Eh, I think it's oversimplification to attribute it to a single motivation. There are definitely people like OP is describing, but there are also definitely the 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire' types. And honestly I think a damn big percentage is just plain ol' fear of change wrapped in several layers of rationalization.
Oo yeah, for real. I kind of stumbled upon this in my teens (maybe everyone does), but luckily was able to snap out of it, woke up, and realised I could form flexible informed opinions that define my whole personality
A lot of people just lack critical thinking skills and imagination. A lot of people like being at the bottom of hierarchy. A lot of people like when people they dont like suffer, even if it means they do, too. A lot of people are religious. All of these things are plagues on our society, and a lot of them are done on purpose by those in power.
In theory, a benevolent dictatorship is a good system, that can cut through a lot of bureaucracy and enact good changes in a timely fashion. The obvious problems are who gets to be dictator and how do you keep the dictatorship benevolent.
If I could unilaterally make somebody a dictator and believed they would do what's best, I'd do it. But I don't know if there is such a person. To me it just seems like people believe in and trust certain public figures to agree with them, and enact the same changes they'd want.
They have been told that their sky daddy will actively judge their lives and they will get what sky daddy thinks they deserve. They have been told this so often and in so many ways that they now worship money. Money becomes the way for them to tell how sky daddy judges their lives. Obviously, this means that those who have more money are more beloved by sky daddy and therefore should be listened to and obeyed.
That also happens to be the literal definition. Surprisingly few people know that the political left and right correspond to equality and hierarchy respectively.
Right and left wing are historical terms stemming from the literal left and right halves of a physical building. If you're not referring to the revolution era french national assembly, you have to accept that since other connotations may have snuck in along the way.
Even at the time the terms came with complex meanings.
Boiling it down at any time merely to equality versus hierarchy is only something you'd do if you want to misrepresent people by oversimplification.
These heirarchies caused or exaserbated just about every major tragedy in history - war, genocide, slavery, rape, empire, colonialism, capitalism, etc.
But depending on how you look at it, 25-40% of humans just like heirarchies and want them, despite the misery they cause for both the empowered and disempowered.
That's a huge problem - fascism will likely always have a base of supporters to come back from no matter how many times we defeat it, and you just can't imprison/disenfranchise/exile that high a % of people for a wide variety of obvious reasons.
I fear this is a "this is who we are as an organism" problem that will follow our species wherever we go.
But depending on how you look at it, 25-40% of humans just like heirarchies and want them, despite the misery they cause for both the empowered and disempowered.
Get them into kink.
Seriously though, you can have consensual hierarchical structures that provide an outlet for those desires to the degree that they are innate. Is the desire to force everyone in the world to be a part of your hierarchy really part of that innate desire? Or is it more that some people feel more comfortable when they have a clearly defined status?
And it doesn't have to be confined to kink, for example, in a community for a competitive sport or game, there can be a bit of an implicit social hierarchy based on skill.
Those kinds of hierarchies are a lot closer to the hierarchies that humans evolved with, applying to an immediate social group, within "Dunbar's number." There was never a long period of time (from an evolutionary standpoint) where state-wide or globe-spanning hierarchies were selected for, so it doesn't really make sense that those would be innate and unavoidable desires.
I wonder how many people think that their place in society would be a lot lower if it was based on competition, so it is better to preserve the system that keeps them where they are at.
That's literally true though? If it's hard to see, take it to the extreme: If you were the only person in a place, you'd be the most important one by default?
They wouldn't do a good job, but they'd have the job since, you know, there is less competition.
I did work and travel in USA, and they were paying us peanuts due to some law shenanigans (they had to pay overtime for Americans, not us.) Wouldn't they have to hire a native instead of me if I wasn't allowed to work there?
Same reasons cults work. They want someone else doing the thinking and leading for them, and surrender responsibility and blame to someone else. It's never their own fault, so they want a system where they don't have to be responsible or feel at fault.
The thing is, tree structures are very good ways to scale interconnected systems. Ask any computer scientist or computer networker about it.
This applies to societal systems as well. A bronze age society that has a feudal structure can manage a much larger area than a flat society. Armies can be coordinated that would be an ineffective mob otherwise.
That doesn't make hierarchies nice for the people living in them, any more than the industrial revolution was actually nice for the people living through it. But they are an enabling technology, and societies that did not have hierarchy were eventually overwhelmed until almost every living human is living that way.
For sure it's more effective with entreched heirarchies, bit i think it's possible to use that organisational structure without it metastisizing into a perminant heirarchy. Anarchist federations do this, sortition is useful, turn-taking etc.
societies that did not have hierarchy
I don't believe such a thing ever existed. Other mammals display heirarchies so it was probably present in a distant ancestor, predating humans and our societies.
It's the nature, duration and intensity of heirarchy that has changed so remarkably in the last 15k odd years.
Belief that heirarchies are natural and desirable because some people are better than others is the worldview required to be vulnerable to the lie of fascism, it's the precursor to all supremacist thinking.
If you look at opinion polling across countries, die-hard support for supremacist candidates hovers around 25-40%. Die hard as in will support those candidates no matter how poorly they're doing. Support levels wax and wane as anxiety goes up and down, or as supremacist candidates tend to be winning or losing, but the core support base for authoritarian ideals routinely comes out around 25-40% across most western countries.
Belief that heirarchies are natural and desirable because some people are better than others is the worldview required to be vulnerable to the lie of fascism, it’s the precursor to all supremacist thinking.
It isn't because "some people are better than others", it's because some people are better than others at leading. Leadership is a skill, and it can be learned and practiced just like any other skill. You could say, "Hey, Mary is good at fixing things, let's put her in charge of repairs. Margaret is good at planning projects and organizing people, let's put her in leadership."
And no, it doesn't imply that the person leading should have total control over everything or that they can't be held accountable.
If you look at opinion polling across countries, die-hard support for supremacist candidates hovers around 25-40%.
You said "humans who want hierarchies" and you're equating that with "support for supremacist candidates". Does that mean that if I support a centrist or a left-wing candidate, then I don't want hierarchies? I can tell you, there are certainly not that many anarchists in the world. 60-75% of the population?
The desire for hierarchy and order isn't an inherently bad one. A highly authoritarian individual will be the first to volunteer when someone needs to run into a burning building to save someone. They will be the first to volunteer to defend the community. They will also be the people that organize trash pickups, because littering is bad.
