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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6332 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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But if the meme was true, you would expect basically every society to see a cycle of uprisings from the lower class that overtake the complacent upper class folks. The new rulers would then get complacent over time, and their descendants who only knew good times would be overthrown by the underclass created by their parents. You would expect a good deal of social mobility where rich kids rot while the poor amass power until the positions are reversed.

Yet that does not happen. The poor stay poor, the rich get richer. Money flows towards wealth, and power creates more power. The same families stay well-off for generations and usually your parent's social position is a strong predictor for how your life will turn out. This is the opposite of the meme. Even in countries like the US where your rights are (mostly) not dictated by your social standing, people who break out of poverty are incredibly rare.

I think appeal stems from the idea that people grow in the face of adversity and get complacent when everything is handed to them. I think this much is true. But it does not at all follow that hard times create strong men. Humans need the right amount of adversity to grow - too much will damage you - along with good role models, food, and shelter. You need some amount of abundance for this. Good times, in other words. So unless you actually mean to say "complacency creates weak men" (which is so trivially true as to be uninteresting), I also do not believe it holds up.

I literally said that it's a description of cycles, not of relative power. The poors during good times may be weaker than the rich during bad times.

It's even in the words of the meme "good times" and "bad times". Simply being in a slum doesn't subject you to bad times.

The poor stay poor, the rich get richer. Money flows towards wealth, and power creates more power.

This definitely is not an inevitable historical constant, otherwise we would be ruled by Sumerian priest-kings or something.

Which tbf is a pretty fun conspiracy theory.

Given enough time, random chance ensures that things will change. But in general terms it seems to be true. If someone is born rich, odds are they will stay rich. Someone born to a poor alcoholic will likely stay in the underclass. Even then, exceptional people prevail and rise above what you would expect. But it is more common to stay in the class you were born in, and to my knowledge, this has always been the case.

it is more common to stay in the class you were born in, and to my knowledge, this has always been the case.

If there was an iron law of history that every four generations like clockwork the meritorious in the lower classes would rise up and take the place of the decrepit in the upper classes, this would still be true. It's quite possible for there to be both a cycle of uprisings from the lower class that overtake the complacent upper class folks and for most people to stay in the same social class as their parents.

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