The Mega-Rich Are Turning Their Mansions into Impenetrable Fortresses
wsj.com
wsj.com
Only the compounds are entirely porous. Motivated criminals can and do regularly hurdle those fences or slip under those gates in moments, break and enter and leave the property in minutes.
This makes one question whether the next layer of "hardening" would actually be effective of if it is more of the same. The article cites armed guards. I would think there are very few people out there that are stable enough to be trusted to bear arms and patrol around your family but also stupid enough to actually put their life on the line for some jewelry that is probably already insured.
Armed guards will be the ones running the show the moment when something will happen. Rich guy is respected only because he has money, if survival is on the line, rich guy becomes bottom feeders, because most of these rich guys can't survive in a real world.
In personal protective gear, you have ballistic helmets. They don't cover the face. They often have cutouts around your ears. They don't cover your neck. They can generally stop a low velocity handgun round, and anything more energetic except a glancing rifle round is usually going right through. Even if it doesn't penetrate, backface deformation may be lethal. They're still generally worn as the only game in town.
The first is that very few people (especially rich people) are anonymous. A motivated person who has had a psychotic break can be very dangerous, and if you’re even a little bit famous, the probability of that happening to you goes up substantially.
The second issue is the one that everyone is getting riled up about - wealth inequality.
These are distinct issues, and I think it does harm - in the form of polarization - to not explicitly call them out.
When a thing seals itself against its own destruction, it merely dies a different death.
Ain't no such thing.
The only question is what kind of threat is mitigated, and for how long.
And that's assuming they'll have the manpower to defend those fortresses. Which, given their belief we're moving towards the societal collapse (of their making), isn't a given.
Quote[1]: What I came to realise was that these men are actually the losers. The billionaires who called me out to the desert to evaluate their bunker strategies are not the victors of the economic game so much as the victims of its perversely limited rules. More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where “winning” means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.
In the end, who'd want to stick up for those losers?
Tsar Nicholas II had great fortresses. So did Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Worked out swimmingly for both of them.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...
Opens fine in the US. FWIW, it's an archive website. The link goes to a mirrored copy of the WSJ article to make it available without the paywall.
Cases run too long and get dropped; cases have evidentiary issues and get dropped; etc.
Spending a little as a hedge against anarcho-tyranny and its collateral damage showing up in your (gated) neighborhood seems rational for those who can afford it.
Cement over their bunker doors from the outside.
Park armed drones on the opposite side of their literal moat.
With the end of jobs coming, 10s of millions will be freed up to remind the tiny mega-rich portion of the species their meat suits were never essential. Just coddled by political handouts.
first we need an artilery range to test varios types of construction, or perhaps it will be faster to hire mercinaries and attack the other billioniars fortresses and take notes, it's just pen testing right ,we can get paid from both sides :)