[MrBill]

I would suggest that anyone who talks about the French Revolution should spend a few hours researching how and why it happened. It certainly was not caused by high expectations. And it was manipulated from above in response to an economic dispute between landowners and the crown over historical rights, rents and taxes and not a groundswell from the folk.

The parallels with post peak oil resource depletion are not very accurate either. If you want to speak about roasting the rich or those perceived as privileged then the Spanish Civil War may be a better analogy where the socialists mobbed the fascists who were made up of the ruling classes for the most part. But even then revenge killings were highly local and based upon local greivances and petty jealousies as much as ideology or economic rifts.

The civil war merely provided the cover much like in Rwanda. There you may be targeted if you have two acres of land and two cows by the guy that has one acre and only one cow because you married the girl he fancied. I really do not think the Gini-Coefficient has much to do with that kind of score settling. In the former Yugoslavia, and certainly in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, it had more to do with peasants having guns, and then showing those in the city who was in charge now. "We got the guns, we make the rules now."

If you are an accepted fixture in your local community, and are seen as providing jobs and supporting that community, then you might be far less likely to be targeted by the mob as the unwanted migrant workers in the shanty town down by the river.

The French Revolution fires up the imagination, but I just do not think that post peak oil resource depletion is going to be the great social leveller that many posters expect. At least not early stage depletion. Any more than The Great Depression lead to heads on pikes. Quite the opposite. Many made great fortunes after the crash. And if you wanted a paying job to support your family you did not want to be seen as one of "those socialists aggitating for a revolution." Just my opinion. Whose else, right?

[nobodypanic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'I') would suggest that anyone who talks about the French Revolution should spend a few hours researching how and why it happened. It certainly was not caused by high expectations. And it was manipulated from above in response to an economic dispute between landowners and the crown over historical rights, rents and taxes and not a groundswell from the folk.

[nobodypanic]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', 's')ee the problem w/that scenario is that it ignores the history of modern revolutions. when people that have come to expect a growing standard are faced w/the opposite, you get things like the french revolution.

it's perfectly plausible and reasonable to predict that the wealthy and well off will be lined up against walls and roasted over spits when things get bad.