Burning the system to the ground is not very constructive (duh). In fact, this article - well, it's not clear what it advocates, but it sounds like it advocates some kind of violent "line the bastards against a wall and shoot them" revolution or civil war.
The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.
The worst case outcome of letting things continue along their current path is quite simply the end of the human race.
The system is forcing 100's of millions of people to choose between utter misery or soul crushing servitude to capitalists and managers whose philosophy of labor differs little from the slave holders of the pre-civil war south.
And that's how things are now. What will happen when 100's of millions more lose what little value to the system they currently have due to automation and robotics ?
Given the pace of technological advance sooner or later (I would guess within the next 100 years) one of these unhappy people will figure out how to synthesize a species ending bioweapon. I've heard the secret service is already taking measures to protect the president's DNA due to fear of a targeted bioweapon being developed. But an untargeted bioweapon would likely be easier to develop and it's effects far more frightening.
In short, such talk is regularly used throughout history to fool idealists into supporting a "just cause" that ends up leading only to more misery.
The problem you mention is real, but unless you have at the very least a practical solution to suggest, and perhaps a path from here to there that has any kind of likelihood to it, it is just fodder for people who would use you to gain more power for themselves. Be wary of how your honest, true beliefs and desire for justice are manipulated by others who just want the regular old kind of power.
Any kind of violent revolution will end up with an order-of-magnitude more people getting shot, jailed, or otherwise ruined than the current US system.
Revolution is good as long as you're born 30 years after that. (Sometimes more. It took almost a century for the French Republic to stabilize after the revolution.)
I agree with you, but an argument can be made that if we stay the course, the outcome (through ecological damage, overproduction, loss of natural resources) might be worse than the relative short-term misery of revolution. Whether a post-revolution world will not make the same mistake is not a given, but at least things might be better in that regard.
That said, I personally would probably better of navigating the current system, but then I'm part of a relative minority that does okay currently.
While undesirable, bloody revolutions happen pretty much all by themselves once some hard to estimate pain limit is crossed.
I tend to believe, most western civilizations are pretty far from that limit of pain. But, at the same time, they're far closer to the limit today than a few mere decades ago.
So there's ample reason to worry, and ample reason to speak out that the course we're staying will not end at a happy place.
The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.
More like the civil war. Would you like to live in that period?
There were 31 million americans then. 600k died during the war - 2%. There are 10 times as many americans, now, it's a fair extrapolation that there could be 10 times as many deads.
Maybe the system is so corrupt that it's worth butchering 6 million people to change it, but if so, I think you guys (I'm not american myself) are owed more of a concrete plan than just "this sucks, let's burn it to the ground".
Like I said, not that bad yet but moving in that direction. There are plenty of people already, I suspect, who feel as though they have basically nothing, especially if they face some sort of ruinous expense like getting sick while uninsured. If you have a negative net worth, you have less than nothing, in some sense. As long as the credit markets keep working, even people with negative net worth feel like they have something, but if those markets were to freeze up or otherwise become unavailable you would have a whole lot of people no better off than slaves in terms of "wealth".
As others have pointed out, it's not just the master's wealth, but everyone's wealth.
If anything, I'd suspect the "masters" would be better at protecting their relative wealth in such a "burn it to the ground" scenario than the slaves. At least they have the wealth to move out of the country when it erupts. Most people don't, and would just lose everything - possessions, family, life...
Burning things to the ground doesn't leave much above the ground. Best be able to afford an airship.
Exactly. Wealth, if you're smart, see what's coming, and know how to prepare, brings you options others simply don't have. I'm not talking in the SHTF / survivalist sense, either, though it's true there, too ... simply stating that wealth allows you to do things you couldn't without it.
This is similar to how every time politicians salivate over some new scheme to "tax the rich", the rich - being smart, motivated, and having the option to do so - find ways to avoid paying more than they have to. The middle & lower class, on the other hand, are either no better off, or are actually screwed.
Physical assets are hard to move, and those are the ones we would want to keep. Who cares if they move their cash, see how long it's worth anything after the government stops standing behind it. And if it continues to be valuable (for whatever reason) then fine, they can be rich somewhere else.
Everyplace has a system. Russia has a system. Iran has a system. And everyplace that has a system, the system works pretty much as intended: Putting the Pussy Riot women in prison for insulting Putin was no malfunction.
This article does not claim or system is broken and needs fixing. The article claims the system has lost legitimacy. I'm pretty sure that if revolution came to Russia, people would die, and it would mean hard times for a few years.
But there is another problem with your choice of choosing the system over the alternatives. An open "hot war" revolution is not the only alternative.
What would you say is the most you will tolerate before the French Revolution seems like an appropriate course of action? Does your personal French Revolution cutoff happen before or after a close friend or family member is robbed, raped, kidnapped, or murdered by royalty? Does your personal French Revolution cutoff happen before or after the level of oppression makes the French Revolution impossible?
One of the lies that keeps corruption churning is that the only alternative is anarchy, destruction, and more corruption. "Corruption" vs. "revolution" is a false dichotomy.
There are more effective non-violent ways to "burn down the system." Alternative forms of democratic participation facilitated by modern technology, improved voting systems like approval voting, etc.
The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.