Is that so bad? The rational use of irrational symbols has proven highly effective in the past. Whatever it takes to survive, is worth considering.
Marcus Plutowski
Karma: 2
It seems to me that elites are elite because they are simply the best at doing whatever it takes to maintain their power
This is true, but it’s clearly conditioned on the currently-existing socioeconomic system. The aristocracy of post-feudal Europe did quite a good job of holding on to power for quite a long time, but over the course of just a few decades (1880-1920, or more expansively the whole century from 1850 to 1950) lost most-all of it to the up-and-coming bourgeoisie. This is despite them holding all the usual suspects for “tools to maintain power at all costs”:
political repression
control of the military
heavily-biased elections and political systems more broadly
ownership of most land in most countries
control of state institutions
Yet that was still swept away once, depending on the particular country, either the internal structural pressures grew too great for the aristocracy to hold on any longer (e.g. France, the UK), or a misstep in the face of external pressure broke their ability to maintain the above systems of suppression (e.g. Germany, Austria, Russia).
any replacement elite would have to do similar things or itself be replaced
Considering again the above: after the bourgeoisie replaced the aristocracy as the new ruling class, it’s easy to see that they began to do very different things, both in terms of government policy and in terms of how they maintained power thereafter: beyond the cursory “they are rich and spend lots of money” and “they try to maintain power”, there’s very little similarity between the two. The way they maintain power (e.g. electioneering, party capture, money-in-politics, rotating heads of government but all beholden to the markets), what they do with the power (opening up international markets, privatizing industries, lowering taxes), and the people who benefit the most (business-owners, large financiers) are all totally different.
If it were possible for the majority to govern society for their own benefit from the bottom up
You could say the same in 1850, after the failure of the revolutions of 1848: “if it were possible for an elected parliament to govern society without a King to manage them, we’d be living in a liberal-capitalist utopia already”. I think history shows that there is often significant hysteresis and high activation costs to societal change, so the fact that we haven’t already disempowered the current ruling class tells us rather little about whether it’s generally possible to do so.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I go off topic with coworkers when it feels appropriate, and if anything it can be a nice break from grinding on whatever problem.