I wish more people understood Doomsday prepping is really more of a hobby than an actual concern over the total collapse of all civilization.
It’s fun to prepare, and to think of every scenario no matter how outlandish, and it’s fun to make people think you are super serious about something that seems ridiculous to them.
It is like a game where you collect as many resources and skills to increase your survival score as much as possible.
I'm literally a national champion at a ridiculous hobby, so I feel pretty confident that many of these people are actually super serious. People get way invested in stupid shit all the time.
A couple of years ago I applied for a job at Hipmunk and ended interviewing with Steve, then the CTO. I don’t remember everything but at some point he did ask me to write a program that prints out a spiral.
Reading this article, and remembering that interview, made me realize that no one can really know what the collapse of civilization will look like, but it is always good to be prepared with a two dimensional array or a good GUI library.
anecdotally, it feels like the tech elite are trying to outsmart the system (such as prepping for doomsday scenarios), rather than trying to improve the system to prevent, or lower the probability of the doomsday scenario in the first place
> rather than trying to improve the system to prevent, or lower the probability of the doomsday scenario in the first place
I’m not sure Sillicon Valley billionaire can do much too save the earth from collapsing.
It’s not about rich changing the world to save it, it’s about the world monetary system , capitalism and thermo-industrial economy that has climax and is now going to end.
Hence , every society has cycles. Roman era disappeared, Vikings disappeared etc... this society will disappear as well and let something new come.
completely disagree. SV billionaires wield enormous power and influence, through their wealth, positions of power, influential personas, companies etc.
there is a very good argument to be made that elon musk pushed the EV industry forward. similarly, i think tech elite can shape society.
another example: look at the enormous influence warren buffett has had on the asset management industry.
i think SV billionaires could definitely make a dent in things like income inequality, if they focused on it
It has to be the case that if everyone agrees to spend on something together you get much more bang for the buck than if everyone is out for themselves. That’s the whole reason why tribes outcompete individuals, cities outcompeted tribes and nation states outcompeted cities.
At the extreme, if a small band forms an army, it doesn’t matter how well armed and fortified a single family is; the army is taking them down.
agree completely, although that's kind of the point. the problem is that the tech elite are going for most bang for the buck (ie. looking out for no 1) instead of trying to solve the mess that they, in part, created
Their cover photo is a joke if you have even the slightest idea of what you’re looking at.
Double stacked D&H mags with no pulls, an Anderson “poverty pony” AR, BUIS behind a 1.5x ACOG on an 18” with a cheap non-QD Mount (iron sights with a magnified optic in between doesn’t work)... I’m sure there is more.
But... for the Steve Huffman and similar types, they’ll just see what they want. The real joke would be Randy and his $999 AR (with optic) will just rob Steve-types blind the second there is a without rule of law scenario.
Former combat zone contractor here: I would bet $20 that tacticool guy in the photo wishes so hard he had actually been hired as PSD by blackwater or triple canopy in 2005. Instead he probably ended up running logistics for the dfac at KAF.
> The real joke would be Randy and his $999 AR (with optic) will just rob Steve-types blind the second there is a without rule of law scenario.
I've always wondered how they'd prevent that. How does Randy not shoot Steve or take him hostage and then bring his own family into the compound.
I am sure there are a few schemes, ranging from benign like promise a huge payday at the end, lots of land, resources, power whatever to more sinister ones, like hire another Randy (possible a lot more than one) to watch the first one if he (she) tries to do something.
These guys (and Women?) are at the extreme end of the economic and social hierarchy. The only thing that might endanger their position is if society collapses. Prepping is sort of an insurance policy against the long odds of society collapsing. All societies have collapsed and once the process starts it can happen quickly. They can devote the resources to guard against rare events, because they are already protected against other concerns (they mostly have plenty of money).
IMO, this type of behavior is the same as the bio-hacking crowd trying to beat aging / maximize health. They have everything else covered, so they move out further-and-further on the tail of their perceived threat.
"Of course I will be in a bunker community in Omaha" when actually they are in the middle of the Pacific on an island owned by a series of shell companies..
They already anticipate maximum violence and chaos, I don't think they fear non-prepped mobs hunting them based on an old news article from the non-existent internet. I am not a prepper, but I get the allure. I just need the money :)
I'm thinking more that doomsday preppers who are not vastly wealthy might keep an eye on which wealthy preppers might have well-stocked bunkers to raid in the event.
