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I personally agree fully with your sentiment, but I don’t see any place in today’s American polity where this spark could catch fire, because there’s no donor class that would ultimately benefit. It would have to be like the French Revolution.


Well each of these institutions are targeting people in power, it may only be a matter of "one more wrong move" and there's a critical mass of the political elite willing to tear it down. I think DOGE was never actually a cost saving exercise, that was just a disguise for an attempt to destroy the counter-political power of the administrative state -- it isnt so hard to imagine a political party trying again, this time, competently. And so on with each of these instituions. There's quite a lot of bipartisan support now for breaking up monopolies, dramatic restricts on the power of executive police forces, and the like. For different reasons, either side, but the targets are the same.


> DOGE was never actually a cost saving exercise, that was just a disguise for an attempt to destroy the counter-political power of the administrative state

It was a distraction from tax policy. Raising regressive taxes on imports, cutting services to the poor and cutting taxes on the rich.


> It would have to be like the French Revolution

The elites after the French Revolution were not only mostly the same as before, they escaped with so much money and wealth that it’s actually debated if they increased their wealth share through the chaos [1].

If America started teetering towards a meltdown-type revolution, the first folks to move in would be foreign powers.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/650023


Plus, they had an emperor just 5 years after the revolution was finished


I used to find the popular fascination with the myth of the French Revolution having been terrible for the rich and empowering for the poor bemusing. But I’m wondering, now, if it’s dangerous.




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