Blows my mind that there are people who'd rather have billions of dollars and live in a bunker for the rest of their lives than have a comparatively modest existence in a flourishing environment with fresh air and sunshine, and that those people are being trusted to make decisions for the rest of us, but here we are.
The problem is that even a billionaire can't solve the problem, only a revolutionary transformation of society can solve it. Most ruling classes tend to perceive revolution as a fate worse than death, so bunkers are the only option left to them
Oh my god yes, this 100 percent. I study ecology and it frustrates me to no end just how little people are taught about just what environmental collapse is and what it really means. This planet is over 4 billion years old. In that time we have only had six extinction events. They are a HUGE fucking deal. It takes millions of years for life to recover from one of these events. Hell, we're lucky there even is life left after the permian-triassic extinction event(it killed like 90% of species).
These rich fucks that think they can wait it out in some air conditioned bunker are idiots, airconditioning doesn't even work once you get to a certain heat. If they think it's going to be like some post apocalyptic survival fantasy they're also out of luck. If they manage to wipe out insects, something that's never happened before (but might because of pesticides, disease, a million other things stressing them) the cascade effect will crash the entire Earth's biome.
On top of that, they're are going to have over 8 billion diseased, hear stroked, starving, common people looking to beat their asses.
They will eat mostly carbohydrates, made from the tenacious superstrains of wheat that cling to life in soil devoid of nutrients and bare of moisture — hardy stalks engineered to be resilient and adaptive and to mature quickly and to propagate even faster.
Even this is too optimistic as far as what people will be eating.
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10 degrees is insane. That's going to turn tropical places into Venus
In Douglas Rushkoff's book "Survival of the Richest" he talks about the survival ideas of these rich morons he talked to at some event. They were discussing strategies to keep security guards loyal in a post apocalyptic scenario. Shit like shock collars, timed safes, anything besides treating them well. It's a good book.
They'd rather keep driving us towards an apocalypse they wouldn't survive than do something to avoid it.
So maachiaveli wringing a book telling failsons to earn the respect and loyalty of their subordinates was necessaries after all.
If they were all forced down into a bunker or mineshaft for an indefinite amount of time then they might understand better. It would be a great learning experience for them.
I always laugh at these videos saying humanity surviving in small numbers after countless lives wiped out is a victory. Like to make neoliberals feel better about the hell they helped create. Hell they do that shit for nuclear war. "See its ok because humanity will survive in small pockets in horrible conditions"
Listen, we should fake a catastrophic collapse, send all the billionaires into their bunkers (if they do not have a bunker, the state will build them one). Once they're siloed off, control all information coming into the bunkers to maintain the illusion of the apocalypse. Meanwhile, we clean up the world and dismantle any vestiges of capitalism, build utopia etc., at which point we make contact with the now feral remnants of the billionaire class, tell them everything we did, show them around a wonderful world free of want and pain, make them confront the fact that they were the ones holding humanity back.
spoiler
And THEN we put them up against the wall.
Alternatively: Trick them into hiding in their bunkers, then pave the bunkers over so they're stuck down there.
I dunno. If I was a billionaire I would have not have experienced negative consequences for my actions in a time frame I could remember so it would be a safe bet that trend would continue forward
you fool, you absolute buffoon. with enough money, jeff bezos can simply buy Earth 2: Here We Go Again.
I wanna see a space version of the Titan submersible
But this time with bezos and musk
Isn’t the whole point of having a billion dollars lording it over people?
Yes and that is one of the reasons I do not understand these people at all. Like I see more humanity (not goodness, like a raw understandable human essence) in a guy like Genghis Khan than a guy like Bezos. Like at least the blood of the conqueror runs hot. The modern billionaire have ice water in their veins. Pure death camp commandant vibes.
Genghis Khan's desires were ultimately subject to phsyical constraints and diminishing returns but capitalism removes natural limits because accumulation can be infinite
Weber paraphrases Marx as appreciating that “the limits to the exploitation of the feudal serf were determined by the walls of the stomach of the feudal lord.” Under capitalism, on the other hand, we have profit-oriented commodity production. This means that neither “stomach walls” nor any other kind of natural limit impose themselves: accumulation can be infinite, and since everything is tradeable with everything else, the capitalist not only can but must (in order to compete) accumulate without limit.
from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/
Very true. Which is why I sometimes think about how it's not really "greed" that capitalists possess. We need a new word to correctly describe the phenomenon.
Their dopamine receptors are blown out from money. They also use terrifying amounts of drugs. So their brains are mush from lack of consequences and they do their best to scramble them further further
Copium, the Earth's capacity to support complex life is limited both by time and contingency
Or atleast until their air vents get filled in with concrete
You could live forever down there.
Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!
