One of the supposed advantages of capitalist domination of our economies is that a group of profit seeking elites would at least put their thumb on the scale to stop economic self-owns like Brexit, instead the elites enthusiastically supported it at every juncture.
Excluding actual wars, Brexit is one of the greatest own-goals of all time. Britain and Europe had forged something their finest leaders and intellectuals considered an impossible dream: an alliance of shared prosperity.
Then Britain tore it up in a fit of nativist dipshittery.
Time after time in every era, we find that the wealthy oligarchs *oppose* policies that would lead to faster economic growth and they welcome destructive reactionary economic measures because they'd always rather protect their power than grow their wealth.
I mean I'm not disappointed exactly, this is common behavior for elites in every era of human history! But there's no reason to accept reactionary's false frame of "economic growth vs [human rights, environmentalist, labor rights, welfare programs etc]" because the elites oppose economic growth
I feel like this is a huge case of, like, the elites are less interested in being richer than they are in being locally more powerful in really petty ways, and I'm very disappointed in them.
It's frequently self-destructive too! It's similar to the historical dynamic of monarchs who had the choice to abrogate power to legislatures and become constitutional monarchs or try to hold onto absolutism. The constitutional monarchs typically lasted and the absolutists got violently overthrown!
But the ways in which they're becoming more powerful due to Brexit are so petty compared to what they're losing! Then again I've always thought they were fundamentally broken by their abusive schooling systems.
Yup! The thing where so many of our elites got there in the first place by committing crimes biases them pretty strongly against anything that strengthens state capacity, no matter how innocuous. bsky.app/profile/kith...
There's a corollary to this where people think just because they accurately observe that say Donald Trump or Elon Musk are stupid, they cannot hurt them or do not require opposition. Someone stupid can still hurt you if they have power! bsky.app/profile/pfes...
This isn't quite your point, but I think a generation inspired by Michael Corleone and Hannibal Lecter has convinced us that evil is generally brilliant, just pure rational egoism, when actually evil and self-destructive stupidity go together far more often.
the whole “Putin is a manly man” cult is a complete misunderstanding of the fact that Putin is a weak, isolated loser; but a loser with a gun can still lash out and hurt people
Yeah, most of the French aristocracy were spectacularly ignorant and shallow in the 1780s. But they caused epic levels of hardship in furtherance of rent-seeking.
I remember Mike Duncan, when he was summing up the Revolutions podcast, noted that before every revolution he covered, there was a moment when the regime could have made concessions and reforms and endured. Revolution happens when the moment is missed.
This makes me think about the billionaire’s shouldn’t exist argument - because I think it’s in part an argument that billionaires cannot, in any real sense, grow their wealth. They have all the wealth that can matter, so the *only* way they can better themselves relatively is to hurt everyone else.
They also back authoritarians despite the fact that authoritarians are the only ones who have the power to jail them on a whim. A system with rules to exploit is great for them! Why put yourself under a dictators whims? At least look at how many of Putins allies have fallen out of windows!
This! I don’t get it. The daddy issues are strong with this crowd and I can only contemplate why each believes that HE will be the favored son of a dictator.
Also, regardless of their intelligence before becoming a wealthy oligarch, attaining that status generally seems to be detrimental to their cognitive functioning.
That’s because, for the oligarchs, it’s not about absolute wealth, it’s about relative wealth.
They can already buy any things they want.
For the abstract things like impunity, and power, making everyone else poor makes them easier to acquire.
A hungry person will do almost anything for food.
Do you think that they are relying on starving people to work in their underground bunkers when they f*** everything up or will they just steal children and try to brainwash them into believing there is no outside?(Like in the book “Silo”…yes, I read too much sci-fi).
Maybe there isn’t enough edge of your seat excitement when a billionaire? I mean, that’s what the submersible was all about. Maybe too much money really is bad for the soul.
I think it removes limitations, and while I don't think anyone who gets super-hyper-megarich for reasons other than lottery or unexpected inheritence is going to be a *good* guy, some of them can *behave* or even *enjoy themselves*. The two most public billionaires* of the era are not in that group
The powerful need to balance the total desperation in the system. Make too many people too desperate and you spend your life trying not to wind up like Mussolini.
Levers like healthcare and education are also very powerful & less likely to lead to pitchforks.
Still, hunger is the ultimate lever.
They’re also mostly lightly educated dumbasses who are good at selling and bullshitting but don’t actually know how anything works. They’ll fight for lower marginal tax rates when higher taxes would give them higher after-tax incomes because of economic stimulus.
Rereading LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness for book club, the first chapters strongly resonate with this. The Mad King, welcomed into the Ekumen (Galactic Federation) but who snubs the envoy & woud prefer being the only one with power.
Still laughing at this British couple I read about who wanted to retire in Spain or something, but they voted for Brexit because they thought it was a joke and wouldn't actually happen.
Ya the rate of pro Brexit voting among UK ex pats living in Spain was way higher than you'd expect it based on like... All those people completely screwing themselves if it passed
and then getting upset when Spain created a path to stabilizing their residence but actually enforced the rules so that if you didn't do the paperwork, you had to leave
I mean the degree of entitlement was INTENSE
Sure I think they should have been helped on their path but it was so self inflicted I don’t think they rank high on the list of sympathies
the point a voting for Brexit was to emphasize how much you were a small-minded bigoted a**hole, not that there was any particularly setup of regulations and policies you preferred
Even worse. I think they believed that Spain would still be begging them to come live in Spain and that Brexit was just going to ban Spaniards from going and living in the UK.
They think they are highly prized and sought after additions to everywhere else in the world.
I feel like this is a huge case of, like, the elites are less interested in being richer than they are in being locally more powerful in really petty ways, and I'm very disappointed in them.
Once you hit the point where you can pretty much do as you please any further money is just power that you can wield over others. The rich care about power; money is only one form that power takes.
But the ways in which they're becoming more powerful due to Brexit are so petty compared to what they're losing! Then again I've always thought they were fundamentally broken by their abusive schooling systems.
In a capitalist authoritarian state, the bourgeoisie are the power. They want authoritarians who will rule in their favor, the way they want. And that's what they get.
I think at the point where we're talking this kind of theory we need to be deliberate about our definition of bourgeoisie, because there's a lot of variance in definition.
This isn't quite your point, but I think a generation inspired by Michael Corleone and Hannibal Lecter has convinced us that evil is generally brilliant, just pure rational egoism, when actually evil and self-destructive stupidity go together far more often.