Back in 2016 I followed Justin Kan on Snapchat and he used to hang out with Steve Huffman on his stories.
I recall a few particular snap stories where they went out to Justin's new house and were shooting guns, throwing axes and generally doing fun outdoor stuff. I do seem to recall at some point there was talk about survivalist stuff in those snaps.
I've done quite a lot of survival training with the US Government and have been in places where people lived by those skills daily. I have to say that the majority of what these guys are doing, and what most "rich guy" survivalists do, as indicated by this story, is mostly worthless. Especially long term.
There's a hat tip to the most important part, forming groups and all the rest of the community building work, which is not inappropriate, but it's missing the point where you basically do that now with a diverse set of people - not just your rich friends - which is actually a sustainable strategy.
There's a lot to nitpick here but I guess the most interesting thing to me is that, for all their wealth, access and smarts, none of these people seem to actually be trying to solve the systematic and endemic problems which would soften the blow of a major existential risk.
In that sense Levchin and Johnson are 100% on the money here with investing in structural improvement, not some temporary escape plan that doesn't survive first contact with a handful of real actual killers.
I agree and it makes me sad. I always say: imagine all these smart people currently working on “stupid” business problems would start solving the real issues we have. In my view we’re investing too little brain power into these. And even though Musk is a bit of a weird fellow I think he’s doing that: using his connections to gather huge sums to solve some existential problems.
BTW: I watched those snapchat stories too. Mark Suster had good ones as well
> for all their wealth, access and smarts, none of these people seem to actually be trying to solve the systematic and endemic problems which would soften the blow of a major existential risk
They may be. This is just a silly hobby to bond over. Sort of like zombie apocalypse preppers. The few that are serious aren’t doing press interviews.
There's a lot to nitpick here but I guess the most interesting thing to me is that, for all their wealth, access and smarts, none of these people seem to actually be trying to solve the systematic and endemic problems which would soften the blow of a major existential risk.
When the best and brightest of a society are heading for the hills, that's a sign problems are coming. It's not that just they may have concrete reasons to do this but it seems like the society itself by this fact has lost the cohesion that would prevent disaster. And if powerful people don't imagine themselves are the protectors of the common good, who does? etc.
Of course, this situation is a bit of a self-fulling prophecy.
You could also ask the question what they are protecting themselves from.
Maybe they expect at some point that the masses will no longer want to keep paying taxes an lose money, while the rich have all the means to circumvent taxes and leverage their wealth.
I don't see the breaking point yet, but there is definitely a breaking point.
capital gains taxes represent less than 10% of total revenue [0] raised by the IRS. sure the rates can be raised, but is that going to make a meaningful dent?
> I've done quite a lot of survival training with the US Government and have been in places where people lived by those skills daily. I have to say that the majority of what these guys are doing, and what most "rich guy" survivalists do, as indicated by this story, is mostly worthless. Especially long term.
Exactly. Because eventually the diesel gas for the generators runs out so that your water filters don't work anymore. What do you do? Can these people dig a fountain without being buried alive during the process of digging? Can they tell where to dig? Do they know how to make a chariot/waggon for when their truck won't work anymore? (remember, you're out of gas). Do they know how to raise horses/cows?
First thing I notice in the article...(prob) an ex-military man with automatic weapons serving as a guard. In a doomsday scenario he will, eventually, kill or enslave all those nerdy guys that paid a fortune to seeking shelter there.
But then you have everything else and buying these things are a drop in the bucket. Makes sense even if it has a very small chance of happening. What's an extra billion going to do to Steve Ballmer life? Nothing. Money after a while loses value, living is another matter.
Douglas Rushkoff had a podcast where he talked about being paid by these guys to come up with ways to keep their armed guards from turning on them. The billionaires suggested shocker collars (maybe even with explosives) and controlling the food supply by a combination lock.
>>and controlling the food supply by a combination lock.
And who will have the keys? Probably better dying once than dying every day for a year or two :). These "friends" will turn on each other and plot to exclude x today and then team with x to exclude z. Back millions of years ago! All layers of civilization stripped away, killing your ex-co founder so food lasts a little longer.
