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from the create-the-world-you-would-want-to-survive-in dept.
Douglas Rushkoff has a thought-provoking article on Medium, Survival of the Richest -- The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind; here are some excerpts:
Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”
[...] I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.
They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.
Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
[...] The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr Robot hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed in time.
[...] The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively.
[...] When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now.
They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @10:51PM (44 children)
... whom they can't even afford to feed, clothe, bathe, or education.
So, who are the actual greedy, self-absorbed assholes here?
(Score: 5, Funny) by mhajicek on Tuesday July 24 2018, @11:32PM (1 child)
I'm glad I can afford to education my kids.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday July 25 2018, @01:28PM
George W Bush said it best July 1, 2006 in a speech on education: "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?"
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday July 25 2018, @01:38AM (37 children)
Aren't you avoiding the matter of the reasons they can't afford these things?
Why should I take for granted "this is how the world needs to be" and blanked blame them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:05AM (36 children)
The fact of the of the matter is that they are living beyond their means, regardless of the reasons.
They cannot afford to create a new human being, and yet they do so, mainly as as a result of fulfilling their base animal lust.
Why do you people feel such an affinity for the self afflicted?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:12AM (35 children)
How about this: I'll take everything you have and lock it up into a cave**. Then, by your measure, you'll be useless for this world because you'll be living beyond your means.
** Yes, that's the equivalent of taking most of the results of your (and heaps of others) work and depositing them as dollars in fiscal paradises.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:20AM (34 children)
The fabulously wealthy got their riches in 2 possible ways (some from one, some from the other, some from both):
Interacting with other people voluntarily; providing a service for which they got paid according to agreements in advance.
Using the government's men-with-guns to steal resources from people against their will.
Well, quit voting for an ever larger government.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:37AM (14 children)
Oh, so how the wealthy got their riches matter but how the poor got there doesn't?
Can you demonstrate that the poor got poor because of the government and not because of the richy rich?
Because otherwise your advice is a wild goose chase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @03:04AM (13 children)
You either get rich by creating wealth, or you get rich by taking wealth.
When a large number of people band together to organize the taking of wealth, we call that organization "government"; a good government promises to use that stolen booty to create more wealth, usually for the benefit of a special-interest group such as poor voters.
So, a rich person either created his wealth, or he took someone else's wealth; if he took someone's wealth, then either he constitutes a government (e.g., that rich person is a warlord), or he outsourced the plundering to some well-established, industrial-scale, long-lived violently imposed monopoly.
You can't steal under capitalism (if you do steal, you aren't practicing capitalism); you have to create wealth. If there's been a transfer of wealth on a societal scale, it's necessarily the fault of a government.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 25 2018, @03:40AM (1 child)
You on one side and the rest of the world on the other have different meaning for the word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:12AM
Otherwise, the definitions are the same.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:13AM (1 child)
FTFY to make it fit the real world.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @11:33AM
What I do have to do is pay for Walmart employees' food stamps (or be stuffed into a cage for refusing).
As always, the problem is a government program, because a government program is predicated on theft.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 25 2018, @01:50PM (6 children)
No True Scotsman. You can't achieve perfect Capitalism in practice any more than you can achieve perfect Socialism. Under a flawed implementation of Capitalism, people are conned out of their wealth in dishonest ways very frequently.
If a transaction isn't a fair trade of value then it is unfair by definition and in a sense it is a theft of value.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:01PM (5 children)
No one knows what is "fair", mainly because the future (e.g., supply chains, disasters, etc.) is uncertain.
The whole point of a market place is to find what is fair; that which is fair is that which emerges from a multitude of daily interactions, and this implies that a free society searching for fairness must accept "caveat emptor" as a fundamental principle.
That is the major failure of communist/socialist thinking—that there is some kind of fair, absolute, calculable value. There's not.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:32PM (4 children)
This "free" society you describe sounds like an idealized version of Capitalism where fairness improves over time and anyone, with the help of trickle down, has the opportunity to compete with the big guy so no monopolies last for long.
Not one single calculable value, no; I agree. But I'm sure you'd accept that any given product will have a realistic range of prices that a given market will tolerate at a given time. Once you accept that, you should also accept that occasionally there will be outliers -- scams where a small number of people are conned into paying sums of money vastly outside such a range, often due to misrepresentation of facts about the product. These outliers can go to extremes where you have some people awarding themselves bonuses of tens of millions whilst offering little to no new value to their customers in return.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @03:28PM (3 children)
There's no solution to that other than intrusive command-and-control by Angels.
