The Myth of the Poor Uniting Against the Rich

World Riots

As it was Karl Marx's birthday a few days ago (May 5), I personally find it crazy that I missed this "golden opportunity". I remember back when I was in high school, a maid of ours bragged, "If all the poor will unite, all the rich will be defeated." Years later, I remember some crazy brat (probably just past 18 and not in his late 20s) said, "We will do it better when we seize the wealth." This makes me laugh hard because the idea of the poor uniting against the rich, to create utopia, can be easily debunked with common sense. You don't need to go to Ateneo De Manila or the University of the Philippines to understand what I'm going to share.

The poor aren't exactly homogeneous or all alike

I haven't tried being poor. However, having talked with poor people who got better, it's easy to think that you can't have a homogeneous group of the poor. If you look at people under poverty, you have these situations to prove the myth of the "homogeneous poor":

1. Poor people who are born poor. Some aren't fortunate enough to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
2. Some poor people used to be rich or middle-class. Some lost their fortunes to war, or lost their fortunes through reckless business expenditures.  
3. Some poor people actually aim to get out of poverty. They start to work hard and become different. This, unfortunately, creates the crabs within the community. If only they were delicious mud crabs for dinner, then annoying people who actually pull their fellow poor down. This creates the problem of the class traitor. 
4. Some poor people are so toxic when they keep blaming the rich that they're poor. Such people would actually berate their fellow poor when that person berates their poor financial habits, that's keeping them poor.

The rich aren't exactly homogeneous either

It's easy to blame the rich that you're poor. However, if we need to look into the poor vs rich battle, the rich aren't exactly homogeneous either. I was looking into these situations where the myth of the "homogenous rich" doesn't exist either:

1. Not all people born rich are actually spoiled brats. Some rich people actually make their children work regular jobs or work without special treatment in their family business. Yes, some rich people treat their heirs like pampered royalty, but such management results in the family wealth moving from strong foundations to weaker foundations.
2. Some of the rich people whom some of the poor hate today used to be poor. In the rich vs. poor dichotomy, this contributes further to the idea that the poor aren't a homogeneous group either. 
3. Some rich people actually created benefits for the poor by giving them stable working conditions, a reasonable salary, and giving employees benefits along with their employment. If the rich can make the poor they hired eat three meals a day through the benefits, can the revolution of the poor still happen? 
4. The rich tend to be a self-policing class. Some rich people can be brutally honest when it comes to reporting their fellow rich who are using illicit means to become wealthy and stay wealthy. 

Poor people, more often than not, are disadvantaged under the state of poverty 

Being poor puts one at a severe disadvantage. Some rich people who used to be poor might share bad habits that kept them in poverty, or what they ditched to get out of poverty. I wa slooking at these problems that are common among the poor people, making the "revolution of the poor" utterly laughable:

1. If a person can't even eat three decent meals a day, even if it's cheap food, how can they lead a revolution when the stomach is always growling? Rich people who used to be poor, tend to admit that they had to learn to manage to eat three meals a day before they even started the basic foundations.
2. Some poor people tend to waste the money when they get it. 
3. The irony of potential members of the "poor revolution" are actually trying to get rich quick. One of them is spending money on the lottery instead of learning how to invest.
4. If some of them are trying to get into cryptocurrency, can they really do it with mobile data when they can barely afford a meal? 

Seizing the wealth isn't the same as sustainable wealth

It's easy to say, "Once we, the poor, seize the wealth, we will distribute it and create utopia." However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the plan isn't feasible. After all, we must account for the following things that can happen in a hypothetical revolution of the poor against the rich:

1. The revolution can seize the means of production. However, without a proper understanding of the means of production, they may not even learn how to operate and maintain the assets they seized from the rich. Without the rich, how can they even liquidate the means of production into money?
2. It's easy to get a lot of money. However, in the process of redistribution, greed naturally kicks in. Remember that in several revolutions and Communist countries, the ruling party becomes the new rich. Think that Mao Zedong died in a villa he created during the Great Leap Forward's failures. Fidel Castro also died in a villa. How's that for equal wealth?
3. Without the business secrets and the like, how can those who seized the means of production even create the basic goods like grocery items? They would probably be able to create them at a basic level, but they wouldn't be as effective.