However, they can also be easily weaponized against others. Just like littering is against the natural order of things, and they will go out of their way to pick up litter, they can be convinced that other people are also against the natural order of things....with significantly more horrific outcomes.
A highly authoritarian individual will be the first to volunteer when someone needs to run into a burning building to save someone. They will be the first to volunteer to defend the community. They will also be the people that organize trash pickups, because littering is bad.
I don't think this is necessarily true. A person can just as easily be motivated to do these from a sense of solidarity and mutual responsibility than a desire for hierarchies. (Ursula le Guin's The Dispossessed explores the various aspects of how a society could be built on such principles.)
I don't believe these two go together, heirarchies tend to be characterised by tension and discord.
highly authoritarian individual will be the first to volunteer when someone needs to run into a burning building to save someone ... to volunteer ... to organize
It's actually the exact opposite! The phenomenon of Elite Panic is well established and included in disaster planning.
During an emergency, most people exhibit "spontaneous self organisation" - bucket lines, food distribution, search parties, etc. Whereas people with authority are much more likely to freak out, to fail to understand that the situation is different, to enforce detrimental rules, to feel threatened, to generally act badly.
Oh, you misunderstand. I'm talking about authoritarians. You seem to have done some reading in the past. Do some more. theauthoritarians.org
The people that form those bucket lines and search parties would, ironically, be more likely to be authoritarian in worldview, and therefore have the greatest psychological need to fix the problem.
This touches the terrain of leadership and motivation, and I'd argue that authoritarianism is accidental here. Sure, here and there leaders with authoritarian views rise (e.g. Mussolini), but also people who do not believe in it so much (e.g. Che Guevara). There have been studies about the psychology of leaders and motivators, and they seem to be driven by a lot of energy and often certainty at least in some core ideas. There are books like A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness that go as far as to suggest these traits border the unhealthy in many notorious and strong cases.
It seems that populism/fascism is 'ingrained' in our simple minds. But that begs the question, why do some of us reject it? Random chance, empathy, or education?
I don't think it's ingrained and then rejected, i think it's present in some % of humans because heirarchic organisation is useful in limited, temporary contexts.
Pirate ships were feircely egalitarian until a target was sighted, then the captain is a dictator until the loot was secure. Some hunter-gatherers had a season of authoritarianism (say, hunting season) in between seasons of different social organisation.
So like how sickle cell anemia is debilitating but grants near immunity to malaria, heirarchophilia has just enough limited benefits that it remains as a variant within the population.
Because I was taught as an American that I should be a rugged individual, which is incompatible with fascism. I also do not really enjoy much sports so this tribalism blah blah just doesn't do it for me. I also don't much like circuses and spectacles; fairs, to me, are just meh.
And I could probably ignore it when it's benevolent, but it's often malicious like germ warfare.
"Rugged individualism" is also incompatible with hierarchies but these people aren't thinking that far into it. It's just a myth that makes it your fault when society fails.
I sort of disagree, it's that they want to feel safe and taken care of. They've made Trump their Jesus, literally. He is their shepherd and will only do well for them.
That's why the gas and inflation going in the wrong direction after 2 years is fucking with their heads. If he's wrong about one thing, and god can't be wrong, then maybe he isn't a god.
Sort of? This is giving way to much logic to an emotional situation. The reason fanboys choose Musk isn't because he has leadership or patriarchal qualities, he just has money which they think is the same thing as being smart. They can project themselves on to him and experience his wealth or veneer of expertise vicariously through a fantasy.
This still is the relationship men have with patriarchs. It's just obfuscated by the fact that Piss-odor guy isn't competent in the ways associated with rulership
I think your interpretation is still too cerebral. People don't follow money because it's money. Money has become essential to our individual survival, so success with money is essentially conquering the threats to individual survival, and I think that is why people revere him and other billionaires.
At the end of the day, we're all shit scared of our own end, and we've been tricked into believing that money is our way out of that inevitability. Money is God, so those with lots of money are closer to God, if not a god themselves.
The thread is so lost anymore it doesn’t even matter. In America it is just survival as America becomes Russia. You can’t defend anyone when you can’t even get your doctor visit or medication to live if you even try to rock the boat for more than 3 days. If that. Modern feudalism.
Stupid and confident is a dangerous combination. Add arrogant, charismatic or attractive, and you get weaponised incompetence.
Weak people love confidence and will tolerate arrogance. Once a confident person starts observing those around them agreeing, following, defending them, they start to believe their own bullshit, and they learn through reward feedback that if they do anything with confidence and arrogance, even when they are wrong, weaker people will agree with them.
Every time I've had an honest, constructive conversation with a conservative, I've found the root of their beliefs is fear, whether they are conscious of it or not.
This is what the US tried to do in Germany after WWII. There were "denazification" efforts. Unfortunately, they did a shit job of it, which is why Germany still has a problem with the right wing.
I saw an interview with a lady comparing Trump to megachurch preacher and it made perfect sense. You have these people giving their last dollars to a guy living in a mansion and flying in a private jet because that's what god wants. They are conditioned since childhood to just accept that some people are there to exploit them and their purpose is to be exploited by them. Having leader like Trump makes perfect sense to them. It's just conservative brain doing its usual thing.
There was an article about one of those "tradwife" influencers who got a divorce recently after realizing that she hated the very idea, but only after she was engulfed in the life.
Or they are just brainwashed, and can't fathom another type of society after ~500 years of capitalism.
I've known far more Musk fanboys than I would have liked to, and I wouldn't say they see him or other genocidal pedophiles as gods or anything.
In fact, it's quite difficult to describe it or compare it to anything, because that sort of blind admiration just plain doesn't make any sense, and usually contradicts their other beliefs. Which is a big sign of being affected by propaganda.
This, but unironically. As a sub who is anti-Trump, it becomes a bit uncomfortable when the conversation turns into "Conservatives are just subs who want to be dominated!" Yeah, okay, maybe there's some truth to that. The problem is that there isn't any safeword I can use on Trump.
It’s also “don’t rock the boat.” Because if society decides that rich people don’t get to be filthy rich, the rich peoppe will take it out on the peasants so they can stay as rich as possible. IOW if we don’t leave the rich people alone they’ll be mean to us and take even more.
This is the same logic as "If I give the bully some money, then they won't take all of my money". If they can get some, why wouldn't they take the rest? Appeasement doesn't work. They just push for more.
