Back in the day, most people grew up working on a farm/ranch/etc. and actually knew how to use a pitchfork. I'm trying to imagine today's obese generation trying to physically overthrow the government and can't help thinking that it wouldn't go so well.

Most Americans have guns. The police has better weapons, but it would be a war of attrition, and I doubt most police would want to go on killing sprees against their fellow countrymen.

Although I doubt it'd reach the point of massive insurrection. That would require a total loss of trust in the government, and I think we're still far from that.

How old is the average American gun owner? Are they physically fit?

Merely owning guns is different than possessing the physical ability and training in weapons and tactics to use them effectively, especially versus military or paramilitary forces (National Guard and Border Patrol is a much more likely initial pro-government force than police). Not only are they equipped and trained with the same weapons civilians may have, they also have automatic weapons, nightvision, grenades, armored vehicles, helicopters, tear gas, sonic weapons, fire trucks, and a lot more.

Keep in mind that the very modern, very well funded, and very well equipped US military has been fighting a bunch of dudes with rifles and IED's for the past several dozen years without conclusive victories or signs of the resistance slowing.

That US military is also neither attacking its own citizens it has filial and friendly ties with, nor attacking people who look and talk like it.

Modern armor and missiles don't accomplish much when the enemies main goal is to just live as they want to (instead of conquer territory or resources).

To be fair, the U.S. military is very effective against the individual people they are fighting at any given moment. Kill ratios in recent conflicts are of the order of 100:1. It's just that for every insurgent you kill, you create 10 more. Unless your goal is to just depopulate the rest of the globe (something I wonder about, given recent U.S. foreign policy), you can't actually win this war without addressing the conditions that lead people to hate the U.S. in the first place.

Open rebellion in the US would tank its credit rating and foreign investment, which is the only thing keeping it afloat.

No sane country would lend us money to wage war on our own people/economic infrastructure.

And mass insurrection would disrupt the supply chain. Nothing is warehoused these days, so the country would fall apart.

Maybe I'm a pessimist. Maybe I should start digging my shelter.

In every instance throughout history, the $weapon wielded by the peasant has been vastly inferior to the one wielded by the noble's army, guards, etc. In fact one could argue that the peasantry has never been less outgunned that they are currently, when previous uprisings made do with sticks and rocks, and the heads of the wealthy still rolled in the end.

The fact is that the select few protect themselves with rolls of the sons and daughters of the masses. Sure, plenty of them will turn their weapons on their fellow countrymen for a paycheck, but how many? And for how long?

And especially once those bullets start flying, how useful is the money being paid to those guards? How long before they have all the money they could ever want and no one will sell them food?

In our hyper-connected world, we lose people jobs when they crack a racist joke on twitter. How hard will it be to find the 1%'s executioners?

It’s hard to be sure exactly what scenario people are picturing when they speculate about this. If you want an example of urban warfare vs. a modern military, check out Iraq about 10 year ago. While it was difficult, for them, guess who won. As far as the rest of the theorizing, we would have to be on common ground about the entire scenario before it’s worth speculating about.

For example, I don’t know what food you’re talking about because in my wild fantasy scenario, all of the freeways have been destroyed and Walmarts and grocery stores are empty. Mass starvation, plague, panic, electricity is off, no communication systems work other than the military. They have seized anything useful. They have tanks etc, which helps a lot. As far as ‘who will sell them food’... you’re talking about a highly armed military force fighting a civil war? Do you think people are going shopping at Kroger with the other side or something? This isn’t the French Revolution. This is 80 years after millions of people died in gas chambers in Europe, right? The next major wars are not going to be very friendly.

People can be extremely resilient, especially when their lives are at hand. I don't think you've thought this through. A true civil war where the US military is fighting its own citizens won't be like the Iraq war at all. There is likely to be mass defection of soldiers who are unwilling to fight their own countrymen. Massive civil disobedience where taxpayers stop paying their taxes, farmers defect to the sides that they most recognize with.

Its not a scenario that I really want to think about since its so brutal. But it can happen, and the war is likely to be a prolonged battle.

Not to mention, the unrest in the Motherland will let other rogue forces run amok internationally as they jostle for supremacy over each other. I can't see any of that ending well.

That's not the worst scenario.

