🆘Bill Cole 🇺🇦

@V0ldek @sneerclub It happened when rich people realized that their individual liberty in a world of mostly poor people would intrinsically be constrained by proper democracy.

A government dedicated to maximizing the broadest possible freedom will, if allowed, redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, to provide the poor more opportunities & limit the dangerous “freedoms” of the ultra-wealthy to impose their own control over others.

@V0ldek @sneerclub There was definitely a proto-capitalist class in late Republican & Imperial Rome.
The pervasive existence of slavery made the economic systems very different from ours, and even different from our most recent flavors of slavery. One could argue that EVERY slaveholder was a de facto capitalist.

@Soyweiser Not as a primary focus, but as a background fact, e.g. Trantor in Foundation.

@Soyweiser It was a bigger theme earlier: 50s/60s. Asimov, Bradbury, and I think Heinlein all used it.

@Amoeba_Girl @sneerclub Is that why it is so repetitive, wandering, and tedious?

@Starseeder @sneerclub That article is a powerful argument for professional editing.
(I do not mean that its topical content makes any such argument.)

@Varyk Kurzweil thought we’d all be quasi-cyborgs on 2 wheels by now.

@skillissuer I have no idea how they could have been *needed* against Ukrainian tanks. My impression was that they didn’t have any tanks with active defense until they got EU/NATO models, but I could be wrong.

@skillissuer Used in Ukraine. Possibly because they were running out of basic antiweapons.

@YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM @sneerclub The joke is in fact so much better, explained.
Thank you.