U Got A Friend In Me
"The ground is still wet. " Instead of just lording over us for ever, however, the billionaires at the top of these virtual pyramids actively seek the endgame. Most billionaire preppers don't want to have to learn to get along with a community of farmers or, worse, spend their winnings funding a national food resilience programme. You've got a friend in me net.org. "Wear boots, " he said. That's because it wasn't their actual bunker strategies I had been brought out to evaluate so much as the philosophy and mathematics they were using to justify their commitment to escape.
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There's something much more whimsical about the facilities in which most of the billionaires – or, more accurately, aspiring billionaires – actually invest. 3m luxury series "Aristocrat", complete with pool and bowling lane. Or was this really their intention all along? They started out innocuously and predictably enough. They also get a stake in a potentially profitable network of local farm franchises that could reduce the probability of a catastrophic event in the first place. You've got a friend in me nyt daily. "The fewer people who know the locations, the better, " he explained, along with a link to the Twilight Zone episode in which panicked neighbours break into a family's bomb shelter during a nuclear scare.
Why help these guys ruin what's left of the internet, much less civilisation? They seemed to want something more. The landscape is alive with algorithms and intelligences actively encouraging these selfish and isolationist outlooks. This is an edited extract from Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff, published by Scribe (£20). You've got a friend in me net.com. Solar panels and water filtration equipment need to be replaced and serviced at regular intervals. They provide imitation of natural light, such as a pool with a simulated sunlit garden area, a wine vault, and other amenities to make the wealthy feel at home. Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down. Everything must resolve to a one or a zero, a winner or loser, the saved or the damned. "Honestly, I am less concerned about gangs with guns than the woman at the end of the driveway holding a baby and asking for food. " To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
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The mindset that requires safe havens is less concerned with preventing moral dilemmas than simply keeping them out of sight. Should a shelter have its own air supply? Those sociopathic enough to embrace them are rewarded with cash and control over the rest of us. "By coincidence, " he explained, "I am setting up a series of safe haven farms in the NYC area. What sort of wealthy hedge-fund types would drive this far from the airport for a conference? Amplified by digital technologies and the unprecedented wealth disparity they afford, The Mindset allows for the easy externalisation of harm to others, and inspires a corresponding longing for transcendence and separation from the people and places that have been abused. The people most interested in hiring me for my opinions about technology are usually less concerned with building tools that help people live better lives in the present than they are in identifying the Next Big Thing through which to dominate them in the future. Like miniature Club Med resorts, they offer private suites for individuals or families, and larger common areas with pools, games, movies and dining. By the time I boarded my return flight to New York, my mind was reeling with the implications of The Mindset. The way to get your guards to exhibit loyalty in the future was to treat them like friends right now, I explained. Maybe the apocalypse is less something they're trying to escape than an excuse to realise The Mindset's true goal: to rise above mere mortals and execute the ultimate exit strategy. They're more for people who want to go it alone.
Never before have our society's most powerful players assumed that the primary impact of their own conquests would be to render the world itself unliveable for everyone else. That doesn't mean no one is investing in such schemes. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. For one, the closed ecosystems of underground facilities are preposterously brittle.
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This was probably the wealthiest, most powerful group I had ever encountered. JC was also hoping to train young farmers in sustainable agriculture, and to secure at least one doctor and dentist for each location. What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader? The enterprise originally catered to families seeking temporary storm shelters, before it went into the long-term apocalypse business.
The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. But while a private island may be a good place to wait out a temporary plague, turning it into a self-sufficient, defensible ocean fortress is harder than it sounds. 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. For example, an indoor, sealed hydroponic garden is vulnerable to contamination. "You certainly stirred up a bees' nest, " he began his first email to me. The New York Times reported that real estate agents specialising in private islands were overwhelmed with inquiries during the Covid-19 pandemic. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed "in time". I asked him about various combat scenarios. Could it have all been some sort of game? The next morning, two men in matching Patagonia fleeces came for me in a golf cart and conveyed me through rocks and underbrush to a meeting hall. This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour.
I made pro-social arguments for partnership and solidarity as the best approaches to our collective, long-term challenges. The farm itself was serving as an equestrian centre and tactical training facility in addition to raising goats and chickens. A limo was waiting for me at the airport. Their language went far beyond questions of disaster preparedness and verged on politics and philosophy: words such as individuality, sovereignty, governance and autonomy. Was there any valid justification for striving to be so successful that they could simply leave the rest of us behind –apocalypse or not?