Wealth inequality risks triggering 'societal collapse' within next decade, report finds

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It's better for people to feel productive and accomplished than to sit around doing nothing.

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I don't think we're going to fix things in any meaningful way. I think we're watching a big collapse. Not the end of humanity like some want to predict, but very rough times ahead.

I am with you that we should help each other out, and there's ways to do that. We can feed and shelter people now, and we should, but much more than that becomes infeasible quickly. And I think it will become even less feasible as things get worse.

I think what the other person was saying is... If there's a way to fix things, to make things better or at least lessen the harm, it's going to take a lot of people doing a lot of things. Things that aren't always profitable right away, but pay off later. Better public transit systems, more renewable energy, huge programs replacing the old but crucial infrastructure that brings us clean drinking water, turning useless land into productive fields, and so much more. If we had the political will, we could offer everyone the ability to work on these programs and in return have a better quality of life, while also building a better future.

And to be clear, this isn't all manual labor. Probably most of it isn't really manual labor. It's math, it's planning, it's machine operation, it's coordinating and transporting, it's organizing and communicating. To solve our problems will require a lot of people with a lot of skills, and if we can encourage the right people to be in the right place, we could solve so many problems and make so many things better.

We won't, though. But we could.

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For them it is catastrophic collapse of the stonk market and economy with trillions of wealth evaporating overnight.

For us, it is Tuesday.

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It's hard to imagine, but modern inequality is actually very extreme in historical context

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That money is just somewhere else.

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From a quick skim, that's not actually what this says. It's about wealth tending to concentrate in historical societies until there's a catastrophe. The graph of estimated wealth inequality included takes an absolute nosedive in the 20th century before starting to climb back up a bit, and it's still shown way lower than in the bad old days.

Keep in mind that ancient societies, at their worst, were mostly slaves, with just enough free people to beat them into submission. (At their best, you get some merchant republics and loosely overseen peasant communities, but no actual democracies)

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And here's the latest recalibration, done in 2023, main difference is that pollution just uses co2 level instead of a complex aggregate of pollution metrics.

Your pictured 2004 model may be the BAU model in these charts, not 100% sure, but Recall23 is the latest one.

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That's an optimistic timeline.

At the current pace I'll give it till June.

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So why don't we just eat the rich? Why can't we do the gamestop stock thing again at a bigger scale?

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For the US, my guess is: within the next 4 years. Inflation will be insane. Lets hope blue collar can organize and leverage the situation.

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I used to be pro UBI. Now I'm not so sure. The only resilient tool for increased equality is an organized work force that has real economic power. Workers on UBI has no real power and the UBI can be taken away anytime by those in power.

And if AI takes all jobs.. Well, lets cross that bridge when we get there. Maybe we simply have to hope for that crypto bro UBI solution. Qualia will be our last currency.

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It usually is. Its a high risk gamble that can lead to basically anyghing. And probably that anything will be bad for the poor. Reformism and organized labor is a safer path towards increased equality. But maybe that ship has sailed for the US...

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Unregulated capitalism in a nutshell.

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An organized work force in the USA is wishful thinking. It could have happened any time in the last 150 years, it didn't. I don't see it happening now.

UBI is a temporary measure. While i agree with you, that it weakens the stance of the population, because they are dependent on welfare money, i'm still reasonably sure it's way better than literally dying by starving to death. Because that's what's otherwise gonna happen.

The only true solution i see is reducing the population size. Supply and demand. If the workforce is smaller, wages are going to go up. The ethical options to do this is by being against migration, and giving women the option to have fewer children. But yeah, you can't say that, or "leftists" will call you a racist, while Trumpeteers will call you a "baby-murderer". So, i guess the USA is stuck.

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Wealth inequality risks triggering 'societal collapse' within next decade, report finds