The real reason tech billionaires are prepping for doomsday

[workinclasszero]

The real reason tech billionaires are prepping for doomsday
A misanthropic view of humanity guides the tech aristocracy — and it’s trickled into their vision of the future
JASON RHODE MAY 12, 2018 11:30PM (UTC)

If you pay attention to what Silicon Valley’s best and brightest are up to, you know about tech survivalism. The digital elite are preparing for the Apocalypse, and have been for a while.

As Evan Osnos wrote in his New Yorker feature, “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich,”

Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.

The Guardian noted that the end-of-days obsession could be traced back to a single source, a sort of ur-text of rich-guy panic: a 1999 book called "The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive during the Collapse of the Welfare State." It was written by James Dale Davidson, a private investment advisor, and Lord Rees-Moog, a British newspaper editor.

You can probably already guess at what the book says. More or less, it’s a pastiche of extolling the virtues of how the rich are superior, how they're persecuted by the state, and how digital realms can and will liberate them and make them sovereign individuals. It’s a familiar trope: Ayn Rand had John Galt spewed the same list of self-serving ideas 60 years ago in “Atlas Shrugged.”

https://www.salon.com/2018/05/12/the-real-reason-tech-billionaires-are-prepping-for-doomsday/

[Oneironaut]

1. "Thriving" in that situation is kind of a nonsense concept.

Imagine no:

- Laws or police to protect you, since everyone is going to want your stuff.
- Grocery stores to buy food. Your entire diet is measly MREs that you need to ration to survive.
- Supply stores. What you have now better last.
- Firemen to put out fires that will just gut a whole city when it starts
- Hospitals to help you if you’re sick or wounded. One scrape or fall could be the end of you.
- Electricity / light
- Running water to drink or help you stay clean

I think I’d rather just die, thanks.

[WhiteTara]

5. well, they may have a more sophisticated system

https://worldtruth.tv/the-ozark-conspiracy-theory/

I keep thinking we will drive down to Mulberry one hot summer afternoon and check it all out, but here's the conspiracy theory about the house and area.

[Blue_true]

10. Exactly. They will be like trapped rats, sitting with all their money that is useless to them. nt

[MineralMan]

2. I'm sorry, but that article is almost entirely information-free.

It provides no actual details about any survivalism on the part of the tech elite. It says nothing about any preparations any of them are taking. It's just a general rant with no details at all.

As such, it's not of much use. Perhaps the New Yorker article is better. I don't know. But this article was essentially useless.

Besides, Salon is almost impossible to read these days, as the content jumps up and down while all those ads load.

Why not just link to the New Yorker piece in your DU post? In fact, here's that link. It's almost a year and a half old, but people can click it and actually get some information:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

[Locrian]

3. fantasy

People live in a fantasy world where they can spend their way or buy something to enable them to ride out doomsday.
The reality is that the collapse of a civilization means there are no rules and their "plan" goes out the window. It becomes survival of the fittest - and who can partner with whom.


There was a survivalist blog (yeah I know) when the Argentina economy collapsed. Not a fun time:
http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2008/10/thoughts-on-urban-survival-2005.html

4) A man with a wife and two or three kids can’t set up a watch. I don’t care if you are SEAL, SWAT or John Freaking Rambo, no 6th sense is going to tell you that there is a guy pointing a gun at your back when you are trying to fix the water pump that just broke, or carrying a big heavy bag of dried beans you bought that morning.

[brush]

4. Right. And you better have a lot of clean water for those beans...

to become edible.

[Locrian]

7. yep

water
fuel
food
safety
shelter

you know, civilization. Some of these guys fantasize they can "hunker down" with their guns etc and ignore the world. Thing is - it takes social skills to survive even *more* when there is chaos. There's a name for people that think they can "go it alone": soft targets.

Not to mention the brutal, grinding, slow march of things like disease, hunger, fear, etc that would set in. Truly a living hell.

[Blue_true]

11. Or a deadly gas released into their compound that their fucking air filters are

useless against. They can stockpile self contained breathing air, but that will run out. If I was after them, I would do like Grant did at Vicksburg, why get my fighters killed assaulting them? I would bomb them at irregular intervals and have barbecues for my fighters at irregular intervals, just the task of trying to figure out what will happen next will drive them fucking insane. And there better not be a big assed water reservoir above their heads, if there is, they have better defend it until their last dying breath, because if they don't, they will drown in it.

[Locrian]

12. one could go on and on....

The funny (?) thing is - the rich depend MORE on civilization and order, and should be MOST INTERESTED in preserving and keeping a balance. The result of it falling apart seriously impacts their safety because the numbers (angry masses) are overwhelming.

Do they not get this?

Maybe that's the result of a lot of techies lack of appreciation for history classes, etc....

[Blue_true]

13. You are exactly right.

I don't understand why someone that makes $1 after covering all investment costs, labor and taxes, is unwilling to give $0.35 to society to help keep society halfway healthy. Hell, giving up $0.80 means they are $0.20 richer than they were when they started.

[Yavin4]

6. People develop and hone their technical skills in solitary environments.

Thus giving them the false belief that they don't need anyone else to be successful.

[Initech]

8. Remember that movie "The World's End"?

Picture the end of that movie where humans have no electricity and we've been replaced with blank copies of ourselves. That's a scary thought.

[Blue_true]

9. Their shit is funny.

The digital realm will make them their own state. How insane, if society is collapsing all around them, there will be no damned digital realm, or places to get food, or water. Their stockpiles can't last forever, look at the time before and after the French Revolution. Things were grossly unstable for around 75 years. Hope those bastards have enough food and water for 75 years. More than likely their necks will be hanging over a chopping block after 4 years once society goes to hell. Why can't those people see that it is in their damned best long term interests to insure that society thrives and is peaceful.

[Major Nikon]

14. ...