this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Studies on the phenomenon called Elite Panic suggest that people in general are more cooperative in disastrous events than normally assumed by the elite, and often a lot of the rest of us too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Like, the elites would panic in a survival situation. But I have real survival skills that would allow me to survive until rescue. Someone like Bezos or Musk would starve quickly, or eat something poisonous without knowing whether it was safe or not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No, Elite Panic is people in power or with money assuming that the rest of us plebs are going to go wild stealing their stuff and eating each other. They therefore believe they need to get a strong police or military force in place to control the situation, because we can't be trusted. Many times in the past this happened it caused more issues and deaths as they don't prioritize human life.

Quoting from the wiki: Philip L. Fradkin detailed cases of "elite panic" during the Great Chicago Fire, the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.[10] After the San Francisco earthquake, Mayor Eugene Schmitz authorized the use of deadly force against "anyone engaged in looting"[11] – chiefly poor and working class victims of the earthquake. While residents of Chinese descent evacuated the disaster areas, and were segregated from white victims of the earthquake, Chinatown was itself looted by soldiers and members of the city's upper classes.[12]

Another: During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, evidence of "elite panic" included the extensive media coverage of and political focus on reported looting and violence, the authorization of deadly force in response to reported property crime and the circulation of rumors about the behavior of New Orleans' lower class and residents of color.[6] Mayor Ray Nagin appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and claimed "hooligans [were] killing people, raping people" in the Louisiana Superdome.[7] President George W. Bush subsequently dispatched the United States Army to the city, where they prevented residents from leaving disaster areas.[16] On September 1, 2005, Governor Kathleen Blanco called off search and rescue efforts and diverted the attention of emergency services towards looting, warning that residents of New Orleans caught looting would be shot by veterans of the Iraq War.[12] Michael D. Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was later held responsible for the crisis, despite official guidelines stating that leadership during times of crisis fell to the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, who at the time was Michael Chertoff.[12]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

The Superdome thing is especially egregious, because a ton of people had worked to convert it into a refugee camp, including several armed patrols to make sure people didn't steal shit they didn't need.