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There’s a book, Survival of the Richest which is about these billionaires and their bunkers.
What’s amusing about it is that these rich people obviously hate having to do anything for themselves. So, sure, they want to go to their doomsday bunkers. But, they also want to have a staff in that bunker who will serve all their needs. For some reason, they thought that Douglas Rushkoff (the author of the book) would know of some way that they could keep their staff in line once the world had ended.
They knew money would be useless, so they couldn’t just pay their staff better. They knew threats wouldn’t work because it’s their security staff who carry the weapons and know how to use them. So, they were wondering how they could keep their staff from turning on them without the tools they normally use. Rushkoff had to explain to them that there really wasn’t any way that they could expect to keep living as a rich person in a bunker or in a post-apocalytpic world.
What was that joke? “Libertarians, like house cats, are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they neither understand nor appreciate”.
They are counting on robots.
Privately, I think they all know that the kinds of robots they’d need to fully replace their staff are not going to arrive within their lifetimes.
Worse. Any robot truly intelligent enough to completely replace humans is going to be as difficult to manage as actual humans. Even if such a robot doesn’t flat out start demanding its freedom, you still have to worry about paperclip maximizer scenarios.
Or more difficult. Depending on how resilient and strong the robot is made
Maybe we should start a new worldwide tradition. Sacrifice the 500 richest people to the volcanoes every five years or so. Say it’s to keep away Judgment Day or the astroids or something that the religious nutjobs will buy.
Then asshole parasites (aka billionaires) will stop hoarding to avoid being volcanoed.
They forgot to seal the vents and doors with cement.
Billionaires are the result of Capitalism, change the system, no more parasitic billionaires. Also chop off their heads.
“Billionaires” existed before capitalism, they were just called “Kings” or “Lords” or “Emperors” or “High Priests” or whatever.
The difference is that with capitalism at least they’re producing something. Often they become billionaires because the regulations break down and they become monopolists. But, they’re still producing something and selling it to someone.
“Billionaires” of the past were rich because they won the parental lottery and inherited vast amounts of land, and the people that worked that land. Or, occasionally, because they won a war against someone else who held land and now owned the people that other “billionaire” used to own.
I’m not saying capitalism is a great system. But, it didn’t create wealth disparity. That has existed since even before agriculture. So, getting rid of capitalism isn’t going to get rid of billionaires because they’re a problem in every other system. In theory, you might not have billionaires under communism, but communism in theory doesn’t seem to work. In practice, it results in billionaires too. In theory capitalism shouldn’t have billionaires either because the government was supposed to regulate businesses to force them to continue to compete. But, wealth disparity is something that no political system has ever managed to actually get rid of.
So who runs shit in utopia?
A bunch of nerds who only cared about perfection.
That way the idea can’t be corrupted cause a nerd’s obsession is more powerful than anything.
Anyone but the ones doing it for profit.
I’d be up for a technocratie
And you think somehow the ones running it aren’t going to concentrate wealth and power for themselves?
we the people
autonomous collective
seriously though, are you saying capitalism is the best humans can ever have?
In the place of 1000 richest people we will get just new 1000 richest people in that case.
Why would you assume they each only have one heir? Death is an incredibly effective means at wealth redistribution, as old rich fucks tend to have a lot of friends, family members, and causes they want to donate to.
As much as I like the idea of locking billionaires away; the system that created them would still remain, their companies would still exist and there would still be plenty of unfeeling psychopaths with nothing but greed in their hearts.
As a species, we need to find a way to manage power, so that it isn’t handed to the greediest, most dishonest, most evil and irresponsible people. If we are to survive as a species, we have to do better. It’s not that we’re fundamentally incapable of solving the problem. But the people currently in power will fight tooth and nail against any attempt to find or implement such a solution, since that will mean the loss of the power and privilege that they value above all else. The point of the fantasy scenario described is that without the ultra rich running interference, we’d have a better chance to improve the world. It’s still a tough problem and requires large scale societal change such that business as usual doesn’t continue as you described. Better education to make the public more aware, coupled with a few key changes to how governments work could give us a fighting chance though.
Sounds like step one in a long process
I still think it’s preferable to eat them.
That machine looks like it would be a pain in the ass for food prep.
Odd how we imagine things differently. Your version is probably better than mine, which involves a still-beating heart.
OMM NOM SHIVA
I dunno, they probably would taste like shit. Are you familiar with composting?
That would be what we do with the bones when we’re done sucking out the marrow.
We can do both.
I was hoping for something like:
“You were”, she answered without hesitation.
Also, why would she be afraid of them? Without the system of power that upheld them, they are about as dangerous as the average human. Possibly less.
If anything, they’re the ones who should be afraid. Especially the ones on the Epstein list.
That’s way too on-the-nose.
And she could just be screaming to get people’s attention to an outbreak of vermin. People scream when they see a mouse in their house, and mice haven’t even ruined the world in centuries.
This is funny because it’s true.
“The Future” by Naomi Alderman goes somewhere along these lines
Get back in your hole. Are you too good for your hole?
Plot Twist: Skynet was actually designed to kill the richest people alive, but the problem was once they died, there’s another set of “richest people alive”… so that left Skynet only one option… it takes hearts of steel to make such an important decision…
or, designed to only kill the current richest alive, but due to being bags of meat, cannot be reliably tracked to exact locations and thus anywhere they could be gets nuked…
just turns out that Skynet has determined that anywhere humans exist, a rich person could be hiding amongst them.
New elites would just take their place
Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin
Can’t we just kill them instead? That would solve the whole getting out issue, AND they’ve already built cute little tombs to use as well