They see people like Musk, and they see strength, if only because of their economic capabilities. They want a society of strength. A society where people hoard around the few to lift them up. A society that enables greatness. Somebody who can look mortality in the eyes and reject it. To bring us into the future with vitality.
What they fail to see is that by turning the mighty into gods, we turn ourselves into coggs. In the pursuit of lifting them up, we alienate ourselves from the meaningful. Makes us sacrifice for the superficial. We become lifeless and in fear of the meaningful.
I don't know, I would consider our hard-wiring to seek out social relationships or to love our children to be a part of what makes us human. (As part of a basket, in the sense that having four legs is part of what makes a dog a dog, but not all dogs have four legs.)
Recognizing our wiring puts us in the best position to strategize how to work around it, if we want to. Like trying to not eat cookies from the pantry via willpower will always ultimately fail, but not having any cookies in the pantry has a good chance of preventing excessive cookie eating.
I don't defend the rich but I also don't claim it's stupid hard to make 75k and up and I will never in my life say starting a career that can help you live comfortably is an impossible task.
I think the unwillingness to invest in one's self and to sacrifice your thought process of fuck climbing up the ladder, is what's hurting people's personal wealth growth.
I think that as much people are preserving themselves and not going into careers because they don't offer as many benefits as the boomers, I also think people are limiting themselves and I think that if you don't want to invest in your future, that's your own fault.
However, I do not agree with generational wealth but I don't disagree on passing a home down. If you're fortunate enough to have a house passed down to you, then that's what you are, fortunate.
I dont agree with trusifarians using their wealth to buy up more property or to be greedy and glutenous with their money.
I don't hate on the six figure earners but I think once you make 450k/year, you can start figuring out ways to better society.
I think once you hit a 20mil* net worth, you can figure out ways to help other people.
It's like the Stanford marshmallow experiment. It's not willpower, it's that people have been taught that any money we save will be lost.
We're all expected to invest or lose money to inflation. But most of us don't know anything about investing. So we trust our money to some Wall Street type, and then get called stupid when we pick the wrong dudes. But you don't get called stupid if you just spend the money now.
It's even worse in the USA where everyone has the specter of medical debt hanging over us. You can do everything right and then just get a massive forever debt from which bankruptcy can't save you. Better to spend the money on a community that might appreciate it.
And I pointed this out before that rich people inadvertently will end up becoming involved in politics, even if there was not interest or want to in the beginning or was never a goal; It's shocking how many of them end up getting to know their mayor at a personal level to leverage them.
Most don't leverage their local government for the better and it's rare to see it. It's rare that someone will like actually fund a food bank for a year and become involved in the community. Imagine having enough money to set a trust for a church to have an indefinite food bank? That would be so fucking cool, I would so do that if I had that kind of money to toss around. Or or or like buying old hospitals and completely demolishing them and putting up modern hospitals.
So we trust our money to some Wall Street type, and then get called stupid when we pick the wrong dudes.
99% of account managers and financial advisors are just some dude. The only sensible thing to invest in is an index fund like VOO, SPLG, FXAIX, IVV, or for non-US stuff, VEU, VSS, or something else based on an index appropriate to your needs.
Genuinely, the best known growth strategy in a capitalist market is also the lowest-brain strategy. Buy an index fund, and then do nothing.
Everything else is just giving money to someone else to do a worse job on average.
You're not wrong, but do you hear yourself? That's a terrifying alphabet soup of complicated choices. And in the next thread we'll talk about AI IPOs dumping on the index fund suckers before a collapse.
They do a ton of work for a man they think should tell them how to live life. Even how to vote. They gladly abdicate their agency as a human so they "don't have to think about silly things like politics."
The irony is my mother is an incredibly strong woman. But it's religion that makes her think this way. My nice is just very much a people pleaser, and her fiance is just the baby of the family, so he makes demands and expects everyone else to clean up after him.
What's under that though? Is it another belief? Such as; some jobs are so horrible people must be forced into them? Or perhaps; life being told what to do is easier than having to decide? Or simply; I'd prefer to be cog in a great machine? Part of a team?
Or maybe just, some jobs bad and good, only a few people are suited for them? Is it false meritocracy to hide the shame of having accepted plutocracy? Or perhaps an earnest acceptance of the game of Capital. Acceptance that ones own position must be due to ones own mistakes, and ergo, a superiors is due to their good choices? That kind of justice?
What is it, and can we change their underlying belief?
Nah, brah. This is kinda true but kinda bullshit. Since they're not citing shit I'm not gonna either. I'll go vibe mode too.
People, my fellow Americans, are disillusioned because they've never known anything else. They don't want anything better because they've never been taught that better things aren't even imaginable at best, most likely an existential threat. We're peak society because fuck you, the conservative elite they told us so. It's been that way for decades, most people don't know anything else.
We're all a captive market because the system that was supposed to protect us has been corrupted and is complicit. It doesn't have to be. A huge problem is it's extremely profitable to realize this and act on the opposite side, to be evil and want to exploit everyone, especially the undereducated and marginalized.
It sucks! Talking with brainwashed fools is exhausting, but they're victims like the rest of us, and we should be working on inroads instead of division. Cut your losses for some, sure, but a lot of people are inspired by populism in both directions. We need to leverage that now.
Talk to your neighbors y'all! They're noticing the shit hitting the fan, but they're afraid to talk about it. We're in a lot of this shit because our representatives were too polite/cowardly/ineffective to hold abysmal conservative/fascist leaders accountable in the first place. We never convinced their voters that their so called leaders are con artists stealing their comfort of living as a result. It's the most obvious it's ever been now. Let's take advantage, no?
Nobody inherently believes anything. They observe the world as they grow up, they listen to the things their parents and friends say, they listen to music and the media. We all are influenced by the environment around us and then we have the balls to say "I'm an independent thinker".
I think listening to whatever someone tells you they believe is a waste of time. They don't hold fast to principles. It's some combination of regurgitating the environment back and reinforcing pleasurable experiences and removing painful experiences.
Nobody inherently believes anything. They observe the world as they grow up, they listen to the things their parents and friends say, they listen to music and the media. We all are influenced by the environment around us and then we have the balls to say “I’m an independent thinker”.
Brilliant point.
