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When a billionaire makes a move like this (getting citizenship in another country) it’s often criticized as an “escape plan”, or somewhere to run if any number

When a billionaire makes a move like this (getting citizenship in another country) it’s often criticized as an “escape plan”, or somewhere to run if any number of bad things happen to or in the USA. It’s viewed a little differently from most other ex-pats because these are the people who have the money and power to dramatically influence the government, so if they’re running from something here in the US, it’s either “their” (by that I mean billionaires in general) fault for pushing the government in the wrong direction, or within “their” power to fix. For example, if mass civil unrest breaks out in the US as a result of the recent election, Eric Schmidt can flee to his estate in Cyprus and ignore the fact that he owned a social network (Youtube) that knowingly hosted radical content and disinformation which would have (in part) caused the civil unrest he’s fleeing from. Whether or not that’s his intention, it doesn’t matter. True or not, what people are seeing is billionaires knowingly destabilizing the country in order to make a lot of money, then using that money to protect themselves against the country they just damaged. That very thing happened earlier this year at the start of the pandemic, SV billionaires fled the country to go to a private island in New Zealand, while their employees suffered and died back here in the US: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-underground-bunker-new-zealand-us-death-toll-latest-a9476931.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Google bought YouTube in 2006. Schmidt was CEO until 2011. YouTube got out of control with disinformation mostly after 2011. And he probably had almost nothing to do with YouTube in the five years he was CEO after Google purchased YouTube. I wouldn't blame Schmidt much for YouTube's disinformation problem. I'd blame the people directly running YouTube (especially people running it recently / now).
- throwaways885 6y ago
  Sadly I think the radicalisation started when the censorship did. I honestly believe they're making things worse by clamping down on misinformation. Streisand effect is real.
JAlexoid 6y ago
Ahem... He "owned YouTube"? That's a "bit of an exaggeration". As an anarchist - most people love the state and love giving it power, rich people just use the power that the masses so eagerly give away. If you want to know where the power of the SV billionaires comes from, just look in the mirror. Nothing, other than our compliance, makes them that powerful and wealthy.
BurningFrog 6y ago
This is a QAnon level conspiracy madness.
- AGSYS 6y ago
  How is this a "conspiracy", that post is pointing out how wealthy and powerful people don't have to worry about the long term effects of their actions like their employees do.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    The statement about it being different from assumed ability to control things - if that was true then we wouldn't see the farce of anti-trust hearings and it would be ignored like Disney's prepostorus levels of consolidation. The real world is more complicated than those simplistic soundbites and scapegoating as many agents struggle for power. If they really had that level of control the governments would have given up on their moronic backdooring of encryption ideas.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    > "Eric Schmidt can [...] ignore the fact that he owned a social network (Youtube) that knowingly hosted radical content and disinformation which would have (in part) caused the civil unrest he’s fleeing from." Conspiracy is maybe the wrong word, but OP seems to genuinely believe that Schmidt caused the recent civil unrest through his Youtube ownership.
    - freehunter 6y ago
      I’m not sure where you read in my comment that I “genuinely believe” that he “caused” the “recent” unrest when I feel like I went to major lengths to paint the situation as a hypothetical scenario that may possibly take place in a hypothetical version of the future. I used a lot of “if” statements and “for example” and future tense, and “as a result of the recent election” (so not relating to this summer’s unrest). I even used so many weasel words like “whether or not that’s his intention” and “true or not” and “what people are seeing”. None of that in any way implies a genuine belief or does it imply I’m speaking about something that actually happened in the past. I then linked to an article that shows this hypothetical future situation has actually happened in the recent past, billionaires fleeing to safety while their employees suffer and die. If that’s “QAnon levels” of “conspiracy madness” then holy fuck we’re screwed because this has actually happened, and recently, as shown in the article I linked to. And the fact that it actually happened is the reason people assume that’s what he’s doing now... because the same thing actually happened earlier this year with other billionaires. I mean, I went way out of my way to explicitly avoid comments like this and it seems like you just ignored all of that and read exactly what you wanted to read. That’s not the level of discourse I expect from HN.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Do they expect the same things from the billionaires from Saudi Arabia, china, japan etc who have invested in american companies? I was also under the impression that the jet set is generally considered international

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

Google bought YouTube in 2006. Schmidt was CEO until 2011. YouTube got out of control with disinformation mostly after 2011. And he probably had almost nothing to do with YouTube in the five years he was CEO after Google purchased YouTube. I wouldn't blame Schmidt much for YouTube's disinformation problem. I'd blame the people directly running YouTube (especially people running it recently / now).

throwaways885 6y ago
Sadly I think the radicalisation started when the censorship did. I honestly believe they're making things worse by clamping down on misinformation. Streisand effect is real.

JAlexoid 6y ago

Ahem... He "owned YouTube"? That's a "bit of an exaggeration". As an anarchist - most people love the state and love giving it power, rich people just use the power that the masses so eagerly give away. If you want to know where the power of the SV billionaires comes from, just look in the mirror. Nothing, other than our compliance, makes them that powerful and wealthy.

BurningFrog 6y ago

This is a QAnon level conspiracy madness.

AGSYS 6y ago
How is this a "conspiracy", that post is pointing out how wealthy and powerful people don't have to worry about the long term effects of their actions like their employees do.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  The statement about it being different from assumed ability to control things - if that was true then we wouldn't see the farce of anti-trust hearings and it would be ignored like Disney's prepostorus levels of consolidation. The real world is more complicated than those simplistic soundbites and scapegoating as many agents struggle for power. If they really had that level of control the governments would have given up on their moronic backdooring of encryption ideas.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  > "Eric Schmidt can [...] ignore the fact that he owned a social network (Youtube) that knowingly hosted radical content and disinformation which would have (in part) caused the civil unrest he’s fleeing from." Conspiracy is maybe the wrong word, but OP seems to genuinely believe that Schmidt caused the recent civil unrest through his Youtube ownership.
  - freehunter 6y ago
    I’m not sure where you read in my comment that I “genuinely believe” that he “caused” the “recent” unrest when I feel like I went to major lengths to paint the situation as a hypothetical scenario that may possibly take place in a hypothetical version of the future. I used a lot of “if” statements and “for example” and future tense, and “as a result of the recent election” (so not relating to this summer’s unrest). I even used so many weasel words like “whether or not that’s his intention” and “true or not” and “what people are seeing”. None of that in any way implies a genuine belief or does it imply I’m speaking about something that actually happened in the past. I then linked to an article that shows this hypothetical future situation has actually happened in the recent past, billionaires fleeing to safety while their employees suffer and die. If that’s “QAnon levels” of “conspiracy madness” then holy fuck we’re screwed because this has actually happened, and recently, as shown in the article I linked to. And the fact that it actually happened is the reason people assume that’s what he’s doing now... because the same thing actually happened earlier this year with other billionaires. I mean, I went way out of my way to explicitly avoid comments like this and it seems like you just ignored all of that and read exactly what you wanted to read. That’s not the level of discourse I expect from HN.

cblconfederate 6y ago

Do they expect the same things from the billionaires from Saudi Arabia, china, japan etc who have invested in american companies? I was also under the impression that the jet set is generally considered international