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Survival of the Richest.
- Thread starter Swauny Jones
- Start date
This has been a long time coming. There was always two things the rich needed before cutting themselves off. Security and sustainability. Drone technology and police force militarization, along with the automation drive take care of these problems for the most part. Romero's Land of the Dead was a very clumsy metaphor for exactly this.
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How are they achieving sustainability? Hedge fund bankers aren't skilled enough to survive long-term on their own.
As the author of this piece said the only realistic path to sustainability will be achieved cooperatively or not at all.
Didn't think I'd regret that answer but then I did read it
Might be worth mentioning it spoils Westworld 2 in case anyone cares. Also mistakes the origin of the story if I'm not mistaken while being predicated on a meeting that would undoubtedly have been nda'd if it took place.
On the other hand, the whole thing is dumb enough I can't imagine it being approved for publishing without being true. But the point? Sketchy confirmation of the everyman's suspicions, fears, and romances. Even the rich are afraid of the future, they don't care about us, but darnit we just gotta stick together, folks. We can do it.
It is. But they are selfish morons.
They will be huddling in their bunkers, living off of ever dwindling canned goods, while the outside world learns to cultivate and preserve and pickle again.
And raid the shitty bunkers of the world enders for vengeance and to blow off steam.
It does lol.
Then again, we're living in a shitty c tier novel.
Or maybe a monty python sketch.
By sustainability i mean food and energy. These are problems that can be mostly resolved by technology. Not yet, not fully. But we'll get there. When things really start going to shit in the next few decades, do you believe these people will try to solve anything regarding the general populace? Nah, they'll retreat into safety and let the masses sort themselves out.
Never in the history of humanity were we at a technology level that would permit this kind of 'solution'. Those on top always had to rely on the masses for production of essential goods and generation of wealth. We're fast approaching a reality where those concerns won't matter.
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Don't underestimate them. A lot of these preppers are learning all kinds of survival skills. I think they allude to that in the other article posted in this thread. Some have their whole family training in stuff and have bags packed and a chopper ready to go to their bunker should something suddenly arise.
I think you're really overestimating the pace of technology advancement. Automating food production via robotics is still a long way off. Not to mentioned that even if they are able to do that on a small scale, the variety of food they can produce will be very limited. I hope theyre ready for a massive drop in their quality of life.
How prepared are they really? Most of these people have never done home or car repairs or even grown food in a garden. They're helpless and completely rely on paying others to do day to day stuff that most people have done themselves their entire lives.
If anyone is being underestimated it's ordinary people. We're used to a lower quality of life and we can do things that these people take for granted because they've never had to do them. These pampered, privileged people have no chance of surviving if the world does to hell.
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The most pampered section of human society envisioning themselves as post-apocalyptic survivalists lmao good luck boys
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WE most definitely are underestimated by most of them but there are some whom don't underestimate us and are prepping.
It seems rather strange preparing for a world where the quality of life is so poor that most of these people would probably be shooting themselves within a year because they're not used to eating canned beans and pork. Ditto for taking a trip to Mars.
No they aren't, the shit they are prepping for, the shit they are practicing, it's the exact opposite of actual survival training.
They are training to hoard and bunker down.
And that's not just the rich, but the right wing 'survivalists' in general. It's just a buzzword for them, they don't actually have any idea what they are talking about or how to sustainably survive.
Your cans are going to eventually run out, or spoil, you are looking at like 2 years for high acid like fruits, and 5 years max for low acid canned vegetables and meats.
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I don't have a timetable. I'm simply stating that is the path we have been on for quite some time. Depending on how climate change and social stability evolve going forward, i could be more or less wrong. I don't see the necessary measures being taken to avoid a major social collapse in the next 40-50 years though. If a few million immigrants and relatively mild unemployment rates can throw the western world into the political chaos it's increasingly facing, what will happen to both the developing and developed worlds when these numbers increase tenfold?
But more to your point, full automation is not a necessity at first. Never underestimate people's capacity to be 'one of the good ones' in order to find themselves on the right side of survival.
Pretty much this. There are too many facets of society relied upon by even the ultra wealthy to do away with it. They'd need entire towns of support people.
That'd be great! A dying old rich dude, leaving his bunker for the first time in decades, expecting to see the world in ruins. Instead he finds everyone else picking up the pieces, and not doing too bad, all things considered.
I mean, we would still have access to much of the knowledge we've built up over our history. It wouldn't be too long before we got to at leat industrial revolution standards of we had the population to sustain it.
I used to be a big fan of Douglas Rushkoff back in high school. This article kind of mirrors what happened with his second(?) book, where after writing a book about how the world was becoming more connected and then being invited to speak about it, it was all just companies wondering how they could exploit it for their bottom line.
I always pictured the whole doomsday prepping/survivalist movement as purely conservative paranoia fantasy, which makes me wonder if these ideas about the rich jettisoning us poors is a big part of the narrative with them? That would be an interesting twist on poor conservatives defending the rich nonstop.
Interestingly, they didn't seem phased by their own mortality. They did not seem concerned with the welfare of their kids and their heirs, and were approaching this as a medium term event not lifetimes which might be necessary in an environmental or nuclear holocaust event.
Thought it does somewhat remind me of the Silo series.
So you wouldn't escape a nation wide disaster with your family if you could? Come on son.
You'd think a coming collapse would bring a moment of introspection to the rich; a realization that they are largely the cause, living cushioned lives while treating the rest of the world like cattel. You'd think they'd push harder for better societal safety nets, less income inequality, etc, to keep a collapse from ever happening. But nope, they turn to paranoia, fuck the rest.
They might fare better using their money and influence to try to avert that disaster. I wouldn't think that would be difficult to understand.
These people have become totally unmoored from reality. They are so smart that they haven't learned from history, from what has historically happened when the wealthy elite has gotten too greedy, cut too deep... the article doesn't touch on this but I believe they think they can use technology to outpace that, maybe automate private security forces or the military to keep them safe, move to remote areas or maybe even space, and in the meantime continue to abuse America's capitalism and political systems in order to give themselves ever-greater wealth and distance from the rest of humanity. It's fucking stupidity and I just hope I'm there to see it all end for them.
That's the lesson for what's going on in America right now, though, I think? The social contract that made America actually great, of most middle-income workers making enough to not just survive but also raise families, has been shredded decades ago. It has been replaced with an alternative where the vast majority of Americans get fuck-all nothing, and a tiny few are greatly enriched.
Ultimately, we will.
That's the lesson for what's going on in America right now, though, I think? The social contract that made America actually great, of most middle-income workers making enough to not just survive but also raise families, has been shredded decades ago. It has been replaced with an alternative where the vast majority of Americans get fuck-all nothing, and a tiny few are greatly enriched.
Ultimately, we will.
Believe it or not they have and will. Escape and cashing out is the last thing even the most wealthy want. And btw lumping all wealthy people under one "the rich" label is naive and hilarious.
I was specifically talking about the "survivalist" set, and the poster you quoted before was as well. I'm not sure what's so outrageous about that to you. Obviously there are wealthy people of all political persuasions.
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If anything the traditional survivalists are anti-state. Becoming and being rich depends highly on a stable state. The best way to survive a catastrophic event is to escape as far as possible, not to bunker down.
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That's why they're building these bunkers in New Zealand and Alaska. Though one of these moguls has also built one in one of the mountains in Colorado as well.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if some people do think like this. But I can't really believe that a meeting like this happened and they just let him write about it.