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Are the Wealthy Plotting To Leave Us Behind? (medium.com)
"The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind," writes Douglas Rushkoff, describing what he learned from a high-paying speaking gig about the future of technology for "five super-wealthy guys...from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world," -- and what it says about perceptions of technology today.
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...?
That's when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.
There's nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society. But the current drive for a post-human utopia is something else. It's less a vision for the wholesale migration of humanity to a new state of being than a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability, and complexity.... It's a reduction of human evolution to a video game that someone wins by finding the escape hatch and then letting a few of his BFFs come along for the ride... 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. This freed everyone from the moral implications of their activities... Ultimately, according to the technosolutionist orthodoxy, the human future climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer or, perhaps better, accepting that technology itself is our evolutionary successor.
The piece -- titled "Survival of the Richest" -- is an interesting read, and ends by suggesting this inspiring counter-philosophy.
"Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It's a team sport."
That's when it hit me: At least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the aging process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape.
There's nothing wrong with madly optimistic appraisals of how technology might benefit human society. But the current drive for a post-human utopia is something else. It's less a vision for the wholesale migration of humanity to a new state of being than a quest to transcend all that is human: the body, interdependence, compassion, vulnerability, and complexity.... It's a reduction of human evolution to a video game that someone wins by finding the escape hatch and then letting a few of his BFFs come along for the ride... 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. This freed everyone from the moral implications of their activities... Ultimately, according to the technosolutionist orthodoxy, the human future climaxes by uploading our consciousness to a computer or, perhaps better, accepting that technology itself is our evolutionary successor.
The piece -- titled "Survival of the Richest" -- is an interesting read, and ends by suggesting this inspiring counter-philosophy.
"Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It's a team sport."
mars is gonna be earth 2.0 bye bye to the dirty unwashed
Pipe dream escapism companies. None of them are going to get people off Earth into sustainability elsewhere. They're hucksters advertising a product and the CEO's are overcompensated. None of that matters in the end.
*nt*
Dude, it's a book. Someone wrote a book. You don't have to go full retard and shoot a gun off, we get it, you're upset about the thought experiment. Ok. Let's breathe and watch Trump go off to prison together.
The sooner we leave on the Ark, the better.
See subject.
"Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It's a team sport."
Being Human is a matter of genetics, nothing more nothing less. Same for being a dolphin, being a hedgehog or being a rhododendrum.
Rich people are doing the exact same thing everyone else is doing: acting on their incentives.
People are all upset because they expect that aging will be cured and "they" will price it such that only the rich can afford it. Well, shit bro, research costs money! Not only that, but manufacturing medicine costs money! If they find a way to do it cheaply, they will because if they don't someone else will, and will outsell them with a better price. That's just economics.
Seriously, people need to get their heads out of...er...whatever weird place they are in now. We are pushing our technological boundaries because that's what we do. It's not some grand conspiracy to fuck the world over, its just what makes sense to do right now. And with each breakthrough we make, "what makes sense" will change, and people will adapt to that.
Just...calm down. The world has always been weird. Technological advances have always been disruptive. People have always adapted. That's just how it goes. Go with it.
Just go with it.
Conspiracy theories are a sure sign of the pseudoscience underlying this kind of nonsense. When was the last time anyone uploaded their mind into a computer? That's right - never. When was the last time someone was unfrozen to life from cryogenic Storage? Interesting science fiction but junk science.
I don't think it's just "the wealthy" ... it's a common temptation / failing of human kind.
Don't believe me?
You there, with the trendy facial hair ... whadya say we bring along the folks with the MAGA hats? What's that? No?
...one of the most stupid posts I've seen on slashdot.
Seriously...leaving "us" behind? Is this some sort of attempt at class warfare? Someone just read Piketty and is all-fired about inequality?
In the breakdown of society that's postulated, 0.01 seconds after the electronics die, these guys are poorer than Gomer the Gas Station attendant because he at least has usable mechanical skills and a store full of parts that people will be desperate for. Peter Theil? Elon Musk? Richard Branson? They will all lost the vast bulk of their wealth the moment the volatile memory recording their wealth goes off; all their properties? They wouldn't be able to defend them from squatters, and they'll have nothing to actually pay their security WITH.
