[dsfyu404ed]

Of course everyone loses to an extent in a collapse but power is relative. And short of a meteor collapses are usually partial (e.g. the roman empire fell but the church remained and consolidated power).

You can only paint with a broad brush but it's not exactly hard to pick out groups that will be net recipients of relative power and wealth in various collapse scenarios.

If the financial system collapses people who own capital in whole (e.g. some tradesman with his van full of tools) and people who own "promises" of things (the contents of your 401k, bank account, etc) lose. If high level government collapses people who are associated with alternate sources of organization and administration (local government, the church) win. If local government collapses people who depended a lot on those services lose and people who already went without win.

Remember, money and political capital are convertible to each other to an extent so that complicates things as well.

So it's perfectly rational for people to root for the kind of specific tumultuous change that would benefit them.

[luckylion]

In my experience, it's not those that are likely to be better off after a catastrophe who are looking for it. They are already pretty well off, they have a lot to lose in chaos.

Those who don't have a lot to lose are more interested in a chaotic phase that rolls the dice and will quickly reshuffle the social order. The rich are moving into gated communities, they're not looking forward to living in a mad max world -- they're trying to keep that world out.

[bilbo0s]

In fairness, there's no such thing as a mad max world. At least not one without the rich. A mad max world is predicated on companies like Halliburton continuing to keep the fossil fuel deliveries coming. Which, in turn, is predicated on keeping refineries maintained and running. Keeping pipelines secure. And keeping roads repaired. All of which imply a very large number of wealthy people. (Assuming even state or regional scale energy logistics.)

To get mad max, we have to have alternative energy production and storage be cheap enough for broke people to afford. Even then, they'd need to be able to afford enough of that energy that they can spend huge amounts of it riding around looking for other people to steal from rather than spending the energy on farming and heating their homes. Raiding might work for post apocalyptic populations in Florida or South Carolina. I imagine the climate might be conducive to that sort of thing. But in a world with no energy deliveries, spending what little energy you have so frivolously would quickly doom you and your family if you live in Minnesota, Illinois, or Wisconsin for instance.