FinCEN leak shows some of the extent to which banks need to be burned.

Silvanus

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The problem is that you can take any system collapse, be it Rome being invaded, the French revolution, the Russian revolution or any other, and what you'll see is that the former elite just gets replaced with a new elite. The downtrodden, suffering masses will still be downtrodden and suffering but they will be so without the support (meager as it might have been) of the former system. They'll be suffering more while the new elite hopefully keeps their promises of change and betterment.
Sometimes this is the case. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire is an example in which the violent chaos that proceeded it brought about no real benefit, only a severe degradation of living standards, loss of life, and eventual replacement by equally-unrepresentative dynastic rulers. Reform would have been preferable by almost any measure, most of all from the perspective of the peasantry and lower classes.

But that's not always the case, and you cannot realistically infer one-size-fits-all lessons. We also have events like the Haitian revolution, the collapse(s) of European colonialism, etc, which left the people better off.

But this is all a bit of a distraction. We're talking here about the collapses of political systems brought about by invasion or armed insurrection; but any collapse of the current economic model is not going to resemble these events in the slightest: it would primarily be an economic collapse. No civil war, though civil unrest & violence is a possibility.

Comparing historical uprisings & invasions to a potential modern-day economic collapse is apples-and-oranges.
 
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Revnak

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Sometimes this is the case. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire is an example in which the violent chaos that proceeded it brought about no real benefit, only a severe degradation of living standards, loss of life, and eventual replacement by equally-unrepresentative dynastic rulers. Reform would have been preferable by almost any measure, most of all from the perspective of the peasantry and lower classes.
Wut. Quality of life, lifespan, diet, and the chance of dying peacefully all got better after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Most anthropological evidence would point to common peoples’ lives improving due to that collapse.
 

Silvanus

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Wut. Quality of life, lifespan, diet, and the chance of dying peacefully all got better after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Most anthropological evidence would point to common peoples’ lives improving due to that collapse.
What timeframe are you looking at, exactly? Centuries later these indicators improved for a portion of Europe-- no thanks to the new ruling dynasties, and resulting from technological advances in hygiene, husbandry, agriculture etc which largely built on what the Romans had achieved, and which may well have occurred regardless.

This is all aside from the fact that what data we have on these indicators is sparse and unreliable.
 

Revnak

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What timeframe are you looking at, exactly? Centuries later these indicators improved for a portion of Europe-- no thanks to the new ruling dynasties, and resulting from technological advances in hygiene, husbandry, agriculture etc which largely built on what the Romans had achieved, and which may well have occurred regardless.

This is all aside from the fact that what data we have on these indicators is sparse and unreliable.
Almost immediately to my knowledge. The late Roman Empire was absurdly violent and demanded large quantities of food to feed massive armies. The dark ages were missing this feature.
 

lil devils x

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I don't think you're engaging with my argument; I'm not saying that the government isn't controlled by various wealthy interests. I'm saying that the control is not a matter of those wealthy interests threatening to deploy their economic power against the people in order that the government is forced to obediently save them instead of dealing with the chaos unleashed by their collapse so much as it is the government serving the agenda of those wealthy interests more or less voluntarily and cooperating in the fiction of "too big to fail"; none of those companies were too big to fail, they were too big to fail if you want to leave the liberal understanding of property rights and the private capitalist organization of the economy undisturbed. The government cooperates with and facilitates the underlying liberal property rights paradigm without which those wealthy interests would not have really any power whatsoever. They are very much partners in crime. CitiBank was choosing Obama's cabinet; this was not an administration that was forced by circumstance to be friendly to banks. It was funded by Wall Street to get into office and was nice to them by choice.



A government can simply reverse this position, distribute resources, and so on. It didn't and doesn't because it is not (and was not) controlled by people who want to do so. The Obama administration like the Trump administration was staffed by people who want to advance their political careers and enrich themselves. Just like most of the gobshites in Congress.
Regardless of who was in Obama's cabinet, Obama actually expanded food stamps, reduced Homelessness, opened up the suburbs to low income families, Expanded Healthcare access more than it has ever been in our history.. I say this and I didn't even support Obama. I vocally opposed him, even on here because I worried about him increasing the cost of living, which he did, but he also did so much more that was even more important. NONE of that can be said of Trump. Trump OTOH has been intentionally harming the poor and according to his own cabinet, he openly expresses his disgust and repulsion of the poor and actively seeks to treat them with contempt. The party who is actually trying to destroy and harm the poor isn't going to suddenly "reverse it's position".