I think the undertone of existential comics saying "oh they INHERENTLY believe in masters" is trying to imply the only way to deal with such people is to kill them. Gruesome. The shutting down of all dialogues.
This is why I belive listening to what someone tells you they believe is not a waste of time, because you can then convince them otherwise.
This is why I belive listening to what someone tells you they believe is not a waste of time, because you can then convince them otherwise.
Ok but like.... How many people will actually change their mind?
I've resorted to understanding their psychology. Like what assumptions are they not communicating when they share opinions? What life events pushed them to have a fearful/optimistic outlook? And then I tell them "it makes sense why you would feel this way" which sorta invites them to reconsider without being like "hey why do you think dumb things?"
We all have our heroes that we look up to. We all think that the other's heroes are stupid and bad and our heroes are geniuses and good.
We all get disappointed with our heroes and inevitably find out that they were stupid and bad, too. So, we stop reading, and take a nap from noon to two a.m. Then we all get up and we are all sad
Musk fanboys aren’t the only ones who love hierarchy. Just about everyone will agree with the phrase “someone needs to be in charge” regardless of politics.
people defend rich because they believe in masters
No: the rhetorical defense of rich people usually arises when action against rich people such as "eat the rich" or "steal all their assets" has been proposed, and people say "well not all rich people deserve that."
Which is true. I don't even think a majority of rich people deserve some punishment for how they accrued their wealth. If you have some conception that they should be dropping crumbs of wealth for you along the way, consider:
1 this is rooted in your education, so you really just despise the fact that they rich were educated different from your or had a different outcome to that same education - which is not their fault, since education is top-down nowadays.
2 they may well have already dropped their crumbs, and you were just not among the lucky recipients of it. People prioritise their own family first, and families can be very extensive once you're in the Business of throwing away cash.
3 Literally nothing in society insists upon or suggests that rich people reinvest their wealth in others, or other walks of society - esswntially running counter to how it was historically, for the record.
4 if someone does decide to give away money they get distracted by charity, which is less direct than government schemes to redistribute wealth. Are you going to be vaguely annoyed at people who have done well for themselves rather than the governments ineptitude and charity inefficiency?
And importantly - it is well demonstrated that people can become rich through ethical means. This has been shown to be true over and over again.
Instead of just getting mad at the vague sense of rich people "not doing what you want them to do," reach out and create dialogue with them to lay out your vision for society. Nobody wants to give away money without thinking it will be used effectively.
Elon Musk fan boys
We should call them SpaceX fanboys because they're two different things, really. People support SpaceX because it has been the most technologically successful rocket launching in enterprise in history and is the best bet at space colonisation for its high level or organisation no massive amounts of funding, assuming Elon isn't just a "for profit" kind of guy now.
I cannot imagine liking Elon musk just by himself. He is misguided and loves AI and hasn't taken the time to uhh remedy his PR image. He was buddies either trump. Its like: "do you support the Soviet union and hate stalin" or "do you support the Indian independence movement but disapprove of Mohatma Gandhi (child molester btw)"
People who like Elon musk like him because he politically aligns with them, that is the main reason at the moment. Whether in terms of AI, bitcoin or right wing politics.
1: conservative women like men because they like hierarchy
It is true for some but for many its just that they don't like men being criticised all the time - or the traditional way of life in general. Those ones do not take it to a performative "let me stay home baking for my husband all day" position.
And if people have the right to gay marriage et cet, give them the right to align with that traditional way of life, right? Even if they feel it involves some degree of subservience.
This is an awful allegory for the rich- poor relations, because men-women in a relationship is a binary. Rich and poor is a gradient. If someone approves of rich, they might be like "so I don't understand why anyone would need a billion dollars or more but i support peoples right to hold more money than other people up until that point."
Whereas the question of 'do you like men or not' comes down to "do you literally tolerate >50% of society's right to exist on their terms or not?
As always, then they should say that. No more "x is y" "no I meant chi is y!" debateslop
So what you’re describing is a grave miscommunication in which someone hears “rich” in 2026 and thinks “millionaire”.
No; rich is an incredibly broad, general, term. Anyone who speaks the English language knows that. So again, you have to be specific in your arguments when you lay them out for it to even make logical sense
IMHO if you really want a good debate, you need to ask up front. Rich means a lot of different things to different people and they are indeed saying what they mean.
Thats also giving some of the women too much credit.
They are aware that they can exchange vagina for money. You say the right things, act the right way and some guy who hates the idea of his wife having more say than him will happily keep her from ever working a day in her life.
I'll say that most people that like billionaires is only because they fantasize into becoming one by winning a lotto prize or by hustling. The same way I fantasize I'm a wizard, but I don't expect any magical intervention to turn me into one.
I just need to first find that talking toad.
Look at it this way. One of my values is having the courage to help others. So, I would admire somebody who risked their life to go into a burning building and save somebody. I'm doubtful that I have the same courage, but I hope that I would. It's something that I aspire to.
In the same way, somebody who admires Musk has a value of "being rich". They're doubtful that they'll ever be as rich as he is, but it's something that they aspire to.
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Eh, I think it's oversimplification to attribute it to a single motivation. There are definitely people like OP is describing, but there are also definitely the 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire' types. And honestly I think a damn big percentage is just plain ol' fear of change wrapped in several layers of rationalization.
Another reason: it's really easy for unimaginative people to sound smart with cynicism. They'd rather be superior than be right.
"Look at that crash! I told you that flying machines can't work."
Oo yeah, for real. I kind of stumbled upon this in my teens (maybe everyone does), but luckily was able to snap out of it, woke up, and realised I could form flexible informed opinions that define my whole personality
"It's way easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they've been fooled."
A lot of people just lack critical thinking skills and imagination. A lot of people like being at the bottom of hierarchy. A lot of people like when people they dont like suffer, even if it means they do, too. A lot of people are religious. All of these things are plagues on our society, and a lot of them are done on purpose by those in power.
The world would be better if a bunch of people could just admit they are into mental BDSM and they are subs
Religion, narcissistic family members, social media algorithms, sandwich shops... all tuned to churn out subs.
I'm only okay with one of those.
(Also you forgot shipyards, BTW.)
Stamp on my brain, master
That's what the AI is for.
Can Claude wear stilettos?
