Why Silicon Valley Billionaires Are Prepping for the Apocalypse in NZ (2018)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This is so uncharitable and dishonest. Sure it's technically true, but I think outing someones sexuality deserves to be noted as more than just 'didn't like how they wrote about him.'
[1] https://thinkprogress.org/facebook-privacy-policy-outs-lgbt-...
Or does FB go out of its way to expose LBGT people for some profit of its own?
EDIT
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/technology/peter-thiel-do...
$1.25M is fairly sizable
2 weeks before the election is timely
For sure Trump is probably indifferent to sexuality, but his voters are not.
Trump is also for X other things one might agree with and Y they might disagree. People vote wholesale, not on individual matters, so other attributes might matter more to Thiel (or any voter). And similarly, X or Y pros or cons on the other side might also matter more (negatively in this case).
Besides, if Trump is indifferent to sexuality, what's the argument? Not to give his supporters (some of which might not be) the pleasure of seeing their candidate becoming president?
It's not inconsistent to think that Gawker was a bad site which did a bad thing for which they should be punished and that suing them into oblivion was a worse thing with worse effects for society.
No, but I'm OK with suing them to bankruptcy.
[1] To repeat: what Gawker did was awful. But silencing the whole organization for one sin is not what you want.
They didn't have to violate the law and expose themselves to a lawsuit for damages. Even then, they didn't have to spend themselves into bankruptcy fighting the lawsuit. They could have saved all the legal costs and accepted a judgement. Of course they could have not violated the law and avoided the lawsuit altogether. It seems to make sense the person who was damaged by the organization personally dislikes them, but that has nothing to do with the company going bankrupt, their own behavior is what lead to them going bankrupt.
Did you know that Peter Thiel, in his own words, decided to "create a shell company to hire former investigative reporters and lawyers to _find_ causes of action against Gawker", and to then give it a starting timeline and budget of "three to five years and $10 million"?
Cool.
As I said, you can point the finger at the "Billionaire" but at the end of the day Gwaker's is liable for their unlawful behavior resulting in damages, that can't be blamed on Thiel. A Jury found Gwaker liable and awarded Hogan $140M, that bankrupted Gawker, not Thiel.
If Gawker didn't willfully publish stolen sex tapes of Hulk Hogan in violation of his rights, then Thiel would have wasted $10M and 3-5 years looking for something that doesn't exist, and they would still be in business.
Most small businesses would suffer no harm at all from an adversary with an initial $10MM allocated toward an attack. After all, most businesses have no employees who have ever done anything even remotely questionable. And besides, it's super cheap and easy to win in court if truth and justice are on your side. (and the same in print; there's no way to for an investigative journalist to create disproportionately bad press)
You're definitely correct, right, and very smart. I agree with all of your points.
If those small businesses had done shitty things like Gawker, then let them suffer!
They thought they could stomp on people with impunity because nobody would care / have the money to take them to court for doing so. They thought wrong.
But him using his money to take down a website that thought it was ok to out people? I never heard about it before, but I find that damn cool.
That's not super-villain rich but Batman-level good.
How do you know without mind reading?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...
I'm sure that money helped Hogan mount the best case possible, but it didn't determine the outcome of the trial.
But why should Peter Thiel absorb these blows for nothing? And his response? To fund somebody in a civil claim, because Gawker was depending on the fact that people are too weak to sue them. Gawker gambled wrong. The sad part isn't that Peter Thiel could choose which horse to back -- the sad part is that you need a financial backer to get justice.
You can see it the other way: why would gawker reveal this if not to cause a but of malice.
It's also privacy, basic human decency, and their choice to disclose or not, which are just as important.
You can't just shit on them because someone is "super-rich" and wont lose their job.
He didn't do anything about it for at least 3-4 years after the outing, and was personally content to live and let live.
He only took action after being persuaded by someone else that he had a responsibility to fight back in defence of the countless people, most of whom were vastly less powerful than Thiel, that Gawker's business was built on attacking.
Full story: https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy-Intri...
I don't see many people point this out, but societal collapse would be gradual, and there will be no safe haven. Plenty of people with boats will be able to make it to NZ, and money loses value outside of the societal structure that allows it to be traded for goods (you will not sell your food in a famine for any amount of money). The only way out is to prevent the collapse in the first place.
Also, his summary of the whole Gawker affair is absurdly skewed -- Gawker was a terrible website that used the protections of our free society to ruin people's lives, and Thiel used our free society's libel laws to bankrupt it. He played by the rules and won in that case.
https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Survive-Collapse...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/09/mystic-mogg-ja...
Seriously: people with too much money quickly get surrounded with yes men, who act as an echo chamber for these persons fears, and deliver them the white elephants they want. An apocalypse is very unlikely. But yeah, have this sweet NZ bunker. It's good for the local economy I guess?
Now they have their nice bunkers, I hope they start fearing death more, and invest in anti senescence research. This could benefit a lot of people besides NZ local economy.