You are just flatly wrong in your overall assessment of what was done and not done under Obama, so was I, BEFORE he changed my mind with what he actually did. He didn't do enough and of course I don't like all of his other polices, but I at least paid enough attention that I can give him credit where credit is due. Obama without a doubt saved lives, houses the homeless and fed more poor than those that came before him or after. You can dislike him all you want, but attempting to deny that doesn't change that is what actually happened. People are far worse off now because they allowed the GOP to take office, and will be much worse off and directly cause many of their fellow Americans to needlessly suffer and die when that could be prevented if they allow it to happen again. That isn't an exaggeration, it is just stating the facts.
 
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lil devils x

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Wut. Quality of life, lifespan, diet, and the chance of dying peacefully all got better after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Most anthropological evidence would point to common peoples’ lives improving due to that collapse.
The US will be hell on earth due to resource control and lack of options to survive. People can't just resort to hunting and gathering to survive a collapse anymore, they will just resort to murdering their neighbors and take what they have instead. It will be a bloodbath. Quality of life will be worse that you can imagine. The wealthy, their banks and their money are what keep your stores stocked with food and basic necessities and farms are not just going to magically be able to keep it stocked overnight. The wealthy own these companies with farms all over the world that ensure the US survives winter. The wealthy OWN all those companies and without them, the food doesn't flow. What people are going to overrun the poor farmers only to find out they are not growing food there for humans at all in the first place? Steal all their soybean and corn? Sure, that will help.. This is not the medieval ages and the world doesn't work like it used to. This mythical idea that people will just survive if everything comes to a screeching halt is fantasy. The reality here is that if Pharma stops making medicine, that if Dole stops shipping in fruit and Del monte ect stops sending in vegetables we will not have enough food to feed the people and they will starve. Food does not grow fast enough for you to replace it in time. Water isn't going to purify itself, and we now survive utilizing resources from all over the US and the world so if you manage to take over a tiny little sliver you will wind up dying on that sliver when the wealthy come crush you and the world will go on without you. This idea that a collapse would actually be good for anyone is asinine.
 

Silvanus

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Almost immediately to my knowledge. The late Roman Empire was absurdly violent and demanded large quantities of food to feed massive armies. The dark ages were missing this feature.
D'you have a citation for that? To my knowledge, we simply don't have the data to conclude that. The best we have are highly imprecise methods giving a rough estimate of life expectancies and diets over a period of centuries. & the early Middle Ages were very much not missing in high levels of violence and warfare.
 

Seanchaidh

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Obama without a doubt saved lives, houses the homeless and fed more poor than those that came before him or after.
You can say he did those things to a certain extent compared to some counterfactual other placed into the same situation. But that doesn't make him the kind of president who would have the inclination to do anything like what I proposed if he felt he could have because he was fundamentally a servant of our ruling class and prioritized their interests. That is compatible with some charity leaking through. Even Trump allowed the (entirely inadequate) stimulus checks.

 
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lil devils x

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You can say he did those things to a certain extent compared to some counterfactual other placed into the same situation. But that doesn't make him the kind of president who would have the inclination to do anything like what I proposed if he felt he could have because he was fundamentally a servant of our ruling class and prioritized their interests. That is compatible with some charity leaking through. Even Trump allowed the (entirely inadequate) stimulus checks.

The title is misleading. Obama wasn't responsible for that, and there was little he could do to stop much of it as the ball was already rolling before he took office. Homelessness was at a decade low when he left office. It has been rising rapidly ever since. The GOP COMPLAINED about " Obama gutting work requirements for welfare" and for letting adult single men use food stamps and have done everything they can to destroy programs for the poor. Trying to blame Obama for BS like this ( from your link) Is nonsense. " Racist housing covenants forbade neighborhoods from selling or renting to black families," Obama was supposed to be responsible for illegal housing practices? His administration prosecuted people for that BS, but this is so rampant, there was no stopping the sheer amount of it happening. Trump attempting to change the numbers of people who qualify as being considered in "poverty" by his administration doesn't change the actual number of people IN poverty.

 

Revnak

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D'you have a citation for that? To my knowledge, we simply don't have the data to conclude that. The best we have are highly imprecise methods giving a rough estimate of life expectancies and diets over a period of centuries. & the early Middle Ages were very much not missing in high levels of violence and warfare.
No I’m just operating off of memory of various podcasts on the period.
 

Specter Von Baren

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D'you have a citation for that? To my knowledge, we simply don't have the data to conclude that. The best we have are highly imprecise methods giving a rough estimate of life expectancies and diets over a period of centuries. & the early Middle Ages were very much not missing in high levels of violence and warfare.
He might just be basing this off of how people picking off from the skeleton of the Roman Empire would be pretty well off for a time before things like the aquaducts made by them start to break down and there's no one alive that knows how to fix them. Though perhaps I'm misrepresenting him.
 

SupahEwok

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He might just be basing this off of how people picking off from the skeleton of the Roman Empire would be pretty well off for a time before things like the aquaducts made by them start to break down and there's no one alive that knows how to fix them. Though perhaps I'm misrepresenting him.
Nah he just really hates Rome.