this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Love the energy, but before posting anything on the internet you should imagine a prosecutor asking you to read it to a jury
I'm stealing this. I'm seriously worried for the world. We are entering a new age of the diggers and levellers and that ended with the beheading of the king and no real change.
We have a segment of the population that's exceedingly frothing at the mouth and in some cases for very valid reasons but at the same time they have no plan and that's scary. They want to scorch the earth instead of fix it.
Please do!
Same :(
First of all, great reference, the English civil war is a fascinating period of history.
But second of all, it wasn't the diggers who chopped off Charles' head, they basically never had any real influence on anyone. It was the nobility in parliament that did that (and honestly, Charles did it to himself by being such a stubborn pain in the ass for the nobility), and they were the same ones who didn't have a plan/couldn't really imagine a world without a king, which is why they basically forced Cromwell to be king in all but name and then crowned Charles' son when Cromwell died.
I can imagine a lot of scenarios where a bit of scorching is a necessary first step in fixing (but I can also imagine a lot of scenarios where scorching goes off the rails and/or starts cycles of vengeance, so, yeah, we're seriously worried for the world and for good reason).
Another amateur history buff?!
I wasn't implying the diggers chopped off Charles' head. I was more hinting at he political turmoil at the time was very similar to what we see now and it scares me. Those who don't pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it and we are collectively horrible at teaching people history!
Fair enough, the emergence of groups like them is definitely a symptom of a stressed social system, it's just I don't think they're often the actual cause of the stress, and sometimes listening to those radical groups is the only way to resolve the actual stress (e.g. abolitionists in the United States were right and we just needed to completely abolish slavery for moral and practical reasons but most everyone thought they were crazy until like 1863). I don't think that really applies to the diggers (the English civil war was a bunch of rich people fighting for power by throwing mountains of poor people at each other who were never organized enough to have their own faction in that fight), but it might apply to our present-day situation (e.g. people like Pia Klemp make a lot of sense to me).
On a related note, if you're into the history of political upheavals, I highly recommend this podcast called Revolutions^1^ that actually did a season on the English Civil war and is just absolutely fantastic throughout it's whole ridiculously long run.
^1^ best links for finding it depends on if you're on a desktop, iOS, or Android device,
Sheeeesh, reading y'all's conversation was more enticing than any history class I ever attended.
I would say the richest and most evil of us dooming our planet to a heated, hell hole of an apocalypse kind of deserves some emotional reaction. The lack of one by most of the population is probably why we won't see change until it's too late.
It already is too late.
The only thing we have left is to make sure the ones whi caused this suffer as immeasurably possible as the damage they've done. To make sure they do not enjoy one second of the remainder of their days.
This includes any and all o&g execs. Every last shareholder. Every politician who has done nothing or invited this. Every one of them.
Heads on sticks.
Yes, judge, i said " we should just shoot the people who are actively killing us."
What's the problem here? It's stand your ground / self defense at its finest.
100% tax on anything past 100 million or 100% of their head gets lopped off. That's still an absurd amount of money for you and your family. Put the rest into growing your businesses and thus the economy, or give it to Uncle Sam for some socialized healthcare and UBI instead.
That's what they currently do. All of them. That's the whole point in them owning/investing in a business. That's how they sidestep so many taxes. Aside from a few (relatively) toys and houses, do you really think Musk or Bezos keep billions on hand in liquid form or physically owned objects?
I have a friend with parents that owned their own business that wasn't really all that large. It had a net profit of maybe $450,000 per year. They paid themselves enough to do whatever they wanted to that year, and the company "reinvests" the rest. It's all a shell game to avoid taxes. They did it by buying real estate for the company to 'eventually' grow on, but just put five cows on and got themselves agricultural exemptions on taxes, then sold the land later. Repeat x100. That money from the sale could be shuffled into other 'company' assets. That's super small time. They didn't have fancy lawyers or investing agents to help.
Big, rich, asshole business does it by buying back stock, diversifying (do you really think the big contractor company wants to own a grocery store chain, or a bank wants to own restaurants?) into assets that can just be sold later to recoup the money, etc.
Owning a business is all about tax avoidance. An individual doesn't have many ways to pump up deductions on taxes, but businesses have so many different avenues that even the IRS throws up their hands at some point. Requiring an individual to "put the rest into" their business won't change anything, and god knows the economy improving is only going to help a small portion of society. That portion isn't the portion that needs help.
Also, truthfully, I'd lower your number to $10,000,000. It's enough to live on even in the ritziest of areas, in the fanciest of houses that aren't mansions, and is still more per year than the highest of the middle-class will earn in their lives.