1% Gained 82% of 2017 Wealth Created

[Smitty-48]

I believe the argument is that the apple cart is in peril of tipping over from its own momentum and lack of ballast.

I believe that is hysteria vastly overwrought

I agree with this, all the way. Furthermore, very much want it to be true, having stumbled into the global 1% myself without ever needing to do a single day of actual hard work.

It is a good system.

Unfortunately, it is a system that requires consumers to function, and consumers require currency. Even if we aren't ever going to let the greasy-fingered peasant own any capital, they still need something.

I'm willing to consider a wide range of options, but as soon as anybody invokes guillotines, all bets are off, and it's out the the fuckin' helicopters with them, sayonara, Che.

Don't ring that bell, unless you're ready to go all the way, and don't come crying after if you do.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

and that knowledge is not a necessary component of reason.

Technically true, if not ideal.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

I believe that is hysteria vastly overwrought

I agree with this, all the way. Furthermore, very much want it to be true, having stumbled into the global 1% myself without ever needing to do a single day of actual hard work.

It is a good system.

Unfortunately, it is a system that requires consumers to function, and consumers require currency. Even if we aren't ever going to let the greasy-fingered peasant own any capital, they still need something.

I'm willing to consider a wide range of options, but as soon as anybody invokes guillotines, all bets are off, and it's out the the fuckin' helicopters with them, sayonara, Che.

Don't ring that bell, unless you're ready to go all the way, and don't come crying after if you do.

Well, one side says guillotine, t'other helicopter. I have come to accept these as terms of art.

But, I get it, hearing a bunch of weaklings threaten a sort of quasi-revolution does angry up the blood, damn near makes me want to lace up a jackboot myself, but I don't, 'cause I'm a good Christian.

[Smitty-48]

I agree with this, all the way. Furthermore, very much want it to be true, having stumbled into the global 1% myself without ever needing to do a single day of actual hard work.

It is a good system.

Unfortunately, it is a system that requires consumers to function, and consumers require currency. Even if we aren't ever going to let the greasy-fingered peasant own any capital, they still need something.

I'm willing to consider a wide range of options, but as soon as anybody invokes guillotines, all bets are off, and it's out the the fuckin' helicopters with them, sayonara, Che.

Don't ring that bell, unless you're ready to go all the way, and don't come crying after if you do.

Well, one side says guillotine, t'other helicopter. I have come to accept these as terms of art.

Well except one side are pansies who are really just shooting their mouths off, while the other side really will throw them out of the helicopters if they don't take the warning, so better recognize, Che.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

I'm willing to consider a wide range of options, but as soon as anybody invokes guillotines, all bets are off, and it's out the the fuckin' helicopters with them, sayonara, Che.

Don't ring that bell, unless you're ready to go all the way, and don't come crying after if you do.

Well, one side says guillotine, t'other helicopter. I have come to accept these as terms of art.

Well except one side are pansies who are really just shooting their mouths off, while the other side really will throw them out of the helicopters if they don't take the warning, so better recognize, Che.

There have been real guillotines as well as real helicopter rides in the long bumpy history of man, Louis XVI.

[Smitty-48]

Well, one side says guillotine, t'other helicopter. I have come to accept these as terms of art.

Well except one side are pansies who are really just shooting their mouths off, while the other side really will throw them out of the helicopters if they don't take the warning, so better recognize, Che.

There have been real guillotines as well as real helicopter rides in the long bumpy history of man, Louis XVI.

The bourgeois lefties in the West haven't killed anybody in a long, long time, it's the righty wighties who do all the killing, Che, consider yourself warned.

On your side, you're gonna have the Evergreen College Commandos, on our side, we're going to have the real deal Operators.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Well except one side are pansies who are really just shooting their mouths off, while the other side really will throw them out of the helicopters if they don't take the warning, so better recognize, Che.

There have been real guillotines as well as real helicopter rides in the long bumpy history of man, Louis XVI.

The bourgeois lefties in the West haven't killed anybody in a long, long time, it's the righty wighties who do all the killing, Che, consider yourself warned.

Too true.

I think we all know who Lawful Government really needs protection against.

[Smitty-48]

Indeed, a fascistic backlash is no joke, which is why the lefties best just stick to their knitting, behind the petticoats of parliamentary supremacy, if they know what's good for them. If they don't, then don't come cryin' after, cause it will be too late then.

If the lefties ever tip the apple cart, they ain't gonna be able to miracle themselves into the NVA, so I wouldn't take it there, if I was them, they're fundamentally bourgeois, killing is not their thing, they haven't been deprogrammed for that.

The lefties are playing pretend, but they don't have the courage of those convictions, the militarized righties are hard enough to keep on the leash as it is, so careful what you wish for.

The contemporary left, are not the Jacobins, they're the ones living in a fluffy wuffy Versailles now.

If they think Donald Trump is literally Hitler, boy are they ever in for a rude awakening, if they ever come out of that Ivory Tower.

[DrYouth]

This is all posturing.

The solutions ain't coming from the battle field.

The solutions will come from Parliament.

If this comes to Guillotines or Helicopters the end result will be worse than the current situation. No point lusting for that from either end of the spectrum.

Any solutions are not coming from the extreme left or right. It's the centre that might innovate and get creative.

The solutions can only result from adapting to the new technology... becoming a contender in the society that emerges... keeping fiscally solvent... and making sure the disenfranchised proletariat don't cannibalize the society from within.

Probably reinventing the education system somehow will be a key to this. There are some bright minds out there...
Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and redistribution while the workforce goes through yet another massive disruption...

The state or states that get it right will thrive and rise to the geopolitical top. Those that don't will become shitholes... as it ever was.

[BjornP]

Tonight's reading was the DOI, so I can't wait to see what I learn tomorrow.

Okay, here's some arguments for why democracy wasn't real democracy.

• majority rule is tyranny, and democracy isn't tyranny
  
  representative gov't benefits groups, and that's not what democracy is about
  
  voting isn't democratic

I shit you not.

I wonder more about what sort of education a person who says Greeks allowed everyone to vote or that democracy made Athens militarily superior, has? Not a BA, MA or, god forbid, a Ph.D in history, surely? What was their education and degree, the professor (or lecturer, anyway) who made that claim?

As for the rest: Majority rule can be tyrannical if it's a direct democracy, that's what representative government was meant to curtail, after all. And technically, voting itself is part of democracy, but they also vote for leaders in Iran and China. The cardinals vote for a new pope, too, but the Vatican State isn't a democracy. The middle statement that representative gov benefits groups, and that's not what democracy is "about", is right if they're referring to democracy being about what the entire "demos" or people want/need and how to benefit the demos. But it's a wide stretch to say that supporting, say, working class voters over the 1%, isn't "what democracy is about". Sometimes, society needs balancing out. That can involve political interests supporting one group over another.

So, those three parts aren't nearly as insane as they sound. Although, coupled with the idiot claims about ancient Athens, I imagine they read something else into those three points than I do.