Found Richard Dawkins's account
This is a mistake that many leftists do, thinking that people don't like authoritarianism. A lot of people crave for it
people tend dislike authoritarianism, but tend to be afraid of society changement. Everybody got contradiction
In theory, a benevolent dictatorship is a good system, that can cut through a lot of bureaucracy and enact good changes in a timely fashion. The obvious problems are who gets to be dictator and how do you keep the dictatorship benevolent.
If I could unilaterally make somebody a dictator and believed they would do what's best, I'd do it. But I don't know if there is such a person. To me it just seems like people believe in and trust certain public figures to agree with them, and enact the same changes they'd want.
As I heard someone else say recently, everything with conservatives is either team sports or cuck porn and it really seems that's true.
🤫 you gonna summon them lol
I can't wait to see their smiling face
Its a lot of just world fallacy too
Conservatives are naturally a servile people. They desire to be ruled. They want a daddy.
Yeah, they want a pyramid shape to the world.
They want a single big daddy on top of them, and then an enormous pile of other people below them to be a big daddy to.
As long as they are not at the bottom of the pile, they're happy.
I'm not even so sure about the second part. Plenty of them seem happy to be perpetual bottoms.
They need other races to be below them
And women
They have been told that their sky daddy will actively judge their lives and they will get what sky daddy thinks they deserve. They have been told this so often and in so many ways that they now worship money. Money becomes the way for them to tell how sky daddy judges their lives. Obviously, this means that those who have more money are more beloved by sky daddy and therefore should be listened to and obeyed.
Yep, but uh, it's not just conservatives. There are lots from all sorts that want someone else to make the decisions, for both good and ill
Sounds like embarrassed conservatives.
Right-wing values can be summarized in one word: Hierarchy.
That also happens to be the literal definition. Surprisingly few people know that the political left and right correspond to equality and hierarchy respectively.
Right and left wing are historical terms stemming from the literal left and right halves of a physical building. If you're not referring to the revolution era french national assembly, you have to accept that since other connotations may have snuck in along the way.
Even at the time the terms came with complex meanings.
Boiling it down at any time merely to equality versus hierarchy is only something you'd do if you want to misrepresent people by oversimplification.
It's really true.
These heirarchies caused or exaserbated just about every major tragedy in history - war, genocide, slavery, rape, empire, colonialism, capitalism, etc.
But depending on how you look at it, 25-40% of humans just like heirarchies and want them, despite the misery they cause for both the empowered and disempowered.
That's a huge problem - fascism will likely always have a base of supporters to come back from no matter how many times we defeat it, and you just can't imprison/disenfranchise/exile that high a % of people for a wide variety of obvious reasons.
I fear this is a "this is who we are as an organism" problem that will follow our species wherever we go.
Get them into kink.
Seriously though, you can have consensual hierarchical structures that provide an outlet for those desires to the degree that they are innate. Is the desire to force everyone in the world to be a part of your hierarchy really part of that innate desire? Or is it more that some people feel more comfortable when they have a clearly defined status?
And it doesn't have to be confined to kink, for example, in a community for a competitive sport or game, there can be a bit of an implicit social hierarchy based on skill.
Those kinds of hierarchies are a lot closer to the hierarchies that humans evolved with, applying to an immediate social group, within "Dunbar's number." There was never a long period of time (from an evolutionary standpoint) where state-wide or globe-spanning hierarchies were selected for, so it doesn't really make sense that those would be innate and unavoidable desires.
I wonder how many people think that their place in society would be a lot lower if it was based on competition, so it is better to preserve the system that keeps them where they are at.
In support of that theory, there was a multiplayer video game study a while back that found it was the less skilled men who were assholes to women players. The better players didn't seem to care about their teammates gender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Male_behavior_towards_female_gamers
Well, there are people that believe their position would be higher if the 'others' wouldn't have taken that spot.
That's literally true though? If it's hard to see, take it to the extreme: If you were the only person in a place, you'd be the most important one by default?
They wouldn't do a good job, but they'd have the job since, you know, there is less competition.
I did work and travel in USA, and they were paying us peanuts due to some law shenanigans (they had to pay overtime for Americans, not us.) Wouldn't they have to hire a native instead of me if I wasn't allowed to work there?
Same reasons cults work. They want someone else doing the thinking and leading for them, and surrender responsibility and blame to someone else. It's never their own fault, so they want a system where they don't have to be responsible or feel at fault.
The thing is, tree structures are very good ways to scale interconnected systems. Ask any computer scientist or computer networker about it.
This applies to societal systems as well. A bronze age society that has a feudal structure can manage a much larger area than a flat society. Armies can be coordinated that would be an ineffective mob otherwise.
That doesn't make hierarchies nice for the people living in them, any more than the industrial revolution was actually nice for the people living through it. But they are an enabling technology, and societies that did not have hierarchy were eventually overwhelmed until almost every living human is living that way.
For sure it's more effective with entreched heirarchies, bit i think it's possible to use that organisational structure without it metastisizing into a perminant heirarchy. Anarchist federations do this, sortition is useful, turn-taking etc.
I don't believe such a thing ever existed. Other mammals display heirarchies so it was probably present in a distant ancestor, predating humans and our societies.
It's the nature, duration and intensity of heirarchy that has changed so remarkably in the last 15k odd years.
I'd like to see how you got to "hierarchies = fascism". I also think that the people who want hierarchies are much higher than 25-40%.
Belief that heirarchies are natural and desirable because some people are better than others is the worldview required to be vulnerable to the lie of fascism, it's the precursor to all supremacist thinking.
If you look at opinion polling across countries, die-hard support for supremacist candidates hovers around 25-40%. Die hard as in will support those candidates no matter how poorly they're doing. Support levels wax and wane as anxiety goes up and down, or as supremacist candidates tend to be winning or losing, but the core support base for authoritarian ideals routinely comes out around 25-40% across most western countries.
It isn't because "some people are better than others", it's because some people are better than others at leading. Leadership is a skill, and it can be learned and practiced just like any other skill. You could say, "Hey, Mary is good at fixing things, let's put her in charge of repairs. Margaret is good at planning projects and organizing people, let's put her in leadership."
And no, it doesn't imply that the person leading should have total control over everything or that they can't be held accountable.
You said "humans who want hierarchies" and you're equating that with "support for supremacist candidates". Does that mean that if I support a centrist or a left-wing candidate, then I don't want hierarchies? I can tell you, there are certainly not that many anarchists in the world. 60-75% of the population?
