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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
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.
See subject.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
Well, shit bro, research costs money!
The problem here, shithead, is that the research was paid by us, and those who profit are them.
If they find a way to do it cheaply, they will...
...immediately patent it and then jack the price through the roof.
FTFY.
Oh? And when it sucks up all the funding for medical research into curing diseases that would have otherwise been within society's grasp to cure, then what? Does that still not matter?
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?
At least in the US, the rich (the top 5%) pay 60% of all income taxes. And when you look at SSI/FICA (which they all max out) and capital gains taxes, they end up paying about 60% of all taxes the Federal Government collects. Even though they only make about 35% of all the income. Meaning they also overwhelmingly pay for that research.
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.
"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.
> "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.
The population has ALWAYS paid for stuff. Whether as soldiers in wars, peasants in kingdoms, slaves, paying taxes, currency inflation, bonds, etc.
Initially it has always been the few who benefit from the many. Who do you think actually paid for Columbus' journey, the Pyramids, Roman roads, or the Great Wall? The piece is just a fluff piece talking about something that hasn't changed since the dawn of man.
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.
Perhaps, but to an outside observer it is indistinguishable from a grand conspiracy to fuck the world over.
Laissez-faire capitalism is an environmental and societal suicide pact, and we must break it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...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.
The other real danger, and the most immediate real danger, of mass migration is the far-right ideology it inspires, posing unnecessary threats to the global economy and raising the risk of war (and hate crimes/genocide/humanitarian crises, but the rich don't care about that stuff). For this reason mass migration is only sustainable in short, widely spaced doses, otherwise you get nazis.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They may make only 35% of all the "income", but top 5% also own roughly 70% of the total wealth, so that distribution seems somewhat equitable to me.
And just for the record, the remaining 95% also pay taxes: federal, state, and local taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, social security taxes, and so on. And for that 95%, those taxes often make up a much, much larger percentage of their available disposable income.
We all have a stake in the pie.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.
Laissez-faire capitalism is an environmental and societal suicide pact, and we must break it.
What do you propose as a replacement?
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.
What I get is that you are too stupid to recognise a metaphor.
And you're a libertarian.
But I repeat myself.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Tightly regulated capitalism with sharply progressive taxation to redistribute income. Within the next few decades capitalism as we know it will have to be phased out entirely before post-scarcity effects and a lack of participation opportunity for workers due to automation force a hard crash of the system.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Are you seriously insinuating that we currently have Laissez-faire capitalism in effect? Try to start up your own business, get some real sales, and then come back and tell us how Laissez-faire it was.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm all for capitalism, but it will always need regulations for safety, and anti-monopolistic behavior.
Just another day in Paradise
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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>> Population reduction
Japan is trying that now. China will be soon. Long term it seems like a winning strategy but we haven't figured out the short term plan.
When an argument starts with an idiotic definition, you know you're dealing with an idiot's strawman.
mvdwege is beneath you, you'd be better served arguing with a rock.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Lots of money is parked in productive agricultural land. In the USA the price of a leased productive acre or land went from about $2k to about $5k. More than the lease income can justify.
If you saw something bad coming and wanted to preserve your money where would you park it? There are bubbles everywhere you look.
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.
Round up the 5 or 10 % wealthiest people on the planet and their families.
Always a good start.
People will deliberately aim to avoid being in that top range by cutting their production; those who are selected will be those unfortunate enough to be producing too much.
Do you honestly think this will make things better, or do you just want to indulge in a bit of jealous violence/genocide?
No one with a net worth of less than $100M allowed on the property.
You also see this same divide at more normal levels of income; the people in coastal cities who are wealthy and success versus those who live elsewhere. These two groups increasingly only communicate within their groups and share views on politics, environment, health, etc. This trend seems likely to continue (particularly with automation) and be the great story of our time.
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.
That, and most of the services the government provides is not of service to these guys. Police? Many have and pay for private security anyway. Education? They send their kids to private schools. Direct entitlements like food stamps, welfare, low cost housing, free cell phones (in California at least), Medicare/medicade, all are lost to these guys because we stop them from having access to these entitlements.
Wow, that's so ridiculously wrong that it's bordering on the absurd.
The richer you are, the more in need you are of property protection, meaning police and courts. Private security cannot replace the police. In developed countries, private security are glorified doormen (they, by law, usually have no ability to actually do anything of any consequence). Even if the private security guys can shoot, they cannot investigate crimes and arrest people. You need the police for that. There is no private service you can pay for that will prosecute, try, convict, and lock away criminals - you need the public prosecutors and the government-funded court system.
