this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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Neat explanation. Thanks. I also modded some communities over there.
It’s not only reddit i‘m seeing this happen on. At work, on discord, people with questionable morals start to get into power and take over from those who built stuff up.
It’s like we have an epidemic of the dark triad. Being manipulative, impulsive and brutal seems to get more and more normalized through our economic system.
There is nothing new under the sun - technology may be creating new avenues for people to rise up through, but the reasons for their actions remain the same. In Germany, it was the rise of radio that allowed Hitler to, for the first time in human history, bypass the established rule of that nation and talk directly to the populace, which he leveraged to become the ruling authority. At some point he was even banished, but managed to return. The similarities b/t him and DT are eerily similar, and yet those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.
But as for our economy, on that note I think we are following more along the lines of old Rome. Surely that worked well for them, with zero problems, and therefore we will be safe from any harm, forever... right? R-r-right!? :-P
What's odd about it is that the founding fathers directly warned us that this would happen. We simply did not care. Specifically, they warned about opening up voting to the "uneducated masses", rather than the intelligentsia who had sufficient leisure time to think through the issues as they voted, not needing to toil in a field for long hours in the hot sun every single day. Do we have the means to now convert EVERYONE into the intelligentsia, with mechanization e.g. robots can do the vast majority of effort to farm our crops, and tools like the internet that puts information at our fingertips without even having to so much as turn the page of a physical book? In any case, there are those who do not WANT knowledge, and yet still want the privilege of being leaders nonetheless - e.g. those who showed up on January 6 to "defend the Constitution", while at the same time admitting that they had never in fact read it, not even so much as once.:-(
I get it. I have the same exact drives inside of me, as do you, as do we all. The difference is that some of us are aware, care about that, and even attempt to fight those dark impulses - to be lazy, greedy, and the like. Sometimes anyway:-). Whereas those behind the scenes seem hardened in their resolve, to intentionally go in the opposite direction... and since most of the people seem to either want to join them or at least not oppose them, they are winning. i.e. Elon Musk and Steve Huffman both.
And as a former mod, you KNOW - it takes ENORMOUS amounts of effort to fight against that. It is SO MUCH easier to destroy than it is to create, or even to maintain.:-(
Yes, I agree on most points, especially comparing the different populists/fascists.
But radio was new, as is the internet and now we have a word for this behavior. Psychology shows us why people like musk rise to power.
Instead of taking away voting rights from people we deem „too stupid“, we should hospitalize people without a moral compass like we should do with serial killers to be instead of sending them to the electric chair afterward (or prison for life in europe)
If someone shows parts of the dark triad, they should be barred from any office that has any power over any other human being.
Are they great strategists? Yes! Are they unable and/or unwilling to empathise with their victims? Also yes.
Give them strategy work but dont let them take care of people. Its not that hard.
I don't think it's about stupidity per se - and I am a working-class person myself, thus have to spend many hours of every day doing my work activities, with less time leftover to devote to such things, so possibly I might be recusing myself even from this? - and rather I think it is about people who are educated vs. not. e.g. those who can spot logical fallacies vs. not, and if some subject is about to be voted on, someone who can understand at least the bare minimum of what is being talked about (is trickle down good? bad? neutral?). Anyway, that ship has sailed... I was just saying that the founders DID warn us, and we DID ignore them, and there ARE alternatives other than restricting voting, i.e. making a liberal arts style of education free for anyone who wants it.
About hospitalizing people without a moral compass, I have a better idea: why don't we put them in charge of literally everything, everywhere? :-P Unfortunately this is no joke, b/c that seems to be what tends to happen.:-( Shareholders vote with their dollars, and more often than not they seem to choose to invest into people who rise up and do WHATEVER IT TAKES to make profits.
"Stupid", "immoral", "evil", these are not just words, but in another sense they are, b/c what matters is how the world truly works - one principle of that being survival of the fittest. If we killed off the top half of all people in the world after sorting them by IQ, the remaining people might be more "stupid", but they would be alive, in comparison to the alternative. Conversely, people such as Robert Iger the current CEO of Disney who has run the company for almost two decades, tend to remain in power at the behest of the shareholders, who could vote to expunge him at any time if they wanted. You might say "evil" or "greedy", but they say "me likey, and want to keep".
What you are missing though it that it is not just those INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE who are "greedy" or "evil" or whatever, it is the entire SYSTEM - e.g. if Robert Iger ever were to die (he is getting older now...), he would be immediately replaced, by someone who similarly meets the expectations, nay the DEMANDS, of the stockholders. So no, I don't think it is anywhere remotely close to as easy as you describe. The people who own stock in that company may not be okay with owning a slave personally, but they are quite happy to benefit/profit from the misery of the workers who are forced to churn out that assembly-line whimsey, under what you and I might call "evil" working conditions, but which they call "cost-effective".
So be careful with what you wish for. You might want those people prevented from taking office, but in turn it is THEY who are likely to abuse their power in order to prevent US from holding office. Might makes right. I mean... it ABSOLUTELY does NOT, and yet if you are not willing to fight for what you believe, those who are willing to take action will win the day. In one sense "they" even have a semi-admirable trait then that you and I lack: humility, to bow before the rules of the universe and work according to its precepts, rather than attempting to impose their own particular brand of morality onto it.