, I'm not sure I could do anything. I could piss into the wind with a somewhat larger amount of piss.

I've come to believe that our lack of agency over emergent behaviors in our own societies and economies is a central problem of the human condition.

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I mostly agree with your take. The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

And yet they still hold immense power to make our lives shittier. It is far easier to destroy a functioning system than it is to build one from the ground up

And yet the lives of everyone on this board has never been this comfortable in the past.

Do we live in different worlds? I can't think of a single meaningful way my comfort has increased in the past 25 years. In fact, with the rise of the homeless and mental health crises, the encroachment of more and more people who have no business touching computers into cyberspace, the increased relevance of flash mob power on the internet, I would say my comfort has been actively degraded on a fundamental and significant level.

On a broader timescale, we can take a look at the fact that goods which were designed to be affordable and mass-produced have been elevated to refined luxury goods, like the Herman-Miller Eames, as an indicator that material standards have fallen very far. Not the least of which because of an ever-dwindling labor share of capital (beginning in the 1970s), which silently impoverishes working households and degrades their comfort while being completely invisible to an uncareful eye on paper.

Much of the major boons of comfort were established prior to the transition to shareholder capitalism. Things like e-commerce, IoT, online banking, these are for the birds. Meaningful advances are things like HVAC and refrigeration, ubiquitous motorized transport, electrical lighting.

I believe the parent is implying that we sit uncomfortably at home, silently, rather than uncomfortably marching through the streets, demanding. Yet, I say that while uncomfortably sitting in my home, typing on a screen

Mass demonstrations are common and frequent, more than ever. The thing is that these are mild pressures at best. What came from Occupy Wallstreet? The George Floyd protests? The No Kings marches? Anti-ICE demonstrations? They're not nothing and we should continue to have them and participate in them, but we have to recognize them as what they are: background radiation. On their own, they don't affect change or bring about course correction. We clearly need something more, people inside of these institutions, sharks who are going to fight and win against the entrenched powers on their home turf. There's a very limited pool of people who are capable of doing that.

Plenty has come from all those things. But it's those in power who want you to feel like those are fruitless endeavors. That's why their strategy is to overwhelm. Good news takes time to be received and by then your focus will be on something else. But I promise you if you look them up you'll find real progress. It may not be as much as you want, but that's a different thing. Progress is made by small and successive steps. So the strategy to upend progress is to interrupt those steps and make them feel as small as possible. Don't fall for the trap

  > We clearly need ... sharks

I am afraid of sharks, just as I am scorpions. It is in their nature to draw blood. Bloodshed should be the last resort. By putting sharks in power is the problem with the current administration. Replacing with a different shark doesn't reduce attacks, it just changes targets. If sharks must be used, they must be well contained.

There are not more mass protests these days at all… (to ops point)

You have a strong point, and it's probably not the one you want to make.

Non-violent (peaceful, loud, signs) protesting does little to nothing. Historically speaking, what does work is violence, and a lot of it.

Even in the USA, our own labor battles were effectively wars, with the US military fighting against the people. It's where the Pinkertons were created. And it was bloody as hell, until FDR had some sense in making the NLRB to *curb the violence* with peaceful grievances.

When those in power forget the peaceful paths were a compromise, don't be too surprised when violence rears its ugly head.

This is how you get healthcare CEOs gunned down, or ol Scam Altman's house firebombed, or city council person get their house shot up after voting for a data center, or Flocks (YC17) getting destroyed en masse.

I'm just sitting here. And it definitely is getting worse and worse, for everyone. And some people, when you corner them, do unimaginable things.

To add to your point, I'm struggling to think of any non-violent movement in history that wasn't backed by a more violent movement that made the non-violent movement the more palatable option.

Unconditionally embracing nonviolence is not, properly, a goal. Nonviolence is a strategy. It must be conditional on its effectiveness.

Agreed, Viable nonviolent protests are a useful signal that society has not (yet) converted to outright authoritarianism. This is their only use IMO. They cannot effect meaningful change. But their existence signifies we can still effect such a change without resorting to violence.

There is a threshold beyond which change can only come about via violence. I don’t wish to speculate how far away from that threshold we currently find ourselves. I think we’re closer now than we were 10 years ago.

