alt Hacker NewsI continue to be shocked at how people outright disregard these kinds of possibilities as pure science fiction. This is literally the objective of the ultrawealthy, it is the natural extrapolation of the early events of the industrial revolution projected onto a near-future world, and given current trends, the only hope of it not happening is that people everywhere realize what is happening and use our remaining capacity to steal power back. Feudalism is the natural state of mankind, and has been for thousands of years.
I am very hopeful that such scenarios would not come to pass, but dismissing them outright puts us on the path toward them.
Replies
Yes, I reject the premise entirely, and frankly, viewing everything solely through the lens of class power is a really poor model of the world.
> Feudalism is the natural state of mankind
No, it's not. What we call feudalism arose after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
> This is literally the objective of the ultrawealthy
Assertion without proof; seems extremely likely to be baseless stereotyping since you insist this applies to the entire category rather than some specific named individual;
> it is the natural extrapolation of the early events of the industrial revolution projected onto a near-future world
Ford explicitly built his cars cheap so that the average person can afford them, and you're using this as evidence of supervillain-tier "wipe out humanity"?
> Feudalism is the natural state of mankind, and has been for thousands of years.
Feudalism, notably arising in the 5th century, has not even existed for thousands of years. Feudalism also notably did not involve the complete extermination of the peasant class. And of course, one could go so far as to notice that feudalism has largely been replaced by other systems of governance...