Bravo! That was an excellent analysis of modern events. It highlights a key failing of modern democracy in countries like Canada and the United States. Some comments:
> In Canada and other Western countries, elites have robbed ordinary people of opportunities for prosperity. Their acquiescent partners in government have dismantled systems that at one time fairly distributed economic liberty.
One of the biggest challenges in fact is that society will need an entirely new definition of prosperity because traditional prosperity is unsustainable. So we are faced with two problems: giving people upward mobility but first finding a space that creates the possibility of that mobility.
> These studies show that violent civil unrest emerges after nonviolent anger fails to elicit tangible improvements from elites.
I think it's possible that there are no (serious) tangible improvements from the elites. In a way, the power structure has sort of painted itself in a corner. It has created wealth but the entire underlying mechanism of that wealth creation is based on the industry of exploitation, making themselves much more efficient and people much less so. While traditionally, this efficiency has trickled down just enough to give the impression of improvement, I think the elites have hit a wall: their entire system can longer go forward without showing obvious cracks.
So I think we can expect more civil unrest.
> We must prevent this catastrophe before rising inequality ignites the kind of deprivation-fueled political violence that has plagued so many societies for generations.
I wonder if maybe the goal is not to completely avoid "deprivation-fueld political violence" but to channel it so that it burns in a controlled fashion, and is actually effective. After all, not all political violence leads to an untenable situation of chaos. It is entirely possible that the right sort of movement would actually lead much more quickly to a fairer society than waiting for the megacorporations to hand us a few scraps. Because if you look at it, political violence, while overtly disturbing, is far less disturbing than the systemic violence of the current system.
> The perceived unfairness of the status quo, coupled with the unresponsiveness of elites to citizens’ anger, lies at the heart of increasingly radical views among ordinary people.
I would phrase that a little differently, and say that the system of the elites itself is becoming increasingly more radical in what it is attempting to accomplish, and the views of the ordinary only seem radical in contrast to the radical nature of the elites. If you violently run into someone on the street and push them to the ground, it may seem radical, but that act becomes seen as entirely normal and compassionate if we also add the fact that you have pushed that person out of the way of an oncoming truck.
Bravo! That was an excellent analysis of modern events. It highlights a key failing of modern democracy in countries like Canada and the United States. Some comments:
> In Canada and other Western countries, elites have robbed ordinary people of opportunities for prosperity. Their acquiescent partners in government have dismantled systems that at one time fairly distributed economic liberty.
One of the biggest challenges in fact is that society will need an entirely new definition of prosperity because traditional prosperity is unsustainable. So we are faced with two problems: giving people upward mobility but first finding a space that creates the possibility of that mobility.
> These studies show that violent civil unrest emerges after nonviolent anger fails to elicit tangible improvements from elites.
I think it's possible that there are no (serious) tangible improvements from the elites. In a way, the power structure has sort of painted itself in a corner. It has created wealth but the entire underlying mechanism of that wealth creation is based on the industry of exploitation, making themselves much more efficient and people much less so. While traditionally, this efficiency has trickled down just enough to give the impression of improvement, I think the elites have hit a wall: their entire system can longer go forward without showing obvious cracks.
So I think we can expect more civil unrest.
> We must prevent this catastrophe before rising inequality ignites the kind of deprivation-fueled political violence that has plagued so many societies for generations.
I wonder if maybe the goal is not to completely avoid "deprivation-fueld political violence" but to channel it so that it burns in a controlled fashion, and is actually effective. After all, not all political violence leads to an untenable situation of chaos. It is entirely possible that the right sort of movement would actually lead much more quickly to a fairer society than waiting for the megacorporations to hand us a few scraps. Because if you look at it, political violence, while overtly disturbing, is far less disturbing than the systemic violence of the current system.
> The perceived unfairness of the status quo, coupled with the unresponsiveness of elites to citizens’ anger, lies at the heart of increasingly radical views among ordinary people.
I would phrase that a little differently, and say that the system of the elites itself is becoming increasingly more radical in what it is attempting to accomplish, and the views of the ordinary only seem radical in contrast to the radical nature of the elites. If you violently run into someone on the street and push them to the ground, it may seem radical, but that act becomes seen as entirely normal and compassionate if we also add the fact that you have pushed that person out of the way of an oncoming truck.