[yardie]

You won't get to the kind of change you thought you would see until food runs low and the economy stalls. The American Revolution was rare in that it didn't need to happen. The Founders were just being giant assholes (j/k). While the French Revolution just a few decades later was more status quo. A lot of starvation and poverty just pushed the population over the edge.

[ryandrake]

I would have believed that before 2020, but after COVID, I fully believe that if the food ran out, half the country would say it's a fake hoax. People would be on their death beds actually starving, and deny it was happening with their last breath.

[b00ty4breakfast]

I disagree. You can escape a disease, even during a global pandemic. And not every person that got COVID was on a ventilator or even felt that bad. Seeing the death toll statistics and even the direct effects through a screen is not visceral for many folks.

Starvation isn't avoidable and you can't ride it out. There isn't any chance that starving to death could be less severe than getting a bad flu. Nobody can avoid not eating for an extended period of time. If there is not enough food, it will affect everyone directly.

[slopinthebag]

People largely weren't on their deathbeds with covid claiming it was a hoax either so I'm not sure how that's a relevant analogy. The response to Covid was far more disruptive to my life than the disease itself, which would obviously not be the case with starvation.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I had the same reaction. I thought things were getting bad before COVID, but I thought that, generally, when push came to shove, sanity would prevail.

Herman Cain denied COVID's severity right up until it killed him, and them even after he died, his team was still tweeting that "looks like COVID isn't as bad as the mainstream media made it out to be." When I saw that people were literally willing to die to "own the libs", I knew shared reality was toast.

[hirako2000]

Could also say that over half the population finding such ridiculous mandates justifiable: lockdowns and demands that employers enforce vaccination compliance for all employees, ordoned non democratically by a senile; in a country with constitutional rights likely meant we would not see activists engaging in vandalism anytime soon.

[TuringNYC]

>> I would have believed that before 2020, but after COVID, I fully believe that if the food ran out, half the country would say it's a fake hoax. People would be on their death beds actually starving, and deny it was happening with their last breath.

We're in a K-Shaped Economy right now and half the folks will deny there is any K and insist everything is amazing.

[t-3]

The American and French revolutions originated in the middle classes. The poor are often indifferent to politics because they're focused on survival. The middle classes, who own things they don't want to lose and have free time to aspire for more, are the ones who start revolutions. The poor only came in after being whipped up by the interested parties, and don't necessarily join the revolutionary side.

[Kuinox]

> The American and French revolutions originated in the middle classes.

I don't know about the american revolution, but that's wrong for the french revolution. I'll link to french wikipédia pages since they are far better on the subject. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tats_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux_... Here we can see the first National Assembly was half nobility and clergy. The third estate was the other half.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiers_%C3%A9tat > Par ailleurs, les députés du tiers état aux états généraux représentaient essentiellement la bourgeoisie[2].

Which indicate that the majority of the third estate representative were bourgeois.

[thephyber]

Three critical differences the American Revolution had: (1) the middle class had some extremely well educated people, (2) the communication technology among the colonies was pretty fast whereas the comms between the colonies and the British rule across the Atlantic was slow, and (3) the empire tried to clamp down on the colonies ability to export to any market other than the mother country, killing lots of profit which previously made those markets strong.

[thewebguyd]

> until food runs low and the economy stalls.

Well one of those is already on the fast tracking to happening (economy stalling).

Unfortunately, I don't have much faith that people will turn against the administration during any kind of major depression/food scarcity. I foresee people turning against each other for survival instead.

[jacquesm]

> You won't get to the kind of change you thought you would see until food runs low and the economy stalls.

These are no longer impossibles.

[Waterluvian]

Boy is he trying on the latter. Quite impressive just how resilient it seems to be.

[wutwutwat]

"There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy."

- Alfred Henry Lewis

[mikestorrent]

> The American Revolution was rare in that it didn't need to happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_Rebellion

Interestingly y'all Americans pay much more tax now than you did to England back in the day. Turns out King George was right, and it was just about changing who the tax was paid to.

[pear01]

It's also rare to just "discover" an entire continent that is basically free for the taking since Europeans annihilated native populations through disease and technological superiority.

Much of what makes America unique is tied to this essentially once in a generation event that will never happen again on this planet, a contingent confluence of Earth's parallel geographic and biological evolution... it's fairly easy to rebel or become a superpower when other powers have to contend with peer conflicts right on their borders. A break with England was inevitable why take orders from people an ocean away in the age of sail?

[nathan_compton]

Not really a secret. The slogan was "No taxation without representation" not "no taxation."

The degree to which legislation in the US is bought by big companies and rarely reflects democratic desires we may be in another "no taxation without representation" era.

[fuzzfactor]

The US also got its own stock market.

[UltraSane]

Back then most taxes went to Britain.