The Ultrarich Ask: "How Do I Control My Compound's Security Force After Civilization Collapses?"

[hatrack]

EDIT

They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer 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 raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.

EDIT

Never before have our society’s most powerful players assumed that the primary impact of their own conquests would be to render the world itself unliveable for everyone else. Nor have they ever before had the technologies through which to programme their sensibilities into the very fabric of our society. The landscape is alive with algorithms and intelligences actively encouraging these selfish and isolationist outlooks. Those sociopathic enough to embrace them are rewarded with cash and control over the rest of us. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This is new. Amplified by digital technologies and the unprecedented wealth disparity they afford, The Mindset allows for the easy externalisation of harm to others, and inspires a corresponding longing for transcendence and separation from the people and places that have been abused.

Instead of just lording over us for ever, however, the billionaires at the top of these virtual pyramids actively seek the endgame. In fact, like the plot of a Marvel blockbuster, the very structure of The Mindset requires an endgame. Everything must resolve to a one or a zero, a winner or loser, the saved or the damned. Actual, imminent catastrophes from the climate emergency to mass migrations support the mythology, offering these would-be superheroes the opportunity to play out the finale in their own lifetimes. For The Mindset also includes a faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.

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https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

[ampm]

1. It's all showing up now

No one ever talks about this, so finally yes. They are trying for the last of our souls. Guess what Mother Nature will respond, Money can't buy her, it won't save them

[Irish_Dem]

2. The only chance they have is to go off planet.

Space stations.

[PSPS]

6. That's the motivation behind the billionaires' private space programs.

Also the impetus behind somehow making Mars "habitable."

[Irish_Dem]

7. Exactly, they don't care about space travel except as a means of escape from the planet they trashed

[CrispyQ]

3. Too bad that those with the worst of human attributes

might be the ones to survive a global cataclysm.

[BWdem4life]

14. Actually, if you read to the end

They really have no chance.

[Girard442]

4. They would rather invent a whole new Unified Field Theory than think about ....

...treating people well.

[ThoughtCriminal]

5. Atlas Shrugged:2 - One Hour Later

[orthoclad]

21. Classic

Every frame has gems. "I only know how to pay people..."

[getagrip_already]

8. Pro tip- the guys with the guns are in control....

You are just an annoying jerk.

Tip #2, they won't show up when needed if they have any sense...
Why go into a war zone you can never escape or profit further from?

[yonder]

9. Those top of the pyramid types think "Event" planning equals survival

They can plan all they want and might survive for a bit but eventually systems will become entropic and fail. Civilization requires teamwork with many pieces working together.

They believe their wealth will insulate their lives from calamity; that their needs can always be fulfilled with a phone call. Who will fix their pipes with no plumbers? Who will grow their food with no farmers? Where does their fuel for generators or transport come from with no refineries? Who sets the broken leg or worse, with no physician? Building a new bunker? With whose labor and what materials?

Wealth becomes worthless and barter will rule the day which will between people living a grim existence where wits, strength and guile become the new order for the few that can manage their new-found misery.

Remaining at the top of their pyramid requires structure from below to support it. Not much of a plan from those short-sighted elites.

[orthoclad]

22. I used to think about platinum wire

Scarce metals like gold, platinum, rhodium have value as catalysts and corrosion resistance. Gold is too obvious to thieves. Wind platinum wire on solder wire spools, no one would notice.

But these metals require a functioning society capable of manufacturing things to have value. In the bunker world, they're useless. Potatoes would have more value. But even that potato-value requires labor. Who tills the soil? In the end, it's labor which will control a post-apocalypse world. There are techniques now to control labor; capitalists believe they're the experts in that because it works now, with all the force (and guns) of government to back them up. What they are really talking about in this bunker-security world is re-creating mini-States where they will still control labor.

(Personally I've switched to sweet potatoes because potatoes require too much labor in the form of the chemical industry to survive blight.)

[KPN]

10. This is not the first article/story I've seen on biliionaire survivalists picking experts brains on

how to control their security force. Wish I'd bookmarked the other one -- goes back a few years if my memory serves me.

Many of us have likely mused about this going on among the upper .001% for several or more years now. It's good to see it day-lighted. This is the absolute pinnacle of ego-centrism. Left in the hands of a very few -- the ego-centric billionaires, we are destined for social collapse and possibly extinction, perhaps in some of our own lifetimes. They simply have too much influence and control given their grotesque wealth and lust for more. I don't believe I will see that at my age, but it concerns me that my children may.

We can't let this happen. We can't let a relative few destroy the rest of us. Can we? I hope not.

[Collimator]

13. I actually read the article above a few years ago.

I was glad for the opportunity to re-read it.

1Timothy 6:10 says (And you can be sure as hell that Trump never read it.) "For the love of money is the root of all evil. . ."

That really nails it. Money isn't a bad thing; it merely a symbolic means of exchange so we can acquire resources. But some people cannot have enough. They love not just having a (luxurious) roof over their heads and (gourmet) food in their bellies, they want the power that money provides. Money is their one true god and the love of their lives. It is very sad for them, and it is very bad news for the rest of us.

[KPN]

17. +

[orthoclad]

23. I think I kept a record

of that a few years ago; I'll try to find it. Shoulda made a database.

Is this article the same conference from a few years ago?

[The Unmitigated Gall]

11. They'll cook up nicely, in the end.

[DBoon]

12. their last chance "To Serve Man"

[The Unmitigated Gall]

15. Such fine, FAT young billionaire...

[Brenda]

16. Hah!

They're deluded and will not survive.

The key for some humans surviving the coming climate apocalypse is survival skills and a sense of community, not money. No matter how many people you hire to feed you and guard your moldy lux cave, you WILL run out of something. And your "successfulness" with corporate raiding or hoarding or insider trading won't mean a damn thing.

You will be a moving target because of your obvious inhumanity with your lack of useful life skills such as growing plants, using basic hand tools, cooking, situational awareness, lack of enduring physical hardship and mostly lack of empathy and a conscious since you are very much the root cause of our decline.

[KPN]

18. Well said. Right on the button.

[Brenda]

19. You too

Your post #10 says it all.

[orthoclad]

24. I learned basic blacksmithing

and how to make hand tools from scrap metal. I never got the hang of welding on an anvil, but I learned to make anvils from railroad rail metal. However, even that took acetylene. An object lesson in the value of maintaining a functional society.

Much more valuable than bunkers.

[applegrove]

20. Tell them they should invent a system where everyone gets a say

in how much violence there is and administrators to try to make it so. Most people are good so they'll "vote" for a safe country for all. Then you could call it democracy. That's a plan.

[orthoclad]

25. The do clearly believe

that political power grows from the barrel of a gun, as Mao said. They want to control the guns in their mini-State. I prefer "power grows from organized labor".

"More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where “winning” means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way." -- from the article.