A society in which it’s everyone for themselves, that refuses to care for one another, is no society at all. Then everyone acts shocked and horrified at someone who understandably snaps, like modern western culture doesn’t run entirely on schadenfreude.
That was the crux of the idea of a social contract, which is long dead in the US. Now people line up to revel in the suffering of their fellow citizens with “well you were stupid to do xyz in life, so you deserve your suffering haha.”
If only the rich had elected to share. You would never have felt any need to make your “contribution” to society and the entire problem would have been avoided.
The lesson here is that the rich need to make sure no one suffers.
I think your logic is similar to the logic of someone who would say
This sort of class warfare is not only unfair but also bad for the poor. I think people on here believe that this time they’ll get communism right, but the historical pattern is that usually “peasant rebellions” are crushed and in the few cases where they aren’t, they make things worse.
(IMO this belief has to do with how the American Revolution is taught in schools - too much focus on how it went well and not enough focus on how it inspired people in many other countries to have revolutions that didn’t go well at all. I think the difference was that the the wealthy upper class led the American Revolution.)
Good grief what a ridiculous retort.
Believe it or not our current system (in western countries) is actually very close to what I suggested. Despite the fact that most of us are dirt poor compared to the ultra wealthy, we still have pretty much everything we need, and most of us don’t feel any need to commit crimes.
There is a small segment that does commit crimes out of necessity, and that segment needs to be cared for by the wealthy as part of securing the society they live in. Like we’re this close, they only have to do a tiny bit more and there would be no homelessness. They only have to do a tiny bit more and there would be no hunger. And instead they’re allowing the desperate to be desperate, and thus mar our society with crime.