Many times this insanity is about feeling like a king (today billionaires are the kings of kings) or feeling like gods.
Aren’t Larry and Sergey already investing in this via Alphabet?
And by seriously, I mean spending over 50% of what they have - when they realize that if death happens, all they have accumulated will not matter.
Better spend that on increasing their lifespan that on kids!
Or you could read someone who’s a better writer than I and check out Vonnegut’s 2BR02B.
1) Profit 2) What makes you think they can keep it secret?
>But even if your hoped for outcome did come to pass what happens wrt world population?
In case you haven't noticed, people in developed countries aren't having kids any more. The population will stabilize: people who can afford anti-senescence therapy will live a very long time, but have very few (if any kids). People who have a lot of kids won't be able to afford any therapy and will die young, but eventually their offspring will become wealthier and will stop reproducing so much.
I’m familiar with your reasoning on population dynamics, and while it does provide a nice straw to grasp at, I kind of feel its irrelevant unless you address rampant inequality?
What happens when one segment gets immortality and a far larger population gets nothing? History is littered with the scattered remains of socieities who tgought theyd have it all for themselves. Have a look into the genesis of Gengis Khan maybe, or more recently Cambodia ...
What exactly is the problem here? If you don't want them becoming gods, then it's very simple: pass some laws forcing wealth redistribution. Rich people aren't gods, and don't have super-powers. They are as easily stopped or killed as any other human. And they're just as subject to laws as the rest of us, in a country that has rule-of-law. So it's very simple: pass a law. If your country refuses to do that and lets the rich become god-like, that's because the people in your country want it that way.
>What happens when one segment gets immortality and a far larger population gets nothing?
What happens when one segment of the population gets advanced computing equipment, like smartphones, and a far larger population gets nothing? How are things working out right now, where only a very, very small portion of our population has smartphones and personal computers, while most of our population has landlines at best, or has to write letters and mail them, and has to do all their work with pencil and paper? Oh wait, it isn't like that at all: even poor people have smartphones and computers.
Why do you think that immortality will be some highly limited thing?
If you asked folks in 1920 how likely it would be that in less than 20 years there would be another awful World War and millions of civilians would be systematically slaughtered and turned into ashes, they probably would have said that is "very unlikely" too.
These people are educated, understand tail risks and have the means to try and hedge them. They are not insane, not even close.
They might be spending 0.1% of their wealth (which they could never spend in 10 lifetimes anyway) on protection from an event (war on US soil or loss of their US assets) that has 0.5-5% chance of happening during their lifetimes. Put it like that, it is quite rational.
While even their entire wealth won't make them life forever. 100 billion is a drop in bucket for senescence research, especially if it has to yield results within 20-30 years.
I don't, because it's not just the amount of wealth, but the consequences, and the complexities it creates by snowball effect.
I don't want to talk about my stuff, but let's talk about their escape plans, as I can easily imagine how it would require some similar planning.
These properties in NZ will require upkeep. It will keep their mind thinking about that too. It will also cause other slight increases in costs (the example of getting into a plane: add the costs of a 24/7 on-call flight team + a spare plane in case the first one has some unexpected failure)
Even if they have someone whose job 24/7 is to take care of that, they may want to visit the NZ properties time to time, to make sure things are proceeding according to plan. Because you can't trust people for something as important as that.
And their mind will incorporate these limits into whatever other calculations. For example, a juicy business deal in Europe? A concert or a conference where they can physically meet with some key person? Sorry but they shouldn't go to that conference as it may be too far from NZ in a catastrophic scenario, with the airspace closed, if they don't have another plane+team in Europe too. What's another 0.1%? Sure, add this plane and team in Europe. Then you need a manager, a company, etc. Then you want to have that on every continent. Then you think, what if disaster strikes in APAC? Might as well get started buying other properties in Chile!
I guess it may be fun for preppers, but when you reevaluate the practical consequences, you come to the conclusion some things are better left undone, to have razor sharp focus on the things you want done.
Simplicy has many virtues, especially in planning. Burning some ships is not just an exercise in removing concentration - it also increases focus.
Powerball and Mega Millions seem like an existence proof to the contrary. I'm won't argue the upthread point that such an investment is logical, but it's not senseless either.
"Prepper enclaves as scratch tickets for billionaires" sounds about right to me.
i don't think the blood boys benefit in any ways. And just wait until Thiel and the likes learn how to have "kidney/liver boys".
Wrt. original post - NZ is just temporarily and just for meager billionaires. The Moon&Mars are for really rich people, ie. the trillionaires we're going to have in the coming few years. Private Starship on a private launchpad, private penthouse in high LEO, ... Sergey/Larry are the first people to live to 200, Zuck - to the time dilluting spaceships.
Of courses that canyon was an imaginary sexual paradise of Ayn Rand and 100 millionaires, a strangely feminist construct for the bible of the idiot right.
Like if the collapse happens, the idiot rich will be doing all the work that they used to pay people with? What will they pay people with? Bitcoin? Zeroes in a nonexistent computer system? Gold?