You're better off, IMO, buying land somewhere far, far away in USA, and stock it with weapons and food. Weapons might be an issue (state laws) but with pocket change they can buy freeze dried food for 30 years. You have plenty of land and why not stock it with some seeds. Don't tell anyone, have plans to go there with no one but family. Stay low for a while, then peek out little by little. Gold, silver, food, weapons, water supplies /plans and live under the radar. No sign of life.
Guns for hunting are fine. Guns for protection from people are not nearly as useful as gun sellers say. In a crisis, people don’t turn into ravenous hordes, instead they ban together and help each other. Again, and again this shows up across times and cultures.
OK, I understand the angry, hungry hordes. But if you're far away in NM or Idaho you might not experience that.
Still, better to have the guns than not have them. If you have them, you get to decide. If they're a 200 people rushing you're toast, but if it's a small group you have a chance.
Plus you decide the hiding place /bunker, if it's seen from far away or not.
Gold and silver...the idea is that people might start trade eventually and other than tools /guns gold and silver it is.
My point is that that angry hungry hordes don't occur anywhere.
The galaxy brain trading commodity from the prepper forums is "balistic wampum", which is just a fancy way of saying "bullets", specifically bullets in common calibers. It's galaxy brain because these same forums are talking about how you need 5 different guns to protect yourself from the ravenous cannibal that used to be your neighbor. So who are you going to trade with? That's right, the ravenous cannibal that used to be your neighbor!
If society really does collapse, if they can survive for the first 6 months, there will be a lot fewer people to deal with, and they may be able to gain some power through trade, assuming they have enough manpower to protect their supplies.
It wouldn't be hard for a wealthy person to stockpile years worth of food so as long as they can stay out of site, they could stay holed up for years until the big die-off is over and some semblance of order is restored. Of course, finding a place in the new order is not guaranteed.
Perhaps YC’s Sam can chime in with his reasoning of prepping a loaded gun, and private jet to New Zealand.[0]
Also, if he could chime in with any advice he has to make sure that the hired armed guards don’t turn on him. Perhaps disciplinary collars or controlling the food supply?[1]
I cannot fathom the logic here. Movers and shakers who shape the world pissing away resources on some kind of personal "insurance" if everything goes to hell instead of investing in making sure things don't go to hell.
If they put half as much time, money, thought and effort into fixing some of the glaring boils on the butt of the world, they could stop metaphorically sucking their billion dollar thumbs this way.
There is plenty of evidence that a lot of the financial distress in the US of the masses is rooted in a lack of genuinely affordable housing -- and, no, I don't mean poverty housing. In 2010, an architect coined the term "missing middle housing" to describe middle class housing historically widely available in walkable urban neighborhoods that we have largely zoned out of existence. In the last roughly fifty years, we've torn down a million SRO's in this country.
Health care. We need a single payer system. The ACA is not a great solution. It was just the most politically viable. Frankly, that sucks.
This country already has a system where you flash an ID and get care and there is minimal paperwork and almost no billing. It's well-established and well-developed, but it only serves military members, retirees and their dependents. We don't need to look to other countries and wonder how they do "free" medical care. We have a system on US soil doing that.
Research shows that proper medical coverage helps reduce homelessness. If you provide proper medical coverage and make appropriate housing available to the masses at a reasonable cost, then we can stop living in dread of the collapse of civilization.
I blog, but I have no audience and can get no traction. If rich guys in SV propose ridiculous solutions, like UBI, they get interviews and yadda and everyone takes it seriously, though they aren't actually particularly qualified to propose some solution and it looks to me like BS preening. I feel like if I say too much on such subjects, I risk being banned from HN because I'm just a woman, I'm quite poor and I was homeless for years and yadda. If rich people who haven't actually studied it say something, it's charity or kindness of some nonsense like that. I've actually studied this stuff, but if I say something, it's "political" because I'm not the right kind of people and Hacker News eschews politics.
I've redacted multiple paragraphs of "Doreen is finally snapping after 9.5 years of being essentially shunned and yadda."
Could someone kindly tell me where and how I can successfully get an audience and some kind of engagement, in spite of being the wrong gender and the wrong socioeconomic class? I would be happy to just go the fuck away and leave you folks alone who clearly want nothing to do with me if I could find some means to get engagement elsewhere.
I find your argument compelling, and IMO you should not be scared to get banned from HN for that kind of comment. It‘s actually in line with many other comments here.
I too feel that there are not enough women commenting here. The discussions would be more complete and interesting if that wasn’t the case. We obviously only get a half of the picture without female participation.