If the govt or millitary hold so much tech that you end up in a hunger game scenario, and the population is oppressed (but unlike hunger games, the oppression comes in the form of feeble food and entertainment - ala, bread and circus).

The people feel comfortable enough to not want to revolt. Yet, ignores the minority that do get harsher treatment, because doing so puts their own lively hood in jeopardy.

Well I was specifically speaking in very broad terms. I don't know what a Civil War in the modern US will look like and I hope to Christ or whoever else is running this thing that it doesn't come to that.

I think though that far beyond contemplating who is shooting at who with what, the more interesting question is what does victory look like for the 1%? Just shoot everyone who complains until there's nothing but peaceful staff left?

If you're talking an actual war of attrition between the classes in the US, you'd be crazy to bet on the rich. It's not even a question of "if" they can win, their win condition DOES NOT EXIST and cannot exist. The more disgruntled people who are killed, the more people become disgruntled, until you have the entirety of the damn country saying "wait a minute, why am I shooting my fellow citizens because Mr. Bezos wants a 10th house?"

If this gets to a place of violence, and if the Rich of today allow it to get to that place, they have assured their own destruction, it's simply a matter of time. The best thing they could be doing right now is supporting measures to help out the common people, if for no other reason than their money cannot stop the torches.

Edit: I'm rambling a bit here but I guess my counterpoint basically boils down to: let's assume that the Rich get full control of the US Military and it's assets to end civil insurrection and restore economic order. How do they do it? What orders do they give? Where do they send the missiles to dismantle the resistance? Which neighborhoods get power cut? Who gets banned from twitter? And how does it end?

I'm just not seeing a way that such a conflict would end where Amazon (or anyone else) could simply resume business as usual.

I think a modern U.S. Civil War will look a lot like Syria. Once social order collapses, you'll get a bunch of different armed factions all pursuing their own social agenda. Remember that the 99% generally hates each other a lot more than they hate the rich; I can't imagine a Nazi from North Carolina, an Evangelical from Arkansas, a proud Southerner from Alabama, a blue-collar Irish Catholic from Boston, a cattle-rancher from Montana, a Jewish doctor from NYC, a poor urban black from Atlanta, and a Californian tech-worker all fighting on the same side.

Any conflict where the U.S. disintegrates will likely spread worldwide, too, as other nations take advantage of the power vacuum to press their own claims. So emigration is unlikely to be a solution for people who wish to remain neutral.

The endgame for the 1% is likely to become lords or petty kings of little feudal domains. They may offer to provide security services to their employees in exchange for economic service. They wouldn't be global titans of industry, but they'd be heads of their little fiefdoms. The smart ones will avoid major military action, instead only clearing the local area around their corporate offices of populist insurgents. If the insurgents want to fight other insurgent groups, that's their business; they can all kill each other off.

I suspect national guard forces would make the backbone of several armed factions.

Endgame for the 1% is being in a position to gain the spoils of war and to take less damage than your competition.

Or defectors from the military. That was the case in both the Syrian Civil War, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the first American Civil War - the nucleus of armed resistance formed around former military men who couldn't raise arms against their countrymen.

Private security forces and tech/AI are wildcards - we haven't had anything like the former since feudal mercenary days, and we haven't had anything like the latter ever - but could also form the basis for power centers.

> If you want an example of urban warfare vs. a modern military, check out Iraq about 10 year ago. While it was difficult, for them, guess who won.

Sure, Shock and Awe was successful, but it was nothing more than a raid. The US Army did not conquer Iraq, at least on the medium term. They barely control most of the territory.

For the French Revolution, the King refused to used the army against the people. And the revolutionary had the support of some of the rich and powerful

An attempt to overthrow the government is handled by the military, not the police. The military has more guns, better supply lines, and better discipline than police forces.

It would be terrible to see the military killing its own citizens in defense of a corrupt government that doesn't work for those citizens.

It would be far from the first time that has happened in history.

It certainly wouldn't surprise me if history repeated itself.

It’s easy though, just tell them they are undocumented Mexican transsexuals who voted for Obama.

Most Americans don't have guns. Gun owners are a minority with a very loud voice.

One in three households or thereabouts. It's certainly not "most" - but not sure "vocal minority" is accurate either?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/29/ameri...

