That’s more commonly a US thing and it’s like, “Americans saved from America.” whether health, education, or some basic social service that’s being used for profiteering.
“Amazing! This group of people crowd-funded a medical procedure!”
Hey that orphan-crushing machine is a constitutionally enshrined right. I have the right to mount that thing on wheels and drive it around to crush up orphans wherever I want! And if somebody tries to stop me and gets caught up in and jams the mechanism, I have the right to sue his estate for damages!
Are you on patreon? I’ve got 20k I’d like to invest in your ideas
Yeah, because everybody knows the obvious answer. It’s untethered capitalism. And no it hasn’t always been that way. Politicians weren’t always whores for the rich. That’s a rather recent development that can absolutely be stopped by the will of the people.
As much as I respect your argument; the Romans. Or any civilisation really. It literally has always been that way.
I don’t know enough about Roman politics to contradict but “any civilisation really” is definitely too broad of a stroke.
Greed and corruption has been around for as long as land and money have.
Sure. But it only really becomes a problem in very large communities. A chieftain overseeing 50-100 villagers isn’t as easily corrupted.
At that point, the scale is just different. That’s when the brother of the chief gets to build his new hut on the nice hill.
Lol, that’s the mildest form of corruption I can imagine.
But do you really think a village has zoning laws in the first place?
At that scale, it’s also much easier to just remove the chief’s son from his hut on the “nice hill”. And the chief along with him. Scale being the key factor is the essence of my argument.
Are you implying that the US, and the Roman’s, never had a period of growth and expansion that wasn’t late stage capitalist rot?
The comment isn’t saying this never happens really, it’s saying it doesn’t have to. This is capitalism with no guardrails.
The US and Rom were always run by and for the Ruling Classes never for the people.
Before Caesar, Rome actually had checks and balances to keep one person from amassing too much influence. For example, they had two consuls, which was the highest political position at the time and acted like as the heads of state.
Until Caesar fucked up those systems by literally declaring himself “dictator for life”. So really, it’s not always been this way, it’s usually just a few individuals that keep fucking it up for everyone else. Until they end up with a knife in their back.
There were substantial conflicts between rich and poor Romans well before the end of the Republic. It was not uncommon for a lower class Roman to go off and fight with the army only to come home and find some rich fuck effectively squatting on his land.
This was turning into something of a large scale crisis 60+ years before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. At the same time, politics was dominated by the wealthy and/or those who were successful military leaders.
The Republic didn’t really have “checks and balsnces” in some cases so much as “social conventions”. More a common understanding that something is just not done. They were actually rather Ill equipped to deal with individuals who had a thirst for power. Tiberius Gracchus, who served as Tribune, gave away lots of state owned land to some of the poorer Romans. He did so without consulting the Senate which raised a lot of eyebrows. When he attempted to stand for a second term as Tribune in 133 B.C. – which was just “not done” – the Senate responded by murdering him.
Tiberius’ brother, was elected as Tribune. He went further than Tiberius and sponsored a whole bunch of legislation which would have benefited poorer Romans. The Senate responded by murdering him as well. Over the next few decades, there were a handful of successful military leaders who clamored for more and more power. At the same time, the public was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the Republican government.
Julius Caesar was smart enough to recognize that the Republic was becoming frail and ballsy enough to give it a good shove down the stairs. In 82 B.C. he marched his legion into Rome – a clear act of treason – and effectively declared himself dictator. He was met with little resistance. He was viewed as a champion of the poor in some ways and, based on the way the Republic treated poor Romans, they were probably looking for a champion.
There were others who wanted to wrest Caesar’s newly acquired power from him. Pompey, another successful Roman general, went to war with Caesar. Pompey had the support of the wealthy Aristocrats. Pompey lost.
The Senate murdered Caesar in 44 B.C. Caesar’s supporters responded by killing his assassins. Then they turned on each other. That marked the beginning of another civil war from which Octavian, Julius’ nephew and adopted son, ultimately emerged victorious. By then, the Republic was effectively dead.
To make a long story short, Julius Caesar didn’t break the system. It was already broken. He managed to exploit it further than than anyone else had up until then but there were glaring cracks in the foundation of the Republic that directly contributed to it’s demise. The imbalance of power between the elite and the poor was definitely a big “crack”.
Thank you, that was a fascinating read! Sounds in some ways eerily similar with the direction we are going down today…
The Roman and the Greek “Democracies” where only for the slave Owners. It was always like this. But they can be overthrown.
If you ever wonder why there’s an ORPHAN CRUSHING MACHINE and why they need $20k to prevent the use of it. It was because there’s this one llama with a hat that is trying to build a Meat Dragon to impress his mate named paul
Give man a fish and they call you a communist. Create a baby crashing machine and they call you shrewd businessman. Or something like this.
No, no, it’s asking why he has no fish that gets you called a communist.
The radical leftists marxists communists won’t let us crush orphans anymore
Make Orphan Crushing Great Again
Trump 2024
It’s called healthcare now.
Of course it’s a mystery. An honest discussion about why orphan-crushing machines need to exist would lead to an honest discussion about where your society’s pain really comes from.
And the owner class doesn’t want that discussion to happen. Because it would come out that they don’t pay their fair share of the tax burden, which would keep orphan-crushing machines from existing in the first place.
Just read one like that:
Listen, we here are Orphan Crushing Incorporated are a family business…
Will nobody think of the jobs in the orphan crushing industry?
Great. Now I need to go rewatch cube.
When you say rewatch cube I think of the movie Cube, but I’m not sure that’s what you meant?
That’s the one! Great Canadian cinema. Number 1 n 3. Not number 2.
We all could do with less salt in our lives.
Speak for yourself, I’m not interested in reducing my salary!
And now I’m thinking about the Roman Empire.
The real problem is that the orphans need a crushing machine themselves so that they could prevent to be crushed. We must protect the second crushing amendment.
The only thing that can prevent a good orphan from being crushed is a bad orphan with a… wait what?
I miss Achewood
Orphan Crushing Machines Inc to the moon, no paper hands
deleted by creator