It’s offtopic, but since you asked for it. Being highly controversial/polarizing does often help growing an audience, I‘ve seen this time and again. I don’t know how long you have been doing what you are doing now, but I heard growing an audience for a YT channel/blog/etc takes a couple of years of continuous effort, posting as much as possible. I mean, pewdiepie (whatever one thinks about him) uploads every single day.
Being highly controversial/polarizing does often help growing an audience,
Yeah, I keep hearing that. That hasn't worked for me. I get three things out of it:
1. Banned from multiple forums.
2. All the utter and complete loonies who think I can fix them or will be their one true love cyberstalk me but won't fucking admit it, so it doesn't even get my stuff promoted.
3. I've spent years living in fear of being literally locked up in an insane asylum and thereby killed, like Semmelweis, because the most controversial detail about me is that I have atypical cystic fibrosis and I'm drug free. It's managed with diet and lifestyle, so obviously, I'm insane and making shit up. A former homemaker can't possibly have solved a problem that all the fucking elite MALE doctors and scientist of the planet can't solve, no. Clearly.
Among other things, I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to stop being a train wreck waiting to happen.
I'm really not interested in growing an audience of people getting out the popcorn to watch the lunatic entertain them with her nutty tirades. We can listen to billionaires do that. I'd like a fucking middle class life and to be taken seriously, which is obviously just asking way the fuck too much of the goddamn world.
Anyway, I know that doesn't sound like gratitude. I do actually appreciate you replying. But, unfortunately, no, being controversial is not some means for me, personally, to grow an audience and make money. It's just not.
Well, as Audioslave said, be yourself is all that you can do. Everybody has talents that bring value to society. Have you considered that the type of job you are trying to create for yourself is not the right one for you?
The world is going to hell in a hand basket. Millionaires and billionaires are taking up the thumb sucking hobby of prepping for the apocalypse.
No one else seems to have answers. I'm supposed to say not my problem and go wait tables or look for a rich husband to support me because the world doesn't want to hear solutions from a woman or something?
So what are you trying to say here? Only men are allowed to dream big? Women should just plan to remain barefoot and pregnant and not get all uppity and imagine they can do anything of real value in the world?
Or are you going to say only currently rich people can dream big. Currently poor people should just stay "humble" and accept their lot in life and not complain too loudly?
Or some other dismissive justification as to why I should just accept that no one should listen to me, never mind that I have six years of college and have spent a lot of time studying such issues?
A person with money can get an audience regardless of gender, while a person without money will be ignored regardless of gender. It like the song, "money don't talk, it swears". To quote a professor in biology, neurology and neurological science, the biggest mistake a individual can do is to be born in the wrong socioeconomic class. If I know the trick for a person in the wrong socioeconomic class to get a massive audience and engagement, in spite of being male, I would change so much in the world. Sadly I don't, which is a bit depressing to be saying at this time of the year.
But I do find some comfort that socioeconomic status is only relative. A person that is rich, or a person where everyone else beside them is poor, has the same socioeconomic status. They get the same audience, same engagement, same health benefit and social power. If there were a way to damping the perceived social status signals that people use, we could in theory create a online space which socioeconomic class had no effect. Alternative we could hope that culture would reduce how we grant social status, but that political fight had its prime around 50 years ago and been replaced by more tribal themes like gender. I really wish the discussion would go back and focus on those issues you brought up in the first 50% of the comment, ie health care, housing and food which given the Maslow's hierarchy has a very large effect on the stability of nations.
I have six years of college. I come from a secure family background that was more upper class than I realized. I thought my family was a bunch of poor working class stiffs.
My mother's mother came from a low level German noble family. They sold the title when the family fell on hard times.
I'm pretty damn upper class culturally. I'm just broke, in part because "no girls allowed in the old boys club." So I can't get access to the kind of information that helps men succeed.
I was basically a dilettante and didn't know it. There are plenty of "self made" men on HN. They don't have any trouble translating interest in their comments on HN into traffic for their projects.
I can't do the same. After more than nine years here, I know exactly one person from HN who is willing to talk to me regularly and he's currently banned. He can't play by the rules, which is part of why he's willing to talk to me: he also doesn't abide by the rule of "no girls allowed" and "oh, my god, what if people think exchanging emails equals some kind of internet affair???????!!!"