Minority generally means “less than half”. In some contexts, with a non-binary trait, it may mean “smaller than the largest group”, with the largest group being a “majority” if it is greater than 50%, and a “plurality” if it is not.

33% on a binary trait (one either does or does not own at least one gun) is clearly a minority.

So that’s 33%—of households, not people—at best. Definitely a minority—a minority that appears to be growing even smaller if the trends continue. They’re definitely vocal.

What part of calling them a vocal minority seems inaccurate?

I guess I'm not used to such a large group being seen as a "minority". Isn't the breakdown in US elections roughly 1 in 3 (or 1 in 4) Democrat, Republican and other (independent / didn't vote)?

A house hold often includes more than one person. Those other individuals are not gun owners. Gun owners are a fairly small group with a very powerful lobby that needs to be ignored.

This (and the sibling) strikes me as an odd interpretation - there are more guns than people in the US - most households with any guns, have more than one gun. And as I see it living in a household with guns, generally means access to guns?

So I readily read one in three households, as strictly more than one in three persons - have access to guns?

> So I readily read one in three households, as strictly more than one in three persons

That's a bad reading. Even if everyone in a household with a gun owner have access to guns, that would mean 33% of households implies exactly 33% of people if gun ownership is distributed among households with no bias by household size. It doesn't imply more than 33% of people unless gun owning households are larger than non-gun-owning households.

Why even care about this meaningless distinction? Households can give other households guns. What's important is if there are enough guns and ammunition for every person, not how they are distributed unless it's extremely skewed to a very specific part of the population.

Just because you don't personally own a gun doesn't mean you're also against owning guns.

And that is not relevant, either you own a gun or you don't. Americans by and large don't own one.

Only if we're talking about gun ownership, which you did not do. You brought up the gun lobby. It's relevant because you equate gun owners only to the gun lobby.

There are many non-gun owners that are without a doubt for owning guns.

30% of Americans have guns http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/the-demographics-o...

I wonder how much of the privately owned land area of the US is owned by Americans who own guns?

To be fair, the cops are fatter, too.

On a more serious note, a population is only peacefully policed at the enjoyment of the people. The critical mass of insurrection beyond which a population can no longer be policed is low. In my lifetime I have seen riots in LA, Baltimore, and Ferguson, to name just three. And those were of minority populations. If the entitled "obese" hegemonic population were part of the insurrection, it might be more difficult to put them down.

I'm not sure why you think a mob of fat people won't be able to over power people. A fat man can torch a mansion as well as a skinny man.

It depends on whether or not the mansion is located on the top of a hill.

An overthrow would look entirely different today. The masses wouldn't carry pitchforks, they'd use computers. (I don't know how, but assuming people today wouldn't use computers is definitely wrong)

We have to cripple the datacenters, which tend to be hard to move.

if I were to overthrow the government, I'm assuming many peers would be involved too, probably Anonymous, a lot of the tech community, etc.. (if it was down party lines, or even 99% vs 1%...

Assuming the revolting army was full of tech geeks, the best we could hope for is a drone/robotic army that uses technology. Because jocks most of us are not. LOL.

I have to assume that the government has the ability to shutdown the Internet at will. Perhaps even the ability to physically destroy the networks at key locations at will. They certainly have the ability to take the electric grid offline at will which would render most technology moot within a short period of time unless you have solar panels and battery backup.

Not at all -- not with satellite tech/internet (who's side will Musk be on?) -- what about mesh networks? Musk could also supply energy/electricity if he joined the 90%, I'm sure some billionaires might come join the lowly poor people fighting against Oligarchy.

Physical violence isn't the only way that the working class can seriously disrupt the normal functioning of society.

This is part of the reason why the country is so divided. It's a great tactic to prevent the masses from organized. Give the left and the right something to hate (each other) and steal the economic gains for yourself.

Sadly this is true.. I'd love to see Progressive politicians jump ship to Republican, pick up a few emotional issues like anti-abortion (though secretly pro-choice), and be pro-gun (though still a believer in regulating which guns are allowed on the market).

Basically troll the party in red states, some might actually get elected on a platform similar to Bernie but tweaked to appeal to right wingers, and then we can work from left/right to pull the masses to a center that's more progressive less corporatist.

Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.

Small local police departments are also staffed by the 90%, though.

I find it difficult to imagine an uprising against the 1% in America any time soon, but if it did happen I can absolutely imagine the police siding against the 1%.

At this point in America, pretty much everyone who has weapons and authority to use force is pretty ideologically aligned with the 1%. There is a pretty strong narrative in that group that all of these problems that many would ascribe to poor income equality are actually caused by immigrants, welfare recipients, and government.

I think the chance of the police or military siding against the 1% is incredibly small.

Police forces are ideologically selected to protect the 1%. In extreme cases what you say is possible, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Considering the top 1% is ~$450K per year per household, I'd wager plenty of folks on HN are in the top 1% if they are a two income household.

The top 1% of income is very different than the top 1% in wealth.

hear, hear.

From my experience, police officers generally don't like rich people. Also, I don't think that members of the police force or the military are as obedient or loyal as they used to be in the past.

They don't like "rich assholes" but they are very authoritarian and respect and obey "power."

If the 1% decided to lobby for police salaries > 400k per year, would the police be more obedient? If revolution was coming, you better believe pay for police would rise, and they'd definitely protect their own interests.

You might want to look up the history of for example the Republic Steel Strike in Chicago in the 1930s.

Studs Terkel on that:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/wfmt-studs-terkel/published/22485.m...

Except, if it looked like it was coming to that, guess who just got a major pay raise : Police... Now Police is the highest paid field in America...and they'll do anything the 1% tell them to.

> Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.

Successful uprisings by the masses against the elites almost always involve substantial fractions of the military, police, and other security services defecting, either abandoning their gear or taking it with them and turning it against the elites.

Until we get robots replacing guys with guns, that's going to be a recurring failure mode for narrow elite rule.

When you get robots replacing guys with guns, then you've got a whole second set of problems to deal with them. Namely, cybersecurity goes from being annoying to being potentially lethal.

Which, if you think about it, is a slight recasting of the same failure mode: formal control of the instruments of force can become detached from actual control.

It's the same failure mode, but it's a much worse problem. For the (human) police to join the insurrection, they have to be persuaded that the insurrection is either morally right or too big to fight (which may mean that it's too big for the police to consider arresting/killing them all to be an acceptable solution). For the robots with guns to join the revolution just takes one really good hacker.

Anytime US police are shown on TV it's staggering to see how many are of them are obese. How can these police officers function in their jobs being so large? There must be yearly fitness tests to weed out people like that. Surely someone 6 feet tall 300 or 400 pounds can barely walk let alone run after someone.

US Police on TV look more obese (and in a top-heavy way) than they are because department policy very often includes wearing a bulletproof vest under their uniform shirt.

People on TV are the ones that are later in their career. A police sergeant is more of a middle manager and is often not out in the field. Fitness tests ensure new officers are not overweight.

FWIW, strength is way more important for policing and combat than being thin. Obese people who move around on a daily basis are usually quite strong. They have to be.

But which side will they be on?

Protecting the private property of the state & corporations. Standing rock is a great example.

They'll never get that far. Even when desperate the 90% are easily divided against each other.

Disease, war, some other ecological disaster... a divided and very unequal nation cannot respond to these stresses. This is what ultimately balances things, it's a shame that so many many lives will have to be destroyed in the future because we are too timid to fix the problem now.

It's interesting there's theories that say it took the black plague to wipe out half of Europe and end the riches domination of the poor, end the dark ages, and ultimately start the enlightenment.

It's true that logistically there's always more poor than rich. That said, rich are only one plane ticket away from peace of mind. Surely their money is already distributed digitally so ..

But the democratic establishment does policies that are very similar to republicans, get all their money from the 1% and corporations, and I’d be surprised if progressives manage to break out.

And many Democratic voters find the current, establishment of DNC politicians to be delusionally far right of their constituents. See: Bernie, Ocasio-Cortez, and what I believe will be many more Dems with a leaning towards progressive policy.

There's not that many, though.

The vast majority of Democrats like corporate employment.

The key is passing anti-corruption acts that get money out of politics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe286ky-9A

If it's illegal for lobbyists, corporations, etc to donate to politicians, then we can make politics more fair/ethical. This is a bipartisan group working to get these passed.

