Is there anyway a ruler could prevent a revolution from happening after entering stage 1?
Well you may be wondering what “stage 1” is so let me explain. Stage 1 consists of
-economic crisis
-sense of government injustice
-weak rulers and half hearted reform
-intellectual opposition
-class division and antagonism
-and lastly military victory
So my question is could a -really good- ruler turn a revolution around?
In the past things like class injustice, or economic crisis lead to dramatic revolts, but we are not really taught about the revolutions that never really happened, and that is what I am searching deeper into.
In 2009-2010 Venezuela had a financial crisis, where a number of banks were taken over by individual bankers. At that time 12% of bank deposits were heading towards people that were unnamed, and unidentified. People started to get upset, but did not revolt, yet. The government in time, arrested 16 bankers, and issued arrests for over 40 men who had fled the country. This is an example of a revolution that could have happened, but was stopped by a healthy government.
Another example is automotive industry crisis of 2008-10. During this time there was an energy crisis, in which the fuel price was raised up. Which means that people wanted to buy cars that had better fuel economy. This pushed automotive brands like Ford, Ram, and GMC, to the edge, because these brands live off the sales of trucks and suv’s, and trucks and SUV’s have very bad fuel economy! The people then turned to smaller cheaper brands like Mitsubisi, Volkswagen, and Fiat. The bigger brands then had to adapt and create better cars for the fuel crisis. I know it is not human adaption, it shows that a singular crisis can have a chain reaction. It also shows that the car company’s are reactive, and pay attention to there customers, just like a healthy government.
On the other hand, we have had weak rulers in the past, (and even in the present!) John, the king of England was one of them. John was the second born child and so he did not inherit a lot of what his father, Henry the second, had when he died. Richard, his older brother, became king and ruled quite a lot of land. Now poor John was given a nickname that really stuck, and that was, John Lackland. John Lackland did not appreciate that name. John needed to become king. When Richard was in jail in Germany, (talking about weak rulers!) John Lackland tried to take the throne, he did, and became the new king of England. He was terrible! He married for the second time and it started a war. Now John is quite a loser and so he had lost a lot of the land he had started with, such as Normandy, Anjou, and Maine. He was hurt and needed to show the people what he could really do. This required money, and so taxes shot up. The people were upset and created the Magna Carta. Now this is where it gets tricky. John created economic crisis, government injustice, military loss, class division and well he was a pretty weak ruler. So he created a revolution, the Magna Carta. The automotive industry crisis dealt with the high cost of fuel and so the people went against the high fuel economy truck and SUV’s and went with cheaper vehicles. This is an act of revolt as well, but it does not count as a revolution. The Venezuelan financial crisis included a well oiled government taking care of some barons making money off of peoples cash deposits. I do not believe that this qualify’s as a revolution but the country had a economic crisis. So that answers my question, a country can enter stage 1, but turn itself around before further trouble. But it brings up a new question as well. Could a country have one problem from stage 1, but strong everything else and be safe? The ratio would be 1 to 5. I guess it will be a question for the next time I sit down to type endlessly for an hour or so. So until then
Good bye
Adlih
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