So anyone whose actually socially acceptable is incapable of treating my like anything but a piece of ass who should be seen and not heard, and preferably seen in something sexy. Otherwise, STFU, no one wants to hear what a woman thinks, basically.
Feeling upper class culturally is nice and all, and drawing from the studies people done on stress management it could be very beneficially, but in the end if a person is dirt poor then that is their social economical class.
College is great, but here in Sweden anyone with the intellect can study for about as long they want to endure minimal income from the state, staying at a one room apartment and cook and eat the cheapest food. There are plenty of people here who been at college for 10+ years and have nothing to their name in terms of power and wealth. Because the state pay for college being in college don't convey any implied wealth. In Swedish culture, staying a long time in college can imply low social economic status.
The "self made man" is a myth. Economist, sociologists, and many other in other fields have reach that conclusion. Wealth and luck always pops up as the correlating traits to more wealth and influence. With wealth you can meet and get in contact with other people with wealth. With luck you can raise money. With money you can survive the eventual bad luck. It all goes around in that circle until you either end up in top or fall out.
You have 14k karma and I got 10k karma. I don't have 71% of that one person from HN that you got. No job offerings, no "social network" I can use to get attention for my projects, no followers or anything like it. My average karma score on comments is somewhere between 1 and 3. Life of a man is to be treated as unwanted unless you got money and power, otherwise no one want to even acknowledge your existence, or worse see you as a threat. Does that sound like the kind of thing that helps men exclusively succeed?
but in the end if a person is dirt poor then that is their social economical class.
If money alone determined "socioeconomic class," we wouldn't include that "socio" part in the expression. There are many more factors than current income to such things and your statement is basically just a kind of prejudice wrapped up in ignorance.
My other handle has a hair over 25k karma. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard. There absolutely are men on the leaderboard who have successfully used HN to enhance their career and their finances. Listening to this kind of dismissive crap from people on HN gets tiresome.
I suspect then we have two different view on how socioeconomic class came to be a scientific term and tool.
From what I have studied and learned through my years in college and afterward is that when predictive models are made, it is not enough to just look at income. Location, education and occupation also play as a factor. However the reason why they do so is relevant, and rather than assuming they exist as a matter of nature I follow the reasoning behind it. If you want to call that ignorance then that says more about you than me.
It just happens that studying at a location where a lot of rich people study is great correlation to wealth. Living where rich people live is similar great. Having a occupation which correlated to high income is great even if one do not have high income, as is an occupation which impact the wealth of others. All those are great proxies to wealth and power, which can result in people perceiving a person as being more wealthy.
HN karma do not automatically resulted in career and financial success. It no more does that than reddit points. Networking can be fruitful but it is very context dependent. HN scores are not. If you want to believe it is all a conspiracy against women then do so, but this is the reason why I agree with 90% of your original post that cover the poverty and the importance of housing, but strongly disagree when it jumps into ranting about how you get ignored "because I'm just a woman". You have a ally in the first part, but I suspect the disagreement over the remaining 10% means you see it as opposition?
Why would a wealthy person trust something like the Survival Condo Project? Once SHTF and society collapses and rule of law goes away, what's to keep the armed guards from taking over and eliminating their formerly wealthy clients (or just locking the place down and refusing to let anyone in)?
Why bother keeping a bunch of old (formerly) rich men around when the guards can just get rid of them and take their share of the supplies to help ensure the survival of their own families and friends?
> Why bother keeping a bunch of old (formerly) rich men around when the guards can just get rid of them and take their share of the supplies to help ensure the survival of their own families and friends?
Nothing, really. Back when Western society was in a state of feudal anarchy (mostly after the dissolution of the Carolingian empire and up to the late 1100s) the monied people (which meant mostly the traders) had no power at all, in the words of Adalberon, bishop of Laon [1], "the whole edifice of mankind" was supported by "oratores, bellatores, laboratores", that is by the clergy ("oratores"), by the "warriors", i.e. nobles who could go to war at any one moment, and by the common people, the peasants, the people doing the actual work. The monied people were nowhere to be seen and treated quote contemptuously by the "oratores" and the "bellatores".
When society falls apart the rich won’t have anything that the poor won’t. The people who built these bunkers for the super rich are going to put a 9mm in the back of their head and invite their brother Steve to take the owners spot. “Combination locks on the food supply?” Waterboard the guy till he gives us the combo, then kill him.
