And before you say "no", please explain who gets to decide what resources can be seized, and who gets to decide who gets what?

Who decides? Others. Those who are able to execute such a plan has the power to determine what goes where. I imagine it could be done in $1,000,000 chunks and distributed 10k at a time.

But aside from the dozens of ways it can be done - all of them theft - I personally prefer that to physical violence by a long shot.

Bloodshed is a pretty common outcome of social conflict, too.

Do you think it will require blood and property for wide-scale socio-economic change to benefit the proles?

My family is Quebecois and I am a dual-citizen, but I am not familiar with this as an example of failure.

When the issue is power inequality, those with power tend not to agree to share with "those less than them" unless it becomes obvious that those who are without power are willing to do anything to improve their situation.
The virtual world notwithstanding, despite all educational and cultural resources available, we are ultimately emotional creatures of flesh and blood who tend to have a phobia about the lack of control in our lives.
Even peaceful revolutions have their portion of bloodshed. The nature of revolution is commonly viewed in the turning of the wheel - unless everyone is in sync, someone is going to be falling.

The violence that occurs in a revolution is always the result of resistance from the top. Despite fantasies of WikiLeaks or "V for Vendetta", Anonymous or any other digital avenger to save "us" from plutocrats and or other political or financial bullies and bigots.

Haele

I agree that even peaceful demonstration can include bloodshed and I accept that. It just seems to me that whenever revolution is mentioned, it focuses on violence and, presumably, "re-education" or "work camps." Aren't there many more current means of creating an effect of re-distributing power and wealth? No one needs to steal my wallet to steal my identity, so I do not know why "pitchforks" is so quickly sought as a means of revolution.

The problem is two-fold.
First is the pressure from the top level meeting the bottom level that is attempting to gain some ground of their own.
For the pitchforks not to come out when there is a need for socio-economic or socio-political change, there first needs to be an equalizing figure; a Gandhi, a FDR, a MLK - some sort of transformational populist figure that the less polarized population can gather around and who can use those more moderate forces to push through social change by sheer numbers. Second, there needs to be a smart enough political system in place (i.e., some sort of representative governance) that allows the leaders on the primary ends to negotiate, give up a little for the greater good, and still be able to have some power and leverage left after the negotiations are over.
Without both, the hard-liners are in control of the message - on either side. And the wall between the two sides grows higher as the general population becomes more polarized through uncertainty, and frankly, fear of losing everything when the wall topples over.
It happens time and time again, while anyone who is observing what is going on is left scratching their heads going "why is this happening - why are these otherwise good people acting like vicious shits to those other good people?"

The second part of the problem are the organizations who see opportunity in "destructive change". A wonderful business term that many modern CEOs and MBAs like to throw around when they're talking about outsourcing or down-sizing. There's a lot of opportunity to profit from chaos. "Media" outlets profit by pandering to the worst case scenario and the easiest way out (like "kill them all and let God sort them out&quot It's too difficult - and expensive - to be proactive and look at the various causes and issues that actually are causing the situation, but it's real easy - and cheap - to get attention and rating by ramping up the FUD factor and getting people hooked on outrage so they don't think, they react.
Sociopaths - opportunists, vulture capitalists, and other white-collar scam artists, further instigate FUD because it allows them to act and become wealthy while everyone else start to turtle in because they're terrified about losing their families, home, and livelihood that "those others" are going to take. Whether or not that's the actual idea.

The harder the top pushes down on the bottom, the worse it will become because the societal structure cannot hold. And that's when the pitchforks and torches come out.
Just remember this pearl of revolutionary wisdom - the guys who sell farm implements and gasoline make a crap-load of money when the mobs start gathering.

Haele

If you mean distributing information in violation of current patents and copyrights, the act of distribution will destroy their value.

For instance, you reveal the secret formula for Coke or pirate the new Taylor Swfit album. Once everyone has it, it's value becomes de minimis, and the creators are disincentivized to produce more without such protections or profit.

In the short-term you might be able to share and produce important things like cheap drugs, but ultimately you will not have "re-distributed" wealth so much as destroyed value and disinclined others who are capable from producing more or innovating.

If you mean hacking peoples' bank accounts and credit cards, it might be possible, again in the very, very short term, but ultimately the relevant institutions and government would adapt, and the punishments for the perpetrators would be swift, severe and unforgiving, and I believe largely with popular support.

The biggest problem with such a "digital revolution" is that it lacks democratic legitimacy. It changes the veritable 1% from bankers to computer hackers. It would be unsurprising if the vast majority of people preferred the former over the latter. The devil you know . . .

But I don't think there will be any "contemporary revolution" that will accomplish very much.

And there will be no "torches and pitchforks" either.

So long as people have one meal a day, a roof over their heads, and some means of entertainment, such as television, revolutions are passe.

Only when people become hungry, jobless, angry, and hopeless, will anything change. Only out of necessity will we ever have anything even resembling a revolution. That is just my opinion.

But it is not impossible for it to happen. Republicans and fascists have ideas that can bring on massive suffering.

Last edited Mon Nov 24, 2014, 07:28 PM - Edit history (1)

when people en masse realize what the PTB are doing and have been doing to us.

(I've heard of something called "Emergence" which might be the same thing).

This revolution of consciousness will come when people stop believing the MSM propaganda and see through it. Once the people are no longer shackled by lies and BS they are free to make better decisions.

It won't necessarily start in America first, or it might start in small pockets which spread abroad (like Occupy).