If top of the society is immoral psychopaths with power, and most of the society is composed of people with good intentions, then there is not much hope for “beta uprising” until things go way beyond point of recovery, because powerful psychopaths will not let their power get taken away.
Not sure if this is just evolutionary biology, but this cycle of psychopaths at the top has been going on since when, at least ancient Egypt. And in all these thousands of years, the system that enables this cycle got way more reinforced than it got dismantled.
So is it maybe better idea to put benevolent people’s energy towards designing and preparing a new societal system that will have built-in mechanisms for preventing corruption and malevolence? “prepare” as in get ready to implement for when the current messed up system is about to grind to a halt and collapse? Well, it would be best to figure out how to go full Benevolent Theseus™ by replacing parts of currently failing system with the corruption-proof ones.
What are some resources related to this topic? Recearch on societal dynamics, designing political systems, examples of similar revolutions that already happened, etc. Post any links that you consider relevant
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Getting rid of apathy is the most important step. Too many people say “I’m not interested in politics”.
Politics is everything, it shouldn’t be considered as a legitimate choice to stay away from it.
Liquid democracy is a proposed way to do a direct democracy in a large country. It’s only been tried on very small scales (Google used it to decide which food to get for their cafeterias), so we don’t really know if it would work, but I like the idea.
I’d point out that there are countries which don’t have much corruption or governmental malfeasance. Nordic countries tend to score very well on the Corruption Perception Index, and also have good social safety nets and governments that (generally, for the most part) serve the people. They’re all small countries, though – I suspect that politics becomes an increasingly dirty business the more power a country has.
If you haven’t already, you might want to look into selectorate theory. It essentially shows not only how the psychopaths at the top stay in power, but also why attempts to reform the system often result in a new crop of rulers who are just as bad or worse than those they replaced. (c.f. Cromwell’s revolt, French Revolution, Russian Revolution). A proponent of selectorate theory would argue that the solution is not to remove the psychopaths – it’s to create a system where things in a politician’s selfish interest happen to line up with things that benefit the people. It’s excellently summed up by this video.
In terms of curtailing corporate power from the top down, studying the history of U.S. antitrust law would be a good place to start. Extra Credits has a good series about it.
One reform method that has worked before is unionization. The vast majority of worker protections came about because of labour action. Unions are a lot weaker than they used to be, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. If you can, unionizing your workplace is probably the most impactful action you could take to improve the existing system.
If your tastes are more radical, you could also consider mutual aid societies. A robust one could conceivably Theseus its way into failing institutions, or evolve into a provisional government if everything collapses.
Liquid democracy
Isn’t it obvious this would turn into oligarchy real fast?
I don’t see it as obvious. If anything it makes it harder for vested interests to have an outsized influence, since there are no traditional politicians to bribe. What flaws do you see that I’m missing?
The proxy naming is not anonymous. In normal democracy if Elon Musk wants to buy votes he can in theory pay million people $100 each to vote the way he says that there’s no way for him to verify how they voted. I can take his money and then vote the other way. He wouldn’t know.
With digital voting systems (when those are correctly implemented) what you do is separate the vote signature from the vote’s content. I submit a encrypted vote and sing it with my certificate. It goes to system A which verifies the signatures but doesn’t have the decryption key to check how I voted. After verification the signatures are stripped and encrypted votes are moved to system B (which is air gaped). System B has the decryption key so it decrypts the votes and counts them but since it doesn’t have the signatures anymore it can’t check which vote is mine.
The proxy system cannot function as an anonymous system. Once I pass my vote to someone I also have to able to retract it. Let’s say Elon Musk has 1000 votes and I say I want to retract one. The system needs to be able to check that Elon Musk does in fact have my vote. This means that Elon can pay me for my vote and verify that he actually got it. Which means that rich people will buy votes form the poorest and have greater power than other people. Which will lead to oligarchy.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Extra Credits has a good series
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Matt Stoller has a good newsletter about monopoly power https://www.thebignewsletter.com/
Begin teaching media literacy and critical thinking skills in schools.
