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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."
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.
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.
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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Pick the most extreme, uninhabited artic/desert condition here on Earth - then remind yourself that Mars is less comfortable. They'll be sick for a long time, and they will get osteoporosis. The children will definately get it, if they form properly at all. You might not think a prison sentence sounds welcoming, but the odds of going to a maximum security prison - and surviving - are better than life on Mars.
Also space is filled with deadly radiation. When you look around it's mostly empty, right? That's because it's utterly hostile to life.
There is no Earth 2.0. Ever. Not for the rich, or in the future, or anywhere at all. There is one Earth with a system of life tuned to its oceans and its roughly 24 hr day, and if the descendants of humanity ever move comfortably about on a different planet, it may very well be without legs, or with compound eyes and a chitinous shell.
Good luck to everyone who leaves Earth 1.0 - Final Edition
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.
Thiel wants to use your stem cells to extend his own life. If you're into vampirism, that's all good. Otherwise it gets real creepy real fast.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
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
If they find a way to do it cheaply, they will...
...immediately patent it and then jack the price through the roof.
FTFY.
Not for the rich, or in the future, or anywhere at all.
You may be speaking sense here, but unfortunately this won't stop the detached super-wealthy from blowing it all up in an attempt to drive the industry towards the direction of technological development they think will most suit their dystopian plan for the future.
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?
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
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.
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.
testosterone levels have been drastically falling in the US and other developed countries for quite awhile.
So have violent crime rates.
They'll be sick for a long time, and they will get osteoporosis. The children will definately get it, if they form properly at all.
You are assuming the human genome will stay the same. We can already precisely edit DNA, and it shouldn't be too difficult to fix the genes associated with bone calcium and other low gravity issues. By the time SpaceX is ready to start shuttling people to Mars, we can already have a modified sub-population ready to go.
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
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.
You are assuming the human genome will stay the same. We can already precisely edit DNA,
Just because we can precisely edit DNA doesn't mean we know what exactly we are doing. We don't understand completely how DNA works and how changing bits of the genome affects everything.
and it shouldn't be too difficult to fix the genes associated with bone calcium and other low gravity issues.
That's a huge leap you are making there. Sure, we'll undo billions of years of evolution by messing around with a few genes, and at the same time not producing terrible side-effects. This is at least one level of complexity up from GMO food and whatever. I have not seen these X-Men-like genetically modified humans walking about.
By the time SpaceX is ready to start shuttling people to Mars, we can already have a modified sub-population ready to go.
Extremely unlikely.
Not only is the genetic modification required science fiction, but you wouldn't really know all the things you would need to do until you had 2-3 generations of people living on Mars. There is just too much we don't know.
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.