This is colossally stupid. When the "end times" comes, the wealthiest people on earth are going to be the vast majority of 3rd (and maybe 2nd) world farmers who still have skills needed to continue to produce food.
-Styopa
The Rich have their team...
it is just that you're not a part of it.
so quit whining and join the team that will be left behind.
let's let the rich leave, and then we can start by fixing the world up, which will mean killing off all the remaining psychopaths, politicians and sociopaths, or just sending them off to join the rich...
enjoy your day in a burning heaven.
also, nine out of nine comments loaded, whilst only five comments visible. The rich clearly have their little niche everywhere, including /. just to annoy you.
YMMV
Dude, he's a retard, he can't help but go full retard on stupid shit like this. Just take him out for a hunting trip, and have a little target practice on him.
Enjoy !
Poe be me.
The super rich can't go that far away from their logistical support. It takes the entire planet to have the logistical supply chain to make an attempt to reach for Mars In addition for Thiel to go to Mars, someone would have to be his proxy while Thiel is out there for the next 5 years or so. While Thiel is in the tin can spaceship he is beholden to the rules of the spaceship, oxygen and productivity requirements. There is no way escape hatch to go back to the mansion if there is a long term personality conflict with any of the other crew.
Most of those other "super solutions" have similar pitfalls at this time.
But the general concept is something that is worth watching. The one most worth watching is life extension that provides more years that are productive. Right now we can tack on years that involve being hooked up to machines. If someone came along and said: "For one million dollars I could give you five more years as if you were forty years old and after that you would age normally. There wouldn't be any rapid catch up aging" you would find every real rich person would buy that up in a snap. It provides a practical benefit at an affordable price (for the wealthy). Once this technology comes along (or major organ cloning/replacement) the life expectancy of the rich will leap forward many years. And they will fight tooth and claw to keep those treatments off of insurance and only for the rich. At that point you will have the people rich enough to live an extra fifty years and everyone else. And those super rich people will work to mold the society to suit them because their horizon is longer than ours.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Well, testosterone levels have been drastically falling in the US and other developed countries for quite awhile. The medical standard for what's considered a normal level has had to be adjusted downward because low levels are the new norm now. I dunno if it caused by microwave radiation, but something seems to be at work here.
how is random shit like this news
1) create a false alarm
2) lock them all in their bunkers
3) problem solved
Their proxies, proteges and inheritors will immediately fill in the vacancy and the corporation, foundation, country that put them out there will keep on operating. Its not like the US folded up shop after putting men on the moon.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
what if life extension happened for inmates & rich.
Right inmates get better healthcare then poor
Oh, no, what are we going to do? If Elon Musk builds himself an Elysium, we'll inevitably get at each other's throats!
Yey, Collectivism! Down with the greedy cantankerous Individual, glory be to the Collective!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I would to if I was super rich. Who wants to be around humans that would rather watch reality shows (Ow my balls) vs actually learning.
The wealthy have been buying up land in remote, wealthy, white countries for a while now, places they very rarely visit. They all have escape routes out of the US if the economy ever imploded.
Personally, I think Elysium is going to be a more accurate vision of the future.........
Whoever wrote this is clearly a reality denier! The "danger" of mass migration? It's been scientifically proven time after time that migrations is strengthening and enriching! Imagine trying to deny basic facts and pass it off as the truth. Fortunately tolerant enlightened liberals would never do such a thing.
I hope that someone is already there to sanitize their telephones.
On the whole, the world wouldn't really be any worse off if the top 0.1% disappeared, "breakaway civilization" style. In fact, there is a good argument to be made that the rest of us would be much better off if we simply, and regularly, purged ourselves of them.
I don't blame them for wanting to leave us behind, because we're really not that far away from torches and guillotines. And for that, they only have themselves to blame.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Jokes on them, I got a vasectomy. No kids either!
Huh, I didn't know Thiel backed longevity research. I'm quite astonished to discover he has a trait I admire.
they're going to leave us behind with Automation. Once they've got robots to build their mansions, jets, run their farms and their military they won't need the 99% anymore. They'll have a smattering of engineers to keep it running, some doctors to keep them running and a few slaves for entertainment of one kind or another and the rest of us will be screwed. We'll be left with nothing. Think of the Indians stuck on reservations but on a global scale.