As for education, in developed countries private schools are mostly about creating an exclusive social circle (kids with rich parents hanging out exclusively with other kids with rich parents), not about a higher quality education. Usually, the private schools have to follow whatever the national approved curriculum is (or at least some core elements of it), which means they lean heavily on the public education system (who develops that curriculum? not the private schools). The price of the private school is there to keep poor people out, not to pay for some above-and-beyond education.
Btw, who do the rich employ to work for them, and therefore, earn their money for them? Legions upon legions of people schooled in the public education system. Whether its basic literacy or numeracy, or people with advanced university degrees, the rich's ability to become rich and keep being rich is heavily dependent on millions of people educated using government money.
As for the "entitlements" of the poor - they are there to stop the poor from creating a revolution and stripping their rich of their wealth (and their heads, literally). The rich are the top of the pyramid, but for there to be a top, there has to be a pyramid, a base - and the foundations have to be solid. Do you really think all of the elements of the welfare state that developed over the past 200 years were just pressure from the poor and the lower classes and not a great chunk of the elite realizing that all shit breaks loose when you let people become hungry and desperate (a la France 1789, Russia 1917, and many other examples)?
So yes, the rich benefit from food stamps, welfare, and low-cost housing for the poor. In a very clear way.
Just because they own 70% of the total wealth doesnâ(TM)t mean you are entitled to any of it. What, you think the world just owes you a living?
Nobody "owes" the rich their property rights either, nor does anyone "owe" them the chance to avoid a revolution in which their heads will be guillotined.
If we assume that no one "owes" anyone anything (which, in a Hobbesian way, is a fair assumption for some uncivilized state), then everyone is just looking out for their own survival. So the poor, when they are hungry, robbing the rich, is completely fair game.
You see, the modern welfare state is a social contract between rich and poor: the rich get to keep being rich, their property rights protected vigorously by the state, and in exchange they pay a disproportional amount of the taxes which are redistributed to the poor so that they have a decent life - like, you know, welfare payments if they lose their job, access to a hospital if they are sick without this bankrupting them, and a decent education for their children that will allow them too to make a decent living.
It's funny, in many European countries which are more stratified (i.e. there is less social mobility, those born rich tend to stay rich and those born poor tend to stay poor), there is more of a realization of this by the rich. Intergenerational experience, I guess. In the US, which is a lot more socially - upward and downward - mobile, because every third billionaire had humble or middle class beginnings and has a (great)-grandfather who was a dirt poor nobody, the rich feel more entitled to their wealth, thinking it was purely on their own brilliance, talent and hard work that they earned it, and that those who are poor deserve to be so because they just aren't good enough or didn't work hard enough, so they should just shut up. They miss out on the fact that none this would matter in a revolution were the poor go after their heads (yelling "but it's not fair, I worked hard!" on your way to the guillotine will not help). They also miss out on the fact that, having themselves gone from a modest background to being rich, that they actually do indeed owe something to other people like their former selves: it was the system that gave them a chance, and now they have to fund it so it can others a chance too.
Terry Gilliam's "Brazil"
We can even let them pay extra to launch their Ark first. However, it seems Douglas Adams was wrong, and it was the "C Ark" that should go first.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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 )
That would only be true if your definition of wealth is cash value. In other words, that wealth also includes billions of dollars worth (not really) of crappy abstract art, and a 2 million dollar tintype of Billy the Kid. But that's hardly any of it. Do you know what Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffett have in common? If you guessed "billions of dollars", then you're wrong! What they all have in common is some prime real estate that somebody else decides how much it's worth, and most importantly of all, they hold a bunch of shares that sell for a lot on the open market, and at the end of the day, those are just numbers written on a spinning magnetic patter. Same with the money in their bank accounts.
Contrary to popular belief by politicians and socialists, if they all suddenly gave everything they had away, then it's not going to solve world hunger, homelessness, or any other crap like that. Instead, it will do only one thing: Increase inflation. Also, contrary to popular belief by politicians and socialists, increasing the money supply will only serve to increase inflation. Think about it: if your money is not in circulation (assuming a good portion of it even exists at all, which for rich people, it mostly doesn't) then, as far as everybody else is concerned, it isn't part of the money supply. However, if they suddenly gave it all up, and it went into open circulation, that may as well be as if the Fed decided to suddenly print billions of dollars.
Now, if you consider wealth by it's actual definition (meaning material goods in their possession, as opposed to net worth, which is really what you're talking about) then no, the richest people do not own 70% of all of the world's wealth, or anything even remotely close to that number. By the way, this is simultaneously why a universal basic income won't do us any favors: The forces of supply and demand determine the price of rent. When people are given more money, then they'll simply outbid the homeless guy who was given the same amount.
