Forget Billions or even 100s of millions. If I had a single digit million dollar fortune to my name, nobody will hear from me again. I'll go to a quiet corner and just read books or garden or whatever. If I can be of any help/use to those less fortunate than me, I will. If I can't do that, then I'll keep quiet and live out my life.
I cannot fathom going out of my way to create chaos, to be cruel, to make lives miserable for millions of people, and worst of all, call it "progress". I just don't understand how these people think. Maybe I am just too poor, too dumb...
The personality defect that leads you to become powerful is the same defect that makes you want to become even more powerful.
It's the job of the rest of us to restructure the system to prevent this kind of pathological runaway power accumulation. It means new laws, but also a more enlightened culture.
A lot of people do exactly that, but by definition, you don't hear from the people who nobody will hear from again.
What's left are the folks for whom power and influence is a game. If they were to fuck off to the sunset and live a quiet life which harms nobody, they'd be abandoning the game. And it's become such a part of their identity that they can't live without that anymore.
Ironically, these folks are the best argument for replacing human decision making with machines. Cold, logical, emotionless machines that don't have identities or a need to win the game. Then all the folks whose sole purpose in life is controlling others would either need to find another purpose or off themself.
They have already taken part in every conceivable pleasure known to man that money can buy (legal and illegal). So much so that they have been desensitized to any stimuli barring extremes. And that's assuming these billionaires started out as ordinary folks in the first place (which is doubtful). All they got left is a God-complex to sustain them emotionally.
Earning billions and being cruel are inseparable. It is simply not possible to lay hands on such astronomical amounts of wealth without massive exploitation, which is why billionaires have the character traits that you describe.
A lot of it stems from EA (effective altruism) - paraphrased very roughly, it could argue that you are being immoral or selfish by not using the million dollars to invest and make a humanity changing discovery (FWIW I don't believe this, I'm explaining how they view things).
If they harm a billion people, but it benefits trillions in some theoretical glorious future, then it's the right thing to do. Of course it's all bullshit and they bake in a ton of assumptions at the core of their arguments that make the math of greed 'feel' okay, or at least palatable.
This is the inevitable result of a system that equates capital with power, and relies on an uneven distribution of said capital-power. A system designed for inequality will result in equality, and those with power-capital will only find more and better ways to increase their power-capital, to the detriment of us all. Humankind is doomed if we do not find a better way than capitalism.
> Humankind is doomed if we do not find a better way than capitalism.
better way is regulated capitalism. Its just citizens don't stand ground when capitalists compromise regulation, and our regulated capitalism becomes not regulated.
This is Bernie Sanders not quite getting what's going on.
Computers getting more powerful in a Moore's law like way has been going on for decades and if human brains are something like computers of somewhat constant abilities it's inevitable the computers would overtake at some point. It's not really sci fi or an oligarch plan or especially new - I wrote about it for my uni entrance exam 45 years ago and the ideas go back at least to Turing.
Most of the stuff mentioned will inevitably happen, oligarchs or not and we should plan to make the best of it. Some of the things - merge, immortality and super intelligence could be quite cool. I imagine it'll be voluntary and some people will live traditionally, some will embrace the tech.
These technofascists are today's equivalent to the eugenicists of 100 years ago. They believe they have the singular vision and the moral authority to dictate the future of humanity.
But it's also different this time because these maniacs come with the power of perverse amounts of money and control over actual technology.
We let them become that big and powerful and I have an inkling we might come to regret it.
Does anyone have a better long term plan for the species? The full article is paywalled, so does Bernie (who seems generally great) have a 10,000 year plan for the species?
We can’t even solve 1 year problems as a nation, so the probability of global human community aligning to stall our breakneck self destruction via AGW or war is zero.
Humans have only dominated the planet for 250,000 years, who says we’re supposed to continue that?
Dinosaurs dominated for millions and they are gone there’s no universal mandate that humans are the final form of intelligence and no reason to believe we are.
Last I checked we’re all extinct within 1Billion years and humans can’t survive mass migration off of earth because there’s nowhere to go.
Forget Billions or even 100s of millions. If I had a single digit million dollar fortune to my name, nobody will hear from me again. I'll go to a quiet corner and just read books or garden or whatever. If I can be of any help/use to those less fortunate than me, I will. If I can't do that, then I'll keep quiet and live out my life.