And, as men are not Angles, such command-and-control inevitably transforms into Tyranny.
You can't save a person from his own stupidity.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 25 2018, @03:50PM (2 children)
The solution, although it's only a sticking plaster for a flawed system, is a safety net of social benefits.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:59PM (1 child)
You have to crawl back to the ladder and start climbing again.
The reason your "safety net" doesn't is that it's a government program rather than a "private" charity; because it is a government program, it is based on theft, and will therefore end up destroying wealth rather than maintaining or creating wealth.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 25 2018, @06:01PM
Let's assume for a moment that what you say were correct. Who gives a shit about what effect a small safety net has on the total wealth* when it's saving people from suffering and dying?
*Let me give you a clue. If done properly, it's a very small effect.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday July 25 2018, @05:46PM (1 child)
Please: "You can't steal under capitalism" is clearly false. That your modifier "f you do steal, you aren't practicing capitalism" is true doesn't change that. There are many in capitalist systems that steal by one means or another. (Fraud is the most legally protected, but hardly the only way.) Some are successful, some aren't. Many camouflage what they're doing as something other than theft.
Secondly, wealth is not a thing. You're thinking about it incorrectly. Wealth is contextual. Wealth is access to things that are useful, helpful, or at least pleasurable. Gold is not wealth in-and-of-itself, but only in the context where you can trade it for something useful, helpful, or pleasurable. That is commonly occurs should not obscure the difference. In times of famine, food is wealth much more than gold. In times of danger, military competence is wealth (well, depending on the nature of the danger). Etc.
If you want guaranteed wealth, become a skilled doctor, who is also skilled in bush medicine. (Not first aid...that's just to tide you over until you can get medical help.) But be aware that doctors often suffer when the powerful demand to be cured of something incurable with the given resources.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @05:58PM
Capitalism is the philosophy that, ideally, every resource should have a well-defined owner; a resource with a well-defined owner becomes "capital". Theft is appropriation of a resource in contravention of well established ownership. Obviously, there can be disputes over ownership, and thus Capitalism necessarily entails an iterative process of dispute resolution, contract negotiation, and enforcement (the latter of which is voluntary by definition, as the means of enforcement is necessarily specified in each contract).
I'm not thinking about wealth incorrectly; indeed, you and I pretty much agree.
I don't agree that being a skill doctor guarantees wealth; after all, it would be stupid if everyone in a community were just a skilled doctor.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday July 25 2018, @03:36AM (16 children)
You left out swindle, con and flat out steal, the most common ways to get rich.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:16AM (11 children)
Firstly, you cannot maintain fabulous wealth in that way unless you tap into organized crime, which on a societal scale implies government (even the mafia has to operate through the local governments).
Secondly, are you suggesting that all of the fabulously wealthy are swindlers, con men, and thieves (which are multiple ways of saying the same thing)? If so, you're merely betraying your irrational, dogmatic, self-loathing, envious hatred for the well-to-do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @09:20AM (1 child)
Only because typically the government interferes.
Only in the sense that a sufficient powerful organization automatically is sort of a government, just by being powerful.
No. The core business of the Mafia works without government influence, however the Mafia has to infiltrate the government to make sure the government does not interfere with their core business. Of course, having infiltrated the government, it makes sense that they also use it to further increase their own power.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:33AM
In other words, operate through the local government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @10:48AM (8 children)
No matter how you put it, Economics 101 is that you get profit only by getting more than the worth of something in an exchange. Translated to kindergarten speak, you can only get ahead by being unfair. Translated to elementary school speak, "Tom Sawyer" - read it.
Why the other side accepts bad deal? None in their right mind wouldn't, and the rich are different from the rest of us in that they NEVER EVER do accept not only bad deals, but also no fair deals, except when they need to show off, signalize their wealth by buying overpriced exclusive goods.
Normal human beings chose to offer and accept deals they deem fair, among themselves.
People accept bad deals mostly because they are conned (not aware of real costs), or blackmailed (in an submissive position), or because they are conditioned to accept them as fact of life (aka they are not brought up with mindset of the rich).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @11:41AM (4 children)
Apple computer thinks your dollars are worth more than its iPad.
You think Apple's iPad is worth more than your dollars.