This could be solved with resource access requiring multiparty agreement, like the Bitcoin multisignature wallets: the location that contains the food and water for a week requires permission from 2 parties that are located in 2 separate geographical locations
Why would anyone assume the risk to put a gun to your head when they know you can't give them what they want just by yourself? With blockchain you can prove them that's the case. They would have to also put a gun to the head of the cosigner(s) in order to get it.
I am not aware of any other mechanism similar to BTCs multisig that doesn't require a trusted third party.
> But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.
Rich people being paranoid and preparing for disasters is not exactly a new thing. I guess we are supposed to believe that the affluent are somehow more sane than the rest of us.
For the non U.S. readers: worry not, my friends.
Doomsday apparently only means “heavy social unrest or natural disaster in the coastal United States of America”.
You can't prepare for the complete collapse of civilization.
Even the Survivalists who go out with "nothing" and build their shelters, start their own fires, hunt their food, they still need backpacks to carry their gear. They still need gear to carry, like saws, axes, fishing poles, knives. They still need clothes to wear. They still depend on the infrastructure of society in myriad ways.
It's a guide written by the author of american fuzzy lop (afl), and while it touches on end-of-civilization, guns-n-ammo prep, much of it is about practical preparedness for more likely disasters, such as a prolonged and widespread power outage; and how to reduce the risk of financial ruin or serious injury.
84 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadIt’s fun to prepare, and to think of every scenario no matter how outlandish, and it’s fun to make people think you are super serious about something that seems ridiculous to them.
It is like a game where you collect as many resources and skills to increase your survival score as much as possible.
Reading this article, and remembering that interview, made me realize that no one can really know what the collapse of civilization will look like, but it is always good to be prepared with a two dimensional array or a good GUI library.
Mixing metaphors has never been my strong suit though...
I’m not sure Sillicon Valley billionaire can do much too save the earth from collapsing.
It’s not about rich changing the world to save it, it’s about the world monetary system , capitalism and thermo-industrial economy that has climax and is now going to end.
Hence , every society has cycles. Roman era disappeared, Vikings disappeared etc... this society will disappear as well and let something new come.
Kings die every decade or two. States expand and shrink and occasionally disappear. But civilizations and societies mostly stay and develop.
there is a very good argument to be made that elon musk pushed the EV industry forward. similarly, i think tech elite can shape society.
another example: look at the enormous influence warren buffett has had on the asset management industry.
i think SV billionaires could definitely make a dent in things like income inequality, if they focused on it
At the extreme, if a small band forms an army, it doesn’t matter how well armed and fortified a single family is; the army is taking them down.
Double stacked D&H mags with no pulls, an Anderson “poverty pony” AR, BUIS behind a 1.5x ACOG on an 18” with a cheap non-QD Mount (iron sights with a magnified optic in between doesn’t work)... I’m sure there is more.
But... for the Steve Huffman and similar types, they’ll just see what they want. The real joke would be Randy and his $999 AR (with optic) will just rob Steve-types blind the second there is a without rule of law scenario.
I've always wondered how they'd prevent that. How does Randy not shoot Steve or take him hostage and then bring his own family into the compound.
I am sure there are a few schemes, ranging from benign like promise a huge payday at the end, lots of land, resources, power whatever to more sinister ones, like hire another Randy (possible a lot more than one) to watch the first one if he (she) tries to do something.
https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef...
IMO, this type of behavior is the same as the bio-hacking crowd trying to beat aging / maximize health. They have everything else covered, so they move out further-and-further on the tail of their perceived threat.
"Of course I will be in a bunker community in Omaha" when actually they are in the middle of the Pacific on an island owned by a series of shell companies..
I recall a few particular snap stories where they went out to Justin's new house and were shooting guns, throwing axes and generally doing fun outdoor stuff. I do seem to recall at some point there was talk about survivalist stuff in those snaps.
I've done quite a lot of survival training with the US Government and have been in places where people lived by those skills daily. I have to say that the majority of what these guys are doing, and what most "rich guy" survivalists do, as indicated by this story, is mostly worthless. Especially long term.
There's a hat tip to the most important part, forming groups and all the rest of the community building work, which is not inappropriate, but it's missing the point where you basically do that now with a diverse set of people - not just your rich friends - which is actually a sustainable strategy.