I cannot fathom going out of my way to create chaos, to be cruel, to make lives miserable for millions of people, and worst of all, call it "progress". I just don't understand how these people think. Maybe I am just too poor, too dumb...
The personality defect that leads you to become powerful is the same defect that makes you want to become even more powerful.
It's the job of the rest of us to restructure the system to prevent this kind of pathological runaway power accumulation. It means new laws, but also a more enlightened culture.
A lot of people do exactly that, but by definition, you don't hear from the people who nobody will hear from again.
What's left are the folks for whom power and influence is a game. If they were to fuck off to the sunset and live a quiet life which harms nobody, they'd be abandoning the game. And it's become such a part of their identity that they can't live without that anymore.
Ironically, these folks are the best argument for replacing human decision making with machines. Cold, logical, emotionless machines that don't have identities or a need to win the game. Then all the folks whose sole purpose in life is controlling others would either need to find another purpose or off themself.
They have already taken part in every conceivable pleasure known to man that money can buy (legal and illegal). So much so that they have been desensitized to any stimuli barring extremes. And that's assuming these billionaires started out as ordinary folks in the first place (which is doubtful). All they got left is a God-complex to sustain them emotionally.
Let us be neighbours, so we can play a little bit Counter Strike or Q3A :-))
I would buy a small house near forrest & mountains.
Earning billions and being cruel are inseparable. It is simply not possible to lay hands on such astronomical amounts of wealth without massive exploitation, which is why billionaires have the character traits that you describe.
> I just don't understand how these people think.
A lot of it stems from EA (effective altruism) - paraphrased very roughly, it could argue that you are being immoral or selfish by not using the million dollars to invest and make a humanity changing discovery (FWIW I don't believe this, I'm explaining how they view things).
If they harm a billion people, but it benefits trillions in some theoretical glorious future, then it's the right thing to do. Of course it's all bullshit and they bake in a ton of assumptions at the core of their arguments that make the math of greed 'feel' okay, or at least palatable.
Same. Non-sociopaths understand that with power comes responsibility and I don’t want to be responsible for everyone else so I don’t want power.
This is the inevitable result of a system that equates capital with power, and relies on an uneven distribution of said capital-power. A system designed for inequality will result in equality, and those with power-capital will only find more and better ways to increase their power-capital, to the detriment of us all. Humankind is doomed if we do not find a better way than capitalism.
> Humankind is doomed if we do not find a better way than capitalism.
better way is regulated capitalism. Its just citizens don't stand ground when capitalists compromise regulation, and our regulated capitalism becomes not regulated.
This is Bernie Sanders not quite getting what's going on.
Computers getting more powerful in a Moore's law like way has been going on for decades and if human brains are something like computers of somewhat constant abilities it's inevitable the computers would overtake at some point. It's not really sci fi or an oligarch plan or especially new - I wrote about it for my uni entrance exam 45 years ago and the ideas go back at least to Turing.
Most of the stuff mentioned will inevitably happen, oligarchs or not and we should plan to make the best of it. Some of the things - merge, immortality and super intelligence could be quite cool. I imagine it'll be voluntary and some people will live traditionally, some will embrace the tech.
https://archive.is/gvPFC
These technofascists are today's equivalent to the eugenicists of 100 years ago. They believe they have the singular vision and the moral authority to dictate the future of humanity.
But it's also different this time because these maniacs come with the power of perverse amounts of money and control over actual technology.
We let them become that big and powerful and I have an inkling we might come to regret it.
Does anyone have a better long term plan for the species? The full article is paywalled, so does Bernie (who seems generally great) have a 10,000 year plan for the species?
We can’t even solve 1 year problems as a nation, so the probability of global human community aligning to stall our breakneck self destruction via AGW or war is zero.
Humans have only dominated the planet for 250,000 years, who says we’re supposed to continue that?
Dinosaurs dominated for millions and they are gone there’s no universal mandate that humans are the final form of intelligence and no reason to believe we are.
Last I checked we’re all extinct within 1Billion years and humans can’t survive mass migration off of earth because there’s nowhere to go.
This is the only option
[dead]