So, you both "swindle" each other: You both profit by making the exchange; you therefore make the exchange voluntarily.
In contrast, I don't think it's profitable to me to throw people in cages for smoking marijuana, but the government forces me to pay for that bullshit anyway; that's NOT voluntary exchange. In contrast, I don't have to shop at Walmart; the only thing I have to do is pay for Walmart employees' food stamps, which (wait for it) is a government program that forces me to pay for it.
The problem is involuntary interaction, and government is founded explicitly on involuntary interaction.
Get it yet?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:02PM (3 children)
Bad example. People who buy iPads are generally spending disposable income (unless they got into debt to pay for it). Let's suppose it were a cheaper brand of tablet. In that case it's worth more dollars to the buyer than to the manufacturer because it's much harder for the buyer to make their own tablet due to the manufacturer's economies of scale. In the case of the Crapple tablet, I'd say part of the value the buyer places on it is due to religious indoctrination which is a strange idea of voluntary behavior.
A better example might be a pauper that has foraged for all the food they can find, eaten it, but is still starving. They head to the grocery store and the cheapest food there, they feel is overpriced, but they still hand over their dollars because that's preferable to starving to death. Yes, in that moment, the food is worth more to them than a large number of dollars, but it's hardly a voluntary exchange. If they can't walk to a cheaper grocery store, it's an example of a captive market.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:32PM (2 children)
Your pauper can't believe that the food is overpriced, because otherwise he wouldn't have given up his dollars. Clearly, not starving is worth more to him than those dollars.
Your anger is misdirected.
Chastise the Universe for what it is, or admonish your parents for having conjured you into this world of scarce resources. Don't be angry at the grocer, without whom there wouldn't even be an "overpriced" item to fill your belly.
(Score: 3, Touché) by acid andy on Wednesday July 25 2018, @02:35PM (1 child)
Who said I was angry?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @05:05PM
What a waste of a website this is.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:44AM (2 children)
It's sad when people reduce trade to mutual swindling while ignoring the mutual gain. The obvious rebuttal to your bit of silliness is that worth is relative. To someone who makes thousands or millions of bottles of orange juice, the value of the juice is low relative to the price they sell it at, hence, profit. However, to the person who is thirsty for that bit of sweet fluid, the worth of the juice can be well above its price.
Because it's not a bad deal. I wonder why that concept is so hard to grasp.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:28AM (1 child)
Except when it is. They might realize that later, when it's too late. Most people are shitty at due diligence. The emptors don't caveat.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:33AM
Then they probably won't do it again - trade is rarely a one-time thing. And if they don't "realize" that later, then it probably wasn't a bad deal in the first place, contrary to assertion.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday July 25 2018, @01:32PM (3 children)
Also left out inherit as a way of getting wealth.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:50PM (2 children)
What could your point possibly be?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:39PM (1 child)
Oh, maybe that as a result of never having worked:
* some people don't understand having to work, be tired, scrape by
* think that they are better than other people (it's "breeding" not "environment")
* they have not actually created anything of any kind of value to society, they are effectively leeches draining a disproportionate share of the planet's resources for themselves
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @02:07PM
You're the one who sounds like a whiny, entitled bitch.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @09:12AM (1 child)
Things you don't want to do, but have to do to survive are not done voluntarily. It's a nice trick: Create an environment where the only way for people to survive is to play by your rules, and then observe that people “voluntarily” follow those rules.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @11:44AM
... or yell at your parents for having birthed you into a world of scarce resources.
To me, you sound like an entitled prick.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:27PM (3 children)
> So, who are the actual greedy, self-absorbed assholes here?
Um, everyone? Or, every man?
They're putting on a show called The Rich Consult Dr. Strangelove. There are a whole lot of levels of stupid, delusional insanity to it, much like in the movie. The idea that an "Event" could wipe out almost but not quite everyone strikes me as highly improbable. They are therefore wasting their time and resources preparing for the wrong problem. More likely is everyone goes. Wars have killed upwards of 25% of the population of a nation, diseases such as the Black Death have killed off a bit more than half the population, but that's the most. Have to look to geologic history for worse. There are five gigantic extinction events we know about, and the worst one, the Great Dying, occurred about 250 million years ago, causing about 70% of all land species and 96% of all ocean species to go extinct, bringing an end to an age. Such a severe extinction event is extremely rare. If it did occur, they'd likely die with everyone else, discovering that all their preparation was laughably inadequate. Even if they survived the initial shock, could they survive centuries of darkness, crop failures, violent aftershocks, poisoned and thinned air, caustic and toxic liquids and gases, and the lack of who knows what else we need from the environment and don't yet know we need it?
