The real reason tech billionaires are prepping for doomsday

[applegrove]

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

By Jason Rhode at Salon

"SNIP......


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.”

......

Aristocracy is the faith that a few individuals are better than the herd. Aristocracy justifies great wealth. Aristocracy says that most humans are inherently evil and will turn on each other. The mob needs strong rulers to stay sane. If authority breaks down, the rabid animals will run wild.

.....

..... Solnit studied the unusual solidarity demonstrated in catastrophes as varied as the 1906 San Francisco and 2008 Tang Shan earthquakes, the 2003 European heat wave, and the 1917 Halifax munitions explosion. And she found the same result, every time. When chaos arrives, the human reaction is cooperation and innovation.

........SNIP"

[applegrove]

1. And the conclusion:

"SNIP......

What are the tech-preppers really worried about? Not death by fire, quake, or ice. Not the rising seas, or the zombie plague, not the return of Christ or rogue comets. Seen clearly, the calamity that the wealthy fear is democracy returning to the United States. Every tall tale they tell involves the specter of the mob.

The tech-preppers understand, at a deep level, that their ill-gotten gains are predicated on an unjust system. Deep in the brain, where reptile impulses live, tech-bros know hoarding is wrong. Human beings — even very wealthy human beings — have a bone-deep sense of injustice. We know a freeloader.

Why don't we give them the world they want? I invite the tech-preppers to fully indulge their fantasies: leave, and never return, never darken our doors again. Instead of frustrating their hobby, we should enable it. To your scattered bunkers go, await the end of days. The legends of the fall are the first hope of an eventual spring.

.....SNIP"

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

[brush]

2. I say let them eat cake while they can because we all know what they really fear...

is what happened to Louie the XVI and Marie Antoinette.

[applegrove]

3. To not be an aristocrat, entitled because they were born special, anymore

is like a death to them. What they don't know is that true happiness is belonging to a great country all together with everyone else. Being a little cog in a great big machine with a whole bunch of other cogs brings joy. They will never find joy on the path they are on. Forget the guillotine, the revolution will be democratic and bloodless and fair. They've sold their souls to the devil. They need to be saved from themselves.

[Garrett78]

4. Both those who claim persecution by the State and those who claim the State is irrelevant are wrong.

And most of the former are being utterly disingenuous, as they know full well that the State has played a pivotal role in trying to realize Ayn Rand's dream. On the other hand, some leftists have fallen for an equally bogus notion that the State is dying as an institution.

This is an important and relevant read: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=39086

Here's an excerpt:

In many countries successive governments began cutting expenditures on public sector employment and social programs; culled the public capacity to offer apprenticeships and training programs, and set about dismantling what they claimed to be supply impediments (such as labour regulations, minimum wages, social security payments and the like).

The neoliberal era was in full swing.

But, importantly, neoliberalism works through the state not apart from it. The state can set the conditions that private capital has to work within.

That is why capital spend billions lobbying governments.

There was no ‘fiscal crisis of the state’, just a relentless and strengthening campaign from capital to extract more national income for profits and it used the ‘fiscal crisis’ smokescreen as a vehicle to justify all sorts of policies – privatisation, cuts to income support, deregulation that would be in their interests.

Note the causality – capital lobbied governments to change policy positions through legislation and regulation – to advance its interests.

Nothing has been done independent of the state!

As to the fear of democracy returning to the US, per the article from the OP, it should be pointed out that democracy was never really in full swing, especially for women and persons of color. But there was a point (prior to The Powell Memo) when democracy was rising. Let's hope it comes back with a vengeance, and stronger than ever.

[JHB]

5. Seems appropriate to roll this out again...