Whenever I see billionaires saying something like this, I read it as “we’re so confident that our power is now unassailable that we don’t need to pretend anymore.” I’m sure a lot of our oligarchs–including many elected Democrats–believe this as well, but they’re less sure that the system has now been adequately rigged and that the inertia is large enough that it cannot be overcome. The further along things get, the more I suspect we’ll see public takes like this.
This. The billionaires were playing things a little coy, but with the AI shit, they KNOW the govt is useless and that people are too atomized to stop them so they’ll just volunteer that they’re building a surveillance state/trying to automate out all human labor/consuming all the natural resources/etc". No inferences needed.
Many of them have been openly talking about building luxury bunkers, secret farms, working on logistics for how to keep their private security loyal to them (even as far as using electrocution collars), because they are well aware the systems they’ve been perpetuating are not sustainable and one way or another, the end is nigh. It’s not like any of that will actually end up insulating them in the long term, but as you and Philosoraptor already pointed out, they’re deeply deluded by their own success so far and sure as hell aren’t ever going to compromise with their subjects, the dirty masses. The abject failure of “liberal democracy” (capitalism) along with the approaching horizon of its own death that it created is right out there in the open for anyone with eyes to see.
There was this Harvard study a couple decades ago where they had a group of people play monopoly and gave one person a clear advantage. Most of the time the person with the obvious advantage still believed they were the better player.
The parasite class are morons. They just have all the resources and the contradictions are rapidly sharpening.
Whenever I see billionaires saying something like this, I read it as “we’re so confident that our power is now unassailable that we don’t need to pretend anymore.” I’m sure a lot of our oligarchs–including many elected Democrats–believe this as well, but they’re less sure that the system has now been adequately rigged and that the inertia is large enough that it cannot be overcome. The further along things get, the more I suspect we’ll see public takes like this.
This. The billionaires were playing things a little coy, but with the AI shit, they KNOW the govt is useless and that people are too atomized to stop them so they’ll just volunteer that they’re building a surveillance state/trying to automate out all human labor/consuming all the natural resources/etc". No inferences needed.
Many of them have been openly talking about building luxury bunkers, secret farms, working on logistics for how to keep their private security loyal to them (even as far as using electrocution collars), because they are well aware the systems they’ve been perpetuating are not sustainable and one way or another, the end is nigh. It’s not like any of that will actually end up insulating them in the long term, but as you and Philosoraptor already pointed out, they’re deeply deluded by their own success so far and sure as hell aren’t ever going to compromise with their subjects, the dirty masses. The abject failure of “liberal democracy” (capitalism) along with the approaching horizon of its own death that it created is right out there in the open for anyone with eyes to see.
There was this Harvard study a couple decades ago where they had a group of people play monopoly and gave one person a clear advantage. Most of the time the person with the obvious advantage still believed they were the better player.
The parasite class are morons. They just have all the resources and the contradictions are rapidly sharpening.