[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Isochroma', '
')With less to lose, people are more likely to revolt.

[Isochroma]

I wasn't implying that revolt only happens when there's absolutely nothing left to lose. As the paper I linked to found, people are willing to revolt when their income declines.

Income decline is a pretty harsh thing, but remember the long list of far harsher actualities facing people alive today, never mind the hypothetical future revolt-candidates.

These worse things, like torture, death of loved ones, even neighbors, 'disappearances' executed by State authorities or rebel groups, mass slaughters of which Hitler was only one of a whole crowd up to recent years... all these have happened and are happening in other countries today.

The study never asked these questions, for several reasons. One is that by using only income, or even primarily income, a study can produce hard numbers. You can plot the responses on a graph, feed it through computers, and ultimately, into the algorithms that decide stock trading and government policy at the State level - not State as in a state of a union or province of a country, but the executive of national power and the entity empowered by law to exercise lethal power and the nonlethal coercive power of the law.

In the halls of policy formation, those graphs will tell policymakers about the 'elasticity' of popular will, just as the elasticity of market prices tells the economist about a market's underlying dynamics. The study I linked to is proper to the field of econometric sociodynamics, the study of how social dynamics are influenced by - and influence - market dynamics.

At that level of power everything is justifiable, and everyone potentially disposable. At that level, financial markets, governments, human lives, and the environment are just chips on the table, fungible commodities to be bought and sold. They want it all and will not stop until they have it all. But they can't go too far too quick - there has to be some feedback. They need to know how much traction they've got on the ground. And how much more force can be applied without it sliding out from under them - and swallowing them up in a maelstrom in the process.

So they fund a few studies, which are never reported in the media. Sometimes they can be found with a lot of digging.

In practice these powers go beyond and enter the functional arena of direct rule by force, conspiracy and other illegal means. That is my definition of the State.

One interest of the state could plausibly be to understand how much income pressure their population could withstand and not be swept up in a functionally destabilizing revolution. Here I make the distinction between a functionally destabilizing revolution and mere anarchy, ethnic or racial wars, etc. It's important to make this distinction between the two cases because there is a massive difference in effect on the State between a non-destabilizng and a destabilizing revolt.

The ruling class may decide to allow or even incite a non-destabilizing revolt to give them authority for a clampdown, and it may throw off popular pressure for reform, frighten the populace, etc. - if and only if it is directed at someone other than the rulers.

Such nondestabilizing conflicts can have other fringe benefits, including reducing superfluous populations (blacks killing each other in ghettos is one example), the prison industry, and of course providing meat to the entertainment industry's meatgrinder.

On the other hand, a truly destabilizing revolt will threaten their power directly. In such a revolt, the people act in a coordinated way against their oppressors. They gang up, tool up, and take on the battle for something greater than their own personal skins.

Instead of killing their co-workers like in the US, they lock their bosses up: 'bossnapping' in Europe. The boss gets released when the workers get their demands met. And they do get their demands met, one way or another.

And that is what the elites are afraid of. They don't mind employees shooting one another, or even the occasional boss-killing. These random events aren't systemically destabilizing like an organized revolution would be. If such events did become very common, the likely result would be more brutality from the existing regime or even more brutality from their overthrowers.

That is what they have worked tirelessly for a very, very long time to prevent. Through control of the media, they have managed very well to 'image engineer' a 'public persona' of the public that prevents to the best degree that it can popular consciousness to form around a common ideal, a common unity between the oppressed against their real enemies.

The result of all the billions invested in media brainwashing could very well be most Americans killing each other and scattering to the winds in a real or manufactured disaster, rather than banding together and using the opportunity to throw off their collective yoke of oppression.

Alas, circumstances are spinning beyond even their control, though they would prefer - truly need - people to believe that they have everything running like a well-oiled machine. There mustn't be any cracks in its smooth surface, except in the approved locations. Democrat-Republican, white-black-latino, man-woman, immigrant-citizen, those faultlines are ok, they are to be fostered and shown constant attention, warm loving care.

Scapegoats provide something to chat about on the evening news, something to fill the ever-increasing collective mental void - an empty space where systemic analysis and honest truth are excluded with religious fervor. Bread and circuses, as has already been mentioned; eerie parallels with the Roman Empire abound, and so does literature on the topic, which is too voluminous to get into here.

Without those, the collective gaze might wander too far afield - it might spy the colossal injustices being perpetrated in its name at home and abroad, which would spell disaster for the true perpetrators.

[Novus]

The two biggest class war revolutions in a historical context were the French and Russian Revolutions. In both cases the oppressed masses rose up and violently killed their oppressors. We all know the saying "Let them eat cake" which was said by Marie Antoinette to a representative of the starving that there was no bread. TPTB would rather we all forget the response.



Will that happen in America? I have to say definitely NO.

Americans are a fractured bunch of individuals who take the lone ranger approach to things. If someone in America is homeless and starving the blame is placed squarely on the moral and personal failings of the individual. People of all stations and classes of life in America accept this as true from the poorest of the poor to richest of the rich and everything in between. To believe anything else is Un-American.