There's a lot to nitpick here but I guess the most interesting thing to me is that, for all their wealth, access and smarts, none of these people seem to actually be trying to solve the systematic and endemic problems which would soften the blow of a major existential risk.
In that sense Levchin and Johnson are 100% on the money here with investing in structural improvement, not some temporary escape plan that doesn't survive first contact with a handful of real actual killers.
BTW: I watched those snapchat stories too. Mark Suster had good ones as well
They may be. This is just a silly hobby to bond over. Sort of like zombie apocalypse preppers. The few that are serious aren’t doing press interviews.
When the best and brightest of a society are heading for the hills, that's a sign problems are coming. It's not that just they may have concrete reasons to do this but it seems like the society itself by this fact has lost the cohesion that would prevent disaster. And if powerful people don't imagine themselves are the protectors of the common good, who does? etc.
Of course, this situation is a bit of a self-fulling prophecy.
Maybe they expect at some point that the masses will no longer want to keep paying taxes an lose money, while the rich have all the means to circumvent taxes and leverage their wealth.
I don't see the breaking point yet, but there is definitely a breaking point.
and did you know that the bottom 50% paid 2.75%?
would dropping that 2.75% down to zero (which sounds fine to me) avert the breaking point?
[0] https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170201145744/FF540-1.png
If you know how taxes work, and know how multinationals do taxes, you know enough.
[0] https://pocketsense.com/percent-irs-revenue-comes-capital-ga...
Exactly. Because eventually the diesel gas for the generators runs out so that your water filters don't work anymore. What do you do? Can these people dig a fountain without being buried alive during the process of digging? Can they tell where to dig? Do they know how to make a chariot/waggon for when their truck won't work anymore? (remember, you're out of gas). Do they know how to raise horses/cows?
But then you have everything else and buying these things are a drop in the bucket. Makes sense even if it has a very small chance of happening. What's an extra billion going to do to Steve Ballmer life? Nothing. Money after a while loses value, living is another matter.
https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef...
And who will have the keys? Probably better dying once than dying every day for a year or two :). These "friends" will turn on each other and plot to exclude x today and then team with x to exclude z. Back millions of years ago! All layers of civilization stripped away, killing your ex-co founder so food lasts a little longer.
You're better off, IMO, buying land somewhere far, far away in USA, and stock it with weapons and food. Weapons might be an issue (state laws) but with pocket change they can buy freeze dried food for 30 years. You have plenty of land and why not stock it with some seeds. Don't tell anyone, have plans to go there with no one but family. Stay low for a while, then peek out little by little. Gold, silver, food, weapons, water supplies /plans and live under the radar. No sign of life.
Guns for hunting are fine. Guns for protection from people are not nearly as useful as gun sellers say. In a crisis, people don’t turn into ravenous hordes, instead they ban together and help each other. Again, and again this shows up across times and cultures.
Still, better to have the guns than not have them. If you have them, you get to decide. If they're a 200 people rushing you're toast, but if it's a small group you have a chance. Plus you decide the hiding place /bunker, if it's seen from far away or not.
Gold and silver...the idea is that people might start trade eventually and other than tools /guns gold and silver it is.
The galaxy brain trading commodity from the prepper forums is "balistic wampum", which is just a fancy way of saying "bullets", specifically bullets in common calibers. It's galaxy brain because these same forums are talking about how you need 5 different guns to protect yourself from the ravenous cannibal that used to be your neighbor. So who are you going to trade with? That's right, the ravenous cannibal that used to be your neighbor!
If they are in that position it means the rule of law has eroded and anarchy is in place.
The first thing pissed off people do is hang their leaders and the children of the rich.
Rightfully so, nothing more than parasites on our human race, take their wealth and redistribute it to those in need.
It wouldn't be hard for a wealthy person to stockpile years worth of food so as long as they can stay out of site, they could stay holed up for years until the big die-off is over and some semblance of order is restored. Of course, finding a place in the new order is not guaranteed.
Also, if he could chime in with any advice he has to make sure that the hired armed guards don’t turn on him. Perhaps disciplinary collars or controlling the food supply?[1]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-val...
[1] https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef...
If they put half as much time, money, thought and effort into fixing some of the glaring boils on the butt of the world, they could stop metaphorically sucking their billion dollar thumbs this way.