And budgets in home economics
I can respect that y’all kind of hate my kind here and I’m going to use this comment to share only the most unobjectionable works that even the most anticommunist liberal should find completely and utterly appealing
Fully Automated Luxury Communism is a book about how we have all of the tools at our disposal right now to automate at least 50% of the work that we have to do to stay alive, and thus get rid of that work as a tool of coercion and exertion of power.
How Capitalism Ends is about how the power got to the concentrations it has today, where we can expect it to go by extrapolating that tendency, why there was no other way it could have gone, and what we can do now to start building the next thing.
These are two very good and easy starts to starting to think about this problem. I’m happy to field questions about the works or anything else related.
Guillotine all the billionaires and redistribute all their wealth. That’s an important first step
I gotta admit…
That’s like cutting off the top layer of the skin cancer without addressing the underlying causes.
It’s a fun “fuck the man” statement that’s worse than worthless because it makes solutions seem like they need to be radical without actually proposing a real solution.
It’s been done before. How did that work out for Russia? Or China? Or anywhere else that the rich died at the hands of the poor?
What happened was that corruption was always the underlying cancer and it never actually went away, it just changed around what organ it infected as one was cut out and replaced by another.
Want to see billionaires lose all their wealth? Create a labor backed “proof of work” currency system they can’t buy into and stop considering their money to have value. No blades required. Just pay taxes on estimated profits so you play by the rules. What happens to a billionaire when the dollar value of a gallon of milk goes through the roof but the labor value for it remains constant?
Corruption loves to live among middlemen. And we live in an age where most middlemen can be cut out of transactions. And within the decade that’s going to be even easier.
What do you think is going to happen when open sourced AI lawyers can generate legal paperwork for cents on a dollar? How much does that benefit Walmart, who already have teams of lawyers on retainer? How does that help the people who work at Walmart? Or the local grocer they are trying to put out of business with unfair competition practices?
Transactional costs are about to go to shit. And with that in mind, I would encourage anyone here to read the economic paper from a century ago “the nature of the firm” positioning the entire existence of the mega corporation as worthwhile based on the existence of high transactional costs.
Corporations and billionaires are already screwed beyond measure. It’s just no one’s realized it yet because the Jenga tower still has pieces left so everyone points at the monolith and exclaims how it’s going to still be around for as long as it’s been standing.
Violent revolution is pointless and just going to set back the conditions for their own demise that the capitalist prisoner’s dilemma of competition is about to deliver.
Don’t sharpen a guillotine. Become better friends with your neighbors and network online with labor in the same sector to prepare for what’s ahead.
The chips are falling into place. I just hope people at large aren’t so caught up in their own BS that they pass up the opportunity that’s going to present, as I’m not sure there will ever be another like it.
The fact that a vast majority will ignore this discussion, is the same reason why most people will not organise towards a cause.
I have little hope in individuals.
Given up entirely, or are you hoping we all join a hive mind to solve our problems?
According to Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, the answer is revolutionary violence.
It’s a fascinating read. I very much recommend the chapter covering the Black Plague. Seems rather relevant nowadays.
Employers lost no time pressuring the authorities to curb the rising cost of labor. Less than a year after the arrival of the Black Death in England, in June 1349, the crown passed the Ordinance of Laborers:
Since a great part of the population, and especially workers and employees (“servants”), has now died in this pestilence many people, observing the needs of masters and the shortage of employees, are refusing to work unless they are paid an excessive salary. . . . We have ordained that every man or woman in our realm of England, whether free or unfree, who is physically fit and below the age of sixty, not living by trade and exercising a particular craft, and not having private means of land of their own upon which they need to work, and not working for someone else, shall, if offered employment consonant with their status, be obliged to accept the employment offered, and they should be paid only the fees, liveries, payments or salaries which were usually paid in the part of the country where they are working in the twentieth year of our reign [1346] or in some other appropriate year five or six years ago. . . . No one should pay or promise wages, liveries, payments or salaries greater than those defined above under pain of paying twice whatever he paid or promised to anyone who feels himself harmed by it. . . . Artisans and labourers ought not to receive for their labour and craft more money than they could have expected to receive in the said twentieth year or other appropriate year, in the place where they happen to be working; and if anyone takes more, let him be committed to gaol.