There is no possible way a populist revolution will happen in America. The downtrodden sheeple will rather literally starve to death, jump off bridges, commit suicide than join in or start a revolution.

[Cloud9]

You are wrong. Class warfare is very possible. The first wave will be lauched at the ballot box. The next will be lauched by the courts. The exposure of the white collar criminals will demand justice.

[OutOfGas]

The good manufacturing jobs that built the middle class are rapidly disapearing. The majority of the jobs left barely pay a living wage.

Will there be a revolution ? I doubt it in the short term. I do see a long term decline in the standard of living in the US for most people.

The disparity between the poor, middle class and the rich is increasing. At the company that I previously worked for, the gap between the upper management pay and the hourly workers pay was obscene.

The greed of most corporations rewards the top management while asking the workers to take all of the pain.
Globalization has destroyed US industry.

If we have another oil price spike the green sprouts will be clipped off. The SWHTF.

[Revi]

I live in a small manufacturing town in Maine. It's a "mill town" which still has its big industries. The economy drops off sharply north of here. There are jobs still being done here, but there are also a lot of people who have lost hope. They cling to this place because there is no other place for them.

There is a vast forest north of us that is owned by big holding companies.

It's always been close to the edge, but now we can see it from here. If any of these industries closes up shop we will be one of those nearly abandoned towns we see north of here.

I can't see revolution happening around here. There's nothing to rebel against.

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Isochroma', 'O')n a collision course with that happy picture is resource depletion (oil, phosphates and lots more), environmental destruction, excess population (its absolute level and growth), and structural greed.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Novus', '
')There is no possible way a populist revolution will happen in America. The downtrodden sheeple will rather literally starve to death, jump off bridges, commit suicide than join in or start a revolution.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', '
')When the costs of allowing us to live outweigh the benefits, they will kill us all.

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', '
')When the costs of allowing us to live outweigh the benefits, they will kill us all.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')The implication is that we should start a revolution? And if we aren't out there throwing molotov cocktails or blowing up the bastille then it reflects on our weak character? In which case I say this: was the revolution ultimately a good thing for Russia? Ask the victims of Stalin, et. al.

The outcome of the enraged masses taking over the country in a fit of hysteria would probably be worse than what we already have.

[ian807]

Dreamtwister is correct. Nothing will happen as long as:

1) There's plenty of cheap food
2) There's plenty of idiot TV like "American Idol" or "Dancing with the Stars"
3) There are plenty of cheap psychoactive drugs like Prozac and other SSRIs. Expect drug legalization (at least of marijuana) in the next 8 years.

Haiti has it pretty bad. Nobody is revolting, last I looked. The Honduran revolt too, is pretty low-key.

Expect all this to change pretty rapidly when oil EROEI starts approaching 4 or 5 to 1 and prices start spiking. After that, food, drugs and just about everything else will be in short supply and without consistent power, there's no TV or internet. People might actually start thinking about their situation. When that happens, so can revolution.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ian807', 'W')hen that happens, so can revolution.

[highlander]

I don't see a revolution as much as widespread civil disorder. Anger will be vented, but in a non-targeted manner. A revolution needs leadership, which is lacking in the western world. The breakdown in civil order will lead to martial law and then dictatorship. The sheeple will be calmed.

[Arthur75]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('highlander', 'I') don't see a revolution as much as widespread civil disorder. Anger will be vented, but in a non-targeted manner. A revolution needs leadership, which is lacking in the western world. The breakdown in civil order will lead to martial law and then dictatorship. The sheeple will be calmed.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Arthur75', '
')having the courage to really go away from the car infrastructure and change the existing infrastructure (in Europe we are more "in between").

[Arthur75]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')
If a revolution comes in the near future it will have absolutely nothing to do with peak oil.

People still can't seem to separate the credit crisis with peak oil. People don't care about peak oil right now, guys. They don't. Trying to superimpose the peak oil issue onto the credit crisis might work here, but not on main street.

[Pops]

I don't think there has been much violence around economics in the US without other triggers. The bonus marchers after WWI wanted money and the bread rioters during the civil war were hungry but those were situational.

Most US violence has been about civil rights and conscription/war. Urban decay played a big part in the '60s but without the racial and discriminatory aspects of inner city relations I wonder how far they would have gone?

You can complain about "TPTB" providing bread and circuses but it's a pretty weak complaint considering we are the fattest and most materially wealthy population in history.


And I'll ask the same question I've asked before:

Revolt against what – to replace it with what?

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'R')evolt against what – to replace it with what?

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I') don't think there has been much violence around economics in the US without other triggers. The bonus marchers after WWI wanted money and the bread rioters during the civil war were hungry but those were situational.

Most US violence has been about civil rights and conscription/war. Urban decay played a big part in the '60s but without the racial and discriminatory aspects of inner city relations I wonder how far they would have gone?

You can complain about "TPTB" providing bread and circuses but it's a pretty weak complaint considering we are the fattest and most materially wealthy population in history.


And I'll ask the same question I've asked before:

Revolt against what – to replace it with what?