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The death toll from the 1918 flu pandemic surpassed all the military deaths in the two world wars.
"You had a lethal new influenza virus that entered the population. No one is sure exactly where. It may have been in southwestern Kansas, it could have been Indonesia, could have been France, there are several theories. Worldwide, the death toll was between 50 and 100 million, obviously a huge range. If you adjust for population today, that would equal 200 to 450 million."
"We were in the middle of the war, and I think that very definitely contributed to the chaos. I don't think it had much impact on the actual spread of disease, but in terms of how society dealt with it, yes, I think it had quite a bit to do with the chaos. Chiefly, because everyone in authority, from the surgeon general of the United States to your local mayor, lied. Everyone could see that this was a lethal pandemic. Some of the symptoms were horrific — bleeding not only from your nose and mouth but from your eyes and ears. And yet the authorities were saying, 'This is just ordinary influenza. If proper precautions are taken, you have nothing to fear.' But people knew they had something to fear. You know, their neighbors or spouses were dying sometimes in 24 hours."
"That's of course because of the war, and the idea was you don't say anything that might be bad news and hurt morale. This is exactly the wrong thing to do. I think ultimately society is based on trust, and once you breach that trust, then people become alienated, particularly from authority. And the worse things get, the more you feel it's everybody out for himself or herself. I mean, in most disasters, people rise to the occasion help each other out. In this disaster, there were people starving to death, both in places like Philadelphia and in rural communities in Kentucky because others were afraid to bring them food."
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday December 25 2017, @10:19PM (2 children)
It doesn't really matter how grandad got his wealth - when a tiny percentage of people are born into wealth and power to dwarf the rest of the population, you invariably get authoritarianism.
As a simple example - once one person owns the lake, or any other reserve of necessary resources, he can forces everyone else into involuntary exchanges. At less simplistic levels, those who accumulate power have outsized influence to shape the rules to facilitate further concentration of power into their own hands.
The only way I can see to avoid that would be to make the rules extremely fluid - so that the population can decide to simply change them at will, rather than having to overthrow a power structure that has spent generations reinforcing the rules to give themselves an advantage. As one example - the idea that an individual person can claim ownership over natural resources (land, water, minerals, etc) that existed millions of years before him is utterly preposterous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @06:30AM (1 child)
Societal organization is a game.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 28 2017, @02:35PM
And when the rules are obviously unfair, it's up to the designated losers to either demand the rules be changed, or simply start playing a new game.