Hacker News Reader

Comment by trealira | Hacker News Reader

In general, rebellion isn't inevitable. It only happens if people get together and organize it, which isn't guaranteed to happen. Individual people will just grit their teeth and put up with anything if they don't think they have the power to do anything about it.

View on HN

It seems that rebellion is getting more difficult, either because of better surveillance or social media. It was originally thought social media would increase rebellion and revolution (e.g. Arab Spring). But social media also makes it much more difficult for anyone to emerge as a leader of it. Social media transparency makes the leader mythos evaporate pretty quickly. Arab Spring failed, and no real leaders emerged as a part of BLM or Occupy Wall Street.

You're forgetting one very important factor in my view: desperation. This makes a single individual rebel.

You get enough desperate people, feeling like they don't stand a chance to get XXX, you got a rebellion.

If someone is desperate, but there's no group or organization that's trying to make a change somehow, I think they're more likely to turn on those with less power or wealth and scam or steal from others, while looking out for themselves and their family, and not organize a rebellion against the government or against a group of rich and powerful people.

But in this case (wealthy people paying to cut the line at the airport, ski resorts, and Disney world), I don't think anyone will feel desperate due to the circumstances, even if they think don't stand a chance at getting wealthy enough to benefit. It may make them resentful, but that's all.

Agree, desperation only applies to more critical things in my view. But sometimes it's the sum of little vexations, being passed on, being forgotten, that lead to a high level of frustration, anger and desperation. Then one goes into a "I don't give a shit anymore, I have nothing to loose" (there is always something to loose but desperation does that to you).

I'm mentioning this because the general tone of the article and the comments was that there are many examples of this trend toward less equality and in my eyes it is very true, we are going toward a society where the gap between poor and rich becomes bigger and bigger. And this is going like this since 50 years at least...

That makes sense; good point. With rising class-based inequality and disparities, some sort of push back is likely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com