The desire for hierarchy and order isn't an inherently bad one. A highly authoritarian individual will be the first to volunteer when someone needs to run into a burning building to save someone. They will be the first to volunteer to defend the community. They will also be the people that organize trash pickups, because littering is bad.
However, they can also be easily weaponized against others. Just like littering is against the natural order of things, and they will go out of their way to pick up litter, they can be convinced that other people are also against the natural order of things....with significantly more horrific outcomes.
I don't think this is necessarily true. A person can just as easily be motivated to do these from a sense of solidarity and mutual responsibility than a desire for hierarchies. (Ursula le Guin's The Dispossessed explores the various aspects of how a society could be built on such principles.)
I don't believe these two go together, heirarchies tend to be characterised by tension and discord.
It's actually the exact opposite! The phenomenon of Elite Panic is well established and included in disaster planning.
During an emergency, most people exhibit "spontaneous self organisation" - bucket lines, food distribution, search parties, etc. Whereas people with authority are much more likely to freak out, to fail to understand that the situation is different, to enforce detrimental rules, to feel threatened, to generally act badly.
huh?
Oh, you misunderstand. I'm talking about authoritarians. You seem to have done some reading in the past. Do some more. theauthoritarians.org
The people that form those bucket lines and search parties would, ironically, be more likely to be authoritarian in worldview, and therefore have the greatest psychological need to fix the problem.
This touches the terrain of leadership and motivation, and I'd argue that authoritarianism is accidental here. Sure, here and there leaders with authoritarian views rise (e.g. Mussolini), but also people who do not believe in it so much (e.g. Che Guevara). There have been studies about the psychology of leaders and motivators, and they seem to be driven by a lot of energy and often certainty at least in some core ideas. There are books like A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness that go as far as to suggest these traits border the unhealthy in many notorious and strong cases.
Definitely.
It seems that populism/fascism is 'ingrained' in our simple minds. But that begs the question, why do some of us reject it? Random chance, empathy, or education?
I don't think it's ingrained and then rejected, i think it's present in some % of humans because heirarchic organisation is useful in limited, temporary contexts.
Pirate ships were feircely egalitarian until a target was sighted, then the captain is a dictator until the loot was secure. Some hunter-gatherers had a season of authoritarianism (say, hunting season) in between seasons of different social organisation.
So like how sickle cell anemia is debilitating but grants near immunity to malaria, heirarchophilia has just enough limited benefits that it remains as a variant within the population.
Or that's how i think about it.
It raises the question. Begging the question is this.
These are not mutually exclusive. Right-wing populists can also be fascists.
Personality difference.
theauthoritarians.org
Because I was taught as an American that I should be a rugged individual, which is incompatible with fascism. I also do not really enjoy much sports so this tribalism blah blah just doesn't do it for me. I also don't much like circuses and spectacles; fairs, to me, are just meh.
And I could probably ignore it when it's benevolent, but it's often malicious like germ warfare.
"Rugged individualism" is also incompatible with hierarchies but these people aren't thinking that far into it. It's just a myth that makes it your fault when society fails.
I sort of disagree, it's that they want to feel safe and taken care of. They've made Trump their Jesus, literally. He is their shepherd and will only do well for them.
That's why the gas and inflation going in the wrong direction after 2 years is fucking with their heads. If he's wrong about one thing, and god can't be wrong, then maybe he isn't a god.
The entire point of religion is to make the insecure feel secure, like the answers to the hard questions exist and Sky Daddy is looking out for them
Sort of? This is giving way to much logic to an emotional situation. The reason fanboys choose Musk isn't because he has leadership or patriarchal qualities, he just has money which they think is the same thing as being smart. They can project themselves on to him and experience his wealth or veneer of expertise vicariously through a fantasy.
This still is the relationship men have with patriarchs. It's just obfuscated by the fact that Piss-odor guy isn't competent in the ways associated with rulership
I think your interpretation is still too cerebral. People don't follow money because it's money. Money has become essential to our individual survival, so success with money is essentially conquering the threats to individual survival, and I think that is why people revere him and other billionaires.
At the end of the day, we're all shit scared of our own end, and we've been tricked into believing that money is our way out of that inevitability. Money is God, so those with lots of money are closer to God, if not a god themselves.
"If he not smart, why he rich?"
Our first mistake as a nation was not kicking out the royalists.
Alexander Hamilton
The thread is so lost anymore it doesn’t even matter. In America it is just survival as America becomes Russia. You can’t defend anyone when you can’t even get your doctor visit or medication to live if you even try to rock the boat for more than 3 days. If that. Modern feudalism.
What I don't understand is why is it the stupidest people getting put on that pedestal.
Because you have to be intelligent to admit you don't know something.
Stupid and confident is a dangerous combination. Add arrogant, charismatic or attractive, and you get weaponised incompetence.
Weak people love confidence and will tolerate arrogance. Once a confident person starts observing those around them agreeing, following, defending them, they start to believe their own bullshit, and they learn through reward feedback that if they do anything with confidence and arrogance, even when they are wrong, weaker people will agree with them.
Stupid people like other stupid people
The fool, or the fool who follows him.
theauthoritarians.org
specifically, social dominators end up on top. Authoritarians put them there.
Every time I've had an honest, constructive conversation with a conservative, I've found the root of their beliefs is fear, whether they are conscious of it or not.
Conservatives do tend to have larger amygdala
https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-structure-political-ideology-27703/
"Oh Amygdala... Have mercy on the poor bastard"
Amygdala? I hardly know 'er!
This is why conservatives should be sent to reeducation camps
This is what the US tried to do in Germany after WWII. There were "denazification" efforts. Unfortunately, they did a shit job of it, which is why Germany still has a problem with the right wing.
I saw an interview with a lady comparing Trump to megachurch preacher and it made perfect sense. You have these people giving their last dollars to a guy living in a mansion and flying in a private jet because that's what god wants. They are conditioned since childhood to just accept that some people are there to exploit them and their purpose is to be exploited by them. Having leader like Trump makes perfect sense to them. It's just conservative brain doing its usual thing.
See also: British people who are weirdly pro-monarchy.
She ain't wrong
Eh, I don't think that is universally true.
There was an article about one of those "tradwife" influencers who got a divorce recently after realizing that she hated the very idea, but only after she was engulfed in the life.
Or they are just brainwashed, and can't fathom another type of society after ~500 years of capitalism.
