I wonder what would happen if people did a “debt strike”. If everybody stopped paying their debts at the same time, the credit card company’s wouldn’t be able to afford to punish everybody. They going to repossess 100k cars and houses etc?
The government would cover the credit card company’s debts while going after one consumer at a time. Then moderates would celebrate a great victory when the credit card company paid the government back, see, everything worked out!
This is more or less my vision of the only possible successful revolution we can have in the face of the ongoing destruction of our civilization by a relative handful of destructively wealthy and/or power-hungry assholes.
A revolution that simply seeks to replace the power structure is doomed, because the best case scenario is that we’ll just end up with a somewhat different set of assholes. And any revolution built on violence will only lead to yet another violent society, with the most willing and able to commit the most violence against the most people yet again at the top.
The successful revolution will be enough people simply refusing to submit.
As you say, there’s an upper limit to the number of people the assholes can punish, imprison or kill. And if we exceed that limit by far enough, the entire illusion of their power will collapse.
And that’s the crucial point - their power is ultimately an illusion. It only really exists to the degree that people believe it exists and submit to it in the belief that it exists. If enough people deny its existence, the assholes will reach a point at which nothing theyvdo will work, and that’ll be the end of their illusory power.
Unfortunately, that’s going to require a humanity notably different from the current one - a humanity that’s broadly ready and willing to take a stand, even if that means they’ll suffer individually, in order to free human society from the rule of the egotists and narcissists and megalomaniacs and psychopaths.
Back in the day, when the banks came to reposses people’s houses, their neighbors would block them from getting to them. They can’t take it all if we don’t let them. Ownership is possession, not what’s written on some document somewhere. If you can’t come possess it, you don’t actually own it, do you?
I wonder what would happen if people did a “debt strike”. If everybody stopped paying their debts at the same time, the credit card company’s wouldn’t be able to afford to punish everybody. They going to repossess 100k cars and houses etc?
The government would cover the credit card company’s debts while going after one consumer at a time. Then moderates would celebrate a great victory when the credit card company paid the government back, see, everything worked out!
This is more or less my vision of the only possible successful revolution we can have in the face of the ongoing destruction of our civilization by a relative handful of destructively wealthy and/or power-hungry assholes.
A revolution that simply seeks to replace the power structure is doomed, because the best case scenario is that we’ll just end up with a somewhat different set of assholes. And any revolution built on violence will only lead to yet another violent society, with the most willing and able to commit the most violence against the most people yet again at the top.
The successful revolution will be enough people simply refusing to submit.
As you say, there’s an upper limit to the number of people the assholes can punish, imprison or kill. And if we exceed that limit by far enough, the entire illusion of their power will collapse.
And that’s the crucial point - their power is ultimately an illusion. It only really exists to the degree that people believe it exists and submit to it in the belief that it exists. If enough people deny its existence, the assholes will reach a point at which nothing theyvdo will work, and that’ll be the end of their illusory power.
Unfortunately, that’s going to require a humanity notably different from the current one - a humanity that’s broadly ready and willing to take a stand, even if that means they’ll suffer individually, in order to free human society from the rule of the egotists and narcissists and megalomaniacs and psychopaths.
Maybe someday…
Back in the day, when the banks came to reposses people’s houses, their neighbors would block them from getting to them. They can’t take it all if we don’t let them. Ownership is possession, not what’s written on some document somewhere. If you can’t come possess it, you don’t actually own it, do you?