Postby Friday » Fri Oct 02, 2020 8:17 am
This isn't in reply to anything, just random bullshit as I sit here at 5am thinking about what's going on in the world.
Back in the year 2000 or so when I first started paying attention to the world, (I was 19) I noticed that this shit couldn't last.
And by "this shit" I mean, society as it is currently structured.
There's an old saying that people say, and it's "The Rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
Whenever they hear it, they nod, yep, of course, business as usual, what else is new?
But what they don't really think about it how that's both absolutely true and absolutely unsustainable.
Climate Change aside, you cannot have a society where the Rich just keep getting richer and the Poor just keep getting poorer. It will, eventually and inevitably, topple. Even if stopgaps are applied. If the rule remains Rich = richer and Poor = poorer as time passes, it doesn't matter what else you do, what laws you pass, what measures you take to slow the process.
Of course, wealth inequality isn't the only thing on the menu right now. There's 10 other things or more, and Climate Change is even worse.
But my 19 year old self understood the concept that you literally CAN NOT have a society where over time the wealth concentrates. This wasn't, like, an amazing genius observation or anything. Historically tons of countries, regimes, kingdoms, and even empires have fallen due at least in part to this truth. What baffled me then and still baffles me now is how people can believe that it cannot happen here, now. Even with all the problems going on all around them, delivered to them 24 hours a day by the rectangle in their pocket.
I know, I know. This also is not unique to our current iteration of society. I'm absolutely sure lots of the people in history who lived in the times of their societies downfalls also did not believe it could happen to them. Right up to the point where the trouble arrived right at their doorstep and killed them, raped them, or forced them out of their houses and stole everything they owned.
And so this pattern of history has given rise to the belief that this process, this ... iteration, this cycle, is also inevitable. As though humans are just eternally condemned to repeat this lesson forever because they cannot figure out a way to create a just society where people can live equally and in harmony.
I don't know if I believe that. I mean that statement literally. I'm unsure.
Can we as a species stop being greedy to the point where it destroys society? Is the tragedy of the commons an insurmountable problem? All these problems have plagued us for our entire existence, but now things are different. When a kingdom or even an empire fell, it would fuck up a localized part of the world. Sure, trade partners would feel the effects, but by and large the fall of the Roman Empire did not fuck over China, and China's repeated shatterings did not fuck over Europe.
But now we're all trade partners. Moreso than ever before. There isn't a country on earth that wouldn't keenly feel the collapse of the United States, or any Super Power. So the stakes are now much much higher. Where before thousands could die, now billions stand to. The US is the breadbasket of the world, and China the factory of the world.
Revolutionaries are always laughed at. "We need a new system," they say, and the reply is always "This is all there is, so shutup with your pipedreams of utopias, commie hippie idiot." But I don't dream of a utopia. I don't believe in a perfect system. I just want a system that does not allow Greed to rule.