The ownership class reading this: “…the training wheels are coming off, boys. It’s time we really kick this thing into high gear. We’re running out of time. Get your affairs in order—and by that I mean pick which if your mistresses will be your concubines on your floating golden fortress.”
“Understood.”
The group: “‘we’re the fuckin worst’ on three—one, two, three!
All:
“WE’RE THE FUCKING WORST!”
Generic white guy #1: “Alright, good hustle. Now go out there and fuckin murder some lower class people! This death machine ain’t gonna run itself! lol obviously im kidding, we were born into a machine that already runs itself and we were just the dumb lucky bastards born into the positions we’re in. But we deserve it!
Generic white guy #12: woah, Tom, you thought a little too much there. I’m afraid…we’re gonna have to take away the “#1” from your position. We worked hard to get where we are today! Don’t you EVER suggest there is an inherent flaw in a hierarchical system! You will be punished severely for even MAKING a reference to some FAKE injustice in our system! You are now #4. Other Tom, congratulations, now you’re #1. You must be very proud to hold this position.
Previously Generic white guy #4: this is an honor. I deserve this.
“Boris Johnson with his Russian connections and Brexit is innocent, if you think he is…”
You know, revolution is not the same as collapse.
The participants identified a negative feedback loop, whereby the government’s failure to tax wealth effectively means it lacks sufficient revenue to uphold the social contract by which strong public services, an effective social safety net and a healthy economy provide people with decent living standards.
Trust in politics then declines further, politicians avoid honest discussions of the underlying problems and what to do about them, and the system’s legitimacy is increasingly questioned as the social contract collapses.
That’s a nice story, but there’s been plenty of even less egalitarian societies. Pretty much all of the ones in written history, actually.
More likely, in the short term a new, more coercive “social contract” will be rotated in (if the trend continues). Heck, we’re already seeing it a bit in the US. Now showing fealty to the president is more important than public relations for a lot of companies and billionaires.
within the next decade?
We’re already most of the way there. Inept, Incompetent, and overtly corrupt governments engraging the population homelessness, unemployment, unpopular immigration and costs of necessities going haywire trade wars brewing, Oh, and World War III is basically already in it’s pre-game show stage with the fighting in Europe.
I’m at the point where Im expecting it any day. the US is just one bad move away from causing an all out revolt, because part of its population rightly thinks that the new admnistration is full of mobsters, tyrants, and fascists.
By the way, Trump wonders if Americans will let him treat them like this and continues to do “his business”
Knock knock open up the door it’s real!
Already there.
This is why the fascist billionaires are carrying out their great takeover. They know the jig is up and everything’s going to crumble down and no one will escape it.
They just want to rob whatever they still can before they too croak. Thre is no great plan for their survival beyond a few years in an underground bunker, either…
Elon literally built a doomsday retreat in Texas, where most of the women he’s fathered children live. as well as most of his children.
some notable exceptions, Grimes isnt there, nor the child who became Trans. for obvious reasonsI didn’t realize he was in the flds
It’s a hilariously incompetent strategy by the rich because they’re more dependent on a functioning society than any other group. You can tell they’re not smart nor good leaders when they build luxury bunkers in New Zealand because those won’t save them from losing virtually (and possibly literally) everything they have. They have everything to lose and the only thing they need to do to keep their wealth and power is to contribute to the society they’re living off of. They’re failing miserably because they lack compassion. It will be their downfall.
It is why they are hastily trying to turn the calendar back to 1933 but they might overshoot and get 1789.
Just hope nobody does a Napoleon…
Barron is way too tall.
Napoleon was actually about average height for the time. The shortness thing was just British (?) war propaganda to, for lack of a less on the nose term, belittle him in the public consciousness.
Barron IS still freakishly tall, though. He should either stop doing that or become really good at basketball or volleyball.
Not to go off on a quite wild tangent from societal collapse but I think beyond propaganda Napoleon was often flanked by tall and hand-picked elite guards and ironically also old aristocracy generals themselves tall from richer diet and so appeared short in comparison.
but isn’t their strategy literally how they have 90 percent of the wealth? seems a crushingly effective strategy. what do you suppose their downfall looks like? does it happen before or after ours?
There’s a limit, and at this rate we are bound to get there eventually.
Look at it this way…either there is a finite amount of money, and the more it is amassed by a handful of people, the less there is for others to survive. Or there is an infinite amount of money, and it’s worthless.
There really should’ve been a point of exponentially diminishing returns on personal wealth, like a long time ago. There shouldn’t have been any super-rich after the steel barons of the early 20th century. You’d think we would’ve learned our lesson then. Especially since by then we had universal suffrage, and not just white wealthy male landowners were voting.
“within the next decade” sounds like an unnecessarily long view on it. Next Christmas will come within the next decade too but it doesn’t mean it’ll be 10 years from now.
Good
Not really, given the current state of the world, it would most likely accelerate the rise of fascism, war and the further environmental destruction of the planet.
Yeah you only need to look at post world war 1 Germany to see how that works out. Or post USSR Russia. It’s fascism that rises to the top.
I’m pretty sure that’s the aim of most accelerationists
Pretty much, you know what you’ll lose but not what you’ll get. A societal collapse would lead to a massive power vacuum that could lead both ways, but I’m not optimistic for a good outcome…
I’d agree if it was just the oppressive system and the power and wealth of those benefitting the most from it collapsing with no ripple effects, but the most vulnerable groups of people will take the brunt of the initial damage long before the billionaires feel it.
A shitload of innocent people are going to die from the devastation wrought by a few billionaires and the politicians they own. Even more so than today.
I can think of a couple of ways to fix that.
In before lemmy.world bootlickers delete these comments for “inciting violance.”
How is a wealth tax violence?
Have an additional one
pretty sure they said the same ting 10 years ago
10 years ago, it was a night and day better world state.
Even Trump 1.0, the worst thing in the world at the time was the ISIS threat. In Trump 2.0, We live in a world with
- WW3 Basically in its opening stage in Ukraine, Russia is pretty much fucked, but NATO is fucked too now that the US is run by someone who hates it
- Post Covid destruction of the economy
- The billionares have turned megalomaniac and wormed their way into government ears
- The US had an attempted Coup, the person who organized it is now the POTUS. and the people who participated in it are on the streets
- the gradual increase of uneducated stupidity through social media and MSM TV Brainrot.
We’ve basically been in a spiral towards armageddon this decade, the 2020s are BRUTAL compared to the mid 2010s.
And the trend has only accelerated since. Especially now that the fascists are implementing Project 2025 with frantic haste.
Just like with climate change, the fact that they hardly ever get the timeframe stated in the headlines right doesn’t mean that the emergency isn’t real.
so you’re 100% on societal collapse by 2035?
Nope. As I clarified in my edit, the exact timeline from the headline is usually wrong and never the point.
Agreed. We just know it’s coming so it’s time to prepare for battle.
so it should read “something might happen eventually, we don’t really know and we are probably wrong, so maybe just ignore this”
Nope. It’s DEFINITELY happening. It’s just the sort of thing that’s nearly impossible to predict the exact timeline of. It could be as soon as a year from now and it could be in fifty.
Either way, the problem is real and worsening NOW, which is the second best time to do something about it.
Does the word “risk” mean “guarantee”?
