5 ms·
The mega rich have been building bunkers and preparing for the downfall of humanity for a long time now. Look around and you'll notice that greed wins out over
by altacc 3y ago
The mega rich have been building bunkers and preparing for the downfall of humanity for a long time now. Look around and you'll notice that greed wins out over everything else. We're surrounded by companies doing nothing or only small token gestures to protect humanity or the world we live in and instead focusing on getting rich, because getting rich is exactly why people become shareholders. Don't rely on those guys to save the world, it'll be the boring committees that are more likely to do that.
- imgabe 3y agoYeah that makes sense. Work your whole life building a company worth billions of dollars so that you can burn down the world and live in a bunker eating canned beans until the roving bands of marauders flush you out and burn you alive. I'm sure that was their greedy plan to enjoy eating canned beans in peace!
- FrozenSynapse 3y agoyou will be eating canned beans, they will ride high as they do now
- imgabe 3y agoYou realize money isn’t magic, right? If the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland billions of dollars doesn’t mean anything. You aren’t getting any wagyu beef down in your bunker.
- phatfish 3y agoYou think they wouldn't give up wagyu beef and the idea of the US dollar for a shot at rebuilding society with a massive head start over the 99.9% percent of the population that don't have a bolt hole?
- imgabe 3y agoThey already have massive influence over society with the added benefit of not having to rebuild 10,000 years of human progress so no I don’t think that makes any sense at all. That is cartoon supervillain nonsense. No real person thinks that way.
- cyanydeez 3y agoElon musk is publically think in a way that no one with 10000 years of history would think. unfortunately, people are flawed.
- cycomanic 3y agoThis article is interesting reading https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...
- easyThrowaway 3y agoIt won't be a "Mad Max"-style of apocalypse. More like "Republic of Weimar" kind of apocalypse, this time with the rich opportunists flying to New Zealand instead of Casablanca or the Austrian Alps.
- cyanydeez 3y agoand they won't have any better at it. the people wholl be in power then will still resemble the basics: violence, means of production and more violence. which they know and are basically planning dystopian police states.
- easyThrowaway 3y agoBecause given the historical precedents, they know they will probably die peacefully in their beds before they have to pay any real consequences for their actions. Sure, a few dictators at the very end of their reign had to pay some consequences, but their cohorts? Soviet Russia, South America Banana republics, the aristocratic european families that enabled fascism and nazism... Probably a few CEOs great grand-childs will probably have to write how they're very very sad that their long forgotten relatives have destroyed most of the planet, and how they're just so lucky to be among the few that are still living a luxurious life somewhere in the Solomon Islands.
- imgabe 3y agoHey if it’s a Weimar style apocalypse we’ll all be billionaires.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago"Underground bunkers" are actually underground cities. There are a bunch of them all over the world.
- fourthark 3y agoWhat.
- TapWaterBandit 3y agoLmao yea the conspiracy theorising behind a lot of this stuff is so poorly thought through. Make billions, live a life of luxury, then end life living in underground bunker drinking your recycled urine. Bill Gates plan all along!
- phatfish 3y agoThey assume they wont be around for when their legacy completely uproots society, be the king now, let everyone else deal with the consequences later. The hedge is to rebuild the world in their image from the New Zealand command center, should it all happen too soon.
- vkaku 3y agoMore like they'll try to maintain their palaces and force more serfs to the bunkers. Not familiar[1]? Now imagine the rich talking about climate change, arguing to bring policies to tax the poor, and then flying off to vacations in private planes[2]. Same energy. 1 - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/richest-1-account-for-more-carbon-emissions-than-poorest-66-report-says https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/richest-... 2 - https://www.skynews.com.au/insights-and-analysis/prince-william-and-king-charles-are-outdoing-ecohypocrite-harry-in-practicing-what-they-preach-about-climate-change/news-story/623356becb78857c2453200b8cc0726d https://www.skynews.com.au/insights-and-analysis/prince-will...
- discreteevent 3y agoThis happens to intelligent competitive people all the time. They don't want everyone to be worse off but what they really don't want - is to lose. Especially to the other guy who is going to do it anyway.
- cyanydeez 3y agoin Steve jobs case, hlel didn't want to admit he's a moron who knew nothing about fruit, nutrition and cancer the problem with eugenics isn't that we can't control population land genetic expression, it's that genetic expression is a fractal landscape that's not predictable from human stated goals. the ethics of doing things "because you meant well" is well established as, not enough.
- easyThrowaway 3y agoMore realistically, "live in extremely gated luxury island apartments somewhere in New Zealand, Bahrain or Abu Dabhi while the rest of the world burns".
- jacquesm 3y agoIncidentally, Altman is a 'prepper'.
- imgabe 3y agoSo is Thiel, famously, but I don’t think that proves they want the world to be destroyed. It’s an interesting kind of problem to think about and you have to spend money on something. It’s the same kind of instinct that makes kids want to build forts. But surely, being a rich and powerful billionaire in a functioning civilization is more desirable than having the nicest bunker in the wasteland. Even if we assume their motives are 100% selfish destroying the world is not the best outcome for them.
- jacquesm 3y agoThey do happen to have some effect on the outcome for the rest of us. It's a bit like the captain of a boat that has already taken the first seat in the lifeboat while directing the ship towards the iceberg and saying 'don't worry, we can't possibly sink'.
- thworp 3y agoIf you are suggesting that billionaires like Thiel don't have any skin in the game (of human civilization continuing in a somewhat stable way) you're nuts. If we hit the iceberg they will lose everything. Even if they're able to fly to their NZ hideout, it will already be robbed and occupied. The people that built and stocked their bunker will have formed a gang and confiscated all of his supplies. This is what happens in anarchy.
- cyanydeez 3y agoyou're assuming they're not determinists. people like Steve jobs are the best example of flawed logic. in the face of a completely different set of heuristic and logical information, he assumed he was just as capable, and chose fruit smoothies over more efficacious and proven medication. they absolutely, like jobs, are playing a game they think they fully understand and absolutely are likely to chose medicine akin to jobs just watch Elon and everything he's choosing to do. these people are all normal but society has given the a deadly amount of leverage without any specific training.
- cherryteastain 3y agoWhy would even the people employed in those bunkers listen to some billionaire after the world collapses? At that point there's no one to enforce your ownership of the mega bunker, unlike the government from before. And all the paper money is worthless of course.
- imgabe 3y agoVery true. Triangle of Sadness was a good movie kind of about this. When the shit hits the fan the guy in charge of the bunker is going to be the one who knows how to clean off the fan and get the air filtration system running again.
- nopromisessir 3y ago[flagged]
- cyanydeez 3y ago.. or the guy willing to violence. shorter movie but equally probable.
- imgabe 3y agoViolence can only get you so far. Sure, maybe the guy who knows how to get food will get you some food if you threaten to kill him. But if he refuses, and you do kill him, then what? You still don't know how to get food for yourself.
- cyanydeez 3y agopeople in the violence frame aren't doing the long term thing. but we absolutely know they exist and in no scenario can you be assured they're not in that position. it's gambling, pure and simple.
- imgabe 3y agoYeah, people are smart though. Like if you’re good at getting food you find the person who’s best at violence and promise to get them plenty of food if they protect you from the other violent people. Maybe you divide up the work among the good at food getting people and the good at violence people and pretty soon you got yourself a little society going.
- cyanydeez 3y agothe rabbit hole is infinite and everyone is capable of chasing into it without regard for anyone else.