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Comment by Steltek | Hacker News Reader

It's intriguing to see rich people feeling just as out of control as the rest of the planet's population. I wonder what that really says about the current state of society? It seems like wealth inequality really benefits no one at all.

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It looks like people who have power are so used to shirking responsibility that when an actual crisis comes up they don't even seriously consider that they might be able to affect the outcome.

Well, I know that I don't have the funds to preemptively build a giant shelter, wall off some fertile land, and then store some seeds in the shelter so that I can grow food after society collapses. I can't afford to buy a giant container ship and ride out the apocalypse offshore by farming on the deck, away from the angry mobs.

But I bet Thiel or Zuck could afford that.

Seems to me that wealth is a definite means to surviving "the Event".

A giant container ship with food is just pirate bait. A walled off region full of food is raider bait. Hoarding resources in the face of desperate people in the absence of law and order is suicide, but these guys can’t conceive of a future in which they don’t command some form of control and respect so they plan this way.

The only feasible way to survive long term is either to form a large, well armed group of raiders, or a larger, better armed community full of skilled people who have each others’ backs, probably intermarried and interbred; clans and tribes in other words.

You might be right but I think that's entirely beside and irrelevant to my point, which is that with money, you have a greater capacity to effect change of any sort than without. Including in terms of prepping for the apocalypse.

How is it irrelevant that the day after the apocalypse, when money is meaningless and law and order are gone, all of that preparation is just free for the taking by someone stronger? What does a CEO have to offer in that scenario? Leadership? Lol. No. Unless their prepping isn’t all about relying on people they pay to do things for them, they’re screwed.

Before an apocalypse they have a lot of power, but only as long as they’re still just trying to accrue wealth. Within the system of scrabbling formevery nickel and dime, they have power, but outside of that? For all of his massive wealth and philanthropy, Bill Gates for example, is hardly saving the world.

Did you get a chance to read the Atlantic's "The Birth of a New American Aristocracy?" That's one of the paradoxes of inequality: as inequality increases, the value of your money decreases. It also increases the anxiety of the rich as the fall from their lofty perch is more dramatic.

I think it also says a lot about the human condition — wealth and power just bring a new set of worries and psychological conundrums, especially if you’re already inclined to want to be in control of your life.

Could be also that it says something about mental illness (in particular: anxiety and paranoia) being present on all the rungs of society.

Thanks you for resuming our injust era.

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