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and they have the fucking gall to call us "parasites" (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/memes@slrpnk.net
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[–] 1 point 1 year ago* (3 children)

I’m talking about extreme power imbalances, and there have been multiple instances of extreme power imbalances throughout history. 5000 years ago wasn’t as extreme.

I’ve already given you an example, here is another one: conditions leading to the French Revolution.

Even though monarchies existed for a while, and also napoleon was a dictator, it was extreme poverty while the elites had extreme prosperity that lead to the fall.

Similar to Russian the revolution. There is also the huge power imbalance and wealth inequality that lead to two world wars.

My favourite is feudalism, basically all of Europe was stagnated until peasants had the leverage to ask for more.

Also, ever since the Great Recession (which made inequality more extreme), most countries in the world have become less stable.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    You should study more history then because conditions leading to the French Revolution were nothing compared to the brutality of Bronze Age God-Kings. Large scale slavery, horrific forms of capital punishment even for petty crimes, high taxes, practically zero public works. As a citizen all you really got out of the government was protection from invaders who were going to steal all your food and carry off the women and children.

    Or how about the Aztec Empire where the elite (Aztec citizens) would capture and ritually murder anyone they could get their hands on? The wealthy feasted and got high on drugs every night, reaching physical and spiritual ecstasy as they sacrificed one captive after another, piling their skulls on huge racks for all to see.

    Feudal Peasants in Europe didn’t have the leverage to ask for more, they seized it for themselves in the wake of the Black Death. Vast swathes of countryside opened up after the depopulation caused by the plague and so the survivors claimed whatever they could get their hands on.

    It’s still too early to say what will happen right now but many signs to me point to countries like the US abandoning democracy and slipping into dictatorship.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I’m going to stop responding because you don’t really talk against my point about power imbalances. You asked for examples, I gave you some, and then you responded by giving examples of horrible times in human history (you didn’t mention inequality and how it could relate to stability or why the examples relate to my point).

    Also, my original comment was about supreme power being something that the majority can get back if they truly wanted to, hence why we have revolutions. That’s still true without extreme power imbalances being problematic.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    You never explained how power imbalances affect human survival as a species, which is key to your original evolution argument. Revolutions and instability represent periods of unhappiness, just as brutal authoritarian systems do, but neither is much of a threat to survival of the species or evolutionary fitness in general.

    Nuclear weapons do represent a real threat to species survival but still the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war is a democracy, so the jury’s still out on that.

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