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Comment by close04 | Hacker News Reader

> a gun

Is that the kind of gun you buy?

Saying power gives you power is a circular argument. Wealth is like a wildcard, it can be turned into anything. And it's greatly amplified by experience as a guide to turning it into power, and allies by your side.

With wealth you buy the tools needed to stay in power: guns, lobbying, policy making, political campaigning, influencing public opinion or education, etc. No wealth and allies, no tools. Look at corporations making the game without firing one shot.

The entirety of human history showed that wealth has always been able to buy power better than anything else. And a few examples of rebellions or revolutions where people successfully overthrew the rich just show poor management on the side of the rich. Plenty more have died with guns in hand. Guns given to them by someone wealthy.

Later edit: I have edited the comment a bit for clarity, I noticed the reply later.

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>Wealth, while not an exclusive means to power, can buy you power in more ways than one.

Wealth only buys you power if people are willing to accept your money, and are also refraining from simply using force to take your money from you.

>Look at corporations making the game without firing one gun.

That's because they have an entire government, with guns, enforcing the rules of the game they're playing. If the government suddenly decides to confiscate all their wealth, there's absolutely nothing they can do about it. This has happened multiple times in history (such as the Cuban Revolution).

>And a few examples of rebellions or revolutions where people have overthrown the rich just show poor management on the side of the rich.

No, it shows that at some point, having money doesn't overrule people willing to use violence against you. Most of the time, this is avoided because people tend to prefer to avoid violence, and because there's enough people willing to defend the status quo (where that money is valued), but sometimes that breaks down, and then no amount of money will save you.

It's very simple: a handful of wealthy people can never be a match for an army of people with guns. The only reason wealthy people have any kind of power is because there's an army behind them backing their claim to power.

> That's because they have an entire government, with guns, enforcing the rules of the game they're playing.

So the guns are just a tool after all. The army isn't leading the rich because it's the rich who built the army. It's the rich who create the wealth and the guns.

> It's very simple: a handful of wealthy people can never be a match for an army of people with guns

It's simplistic. The only example you came up with just showed an error in judgement on the part of the rich due to lack of experience (some things were unfathomable for them), not a failure of wealth to give you that power. Both wealth and guns can "explode" in your face if mishandled.

Insisting the French revolution is the only true evidence that wealth is worthless in gaining power is like insisting the thousands of accidental gun deaths are the only true evidence that people with guns will just accidentally kill each other.

As you can see from today's situation those people with wealth learned from the past. They know where to push and where to pull in order to successfully keep power. They have refined the tools they buy with that wealth. And the civilized world has been managing to keep going this way without using a gun (well, not on home field anyway) for the longest time in history. A library will do a far better job at making my case than I can do in a comment. I strongly encourage it.

You seem to think that "wealth" is a real thing. It is not. That's the whole problem with your reasoning. Guns are a real thing: if you point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, they will be shot and likely die. Wealth, on the other hand, is basically mutual fantasy. The only reason Michael Bloomberg, for instance, is "wealthy" is because a bunch of other people agree to his claim that a bunch of financial instruments he owns (money and stocks) are actually worth something. This only works as long as there's a functioning economy. Periods of hyperinflation in history have shown that this isn't always the case.

What motivation do people with guns have to support people with money? Only the agreement that that money is worth something, and also that that person's claim to the money is something they all agree on.

>As you can see from today's situation those people with wealth learned from the past. They know where to push and where to pull in order to successfully keep power. ... And the civilized world has been managing to keep going this way without using a gun

Have you forgotten WWII? That happened under a century ago, and one thing that happened in the 30s was the Nazis rounded up all the Jews, stuck them in death camps, and seized their money.

Money only gives you power as long as you get enough other people to agree to this. The true power lies with the people who have guns and are willing to use violence.

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