I've known far more Musk fanboys than I would have liked to, and I wouldn't say they see him or other genocidal pedophiles as gods or anything.
In fact, it's quite difficult to describe it or compare it to anything, because that sort of blind admiration just plain doesn't make any sense, and usually contradicts their other beliefs. Which is a big sign of being affected by propaganda.
No kink shaming the subbies.
This, but unironically. As a sub who is anti-Trump, it becomes a bit uncomfortable when the conversation turns into "Conservatives are just subs who want to be dominated!" Yeah, okay, maybe there's some truth to that. The problem is that there isn't any safeword I can use on Trump.
But their kink is kink-shaming -- kink-shaming others.
Kink shame inception 😲
It’s also “don’t rock the boat.” Because if society decides that rich people don’t get to be filthy rich, the rich peoppe will take it out on the peasants so they can stay as rich as possible. IOW if we don’t leave the rich people alone they’ll be mean to us and take even more.
This is the same logic as "If I give the bully some money, then they won't take all of my money". If they can get some, why wouldn't they take the rest? Appeasement doesn't work. They just push for more.
They see people like Musk, and they see strength, if only because of their economic capabilities. They want a society of strength. A society where people hoard around the few to lift them up. A society that enables greatness. Somebody who can look mortality in the eyes and reject it. To bring us into the future with vitality.
What they fail to see is that by turning the mighty into gods, we turn ourselves into coggs. In the pursuit of lifting them up, we alienate ourselves from the meaningful. Makes us sacrifice for the superficial. We become lifeless and in fear of the meaningful.
20% of people are wired this way and will seek hierarchy no matter what. Those 20% convince the morons to vote with them. That's where we're at.
To believe someone is hard-wired a certain way is to deny their humanity. I think you should reconsider your beliefs.
I don't know, I would consider our hard-wiring to seek out social relationships or to love our children to be a part of what makes us human. (As part of a basket, in the sense that having four legs is part of what makes a dog a dog, but not all dogs have four legs.)
Recognizing our wiring puts us in the best position to strategize how to work around it, if we want to. Like trying to not eat cookies from the pantry via willpower will always ultimately fail, but not having any cookies in the pantry has a good chance of preventing excessive cookie eating.
I don't have time to look it up right now but this is scientific fact.
I don't defend the rich but I also don't claim it's stupid hard to make 75k and up and I will never in my life say starting a career that can help you live comfortably is an impossible task.
I think the unwillingness to invest in one's self and to sacrifice your thought process of fuck climbing up the ladder, is what's hurting people's personal wealth growth.
I think that as much people are preserving themselves and not going into careers because they don't offer as many benefits as the boomers, I also think people are limiting themselves and I think that if you don't want to invest in your future, that's your own fault.
However, I do not agree with generational wealth but I don't disagree on passing a home down. If you're fortunate enough to have a house passed down to you, then that's what you are, fortunate.
I dont agree with trusifarians using their wealth to buy up more property or to be greedy and glutenous with their money.
I don't hate on the six figure earners but I think once you make 450k/year, you can start figuring out ways to better society.
I think once you hit a 20mil* net worth, you can figure out ways to help other people.
It's like the Stanford marshmallow experiment. It's not willpower, it's that people have been taught that any money we save will be lost.
We're all expected to invest or lose money to inflation. But most of us don't know anything about investing. So we trust our money to some Wall Street type, and then get called stupid when we pick the wrong dudes. But you don't get called stupid if you just spend the money now.
It's even worse in the USA where everyone has the specter of medical debt hanging over us. You can do everything right and then just get a massive forever debt from which bankruptcy can't save you. Better to spend the money on a community that might appreciate it.
And I pointed this out before that rich people inadvertently will end up becoming involved in politics, even if there was not interest or want to in the beginning or was never a goal; It's shocking how many of them end up getting to know their mayor at a personal level to leverage them.
Most don't leverage their local government for the better and it's rare to see it. It's rare that someone will like actually fund a food bank for a year and become involved in the community. Imagine having enough money to set a trust for a church to have an indefinite food bank? That would be so fucking cool, I would so do that if I had that kind of money to toss around. Or or or like buying old hospitals and completely demolishing them and putting up modern hospitals.
99% of account managers and financial advisors are just some dude. The only sensible thing to invest in is an index fund like VOO, SPLG, FXAIX, IVV, or for non-US stuff, VEU, VSS, or something else based on an index appropriate to your needs.
Genuinely, the best known growth strategy in a capitalist market is also the lowest-brain strategy. Buy an index fund, and then do nothing.
Everything else is just giving money to someone else to do a worse job on average.
You're not wrong, but do you hear yourself? That's a terrifying alphabet soup of complicated choices. And in the next thread we'll talk about AI IPOs dumping on the index fund suckers before a collapse.
Yes, it's alphabet soup, but no, the choices are not complicated.
In USA? Buy VOO.
Not in USA? Buy VEU and maybe VOO if you want.
This makes me realize that if you have a feudalism, master-slave kind of dynamic thing that you want for your life, feel free. I'm not one to judge.
Just don't bring me into your weird little fucking kink.
Let me make my own fucking choices.
Maybe is we glaze the rich enough, they'll give some of their wealth to us.
I hate it, but also think it is true. A slave does not want to be free and all that - it does explain so many things
My mother, and one of my nieces, think this way.
They do a ton of work for a man they think should tell them how to live life. Even how to vote. They gladly abdicate their agency as a human so they "don't have to think about silly things like politics."
The irony is my mother is an incredibly strong woman. But it's religion that makes her think this way. My nice is just very much a people pleaser, and her fiance is just the baby of the family, so he makes demands and expects everyone else to clean up after him.
This is a drama I wouldn't wish anyone to go through. Religion is insanity indeed
What's under that though? Is it another belief? Such as; some jobs are so horrible people must be forced into them? Or perhaps; life being told what to do is easier than having to decide? Or simply; I'd prefer to be cog in a great machine? Part of a team?
Or maybe just, some jobs bad and good, only a few people are suited for them? Is it false meritocracy to hide the shame of having accepted plutocracy? Or perhaps an earnest acceptance of the game of Capital. Acceptance that ones own position must be due to ones own mistakes, and ergo, a superiors is due to their good choices? That kind of justice?
What is it, and can we change their underlying belief?
