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Comment by proc0 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is a lot more complex than meets the eye. As long as the structure of society is shaped like that of a tall pyramid, someone will always take the place at the apex. It is at the very least ingrained in human nature, if not in mammals or even life itself.

Humans have made attempts at freeing themselves from this reality of nature, as history hints at the flattening of this pyramid, even if it is at a relatively slow pace. This does not mean revolutions are good though, since the problem at hand is about human nature, and activism only results in a bloody rebellion against our very own nature.

The battle may very well be spiritual because it could be the only way to transcend nature and its hierarchical grasp that condemns every living being to partake in a brutal hierarchy of some kind.

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> As long as the structure of society is shaped like that of a tall pyramid, someone will always take the place at the apex.

That doesn't absolve them of evil.

> It is at the very least ingrained in human nature, if not in mammals or even life itself.

That's not remotely true. You can't look at humans under capitalism and extrapolate that to humanity, and even to mammals. That's like observing wolves in captivity and saying they act like that in nature, or observing rats in tiny cages and extrapolating to ourselves.

In fact, for most of humanity, we were pretty damn egalitarian. Capitalism changed things, and the problem is getting rapidly worse - precisely because of billionaires [0].

> the problem at hand is about human nature

Nope. It's about human nature being warped. By billionaires and their pets.

> The battle may very well be spiritual

It is - because human nature is being warped. Every loophole in our evolutionary psychology is being weaponized... By billionaires. Inequality is right at the heart of all of our current crises.

0 - https://www.oxfam.org/en/takers-not-makers-unjust-poverty-an...

>In fact, for most of humanity, we were pretty damn egalitarian. Capitalism changed things, and the problem is getting rapidly worse - precisely because of billionaires [0].

No, it's scale that changed things. Larger pre-capitalistic societies (which are still relatively recent as far as the history of the species goes) were even less egalitarian. It's only smaller groups that were less structured where you find much less inequality, the problem is they lose to more organised, larger, and materially wealthier groups.

> it's scale that changed things.

Ok, I mean agriculture allowed for great inequality and large cities... Still, capitalism changed things even more. Scale isn't the reason why inequality is the highest it's ever been right now; it's because billionaire oligarchs are making all the decisions, and are selling the planet's future for a little bit more.

> Larger pre-capitalistic societies (which are still relatively recent as far as the history of the species goes) were even less egalitarian.

I don't think scale is the defining issue there, but if you can bring a paper or something I'd be happy to look at it. Also, keep in mind that despite all our advancements inequality is the highest it has ever been (and global destruction has never been closer).

> In fact, for most of humanity, we were pretty damn egalitarian. Capitalism changed things, and the problem is getting rapidly worse - precisely because of billionaires [0].

Slavery was common for the majority of human history, or when was it that slavery was invented after the "egalitarian" past? When exactly did the first slave happen? At least in current day we have a good part of the world, at least the developed world in which this is unthinkable.

At the very least you would point to the egalitarian times being before civilization happened, which would rule out capitalism.

> Nope. It's about human nature being warped. By billionaires and their pets.

Billionaires are humans and are the way they are because of human nature. You can't take them out of the equation by just saying they're somehow special individuals... either they deserve to be billionares or not... if they deserve it then there's no problem here, if they don't deserve it that means that there are other forces at play and anyone could be in that position if they had enough luck to be born to the right family, in the right place, etc., which means that it's a lot more complex than just blaming individuals, or even blaming the current systems which come about from the collective nature of humans.

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