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by alt_422568 42 days ago
> There was a big zillionaire conference where they talked about slave collars

What? Do you have a link?

1 comments

https://www.popsci.com/environment/douglas-rushkoff-survival...

It was a private 2017 desert retreat where five wealthy tech and hedge-fund investors flew out media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, ostensibly for a speaking engagement.

Rushkoff wrote it up first as a Guardian essay and later expanded it into his 2022 book Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.

The problem's super duper obvious if you studied history, but it is also pretty obvious if you can think about second order effects. In collapse the wealthy obviously need security forces to hold on to their stuff, but in a collapse your stuff will - presto changeo - become the security force's stuff. Essentially the singular founding story of all European royal families. Barbarian general took the house, banged the wife, now he's king. Or King-Sound. Kai- Zar

At the end of the day all these little lords and lordettes figured out the time honored lesson that to be actually safe you want to make friends with the locals. And that's part of being new king types as well. But "making people like you" isn't a popular notion with the Revenge of the Nerds types who love this "Lord of the Bunker" kind of thing.

I've seen zoo chimpanzees make a mockery out of this sort of device in VERY short order, and I would dread to impose it on a Delta Force psychopath who also has more higher degrees than I do. Because he's going to know who it was who did it and have all sorts of ideas about what he's doing about that. So the basic premise is also idiotic.

Sorry, I was a little more snide than I usually am on HN, it's been a long day.