[jordwest]

Yeah, from the perspective of the ultra-wealthy us humans are already pretty worthless and they'll be glad to get rid of us.

But from the perspective of a human being, an animal, and the environment that needs love, connection, mutual generosity and care, another human being who can provide those is priceless.

I propose we break away and create our own new economy and the ultra-wealthy can stay in their fully optimised machine dominated bunkers.

Sure maybe we'll need to throw a few food rations and bags of youthful blood down there for them every once in a while, but otherwise we could live in an economy that works for humanity instead.

[xeonmc]

Charlie Chaplin's speech is more relevant now than ever before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20

[jordwest]

I first saw this about 15 years ago and it had a profound impact on me. It's stuck with me ever since

"Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts."

Spoken 85 years ago and even more relevant today

[vkou]

The thing that the ultra-wealthy desire above all else is power and privilege, and they won't be getting either of that in those bunkers.

They sure as shit won't be content to leave the rest of us alone.

[jordwest]

Yeah I know it's an unrealistic ideal but it's fun to think about.

That said my theory about power and privilege is that it's actually just a symptom of a deep fear of death. The reason gaining more money/power/status never lets up is because there's no amount of money/power/status that can satiate that fear, but somehow naively there's a belief that it can. I wouldn't be surprised if most people who have any amount of wealth has a terrible fear of losing it all, and to somebody whose identity is tied to that wealth, that's as good as death.

[faidit]

Going off your earlier comment, what if instead of a revolution, the oligarchs just get hooked up to a simulation where they can pretend to rule over the rest of humanity forever? Or what if this already happened and we're just the peasants in the simulation

[_DeadFred_]

This would make a good black mirror episode. The character lives in a total dystopian world making f'd up moral choice. Their choices make the world worse. It seems nightmarish to us the viewer. Then towards then end they pull back, they unplug and are living in a utopia. They grab a snack, are greeted by people that love and care about them, then they plug back in and go back to being their dystopian tech bro ideal self in their dream/ideal world.

[jordwest]

I like this future, the Meta-verse has found its target market