Also thank unleaded gas. Yippie science
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Paul Ehrlich has been claiming something to that effect since the 1960s. You should look into the Simon-Ehrlich Wager to see how his predictions have worked out.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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/
In the US, which is a lot more socially - upward and downward - mobile,
That's the belief, and the basis of the 'American Dream', but it's not borne out by statistics. The US has some of the lowest economic (and hence social) mobility of OECD nations.
It's hard not to view the continued insistence that the US rewards hard work as anything more than a self-serving narrative by those at the top. Just as food stamps and cheap housing help hold off the revolution, so too does the belief that if people don't rock the boat and play by the rules, they (or at least) their children can enjoy the fruits of society.
It's not just hunger that sparks revolution. Knowing that your children will be poor, no matter how hard you or they work, will do the trick even if it takes longer.
Since that seems to be about the intellectual level you guys can handle, good advice!
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
No, not yet anyway. We aren't to the French Revolution level of wealth inequality, yet.
Nothing to see here, move along please.
The Constitution is ultimately a piece of paper the people, by and large, like with any law, respect voluntarily.
It was very much against the law for commoners to execute the King in France in the 1780s, yet it happened.
The US Constitution itself is a product of a revolution - from the British point of view, it was unconstitutional - but the people did not like the previous constitutional arrangement they were in, so they fought to achieve a new one. When the mob decides to tear down the system, the courts aren't going to save it anymore.
There were people who built the pyramids who pulled stones up hills. Their jobs were displaced today by cranes and trucks.
There used to be people who quarried stone by hand. They were replaced by a couple of people who did it with machines. But the next step is to replace them only with machines. When we get to that step (and some industries are already there! mining trucks drive themselves!) then the value of most jobs will fall so low that most of us cannot live on them, and some kind of correction will be required. Otherwise, there will no longer be the large pool of people with income necessary to maintain capitalism.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For this reason mass migration is only sustainable in short, widely spaced doses, otherwise you get nazis.
The original Nazis weren't caused by migration at all. They were caused by literal poverty. Neo-Nazis living relatively free from poverty clearly aren't caused by literal poverty. They're caused by poverty of education.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Tightly regulated capitalism with sharply progressive taxation to redistribute income. Within the next few decades capitalism as we know it will have to be phased out entirely before post-scarcity effects and a lack of participation opportunity for workers due to automation force a hard crash of the system.
President Jimmy Carter, remember him? He stated that no person should earn more than 20 times the average salary of the employees under him. The excess profit should be distributed as fair wages and as dividends to the shareholders. But shareholders are getting ripped off. They invest, and the CEO and company elites often get salaries in the millions, though they own no shares. True, they could make a mass purchase at the time the share ownerships were being measured, and sell thereafter, but that loophole could be closed by counting ownership-days.
Computers can do the work.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
They are, but you can spoil their insidious plot very simply: Just get rich, too!
Sounds to me like this story could preface one of Isaac Asimov's novels.
If fundamentalists go into recluse that doesn't affect the rest of the world much. If they plot to bring about armageddon it's a bit worse.
If wealth and power is concentrated in a minority and they work to minimize repercussions of their acts then this is very unhealthy. It's like with military and defense. If you have a strong military but you allow your opponents the ability to hurt you you have a form of checks and balances. If you add defence systems so the other party can no longer hurt you, things become dangerous. For the military to work as a real defensive mechanism you have to allow your opponents the ability to hurt you.
They made their money as members of a society which provided the infrastructure necessary for them to make money. Our taxes contributed to that society, so yes, we, as in we-the-people - the government, - are absolutely entitled to some of that wealth.
See, the difference between "conservatives" and "liberals" is really that liberals are willing to see their tax dollars go toward programs that benefit people, but do not benefit themselves personally, whereas conservatives are willing to see their tax dollars go toward programs that benefit them and everyone else can fuck right off.
I get no benefit from funding homeless shelters. I'm not homeless. No one I know is homeless. I'm solidly upper-middle-class and so if there is a homeless uprising, they're gonna be going for heads much higher than mine. The part of my tax bill that funds programs for the homeless does absolutely nothing for me whatsoever, and yet I don't bitch about paying it because it's something that people need, and I'm happy to help provide it.
Meanwhile, Ben Carson wants to bar homeless people from getting into a shelter if they've been drinking or using drugs which based on alcohol/narcotics use rates among the homeless is another way of saying that the Trump administration wants street people to stay out in the cold because by God we're not gonna pay one penny of a heating bill to keep those drunk druggies warm.
The world does not owe me a living, but when I help fund the things the world wants to do, it damn well does owe me some payback, and we can start by not bitching when people who benefit the most from the world that all of us have set up are asked to pay their fair share to keep that world going.
This is self centric ideology kind of thinking now a days.
@galaxyunlocks