A useful thought experiment is which 80 year period of history would you prefer to live in other than now, with the caveat that you wouldn’t know how things turn out when you lived in that time. It’s easy to pick a single brief moment in history that is in some important ways better than right now. But many of those time periods are bookended by their own periods of strife and struggle. If you had to pick a different time period in history in which to live your life for 80 years birth to death, would you pick any other time than right now? Would you try to thread the needle such that you weren’t eligible to be drafted into the Vietnam war, but still benefit from the economic growth of the 50s-70s? Knowing that the AIDS crisis was still around the corner? And the unrest of the civil rights movement? The impending doom of the Cold War? A world where you rent your phone from AT&T, where your ability to learn about and communicate with the rest of the world list limited largely to passive consumption of limited news sources and books that might be decades out of date if you aren’t in a major metro area? Where your whole town might be dependent on a single employer who might be closing up factories and moving over seas in the 80s, or just plain closing down and taking your pension (and your local economy) with them?

Would you go further back in time and risk the Korean War or the World Wars and the Great Depression? A time when electricity was new and you might very well be using an outhouse as your toilet? When modern sanitation and health laws were in their infancy and debilitating diseases like polio ran rampant?

Would you go back further?

I for one, despite a lot of the issues with today can’t really find a different period of time I would prefer my life to span. I can absolutely identify parts of different times I would prefer to now, but I can’t see myself giving up everything I would need to to actually live in that period of time, and deal with the strife and struggles of the period at the same time.

>with the caveat that you wouldn’t know how things turn out when you lived in that time.

The premise sort of gives it away, doesn’t it? If you don’t know how things turn out you can’t say how you’d respond. Everyone is a product of their time. Some people are miserable, some are resilient.

It's a necessary restriction. Part of what drives modern anxiety is you don't know the future, so it's necessary that while you get to pick a time period where you have perfect visibility into its future (for example, you know that the cold war doesn't lead to the nuclear apocalypse) the person who lives through that moment can't have that knowledge. If you picked the cold war period, it is necessary that you pick it knowing your cold war self would NOT know that, and would be as anxious as their time and circumstances would make them with the information they would have had then, not the perfect* information you have now.

In that respect, all times are equal. There is no rational basis to choose one time over another.

Well if you don't know anything then it is just a numbers game. Most people pre-industrial has a high likely hood of you being a random subsidence farmer. And provided you didn't pick a standout point in history you would most of the time land on and live an uneventful life as a farmer.

And I know plenty of people that would take that kind of life. They would do it today if it didn't completely isolate themselves from society. But atlest in pre-modern times you could trade some random grain or booze for some other goods and pay your taxes with it. But today neither walmart nor the IRS will accept handspun yarn or a sack grain in lieu of money.

There are plenty of people on this board that aren't $200K+ software engineers. The median pay for my local area in the US is $35K at best, assuming it has risen the last few years.

> The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands.

But only within their minds. They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped.

Plenty of people make the choice to stop acquiring, stop increasing their wealth, and stop having more everything (kids, houses, cars, pets, hobbies, etc).

It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires.

These people also have much more leverage to change the world in substantial, albeit often short lived ways. My family has been hurt by the DOGE cuts. Hopefully it's not a permanent injury. Yet it's very real.

Isn't it like that old story about catching monkeys. You hollow out a gourd with a small hole, tack it to the ground and put a nut in it. The monkey can get its hand in but not out with the nut in their fist. The human can walk over and leisurely whack the monkey because the monkey can't let go.

They act just like drug addicts. More's the pity. They can change but they don't seem to understand that rock bottom is a tough place to be.

The Monkey trap is a very powerful analogy.

It is looking like we are venturing into harder times these new few years for various reasons, as such one has to wonder what things you are still clinging to that can be let go and what is still worth handing on to. Hopefully we don't have to make those choices but it is always handy to keep in mind.

> It's hard for those who have no choice, and those who've made different choices, to relate to the insatiable appetite of billionaires.

If we talk about US, your statement is outrageous hypocrisy.

Median income world-wide is less than 50 cents per hour. Average American person "who have no choice" could start working for like 30+ times more at any moment they want and choose any US government they want.

And how much money from this 30+ times more they have "donated or paid enough taxes" that their several dollars per hour "would be distributed far and wide"? Zero. So we are talking about insatiable appetite of Americans, not Billionaires. Because average American person has literally the same choice you are talking about, and literally choosing "having more everything" instead of "distribute far and wide".

The average American struggles to pay rent, utilities, and food, actually. They can’t just go donate 99.999% of their wealth and still survive like billionaires could.

> The average American struggles to pay rent, utilities, and food, actually.

Do you think your average Billionaire do not struggles to pay for their 500m yacht or flock of supermodels and Hollywood stars?

> They can’t just go donate 99.999% of their wealth and still survive like billionaires could.

They totally can. An average American worker with 12 dollars salary in terms of excess cash is way closer to Elon Musk than to a tantalum mine worker in the Congo who earns 22 cents per hour.

