The "game" used to be to have the best arms and strongest men and then remind your neighbors of that fact by periodically beating them to death, stealing their cattle, and raping their women.
We've progressed as a society since then, but it's helpful to see how that evolved into our current state of affairs. In Roman times, Rome was a city who collectively decided that they wanted to make sure everyone paid them tribute and in exchange they would make sure they wouldn't have to play "that game". You provincial people, put down your weapons (or pick them up for Rome) and we'll make sure you won't have to endure constant tribal infighting.
Fast forward to medieval times, and the game had evolved yet again. You pay your fealty to your lord, who pays it to their lords, all the way up to the king. Whether it was wheat or cows or horses or even men-at-arms, as long as you paid you were under their protection.
The end of the middle ages was the beginning of the age of nations. Now people decided that tribal warfare was stupid and instead they should send their kids off to join the military and in exchange they can live their lives free from the terrors of war as their boys would fight in distant lands against distant foes for reasons that couldn't be entirely understood.
The modern age we live in is a direct descendant of that. Now we live in a world where people have "rights" and they get to do things like choose their own leaders and write their own laws to protect those rights. This is an awfully hard game to play, especially if you want easy money and power. But there are people who think they are smart enough to manipulate the masses so they can continue to suck them dry and abuse them all for their selfish purposes. They think that the people will take it and enjoy it.
What we have learned is that a lot of people won't take it. In fact, they'll pick up rifles and RPGs and make IEDs and that's really hard for a modern military to deal with. And when the soldiers come back in caskets and bodybags people start asking questions like, "Why are we fighting this war again? And why are we acting like the bad guys?"
Pretty soon it's a full time job to keep the masses persuaded to send more young boys and money and to endure even stricter living conditions all in the name of "freedom" (What freedom? people wonder, as they lose right after right, privilege after privilege.)
The game we are in is the game of statecraft. There are very powerful people who have meticulously built their powerbase on lies and deceit. They have been using every trick in the book to convince the people that they are legitimately elected and have the best interests of the people in mind.
Well, the cover is blown. Not just a few people are now starting to understand what is really going on.
This is the new game: How can we restore the right of the people to rule themselves, elect their own leaders, write their own laws, without having a massive civil war that may involve nuclear weapons and hundreds of millions of dead?
This is the game you are playing.
Make your moves wisely.
Based On TRUTH. Everlasting, immutable TRUTH.
(Prayer helps.)
Your grasp of history coincides with mine. I always saw the connection between empires and the provinces having to send "tribute" (taxes) to said empires. History shows that as an empire wanes, the provinces become more reluctant to send tribute, they can sense when an empire is losing steam.
Usually empires were satisfied with "the king's fifth" or about 20%. I believe that rate came out of the ancient Egyptian dynasties. But empires in serious trouble tax (i.e., demand tribute) at much higher rates.
If you count up all the taxes we productive people pay it will be FAR higher than the king's fifth.
Just supposing, purely as a thought experiment, I wouldn't DARE suggest we actually do this, but just suppose we all quit paying taxes of any sort... federal, state, local....
How long before we would be put under martial law and taxes (tribute) extracted at gunpoint?
EDIT: Or how long before the empire stumbled and fell?
If we ever want our Republic back, we may have to sacrifice the empire.
This current lot thinks they figured out how to collect taxes without us paying taxes. It's called inflation.
The REAL trick is to stop using their money. Bitcoin is not the answer (I think it was created to distract us from real money) but you can imagine what would happen if we stopped using dollars to buy and sell and trade.
If I could buy bread, milk, and gas with silver, I would already be doing it, and for that very reason of bypassing taxes. But .... in a barter economy, which may be coming, silver will be very helpful. Fiat currency will be found out to have no intrinsic OR extrinsic value.
the missing detail here is one of the "why"s.
when the plague killed off a bunch of european serfs, the average guy in the field suddenly had a bargaining chip. he wasn't nearly as likely to be killed as he had been before. this slowly helped push forward the idea of human rights (and is one of the reasons european culture is a bit different on this topic in the world).
step that idea forward to today and throw automation and AI at it. suddenly the idea of depopulation makes sense to the richest in the world, doesn't it?
the biggest danger to any chinese govt has always been the chinese people--note i did not say "citizens". to keep everyone fed they always needed all of those people. think they will keep that problem around when they don't need to.
we aren't just fighting for our rights, we are fighting for our survival.
we are deciding what the nature of humankind will be going forward.
Interesting view, though very simple.
I would rather say that there is a vast difference in view regarding rights the moment ons goes South or west below the Rhine, which coincidentally also conforms to reformation.
The ideas of humanism or a human centric view of society are well documented in books written by Erasmus, etc.
At the same time, with the rise of cities, cities were able to secure certain rights for their city- zens.
This became so strong, that even the Holy Roman Emperor did not dare touch Hanse League cities.
Luther had written extensively on the topic of Christian Freedom. These were individual freedoms of conscience.
I would not use the Magna Carta as an example, since there are many problems with assigning actual effect of right by that document.
Then there is the issue of feudal lieges.
This finds its source in the Right of Conquest and Roman Law ( France) , germanic Law ( netherlands, west germany ( rhineland, pfaltz, etc) and several local laws like Frysian Law, and canon law.
Under Roman law there were two types of coloni: those who were free, but bound to the soil, and those not free, and bound to their owner.
For practical purposes, due to low yield of the fields, a domain was divided in two parts, those given to mansi as a loan, and those on which a mansi was allowed by a Serf/ slave. This is were Manor, or mansion comes from. The second part were the domain fields. ( domus = lord)
The Serf/ slave, and the "free" mansi, had to perform chores, ranging from blacksmitting, agriculture, etc. And most domains would try to be self sufficiënt. And there simply was not a lot of coin going around.
Liege lords had a need for an army. This was sourced from
In order to pay, a king could Grant land and thus income to whomever he pleased, or forced to give, depending on the need.
This then gave rise to quite a diversity of rights. You could be a vassal, but taxable. Or gain taxfree status.
Just like you can tokenize anything, so in them days, a king could Grant a lot of rights:
The middle ages were very different in England vs France, vs Italy, vs Germany, etc.
It may be due to the fact that both France and England have known quite a long period of Romanization, whereas north and East of the Rhine, this was not the case.
Only during the Francan Empire ( Charles the Great etc) things started to change, but by then, England, France and Germany went into different directions where it concerns the law and the status of its people.
a lot more rebel thinkers would have been crushed out of existence if they hadn't needed the humans. the rest of the points continue from that simple detail. those families were allowed to continue propagating their views, and those turned into all of those other things.
pretending that christianity was always a force for good neglects where many of the crusades actually occurred, doesn't it?
Except AI and automation is a pipe dream.
There will always be a place for people with a brain. Computers can't replace us, but they can make us more productive.
The CCP, or the people controlling them, may not realize this. It is certainly not popular to explain to people why Deep Learning will never work (it's hyperfitting a curve with math most people cannot even fathom).
you misunderstand. there are a great number of tasks that can already be automated out of existence. and it's already happening. there is a difference between all and most. they'll be happy to put up with a smaller population that they can more readily control.
it's a matter of degrees like so many issues at this point. everyone wants black and white when the world is quite grey.
We were supposed to have hit the inflection point a decade ago. Having worked on the frontlines of AI, I know what it can do and now more than ever what it will never do.
then you have a good idea how many more jobs it can actually take if everything is implemented. when you have a coffee barrista the size of a phone booth texting people that their coffee is ready, jobs are on the line. multiply it up and do the rest of the math.