If powerful people were afraid they would be a lot less unhinged.
As Bill Burr said, if we were to eat just one billionaire, then all the rest would tow the line.
It’s true. The only check on most corporate fraud is an engineer with an Annecdote of real consequences.
This isn’t how human psychology works at all.
I mean, in the past we used to just hang or bomb rich people that got too close to the sun.
People like Carnegie built 1500 public libraries because he knew the game. He knew that his position as part of the ultra-wealthy made him a target, and he had to toe a line. He need to maximize exploitation but not too much, so as to not cause a stir. He did a pretty good job. Some people didn't do such a good job - we don't hear about them because they and their families were murdered.
Rich people today are much safer, mostly due to people being better people and technology.
I don't think that's accurate at all. It's true that rich people in Carnegie's day had more concern about organized violence against them, but most of them preferred to deal with it by getting the Pinkertons or the military to stop you from organizing anything against them. Late 1800s labor disputes killed a lot more workers than millionaires.
Gilded Age industrialists in America weren’t murdered by angry mobs, that’s just a sick terroristic left wing fantasy.
Wanna share with us what makes you qualified to make such definitive statements on human psychology?
You don’t have to be an expert to know that fear and panic don’t make people hinged, they make them even more unhinged.
In particular, terroristic violence almost always incites spiteful reaction against the perpetrators and anyone associated with them.
This isn’t how _normal_ human psychology works at all.
We're talking about sociopaths, not people like you and me.
How much of a percentage that is on that level, we can guess.