The Rich Are Hoarding Wealth — Because They Know What’s Coming
The Takeaway — Collapse Isn’t a Flaw, It’s the Plan
The rich are not scrambling to prevent collapse. They welcome it — because they know they’ll be the only ones left standing. While the rest of us are told to “sacrifice” and “tighten our belts,” billionaires are building bunkers, buying private islands, and hoarding resources for the dystopia they see coming.
Societal collapse is going to hurt rich people the hardest. Money will be worthless and their skills are not relevant in that context.
These comments took the "bunker" concept literally. They're not going to Saddam Hussein and hide in a hole. Jeffrey Bezos has a private cruise ship and his own private island.
Like a leech, they're abandoning their host and moving to somewhere friendly. And we're not able to get to them.
True, but the problems remain the same: No matter, how you hide out, what do these billionaires do when they have to fix issues? Who do they call when someting breaks? In a bunker, the water supply or the air filter can break. You need someone to repair it. Also, you need spare parts. On a boat a sail can get torn in a storm, or the engine could fail. Depending on the apolyptical setting, going to a harbor might not be an option. Here also, spare parts are needed.
What all these methods of locking away oneself have in common is, that this can be only for a rather short period of time, preferrably, as long as your supplies last. When being in a bunker or on a boat for, let's say a month only, these assholes will even call it an adventure. But these billionaires assume that they can survive for years.
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They're literally building bunkers though. The bunkers are for literally going and hiding in a hole like Saddam Hussein.
As opposed to other periods of history, when the rich didn't hoard wealth.
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Exactly, mega wealthy people exist because of wealth hoarding
Kind of a garbage article tbh. The author repeats themselves a lot with little actual information. If you're the type to click that headline already, you're not learning anything.
Let's pretend that society is collapsing and then, when they're all locked in their bunkers, we cement them in and go about fixing the world.
Cask of Amontillado style. I love it. Last thing we do before sealing the air vents is chuck a stinkbomb in it.
I honestly think this is what will happen.
They're children. They're panicking and trying to hide a mess, the adults will just walk in and fix it
Remember one thing: a bunker, no matter how well built, is not absolutely safe. It can be slowly and steadily taken apart by hand tools, buried to become a tomb or blown apart. If air goes in, then inflamable gases can go in. Or the vents sealed.
Inside a bunker, you're corraled.
I read this in the voice of Nemik from Andor. Don't know why, I think it's the "Remember one thing"
Additional to that - what is a bunker worth when you can't reach it? I think those super-rich people who build bunkers in remote places watched too many movies and didn't think it through.
Also a valid reasoning.
tbf most of these problems can be solved by murder drones
Murder drones can be countered
The rich hoard wealth full stop. That's why they're rich; "being rich" and "being poor" are emergent properties of inequitable wealth distribution.
They may think that they're being smart but, if society collapses, their money will be worth nothing. If anything, they have more to lose than anyone.
In the leadup to societal collapse (you are here!), land ownership matters more than anything. It is immune to inflation. To a lesser extent, stocks matter. It's not like billionaires are sitting on a mountain of cold hard cash.
In the aftermath of societal collapse, control of law enforcement private militias matters. If you can feed and house a militia, then you can control access to farmlands, roads, all kinds of resources. Control of those resources will allow you to support your militia and provide sufficient coercion for people to "willingly" join that militia. The only tricky part here is the transitional phase, and honestly, there's probably enough cultural inertia that this will not be much of a problem at all.
See: feudalism. It is the wet dream of every ultra-rich piece of shit.
Most of the world is highly dependent on long-distance transport for the necessities of life, including food. Look at any major American city. None of them are anywhere close to self-sustaining. Self-sustainability is something America has not only ignored, but actively avoided and prevented in the design of its cities in favor of the "efficiency" of factory farms.
The best time to eat the rich was yesterday. The second-best time is today. Billionaires are an existential threat to society.
They run entire economies around themselves. You can hope some of their sphere turn on them but what makes you think they don't have farms and advanced technology and pet technology firms and all sorts of shit all ready to go?
It's not about the number of dollars or spending them it is about power. They will create new autocracies with themselves at the head, it's not about the money anymore but what the money has already bought them. For the past decades the only thing that tells them "no" is the FBI and military. They look at what happened to John McAfee and want to ensure it never happens to them.
Douglas Rushkoff has written about the apocalypse bunkers the rich are building, and about how their planning does not account for how to control their private security once money means nothing.
The wealthy are not smart enough to plan the collapse, the handful who are smart enough to plan for it can’t figure out how to make it more than a few months.
I've always wondered about that. If society is collapsing, money has no value. The people you hired to help you are going to turn on you and take everything.
Money is worthless, but things like food, fuel, land and guns are worth something. The means to make food, also. Having a private militia that you pay in food is no different to paying them in money after collapse. They could rebel, but of course, if you kill the first person to rebel, the others have a choice. Try again, or keep getting food.
The wealthy are not smart enough to plan the collapse
The wealthy are the cause of it. Cancer ain't gonna get to curing cancer....
Here is an article about his book from 2022. I think I have read this in the past, but I coduln't remember his name. What stuck to me was this:
In the end (so to speak) billions of dollars can only take these guys so far, anyway. “Why do you think they’re gonna protect you after your money is worthless?” Rushkoff remembers asking his billionaire desert hosts of their private security forces. From there, the men began grasping at straws. “At that point, it was shock collars and guard dogs and combinations to the safes,” he says of their last resorts.
This is the fucking insanity. I know people burying silver in their yard "for the day"
NO ONE IS GONNA GIVE A SHIT ABOUT SILVER COME THE COLLAPSE. The only thing that would be useful for is a werewolf apocalypse.
Oh you got a bunker to hide out in? For what? What's the next step? Until rescue? Until things "get better"? There will be no rescue and no recovery you will ever see. you will die in there like the trapped rat you are.
There’s a comic called Billionaire Island. Seems relevant.
Money has value because it represents power to get someone to do what you want. When fiat currency, then precious metals and jewels lose the ability to get shit done there will be food and water as the remaining currency. In the US there will also be bullets and guns to become fiat currency.
Burn it all just to rule the ashes.
Yeah billionaires got there because they're smart... Riiiiight...
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