A Question About Elite Power: Why Not Keep Us Happy?

General Discussion
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Here’s something I truly don’t understand about the elite. If they want to protect their interests and maintain their power, why do they do everything possible to make life harder for the 99% of us barely scraping by? Their approach just doesn’t make logical sense to me.

If I were part of the elite class, if I had billions of dollars, I’d handle things completely differently. I’d want to ensure the population was happy and content – so satisfied with their basic needs being met that they wouldn’t even think about fighting back or questioning the system. That seems like the smartest strategy to me.

Think about it: The best way to keep people from paying attention to what you’re doing isn’t to keep them angry and distracted. It’s to keep them:

  • Happy
  • Well-fed
  • Secure in their housing
  • Confident they can have the family size they want
  • Protected by strong safety nets

Instead, they’ve created a system where we live in constant terror:

  • Terror of becoming homeless tomorrow
  • Terror of not being able to feed our children
  • Terror that a cancer diagnosis will bankrupt us
  • Terror about our basic survival every single day

This is what I don’t get – if you want power and responsibility that badly, why not secure it by making sure the 99% is content enough to leave you alone? Because trying to maintain control through negative means, through hurting people, will never give you what you want in the end. History shows that approach eventually leads to your downfall.

The solution seems so simple to me: Keep us happy. Keep us fed. Keep us warm. Just make sure our basic needs are met. Not necessarily everything we want – just what we need to feel secure and stable. Trust me, if you did that, we would leave you alone to enjoy your wealth and power.

Hurting people is never the answer. But the elite seem unable to grasp this basic truth, and I truly don’t understand why. They’re choosing a path that makes their own position more precarious in the long run, when they could choose one that would actually help them maintain their status while also reducing human suffering.

What do they think will happen if they continue making life harder and harder for the vast majority of people? Do they really believe they can maintain control through fear forever? I keep searching for the logic in their approach, but I can’t find it.

Am I missing something here? Because from where I stand, it seems like the elite are acting against their own interests out of either ignorance or malice. And neither of those explanations makes much sense when you consider how much they have to lose by pushing people too far.

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@mggbwmn8 The simple answer is greed. If they go to the trouble to keep everyone happy and content, then they cannot accumulate as much wealth. If they ignore people’s needs, then they can accumulate as much wealth as they want as long as they don’t cross the line where everyone realizes the elites are at the root of the problem and/or everyone rises up to kill the elites.

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Xactly!

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Eat the rich. I hear they’re good with ketchup.

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The irony is that by hoarding wealth at all costs, elites create conditions that make their wealth more precarious. A stable society with broadly shared prosperity would actually provide more reliable long-term returns than our current system of extreme extraction.

Elites are trapped in a system that forces them to act against their own long-term interests, or are they simply unable to see beyond short-term gain?

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Elon Musk is a good example of how they often act against their own interests. Look at how much money he can lose and remain a mega-billionaire. There is simply no consequences to his actions. The legal establishment doesn’t even try to hold these people to any significant degree of ciminal responsibility whatsoever.

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…they can afford to be phruck-ups so it doesn’t matter?

Humanity is never going to evolve.

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Pretty much. Humanity will only evolve when we collectively say “Enough”. That type of thing will not happen until a significant portion of the population stops believing the lies of the status quo. Then stuff’s going to get crazy (but not for us, we’ll just be expressing our rage).

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I think greed an arrogance are at least 2 of the major reasons. So many of them are miserable and, as Kat Williams once said, “Money does make your life better, but it doesn’t change the things about you that were effed up to begin with.”

They keep collecting more and more money and possessions in a vain attempt to fill the hole in their soul. The more it doesn’t work, the more desperately they double down on their behavior. Eventually, they have to start running out of available fillers, so they reach for our stuff.

As for the arrogance, they have been insulated against accountability for their actions for so long, they can barely conceive of their being any consequences for their greed. Every once in a while, the unrest becomes so intense that even they get alarmed, so they allow a small amount of something good to trickle down to us, pacifying most of us for a while. It’s only a temporary reprieve, but it’s all they have.

The idea of following your very logical suggestions would never occur to them. And if someone were to suggest it, they would look at them the way most people at someone who still thinks the earth is flat.

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I heard a very interesting theory years ago (exact source of such unknown and, likely, unprovable if it were) is that in our early development as a species is that we were dependent upon each other as we grew in our development as being hunters and gatherers. Unfortunately, “deviant” human beings that were unlike others would be born here and there that had no empathy, fear or an observing ego, and which lead them to harm and take advantage of others. Since these groups of people were not like them, they did not destroy them, but merely ostracized them from the group. Eventually, enough of these “deviant” and predatory humans, who had become nomads began to hook up with one another. In the process, they realized that they could form packs of marauders, who would ride around take what they want from these otherwise peaceful communities regardless of whether it involved theft, rape, or murder. Unfortunately, the unchecked willingness and ability to harm others gave these groups of marauders a decided advantage that continues into our world today. They do not respect laws, morals, or boundaries, so what is left in order to keep them in check? Past Revolutions, Revolts, and even Workers related Organizing has succumbed to turning to marauders for protection and help, only to have them eventually turn on the hand that feeds them. The obvious solution here would be to identify these individuals and destroy them, but that would require the same thinking and philosophy that they have. Yes, they eventually destroy themselves, but not before a lot of wonderful people get hurt and even killed.

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