If we're going to do something about it now's the time. Now would be the time to establish a guaranteed quality of life for all human beings. Food, shelter, healthcare, Education, and transportation established as birth rights. The hard part is to get the 99% to stop fighting among themselves long enough to do it. Hell, I can't even convince my lower middle class friends that a living minimum wage won't cause prices to spiral out of control let alone get them onboard for single payer health care....
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I think we can see what a lifetime of being driven batshit insane by listening to Fox news blaming absolutely everything wrong in the world on the left does to a human brain. The right is literally nominating neo-nazi candidates, yet you think the left is where the hate is coming from.
ou must really lead a miserable, agonizing life, forever being stark-raving bonkers at the mere thought that someone else deserves equal rights to a white man.
The tune will be thankfully short, and with them all dead about 70% of the worlds wealth will become available, I don't see a down side
"William Gibson's 2014 novel The Peripheral was the first futuristic book he published in the 21st century, and it showed us a distant future in which some event, "The Jackpot," had killed nearly everyone on Earth, leaving behind a class of ruthless oligarchs and their bootlickers; in the 2018 sequel, Agency, we're promised a closer look at the events of The Jackpot. "
From: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/22/the-jackpot.html
Look at history, the wealthy have always sought to keep the unwashed masses at bay.
Count de Money - "Your highness, the peasants are revolting!!'
The King - "You're right, they stink on ice."
there are in the world. If 1% of the population is the ruling class and they claim 1% of the population to service them that's still 70 million people. But that still leaves the other 98% screwed which is 5.6 billion people. Odds are you, mean and everyone reading this is going to be part of the 98%.
Seriously, we need to start preparing for a world where the rich don't need us to generate the wealthy that use.
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This isn't about being wealthy. It is about being smart and being prepared.
Even the Red Cross recommends having a emergency survival kit In case of a catastrophic event. If you get a bit more serious about it you start putting together a bug out bag.
Do you have a emergency water filter (aka Life Straw / Survivor Filter)?
Do you have food rations to feed everyone you care about for at least 72 hours, and preferably 2 weeks?
Do you have portable solar power to power necessary electronics?
Do you have medical supply kit? (Bandages, gauze, aspirin, soap, swab alcohol, iodine, general antibiotics, suture thread/needle, scissors, tweezers)
Do you have a blanket that can keep you *warm*, is light, and water resistant?
Do you have a sleeping bag, same as above?
Do you have para-cord (type 3)? (Has all kinds of uses)
Do you have a waterproof tarp? (rain s***s, and wet equipment really s***s)
Do you have a dependable light source (no a flashlight is *not* dependable - it runs out)
Do you have a reliable way to start a fire?
Do you have a emergency radio / shortwave, preferably crank?
Do you have at least two changes of clothes?
Do you have a guns / ammo, preferably compact, and training to use it?
Do you have a good bush knife (pref Bowie)? (no your kitchen knives don't count)
Do you have a hatchet?
Do you have heavy boots able to walk on sharp rubble? (maybe sharp glass / barb wire under water)
Do you have actual paper maps of your area? (MapQuest probably won't work in an emergency)
Do you have plastic baggies? (Multipurpose, waterproof)
Do you have a good backpack to hold this?
Do you know how much it weighs? Are you fit enough to carry your bag?
If the answer to any of these is "no", the term for you is "future victim". Remember the hurricane Katrina and the sad sacks sitting on their roofs with signs saying "Need water"? Why weren't they prepared?
If you have these items, but not in a kit, and they are scattered throughout your house, again this makes you a future victim. When an emergency hits you won't have time to assemble a bug out kit.
Look at the Mormons. They keep enough emergency supplies to last months or years, not just for disasters, but as preparation for life's ups and downs. Very smart.
This isn't expensive. You don't have to be rich. You just have to have the right mindset.
And by the way, in case of a disaster, don't expect people to share. Desperate times makes for desperate people. Don't forget the weapons (IMHO a good pistol, plus a simple rugged rifle, plus tactical batons, plus pepper spray, and in a pinch, the hatchet, and hiking staff).
Remember the fable of the ant and the grasshopper.
The article is loosely making the "galt's gulch" argument: Oh Noes, the rich people are going to go away and deprive us of their blessings, what shall we ever do?