Anti-corruption benefits everyone.

> If it's illegal for lobbyists, corporations, etc to donate to politicians

It is illegal for corporations to donate to politicians.

But independent expenditures that aren't donated are another matter, which you can't eliminate without taking a big whack to the first amendment and core political speech.

It is not illegal for corporations to donate to political campaigns. It's also not illegal for corporations and lobbyists to offer jobs, to politicians after they retire from congress. Howard dean once a politician is now a lobbyist.

See: https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem/

Corruption in America is perfectly legal, and the 1% carry a much larger voice than the bottom 90%, if politicians did what voters wanted it'd be a different story, see the video on that link for evidence that politicians vote 0% of the time with what the people want, and follow a more normal curve with the elites/corporations.

Money shouldn't = speech. This gives certain people more access to free speech, tips the tables, makes the country an oligarchy not a republic or democracy.

Imagine if all federal offices gave each person running $1 million dollars. Media stations gave each person 30 minutes/month during primaries and general elections for ads. No donations were allowed from corporations, and nothing from an individual exceeding 1000.

Imagine if lobbying were completely illegal. The anti-corruption laws (see represent.us link above) would fix this. It's a bi-partisan movement to fix corruption on BOTH sides of the aisle.

> It is not illegal for corporations to donate to political campaigns

The FEC, who actually enforced election law, disagrees: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate...

“Campaigns may not accept contributions from the treasury funds of corporations, labor organizations or national banks. This prohibition applies to any incorporated organization, including a nonstock corporation, a trade association, an incorporated membership organization and an incorporated cooperative.”

Except there are plenty of 'loopholes'.

1. Superpacs.

2. DNC Fund. (Automatically went to clinton in many cases, so it was another bucket of cash for her campaign. It should've been split evenly in the primary between her and other primary runners.

3. Promises. 'Hey larry, when you're out of congress, let us know if you want to work for our Posh lobby firm. Comfy pay and benefits'.

4. There own interests. Cheney / Haliburton. Anything about Trump.

5. Hillary Victory fund raised: $523.6M -- how many did state parties get of that?

6. There's a lot of ways to hide money. What about speaking engagements.. or other ways to 'pay' the candidate, so they can use their 'own' (but recently acquired) cash on hand? How much do the Clintons or Trumps receive to do a speaking engagement?

I don't know the answer to get rid of all corruption, but how is it that ISP's were able to give money to politicians who voted against net neutrality? INAL but here's a list:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp...

Example: Grassley, Chuck : $135,125.

Obviously they can give money, and do to move their political aims. To say they don't means you're living under a box. Maybe if they give it outside an election term when they're not running for office? That money from ISP's should be illegal, but it isn't.

> I don't know the answer to get rid of all corruption, but how is it that ISP's were able to give money to politicians who voted against net neutrality?

There are four things that are often described by activists and the media as donations by corporations (sometimes combined, sometimes just one or the other—the first and third seem to be the most common where dollar figures are given, because they are most readily available), in roughly decreasing order of the degree to which such descriptions are misleading:

(1) donations by employees of the corporation (regular individual donors with reportable donations must disclose their employer, and often donations by employees of a firm or industry are described as donations by the firm or industry.)

(2) Donations to “leadership organizations” directed by candidates (this is misleading when described as a campaign donation to the candidate, because such organizations are conduits that allow the candidate to promote other candidates), and

(3) Donations to SuperPACs that align to some extent with a particular candidate. (This is a wobbler in terms of how misleading g it is, because some superPACs are essentially focussed on a single candidate, and some are more general.)

(4) Donations from a corporate “separate segregated fund” (this money doesn't actually come from the corporation as such—it is separately solicited from managers and shareholders—but is directed by it.)

The particular article you refer to expressly combines the first two categories.

So, to completely ban the contributions identified in that article, you'd have to prohibit anyone with a job from contributing to a political campaign, and to eliminate everything commonly portrayed as corporate contributions, you'd have to also outlaw independent expenditures (which are what SuperPACs do) on political advocacy.

you could ban all political donations. Period.

Have a political fund, for each election. Every person gets the exact same amount. They cannot use own money or donations. They must use the money given. Whoever wins off that level playing field deserves to be the winner.