Collapse won't promote you: you'd still be at the bottom

Watching the world burn won't move you up a rung

Those who want to see the world burn would, in a world in flames, occupy the first row of the casualty list, according to this analysis. The paradox is not rhetorical: it is the thesis held by several participants in the thread. The reasoning is simple and almost brutal. In any known social order — the Greek city, the empire, the fiefdom, the dictatorship of the last century — the profile with no trade, no education and no family network occupies the lowest rung. Collapse doesn't deal new cards: it deals the same ones with less bread.

Behind this lies an uncomfortable calculation. The civilisation that part of the conversation claims to detest is precisely the one that maintains the standard of living of those who do not produce. The current constitutional order is described as the only historical arrangement capable of sustaining a non-contributing population without it dying along the way.

The order that sustains those who don't contribute

Some take the argument further: the very existence of unproductive, overfed profiles with no practical skills would be a sign of abundance of the best historical moment known. The comparison used is that of those tiny dogs their owners carry in handbags because they couldn't walk on their own. It is derogatory, and it is basic economics: only a very rich society can afford to sustain those who contribute nothing.

From this comes the central warning. In a scenario of scarcity, that same profile wouldn't last a week, because nobody would owe anybody anything. The fantasy of collapse as social ascent rests on the idea that, once the system falls, those who have nothing today will end up in charge. The rebuttal is that hierarchy doesn't disappear with scarcity: it hardens.

What is really being discussed is who bears the bill. It is argued that in a deep crisis the homes of the weakest would be the first to be looted and their occupants the first to lose any bargaining power.

There are also those who reject a half-hearted crisis. They call for a real collapse, one that reaches equally those sheltering in a house with a pool and those who never left the neighbourhood. Equality from the bottom appears thus as the only acceptable distribution.

Why doesn't work lift you out of poverty anymore?

Here the tone changes and the uncomfortable fact appears. In Spain, and increasingly in more Western countries, the gap between working and not working narrows through subsidies. It is argued that work doesn't lift you out of poverty: it only places you one rung above those collecting benefits.

The corollary would be that, without subsidies, we would return to a scenario prior to World War II, with massive pockets of absolute poverty among workers. And that the social elevator has been stuck for decades. On the opposite side, the case is told of someone who has been at the same company for years, collects benefits and has just received compensation for unfair dismissal. With those ingredients, the sarracena of effort has little traction.

Ley de Vagos y Maleantes and alarms at 30

The harshest rebuttal calls for administrative control: that upon reaching 30 with no studies and not a single day contributed, alarms should go off in the public administration and intervention mechanisms activated. The explicit reference is the Ley de Vagos y Maleantes, a 20th-century historical law revived here as a disciplinary tool.

The argument has its accounting logic — every person sustained without counterpart is a cost to the rest — and an obvious dark zone. Where is the line between supervising and punishing poverty? Nobody in the approach defines it.

NATO, Russia and Germany: the other anger

The axis shifts to geopolitics. A classic idea is repeated: that NATO was created to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down, a phrase attributed to the alliance's first secretary general. From there, the blame for one's own misery is shared among military blocs, investment funds and international organisations.

In this section appears the only block of comparative figures: China would have lifted 500 million people out of poverty, while the United States would have pushed 100 million into it. These are figures thrown out by a thread participant, with no source to back them. And there is a more measured stance: an alliance, even if only commercial, between Europe and Russia would be more sustainable for the former and more European for the latter.

The day after has no calculation

What remains is essential. If the system that is despised is the same one that pays the bill, what is left of the desire to see it burn? Nobody has put the cost of the next day on the table. And as long as that number doesn't exist, rage will remain cheaper than the alternative.