Well, they usually end up with the people everyone was most angry at for causing the circumstances that lead up to the revolution powerless or dead, as an explicit aim.

So regardless of who ends up in charge after or if that regime succeeds, you can’t say revolutions themselves are not frighteningly effective

Depends on whether the real goal is "kill those people" or "make a better life for the rest of us". The first is easy; the second is harder.

I assume it often starts with "kill those people" and once that nasty business is out of the way and new people are selected to replace them there's a very strongly implied "Now you people make a better life for the rest of us, or else we will start over."

I think you're confusing successful revolutions with revolutions. Way more likely the revolutionaries succeed in doing a bit of damage and get crushed.

Definitely should not have shot at those redcoats

You jest, but strong arguments have been made on both sides of that counter-factual. Popular narratives of the American Revolution leave much unsaid. Contemporary accounts of inciting events such as the Boston Massacre were often gross distortions or plain lies.

The Townshend Acts were meant to tax the colonies to recoup the cost of their own defense, after the French and Indian War kicked off arguably due to George Washington's poor French:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jumonville_Glen#Afte...

(GP's comment does not appear to be advocating for violent revolutions.)

How is the status quo working out for people in Haiti or Palestine or Sub-Saharan Africa? Lovely results, I expect?

Fantastic results! Check out how GDP per capita is trending in those areas. It has doubled in Palestine and Haiti over the last couple of decades, and is way up for many sub-Saharan African countries.

Funny that you'd pick those areas and not Asia, where a billion people were lifted out of absolute poverty in the last 30 years! Pure chance, I'm sure.

might be worth looking at the 200 years before that

> It has doubled in Palestine and Haiti over the last couple of decades, and is way up for many sub-Saharan African countries.

https://tradingeconomics.com/haiti/gdp-per-capita

The actual facts don't match your rosey summary.

Haiti has faced 4 straight years of a shrinking economy and the GDP per capita is at one of it's lowest points in the last 60 years.

Yes, many people have been lifted out of poverty but it has happened alongside increasing inequality and there have been some very notable failures and Haiti is one of them.

Wrong. World bank data shows Haiti's GDP per capita has more than doubled since 2000. [0]

You anti-capitalists have already caused a century of misery and wont--can't you just admit defeat? Haiti is the perfect example of the extraordinary benefits of our system. 40% can't read. 60% lack access to electricity. Yet even they can't escape the bounty of global capitalist system!

It's over. Capitalism won, for the benefit of all of humanity.

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/country/haiti

It's funny how if you ignore inflation, it looks like things are growing. Try looking at the inflation adjusted 2015 graph.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location...

I’m assuming this is lovely in the SomethingAwful bowdlerized sense

Yes! Rest assured that there is no historical reason to fear "unintended consequences". The very idea is a reactionary dog-whistle.

Aye, like the metric system