What we will do is hire a qualified replacement and move on with our lives and the business at hand. In a year those rich people won't even be missed anymore. In five they will be forgotten completely.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
He couldn't have enough of the stuff. "Elixir of Life" is what they called it. War were waged while the economy was run to the ground over it.
It slowly poisoned him and destroyed the nation.
Humanity is truly doomed to repeat its follies.
Overpopulation. And someone sounded the warning 50 years ago (Paul Ehlrich) but was ridiculed and still is by some.
When you get a class of very rich people it tends to come with a sense of entitlement. These people eventually want to arrange the world around them and consolidate their power. It also means that their solutions to global problems may only serve them. Suppose you have a catastrophic global warming scenario, then one approach to it is, how can we avoid it or minimize the damage. Another approach is, how can we create a fortress paradise which is safe from the rest of the world.
You don't need to believe the purpose of the surveillance state was to protect the wealthy from the rest, to see that it is bound to end up that way. Fear of the external enemy serves that purpose that very well, whether it's terrorists or Russians.
Checks and balances should apply for all concentrations of power, also those who claim to protect us and also private wealth.
...is always 'no'
As US cities fail to keep their streets safe and clean.
Police who don't remove tents and parked RV.
Drug use and police who don't enforce laws due to city politics and demographics.
People with any kind of work ethic and money save up and escape to great parts of the USA.
Clean cities, no crime, no tents, no waste left on streets. Well paid police who are friendly and who have the skills to enforce laws.
Working city governments who work hard to attract new jobs rather than tax jobs.
The more wealthy are buying passports into great nations like New Zealand with the idea of exiting the USA when riots start.
Clean up your city and good people will stay and innovate.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Sorry, I make a decent living. Didn't happen right away, but the mistakes I make right now are the reasons I am always living pay to pay. BUT, I make a very decent living for where I live. Cleveland. People that make more then me, be them have better skill sets that pay better. Higher positions. Or just flat out owners of business's. Millions to billions. I am not jealous. I am NOT a waa, waa, waa. They make more then me, I deserve. I deserve what I can do on my own. Be it my skill set that pays, tax breaks that anyone can get, or recognizing an opportunity when it occurs I can jump on. And for those that say, they were born into it. SO WHAT, don't care. It is very easy to lose money quickly. I don't like Unions, but I am not jealous of people that have good jobs/benefits/pay that are union. People that belittle those that make more then them are petty. Nothing more, nothing less. If you can't do better, THAT IS YOUR FAULT.. Get a better skill set, get more experience, move to where it pays more, or come up with an original idea that will pay. Otherwise, deal with it.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
There must be a positive correlation between wealth and paranoia; here are the "richest" people in the world unable to distinguish between a largely make-believe techno-future, that contains both terrible disasters and miraculous benefits, and reality, and assuming that reality is going to hurt them badly.
I don't envy them.
Nobody else thought of this?
What's need is a society living up to the best of the human condition, not the worst. But unfortunately the 99.9 percent truly aren't worth saving. If they were, they would be banding together and making things better for each other, or their community. But the majority are too concerned with getting their own and not seeing how banding together in smaller groups will help them collectively protect themselves from ever larger groups, attempting to swallow, use, and spit out their lifeless husks at the other end.
Until and unless that happens, the best we can hope for is finding the small group for you and getting away, leaving on your own knowing that civilization will find and crush you again, or hoping the end will come and you live to see it.
Soya. I dropped the Soya made bread and regained my motivation and drive to get tasks completed. Funny thing is the doctors then prescribe me a similar medication for high blood pressure. I comment that I'm only able to get work done in the evenings. The doctors then prescribe me taking statins in the evenings.
This sounds like a good script for Kirk and co.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Nice try, mister socialist sir, but if you can't even convince your friends, how are you going to convince your detractors?
The key to remember is that with hard work and a little organisation we can make a living regardless of the rich 'ombres with all the money. So what if "they" live in a fully-automated utopia and everyone else lives in a crapsack world? We made the world we live in together, we can build something like that anew, also together. All you need is humans and elbow grease. Knowledge, of course, helps tremendously, as does organisation. But all you really need is the first two.