Air is a huge problem. If Earth's air became unbreathable, that'd kill almost all of us within minutes, leaving alive only those who happened to be scuba diving or in submarines. Then what would the handful of survivors do? Could they set up means to get more air before what they have runs out? It's just not reasonable to stockpile beforehand enough air tanks to hold a century's worth of air for a family.
And lack of air is only one way to kill almost everyone fast. What about an Event that heats the whole surface of the planet to the boiling point of water or higher? Or the opposite, freezing the world? Unlikely, but if a giant planet sized Oumuamua came swinging through just wrong, that could eject Earth from the solar system. We wouldn't die in a matter of minutes, but dying in a matter of days or weeks is hardly better.
So, the Events these rich fools are evidently most confident of surviving are self-inflicted ones. They're not working to prevent these disasters, instead they seem bent on raking in the profits that it brings them to make things worse! Profits that they seem unable to grasp will be worthless, if civilization collapses. As for building bunkers, that's about the equivalent of stowing away a rowboat on a ship that is sailing directly into a massive hurricane that will sink it, and thinking you can escape and ride out the storm in that rowboat.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 26 2018, @03:49AM (2 children)
Because? Humans are vastly smarter than anything kicking around before humans. Even if the atmosphere becomes toxic, one can always filter it both for humans and crops that humans would rely on.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:42PM (1 child)
Could air be filtered, generated, and recycled for a long, long time? Maybe, but I doubt we're able to do it, yet. Remember Biosphere 2? It had a lot of problems that developed over a relatively short time, just a few years, and a big one was maintaining the atmosphere.
If we're so smart, we should accept the no-brainer that is right in front of our noses. That is, the Earth has maintained a healthy biosphere for billions of years, and there is no reason why it shouldn't continue to do so for many more millennia, except for us. All we have to do is not screw it up. Sadly, it's possible we're smart enough to gain the power to really screw it up, yet too stupid not to use that power so, not play chicken with the world, not delude ourselves with nonsense and propaganda. To embark on a quest that is implicitly giving up on humanity, standing by and letting the idiots trash the world because your energies are devoted to building a sanctuary that no one knows can be made sustainable, is nuts.
Western society is highly individualistic, and it colors our thinking. It's characteristically individualistic to think in terms of total independence from the biosphere. To use a car analogy, it's like thinking of each animal as a car, when a better analogy might be the whole world as one big car, and we are all parts of it. And we're busy seeing what we can throw out and still have a usable car. Throw out the seats, seat belts, and who really needs the hood, or doors? Or a windshield? As for the trunk lid, why not saw off the whole damn trunk, lid and all? Although, the trunk could be useful for carrying extra gas. Spare tire? Gone of course. The instrument panel is also unnecessary, don't really need to know exactly how fast we're going or how much gas is in the tank. And systems such as power steering and A/C? Toss them too. Air filter? Can live without that for a while, if the air is relatively clean. And really, you could manage without brakes, you really could. Shut the engine off when you want to stop. Just need a bit more room to stop, that's all. Indicator lights, turn signals and the like could all go, no need for them if you're the only car on the road. You will have of course already thrown the brake lights out when you threw out the brakes. Headlights are another item that could go, but then it'd be best to restrict your driving to daylight hours only, although it is of course still possible to drive around by moonlight, or one could invest in night vision goggles. Goggles of any sort could be awfully handy to compensate for the lack of a windshield. Obviously you'd throw away the muffler and tailpipe, and exhaust manifold too, run with open headers, because it's just noise. Might want to use ear plugs, though.
Such a thoroughly gutted, unsafe, reduced capability. short life span, and zero comfort vehicle is just the sort of thing these rich idiots are proposing to use as a personal lifeline if humanity should cause the mother car to develop serious problems. One big flaw with the analogy is that we know everything that goes into a car, while we most certainly don't know all the parts of a biosphere. Seems very likely we'd leave out all kinds of critical things without realizing they were critical.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 26 2018, @12:51PM
Except that we were speaking of an extinction event 250 million years ago. Earth hasn't maintained a healthy biosphere for billions of years. It might not even had a healthy biosphere until some point in the last half a billion years.