Not 99.999% obviously, but they can easily pay 80%, 90%, 95%, or even 98% of their incomes as fair share to people, who really need it. But they choose not to. They choose to get more rent, more utilities, more food (even if they will literally die from that amount). Or even new iPhone, that has been created by those highly underpaid tantalum mine workers. From the point of view of the average human on planet Earth, average American just as much exploiter as any billionaire.

> but they can easily pay 80%, 90%, 95%, or even 98% of their incomes

Not american but I'd presume food, protection from the elements and healthcare costs arefor the vast majority higher than what's left over even if they only afford themselves the minimum no?

Where I live the absolute bottom segment of housing is proportionally more expensive and the price inflexible because smaller or shitier quite frankly doens't exist or is illegal.

> I'd presume food, protection from the elements and healthcare costs arefor the vast majority higher than what's left over even if they only afford themselves the minimum no?

Obviously no. What a hypocrisy and shifting of blame. "The minimum" you'd get if you are working for less than 20 cents per hour. When you are working for several dollars per hour, you are drowning in luxury comparing to the rest of the world and refusing to pay your fair share to other people, whose work you are appropriating.

> Where I live the absolute bottom segment of housing

That is the same as talking about "absolute bottom segment of housing in which billionaires are living". I mean, duh. Your bottom segment of housing (food, protection from the elements, healthcare) is literally a function of your bottom segment of income, it is not the "minimum".

>Obviously no. What a hypocrisy and shifting of blame.

Obviously yes. Your effort to equate the ability to scale down of billionaires to people who struggle to afford a shoebox appartment and lifesaving procedures if they were to fall ill is ghoulish. "

A lot of those a bit above the minimum do indeed spend more on what were historically luxuries because those luxuries now cost a fraction of their historical price whilst housing and such has typically gotten more expensive.

>That is the same as talking about "absolute bottom segment of housing in which billionaires are living".

It is not in any way shape or form the same because billionaires can go lower.

> it is not the "minimum".

The alternative is no housing (or often moving in with parents) so i'd argue it is. i'll remind you that a tent on the sidewalk isn't exactly legal everywhere.

If you’re going to go after Americans then I guess anyone around the world not living in a run down shack in the middle of nowhere without water and electricity is also taking advantage. Americans are well off compared to a lot of places but not the whole rest of the world, not even close. Get some perspective.

Where did you get that 50 cent statistic from? The closest I could find was a dataset from 2006-12 where the median per-capita income was $4k. Even if you extrapolate to working 40h a week and 52 weeks/year (which you can’t, because there’s some correlation between having lower income in this dataset and working part-time), that is still around $2/hr.

In https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-hourly-earnings I could not find a single country even close to what you have said, except for Burundi at $0.6/hr. The rest are all $2 and up.

> They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped.

They pay giant amounts of tax. The people not paying tax, or costing negative tax, are who you mean.

Do they?

The 2021 ProPublica tax leak showed the 25 richest Americans paid a "true tax rate" of roughly 3.4% on their $401 billion in wealth growth between 2014 and 2018, because their wealth grew without triggering realization events.

Try seeing how much net tax a government employee pays. It's in the negatives. Or a benefits recipient.

Sure, undoubtedly. But, also... you don't have to make a ton of money to pay more than 3% of your income.

To be clear, I don't pretend to have preferences. I'm idealistically libertarian, but I think that nukes have ruined the right to bear arms, propaganda has ruined free speech, and central banks have ruined currency. I'm a demoralist, I guess, to coin a term.

“Net” is not relevant, nominal tax rate matters, and billionaires are the biggest tax dodgers by far, stop trying to blame poor people and civil servants for your weird hangups.

> “Net” is not relevant

If it's not relevant then just give every government employee a million dollars a year raise, but on the condition that it's taxed at 100%. Then you've raised all the taxes you need and the private sector doesn't need taxing.

> billionaires are the biggest tax dodgers by far

Even if this is true (no evidence cited, of course) they still pay the most tax in terms of dollars, and their businesses generate far, far more tax downstream as well.

> stop trying to blame poor people and civil servants for your weird hangups

I'm not blaming them. I'm just judging them by your standard. Get a better standard, and don't call it my "weird hangup".

A parent of your comment cited a ProPublica study that references real tax return data that showed billionaires paying an effective tax rate in the single digits. If their accumulated wealth were regarded as regular income, they should be paying 37% on most of the gains. Look it up yourself.

If you look at “net” like you want to, sure, they pay far more in tax dollars than pretty much anybody, but they are able to legally dodge paying tax on most of their wealth accumulation because if the way the IRS treats unrealized capital gains.

Imagine doing away with income tax and replace it with a wealth tax payable in whatever wealth you have. % of your house, % of your investments etc

The government employee at least earns their salary by actual labor.