You can see this in action in, for example, Latin America. It's full of derps living in the "grey economy" because the rich 'ombres own everything and getting anything done from the government takes more forms and offices and weeks than any normal human being lives in years. Many more, in fact. So people keep on living, without government-enforced property rights and ownership rights and so on. It's not good, it could be so much better, but they have what they have and perforce make it work. I'm not saying this is a good solution, but I am saying that we don't need universal basic income socialist claptrap to live. We never have.
Free monies for all is basically saying you want toe rich 'ombres (that decided didn't need us anymore) to pay so you don't have to work hard. Syeah that'll fly, mister socialist sir.
I have a headline for you to think about. See subject.
Those with enough mulah are already isolating themselves from the rest of us, the great unwashed.
Here is a little list
- Gated or 'exclusive' communities often (in the USA at least) based around the membership of a Golf/Country Club
- Being driven everywhere and never mixing with anyone not of their social class
- Only flying using private jets or at sea in their mega yachts
- Only shopping at stores that cater for their social class (eg Rodeo Drive) where you have to pass inspection even to be let inside.
I would not put it past the likes of Jeff Bezos or Larry Ellison to buy a large island and set it up as a community for the super rich. No one with a net worth of less than $100M allowed on the property.
etc etc etc
*sigh* The legacy of the 1977 Alternative 3 April Fool's joke continues...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3
The USA is a circle and the only angle it knows is hatred.
These idiots should read the epic story of Gilgamesh and his quest for immortality in far off lands..
Let's help these rich folks with their plans...
1) Round up the 5 or 10 % wealthiest people on the planet and their families.
2) The old and sick ones we can cryogenically freeze and promise to thaw them out when medical science has progressed to the point of curing them and extending their lives forever.
3) If there is are smart ones in the bunch that are not psychopaths we can download their brain patterns to SSDs for storage with the promise to upload them to suitable computers when computer science has progressed to the point of giving them immortality that way. Of course the download will be fatal to their current human existence but hey.
4) The rest we can shoot off to Mars or wherever they want to go go to escape the impending doom of civilization.
5) With them out of the way we can redistribute all their wealth in a more equitable manner among the rest of us.
Of course in a few decades ahead wealth and power will again accumulate in the 5 or 10% of the population. No problem, we can just do all that again :)
After a few generations of doing this culling exercise the human race might evolve into something better. Or at least people might start to learn not to be greedy jerks.
everyone at the same level = 250K student loan gone
Would getting a lift over to Alaska, including a small house/habitat, really be an escape?
Or would it be a prison outpost?
No one with any intelligence graduates with $250,000 in debt.
And apparently we're not on their team.
What do you think Castles, Suburbs, and Gated Communities are? A way to escape the "rabble". To set yourself apart. Everyone want to believe they are special. They aren't.
That kit sounds like something all homeless people need.
"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."
It's one thing to be completely helpless, have your country go to pot, and then leave for another one. That is bad enough because few are that helpless and if you want a place to live, making it happen is the usual way to get it.
But it's much worse to be in a position of power, give up on the situation and use this as an excuse to exploit and make matters worse. And then when things go to pot, leave for another country.
Humanity advanced by moving from law of the jungle to a more cooperative team sport.
Perhaps this worked so well that we forgot why it is useful to sometimes put we over me.
The bunker guard control problem seem a great example of a problem from me over we.
So what to do?
It is understandable that a rich guy, being human and so mortal, would want to have the best life possible.
Instead of asking how to survive after this event, they should be asking what they can do to prevent the event in the first place.
That is the path to the best life.
For a business man, how about the golden rule?
Encourage making useful stuff and long lasting, friendly customer relationships.
Discourage putting your customers over a barrel in an exploitative relationship.
A stable situation is going to have a ruleset that applies to everybody.
If you wish to exploit others, expect to be exploited.
Wouldn't you rather live is a more cooperative place.
It's kind of funny survival came up on Slashdot, because last month Humble Bundle had a survival collection of books. Survival will be about a LOT more than just growing food, but bringing back a survivable level of civilization.
I think if they honestly believe in any of those scenarios coming to pass, they probably have bigger issues than anything their paranoid brains have concocted. Let them go, good riddance. I would imagine the majority of people already fail to notice their existence.
Mars is colder and drier than Antarctica. Nobody lives there either, mostly. Oh yes, no air to speak of.
> "Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It's a team sport."
