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Peak storytelling.
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.
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
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.
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.
Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin
Yes please
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.
There’s wealth disparity and then there’s the wealth chasm of today, the disparity has grown so much in the last couple of decades beyond anything in human history.
The only reason it can is because of capitalism (neoliberalism, late stage capitalism).
The system incentivises and rewards the horrific behaviour that results in the disparity.
Also, pray tell, what are inheritocrats who made all their non-inherited money through stock markets producing?
As far as I can see, they’re not producing anything, but are profiting off the backs of, and at the expense of, those that are producing the value.
There’s wealth disparity and then there’s the wealth chasm of today,
You think the chasm today is as big as the gap between Augustus Caesar and a slave in Rome, or even a Roman plebian? Augustus Caesar’s wealth is estimated at around $5 trillion in today’s money.
The only way in which capitalism is responsible for wealth gaps is that it is tied to technological developments. In the modern world technology allows 1 farmer to feed hundreds of people. One century ago (also under capitalism) it was only about 4 people. More people who aren’t farming means more labour to allocate to other things, which means more wealth can be concentrated at the top.
We don’t have to totally change the system. They can keep making billions of dollars, we can just tax 99% of it. Maybe they’ll pay their employees more, if they know it’s only going to get taxed away anyhow. And if they don’t, well just take it from them.
Yes this is the answer. No single persons should have this much money. Instead collectives like governments, corps and holdings should have the money. By doing so the governments are also able to control money flow and restrict unethical use cases.
But this would require governments working for the people, people voting parties that are doing stuff for them and not for corruption. Also media outlets need a proper source of independent income to that opinion is not monopolized, which is the hardest in my opinion, because how most outlets are making money is by writing emotional articles so that they are clicked.
My issue is when these people get so much money that they can start cutting personal deals with other nations that aren’t in alignment with their own nation’s values.
And what happens when a few trillionaires decide to form an alliance and create their own army, conquer territory, and create their own Libertarian Dream/Nightmare?
Also chop off their heads.
That’s where you lose. Keep it vague like “eat the rich”
But I’m not into vore.
So who runs shit in utopia?
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?
Godlike AIs of course.
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.
But what is perfection?
System version 1.7.586 is coming out tomorrow.
Still better than the bs we are all running now.
That’s basically how the bureaucratic class aka. the states middle management works.
we the people
Me, of course _
autonomous collective
seriously though, are you saying capitalism is the best humans can ever have?
This is funny because it’s true.
“The Future” by Naomi Alderman goes somewhere along these lines
Nahhh fam we gonna pour concrete down their lil air holes hihi
No
Cum
I will provide it
You gonna fuck the air holes or something?
This is the incident with the dolphins in Seaworld all over!
Nonono, it’s synthetic
All right, so that’s Plan A.
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! It’s like having an outbreak of a long forgotten disease in this scenario, won’t end humanity, but not great either.
Come to think of it, this is a wonderful idea…no assassinations needed.
Until they get out.
that’s why we will block the doors
The death of literacy makes me sad.
Edit: post is riddled with grammatical errors and fucking ‘catastrophy’ — yet I get downvoted. Read a book, something that actually had an editor — then keep reading more books. You will develop literacy eventually.
Don’t punish someone for practicing their art imperfectly. Instead of improving their craft, that only incentivizes them to stop practicing.
Practice makes permanent, if you’ve reached a point where you can make political commentary you are far beyond the point of learning to spellcheck.
Language evolves. Don’t be sad, be adaptive.
Language needs to be evolved by people who understand it though. Not by people too lazy to proofread.
That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how language evolves.
None of you dipshits are going to convince me that ‘catastrophy’ is an evolution of the language. You are a fucking idiot if you believe that.
You just don’t understand what I’m saying because I’m using the newly evolved form of the words.