Whereas anyone on the "top N richest" list is a parasite on all the people who produce wealth.

> The government employee at least earns their salary by actual labor.

They may or may not do much useful - government tends to grow regardless of output, because it doesn't need to earn its money. All you know for sure is a government employee pays no taxes, and so contributes nothing to anything like roads, public services, etc etc, and takes taxes away from the people who are net contributors.

I didn't even see the actual problem with this originally: wealth is not what is or should be taxed. If shares I own go up and I don't sell them, I don't have anything to tax. It's only when I sell them that I should be taxed.

> wealth is not what is or should be taxed

But why not?

Well said, I have exactly the same thoughts.

However, overcoming these forces is something people did successfully in the past. I think right now we are just in a cycle of mass confusion caused by the technological revolutions, which prevents us to see clearly (as it happened in the past as well).

Without alignment we just drift by natural forces of a system in place in whatever direction. When we adapt and if the world survives, this should not be an issue.

The problem of billionaires is that they are one level below from the top in abstraction of a society. They are required to play by the rules of the state designed by someone else, and they lack the knowledge and experience to go one level higher and think about the policies and rules for society itself - and this is much harder than doing business, and requires completely different skills.

Because of these factors, we see them being able to hoard wealth but unable to influence the system in any positive way, except for the ones which the system was already designed for (create jobs, innovate, etc.)

Honestly, my worry is that the longer we put it off the more likely any revolution or change will happen more chaotically. It should be organized, with strong leaders. But if that fails, I think Reverend King has a famous quote about the unheard. And I think that ends up being chaotic and bloody. I don't want that, I hope we've evolved enough to do transitions of power peacefully, or at least as peacefully as possible

Hold on. Panama papers. Epstein files. CointelPro -> NSPM-7.

There absolutely, without a reasonable doubt, is a conspiracy of the elite -- the billionaire class.

The idea that all billionaires work together is hilarious. No real adult could possibly believe such nonsense.

Any adult who has been paying attention has no doubt that enough of the elite do collude to call the duck a duck.

In the real world it's hard enough to get 5 people on the same page about anything. The idea that dozens/hundreds of people with billions of dollars who are in business against each other in many cases are secretly colluding with any effectiveness is a joke. If they were, zuckerberg, larry and sergey would have been squashed in the 90's/00's by the elite of the time. Sam Altman would have been crushed years ago. Obama or Trump would have been put in their place, probably both. Look at all the billionaires all of a sudden kowtowing to Trump. The billionaires just got beat real bad in NYC.

Billionaires just don't have much power. This isn't a movie.

This seems to contradict itself. You first claim that there's no organization but then you claim billionaires have no power because of the more powerful above them. Hierarchy is organization, so which is it

No, nothing above them. No power. That's the point. In a couple years Trump will be gone and he'll be kowtowing to others and so on.

There is no group in charge. No one is in charge.

If that is true then we all are in charge and it is up to all of us. As you agreed elsewhere, cooperation exists.

If there's no power then why did so many line up to bring gifts and kiss the ring of a certain vindictive, convicted felon turned President?

Just because no one is in charge, it doesn't mean favors disappear and it doesn't mean no one can throw a wrench in your system.

It really sounds like you're trying hard to define a square circle. Your argument isn't even self consistent because what you described sure sounds like someone has power...

Nope. It's perfectly consistent. No one has much power at all. No one is in charge, there is no greater power sitting above us all calling all (or even most) the shots. To use someone else's term, there is no cabal.

You seem to conflate "no one is powerful" with "no one has any power in any situation at all".

  > You seem to conflate "no one is powerful" with "no one has any power in any situation at all".

The problem is not this, it is your claim that all power is equal, that there is no imbalance. No one is claiming God, only men

Never said equal, just that no one has much. It's just not that hard of a claim to understand. No need to twist oneself into a pretzel.

How many billionaires attended Biden's inauguration or donated to Biden's projects? How many for Trump 2?

I never said nobody hoped to be powerful, or increase the level of power they have. They just don't have much, and they can't/don't coordinate like some conspiracy theorists believe.

As a class, they steer things through emergent behavior and overlapping self interest in certain areas. As individuals, they can’t afford to trust each other without leverage.

Nobody said anything about ALL billionaires. You are the only person suggesting that.

The idea that an aggressive handful of them can't, won't or don't work together is even more preposterous than your strawman that all of them do.

"the billionaire class".

Whether they meant all or most, those words certainly don't mean a handful.

Poor people door all the same shit, just on a smaller scale.

The scale is the problem; their money is orders of magnitude more damaging.

Poor people do it at scale too. Millions of pockets of poor people doing the same shit on a smaller scale adds up.

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