The problem is that it was never about being human.
They aren't worried about "being human": they'll take their cats with them and leave humans behind.
Some people love intelligent beings because they're enticing; the others want dumb pets, because they pose no threat and they can always get the upper hand.
its our only chance
Sure thing Gene Roddenberry, it's all the Rooskies.. thats why Checkov wasnt added until season two right?
Go eat a space dog Rooskie.
Kirk & Spock set the template for America's space-mad billionaires.
Sure, maybe Musk could make a claim to it with electric cars and renewables.
But the vast Majority of the rich VCs and execs do it in the same way that athletes say they're "doing it for the fans".
So yeah, when you can buy anything, what becomes the most precious resource? Perpetuity.
Born in the richest country at its epoch of accesable education and credit, backed by a government bent on relentless global hegemony. Yeah he totets did it all hizzself!!
This is our shocked face.
If the elite ever reaches a point where they donâ(TM)t need us, I hope they kill us, but if weâ(TM)re lucky, weâ(TM)ll nuke ourselves out of existence before then. We definitely donâ(TM)t need to spread our cancer to others planets.
NIMBY.
...you are making other plans"
Travels to escapist encampments in South America teach a very paranoid, sadistic outcome in store for those in whom choice is simply an escape plan.
It really needs to get very bad before a place like Mars is better for us than earth. First, you can only get a tiny group to leave earth.
Second, with the investment needed it's always possible to create a better place for them here than you'd achieve elsewhere.
I can think of two reasons to explore space
1. pioneering. No rationale required
2. not putting all your eggs in a single basket. Things might get that bad that humanity kills itself off.
If they aren't, I'd have to wonder what's wrong with their heads.
Go to Mars, White Man! The wogs can't follow you there!
When we’re all starving that’s the only solution. But avoid Peter Thiel, you don’t know what he’s got. A person like him doesn’t fund herpes research for the greater good of humanity. He’s doing it for self-preservation.
Libertarianism doesn't imply "hyper-individualism". It just implies that the collective is not more important than the individual; the collective is composed of individuals, and the collective is something that emerges from the interaction between each pair of individuals. If anything, libertarianism tends towards hyper-interdependence, because each individual is expected to find that which is self-sustaining, which is often a very specialized function in society.
Secondly, you're wrong again; there's nothing LESS libertarian than trying to walk out of a the "supermarket" without paying; you see, libertarianism implies that an individual's property rights are sacred, and so a libertarian would be aghast at the prospect (if only because ignoring one individual's property rights undermines one's own property rights).
You're just wrong.
Allow me to set you even straighter: Non-libertarians and other hyper-collectivists wander around the supermarket of civilization (stocked and supplied by individuals according to their contracts), filling their pockets, and acting indignant and crying "robbers!" when [private] security stops them as they try to leave without paying.
Do you get it yet?
testosterone levels have been drastically falling in the US and other developed countries for quite awhile.
So have violent crime rates.
n/t
Have gnu, will travel.
Just saying...
One of my favorite quotes is from Jerry Pournelle. "The poor are what the rich use to scare the middle class into working." The wealthy have already left us behind. The rest of us will be the ones fighting wars they start and continue, running out of food, water and medicine.
If you got a 250k student loan, you're a fucking idiot.
productivity has doubled. Pie's bigger, your piece and mine is smaller. These are facts. There's already a class war going on. You just been insulated from it; mostly because cheap Chinese consumer goods and Amazon losing money in the hopes of driving competition out has kept inflation at bay for you. That won't last.
Not everybody fought in WWII or 'Nam. But we all eventually felt it's effects.
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You're an adult, so you drive and use roads paid for by my tax dollars. You most likely went to public schools when before school was the domain of the very rich or the occasional whipping boy. The computer you type on was built with technology invented through government grants. I could go on. And on....
/.). You'll regret it later if you don't. The 1% are not your friends, and you are not nor will you ever be one of them.
I know you're trolling, but it's a bad kind of trolling. Go make trouble on the Overwatch forums or something if that's what it takes to get a rise out of you. There's a chance somebody might read what you wrote and believe it. Of course, you might be a Russian troll paid to make these posts to disrupt and weaking my country. If that's the case all I can say to you is that sooner or later Vlad will be done with you and you're going to be pretty well screwed when that happens. If the post above is the best you can do you're not joining the KGB anytime soon... Wake up and join the left. Join the working class (of which you are clearly a member, the wealthly don't waste time on
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Unless you're an MD.