Nah, brah. This is kinda true but kinda bullshit. Since they're not citing shit I'm not gonna either. I'll go vibe mode too.
People, my fellow Americans, are disillusioned because they've never known anything else. They don't want anything better because they've never been taught that better things aren't even imaginable at best, most likely an existential threat. We're peak society because fuck you, the conservative elite they told us so. It's been that way for decades, most people don't know anything else.
We're all a captive market because the system that was supposed to protect us has been corrupted and is complicit. It doesn't have to be. A huge problem is it's extremely profitable to realize this and act on the opposite side, to be evil and want to exploit everyone, especially the undereducated and marginalized.
It sucks! Talking with brainwashed fools is exhausting, but they're victims like the rest of us, and we should be working on inroads instead of division. Cut your losses for some, sure, but a lot of people are inspired by populism in both directions. We need to leverage that now.
Talk to your neighbors y'all! They're noticing the shit hitting the fan, but they're afraid to talk about it. We're in a lot of this shit because our representatives were too polite/cowardly/ineffective to hold abysmal conservative/fascist leaders accountable in the first place. We never convinced their voters that their so called leaders are con artists stealing their comfort of living as a result. It's the most obvious it's ever been now. Let's take advantage, no?
Nobody inherently believes anything. They observe the world as they grow up, they listen to the things their parents and friends say, they listen to music and the media. We all are influenced by the environment around us and then we have the balls to say "I'm an independent thinker".
I think listening to whatever someone tells you they believe is a waste of time. They don't hold fast to principles. It's some combination of regurgitating the environment back and reinforcing pleasurable experiences and removing painful experiences.
Brilliant point.
I think the undertone of existential comics saying "oh they INHERENTLY believe in masters" is trying to imply the only way to deal with such people is to kill them. Gruesome. The shutting down of all dialogues.
This is why I belive listening to what someone tells you they believe is not a waste of time, because you can then convince them otherwise.
Ok but like.... How many people will actually change their mind?
I've resorted to understanding their psychology. Like what assumptions are they not communicating when they share opinions? What life events pushed them to have a fearful/optimistic outlook? And then I tell them "it makes sense why you would feel this way" which sorta invites them to reconsider without being like "hey why do you think dumb things?"
We all have our heroes that we look up to. We all think that the other's heroes are stupid and bad and our heroes are geniuses and good.
We all get disappointed with our heroes and inevitably find out that they were stupid and bad, too. So, we stop reading, and take a nap from noon to two a.m. Then we all get up and we are all sad
Not all of us. You're just projecting your own feelings.
Of course, how could I know anyone else's feelings?
This goes without saying
Musk fanboys aren’t the only ones who love hierarchy. Just about everyone will agree with the phrase “someone needs to be in charge” regardless of politics.
Anarchists:
"Just about everyone". What percentage of people are anarchists?
Yes, I don’t agree with it, but almost everyone disagrees with me.
Saving this to post every time someone comments with that stupid theory.
Techno Fuedalism, yo!
No: the rhetorical defense of rich people usually arises when action against rich people such as "eat the rich" or "steal all their assets" has been proposed, and people say "well not all rich people deserve that."
Which is true. I don't even think a majority of rich people deserve some punishment for how they accrued their wealth. If you have some conception that they should be dropping crumbs of wealth for you along the way, consider:
And importantly - it is well demonstrated that people can become rich through ethical means. This has been shown to be true over and over again.
Instead of just getting mad at the vague sense of rich people "not doing what you want them to do," reach out and create dialogue with them to lay out your vision for society. Nobody wants to give away money without thinking it will be used effectively.
We should call them SpaceX fanboys because they're two different things, really. People support SpaceX because it has been the most technologically successful rocket launching in enterprise in history and is the best bet at space colonisation for its high level or organisation no massive amounts of funding, assuming Elon isn't just a "for profit" kind of guy now.
I cannot imagine liking Elon musk just by himself. He is misguided and loves AI and hasn't taken the time to uhh remedy his PR image. He was buddies either trump. Its like: "do you support the Soviet union and hate stalin" or "do you support the Indian independence movement but disapprove of Mohatma Gandhi (child molester btw)"
People who like Elon musk like him because he politically aligns with them, that is the main reason at the moment. Whether in terms of AI, bitcoin or right wing politics.
It is true for some but for many its just that they don't like men being criticised all the time - or the traditional way of life in general. Those ones do not take it to a performative "let me stay home baking for my husband all day" position.
And if people have the right to gay marriage et cet, give them the right to align with that traditional way of life, right? Even if they feel it involves some degree of subservience.
This is an awful allegory for the rich- poor relations, because men-women in a relationship is a binary. Rich and poor is a gradient. If someone approves of rich, they might be like "so I don't understand why anyone would need a billion dollars or more but i support peoples right to hold more money than other people up until that point."
Whereas the question of 'do you like men or not' comes down to "do you literally tolerate >50% of society's right to exist on their terms or not?
They're not talking about doctors who are working class but earn more. They're talking about capitalists.
The binary is "does the money come from labor or from owning something?" Whether or not they are doing a specific action.
So what you're describing is a grave miscommunication in which someone hears "rich" in 2026 and thinks "millionaire".
As always, then they should say that. No more "x is y" "no I meant chi is y!" debateslop
No; rich is an incredibly broad, general, term. Anyone who speaks the English language knows that. So again, you have to be specific in your arguments when you lay them out for it to even make logical sense
IMHO if you really want a good debate, you need to ask up front. Rich means a lot of different things to different people and they are indeed saying what they mean.
Therefore we should never commit to a "remove rich people from society" ideology because it's just a stand in term for "people i don't like"
Thats also giving some of the women too much credit.
They are aware that they can exchange vagina for money. You say the right things, act the right way and some guy who hates the idea of his wife having more say than him will happily keep her from ever working a day in her life.
I'll say that most people that like billionaires is only because they fantasize into becoming one by winning a lotto prize or by hustling. The same way I fantasize I'm a wizard, but I don't expect any magical intervention to turn me into one. I just need to first find that talking toad.
Look at it this way. One of my values is having the courage to help others. So, I would admire somebody who risked their life to go into a burning building and save somebody. I'm doubtful that I have the same courage, but I hope that I would. It's something that I aspire to.
In the same way, somebody who admires Musk has a value of "being rich". They're doubtful that they'll ever be as rich as he is, but it's something that they aspire to.