The actual effect of these ordinances appears to have been modest. Just two years later, another decree, the Statute of Labourers of 1351, complained that said employees, having no regard to the said ordinance but rather to their own ease and exceptional greed, withdraw themselves to work for great men and others, unless they are paid livery and wages double or treble what they were accustomed to receive in the said twentieth year and earlier, to the great damage of the great men and the impoverishing of all the Commons and sought to remedy this failure with ever more detailed restrictions and penalties. Within a generation, however, these measures had failed.
NoBoDy WanTs tO WoRk!!! lol.
If CBT and DBT were taught to kids in school… man, what a change that would make. To be taught at a young age how to control thoughts, cope with stress, face emotions, communicate effectively.
Organize labor.
Evolve labor strikes from the dark ages with guerilla tactics.
In every company I’ve ever consulted for, there were bottlenecks where a handful of people in key roles not showing up to work would tank the entire operation.
Why the hell are we still striking with everyone walking out instead of everyone clocking in and getting paid and funneling money to keep key roles empty as the coffers burn while revenue drops and payroll still runs?
Why are strikes so often per-company (or worst per-store) instead of per-industry?
In the digital age organization is theoretically much easier than it has ever been.
And yet labor is still playing with the 1920s playbook while corporate is hiring specialized modern talent to combat it.
What about seizing the means of production?
Look at the actors strike, whining about studios using AI to replace them.
Why the hell aren’t the actor unions building their own AI platform for generative performances? It’d unquestionably be a better product working with talent than competitors ostracized by talent. Reminds me of when the MPAA fought against Napster instead of embracing the tides of change and as a result missed the boat on owning digital distribution platforms to Apple and others.
But no. People are scared of change and cling to the status quo even when that isn’t working very well for them.
Embrace change. Focus on progress. Evolve.
If the masses can do that faster and better than the boardroom (which really shouldn’t be that hard as those guys suck at embracing progress and abandoning status quo), then the masses are going to be holding the bag at the end of the changes coming.
If the masses can’t organize enough to stay ahead…
Well, we should probably all learn to enjoy eating cardboard and watching the world burn around us.
make public transport better (pls metro in Tallinn)
Take good care of yourself and always claim the rest you need - don’t let anyone call you lazy, disabled or mentally ill for working during as many hours of the day as you want. Being productive is not a virtue.
After you have spent enough time resting: support your local mutual aid circle, or (help) create one. Use your talents and skills to help and support others in your community as much as you can afford. Try and work without participation from the existing authorities (not always possible, but at least don’t seek their support unless you have to), basically create your own self-government infrastructure within the crumbling ruins of the old society - like a new tree growing in a hollow stump.
I think the best anyone can do is try to make life as good as possible in their mini sphere of influence, their personal bubble of friends and relationships. If everyone did that, society would be better. I’m not sure what to do about psychopaths in power. Maybe deal with the psychopaths in your personal world or aim to reduce your own personal behavior that’s harmful to others?
I’m currently taking a class about this (kinda). The current system, which is, in the states, neoliberal capitalism (redundancy for clarity) encourages people to act immorally, or more accurately under a set of morals that justifies those actions. A different system can encourage a different set of actions to get success, and a different set of morals to justify those actions. This is a large part of politics. The other part is praxis, or getting that in place. I’m not going to share the set of theory I believe in, but rather common ways people try to impose their desired version of society.
One way is through the current system, even if you want to completely change it. This is what the class I am talking about. You identify who has power, why they act the way they do, and how you can get them to enact your policies, or at least gain power yourself. This method falls under a lot of criticism, as it stands to reason that a system built by those in power cannot overthrow them. You can’t use the master’s tools against him.
The other way is revolution, but that has its own problems. It is hard to convince people to completely change everything, and when it does happen, it often happens in the best way possible for those who have power. It also isn’t any more moral than the other options, but that is the nature of changing an immoral system. Welcome to politics.
Disclaimer: I’m by no means an expert, as I am just getting into political theory, both in my own studies and formal education.
We gotta bring in the new world order.
You could be also interested in democratic confederalism, however I don’t know how does the curdish reality look like.