If you are an MD, you're set, with such a low debt.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
As productivity has risen, costs have fallen. Households used to have one expensive television that the whole household shared.
Really hard to empathize with a leftist drone who believes the best way to secure the cooperation of security guards in case of the Event is by treating them nice NOW. So what happens with their families in the event? What if the Event happens past the expiry date of active duty for this or that security guard? How would one define "nice treatment"?
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Of people who though they could cheat death . This is where we all end up eventually. The sooner everyone realises this , the sooner they will make the most of this life here, now.
If the left looks like they may win a major election, bailing may not be a bad idea. They WILL be coming for our money, guns, speech, etc.
Just watch what they are doing to California, its what they have planned for everyone ( and worse )
Also thank unleaded gas. Yippie science
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
This is very similar to the plot of Ben Elton’s 1989 satirical novel Stark, sadly the reality is serious.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
A recent Slashdot post frames the global warming problem as eventual extinction of all life. See:
https://science.slashdot.org/s...
I think we should adopt a simple and direct plan of reducing human caused CO2 emissions until we can get the locally measured CO2 numbers to stand still or go down. The easy obvious way to get the first 10% reduction is to fill commuter cars and work fewer days a week and stop 90 % of petroleum based flying .
What we want to do is accomplish a Great Depression slowdown of society without bankruptcy, foreclosure, hunger, unemployment or desperation.
The modern American way to do this is establish local CO2 measurement systems that can report social CO2 changes with one day's data. Use cell phone applications and a synthetic digital currency to fund and accelerate social change from a velocity of slow disaster to determined high speed reductions.
Local CO2 is out of control because we are not measuring it with meaningful speed and location. CO2 is invisible and without local measurement there is no local control of the problem. We have had 30 years of a spreadsheet thinking, while the real numbers relentlessly creep up.
Come by and visit my blog where I am working on this problem: http://www.lowco2america.com/
No, not yet anyway. We aren't to the French Revolution level of wealth inequality, yet.
Nothing to see here, move along please.
Most of these beardos talking about wanting to live on Mars don't even have the ability or resolve to spend a few nights in a tent in the desert or on a beach in midwinter. I would not give their grandiose pseudo scientific hubris much more thought. Let them play space.
Hopefully they take leaded gas away from the spoiled people who can afford to fly. They're still allowed to spew unburned leaded gasoline out of their exhausts.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Say what you like about scumbag capitalists - they have given the poor a quality of life that would be undreamt of under other systems. If their research and funding gives us oiks space travel and medicine, who cares if the motives were originally selfish?
This sounds a lot like what I've encountered all my life: Jewish plots. I suspect this current plot of the rich is simply a way to denigrate the wealthy.
If "The Rich" leave the planet, they probably won't survive alone, and the Earthlings might just see a better quality of life with the burden of supporting the unskilled elite removed. Most of the really intelligent people (in fact, most people, period) earn less then $100K/year. For The Monetarily Elite to even survive getting into orbit, they'll have to take along lot's of lackeys who will quickly figure out that these wealthy waifs don't bring anything truly useful to any colonisation initiative, and the 'employees' that go along will quickly be calling the shots. Call it what it is: The Golgafrinchan 'B' Ark. -- don't worry, DJT Jr., we're right behind you.
Haven't they already?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Rushkoff
If these hedge fund guys invited this imbecile to talk, then fear not. The hedge fund guys are imbeciles too.
They are, but you can spoil their insidious plot very simply: Just get rich, too!
The rich and powerful have been protecting their wealth and power for millennia.
About as insightful as the revelation that most CEOs are sociopaths.
Sounds to me like this story could preface one of Isaac Asimov's novels.
I'd be more worried about the Fundamentalists, plotting to leave the rest of us behind.
Why? This kind of ideology could lead a Fundie to stop caring about this world. I mean, it's all going to Hell anyway, right? So let's do whatever we want, we're going to Paradise! Only Paradise matters, and Hell is supposed to be a bad place for Unbelievers anyway...
I have no good way of judging the risk this presents though. It's more of a conceptual concern.