There is plenty of evidence that a lot of the financial distress in the US of the masses is rooted in a lack of genuinely affordable housing -- and, no, I don't mean poverty housing. In 2010, an architect coined the term "missing middle housing" to describe middle class housing historically widely available in walkable urban neighborhoods that we have largely zoned out of existence. In the last roughly fifty years, we've torn down a million SRO's in this country.
Health care. We need a single payer system. The ACA is not a great solution. It was just the most politically viable. Frankly, that sucks.
This country already has a system where you flash an ID and get care and there is minimal paperwork and almost no billing. It's well-established and well-developed, but it only serves military members, retirees and their dependents. We don't need to look to other countries and wonder how they do "free" medical care. We have a system on US soil doing that.
Research shows that proper medical coverage helps reduce homelessness. If you provide proper medical coverage and make appropriate housing available to the masses at a reasonable cost, then we can stop living in dread of the collapse of civilization.
I blog, but I have no audience and can get no traction. If rich guys in SV propose ridiculous solutions, like UBI, they get interviews and yadda and everyone takes it seriously, though they aren't actually particularly qualified to propose some solution and it looks to me like BS preening. I feel like if I say too much on such subjects, I risk being banned from HN because I'm just a woman, I'm quite poor and I was homeless for years and yadda. If rich people who haven't actually studied it say something, it's charity or kindness of some nonsense like that. I've actually studied this stuff, but if I say something, it's "political" because I'm not the right kind of people and Hacker News eschews politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-missing...
I've redacted multiple paragraphs of "Doreen is finally snapping after 9.5 years of being essentially shunned and yadda."
Could someone kindly tell me where and how I can successfully get an audience and some kind of engagement, in spite of being the wrong gender and the wrong socioeconomic class? I would be happy to just go the fuck away and leave you folks alone who clearly want nothing to do with me if I could find some means to get engagement elsewhere.
Thanks.
I too feel that there are not enough women commenting here. The discussions would be more complete and interesting if that wasn’t the case. We obviously only get a half of the picture without female participation.
It’s offtopic, but since you asked for it. Being highly controversial/polarizing does often help growing an audience, I‘ve seen this time and again. I don’t know how long you have been doing what you are doing now, but I heard growing an audience for a YT channel/blog/etc takes a couple of years of continuous effort, posting as much as possible. I mean, pewdiepie (whatever one thinks about him) uploads every single day.
Yeah, I keep hearing that. That hasn't worked for me. I get three things out of it:
1. Banned from multiple forums.
2. All the utter and complete loonies who think I can fix them or will be their one true love cyberstalk me but won't fucking admit it, so it doesn't even get my stuff promoted.
3. I've spent years living in fear of being literally locked up in an insane asylum and thereby killed, like Semmelweis, because the most controversial detail about me is that I have atypical cystic fibrosis and I'm drug free. It's managed with diet and lifestyle, so obviously, I'm insane and making shit up. A former homemaker can't possibly have solved a problem that all the fucking elite MALE doctors and scientist of the planet can't solve, no. Clearly.
Among other things, I've spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to stop being a train wreck waiting to happen.
I'm really not interested in growing an audience of people getting out the popcorn to watch the lunatic entertain them with her nutty tirades. We can listen to billionaires do that. I'd like a fucking middle class life and to be taken seriously, which is obviously just asking way the fuck too much of the goddamn world.
Anyway, I know that doesn't sound like gratitude. I do actually appreciate you replying. But, unfortunately, no, being controversial is not some means for me, personally, to grow an audience and make money. It's just not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
No one else seems to have answers. I'm supposed to say not my problem and go wait tables or look for a rich husband to support me because the world doesn't want to hear solutions from a woman or something?
Or are you going to say only currently rich people can dream big. Currently poor people should just stay "humble" and accept their lot in life and not complain too loudly?
Or some other dismissive justification as to why I should just accept that no one should listen to me, never mind that I have six years of college and have spent a lot of time studying such issues?
But I do find some comfort that socioeconomic status is only relative. A person that is rich, or a person where everyone else beside them is poor, has the same socioeconomic status. They get the same audience, same engagement, same health benefit and social power. If there were a way to damping the perceived social status signals that people use, we could in theory create a online space which socioeconomic class had no effect. Alternative we could hope that culture would reduce how we grant social status, but that political fight had its prime around 50 years ago and been replaced by more tribal themes like gender. I really wish the discussion would go back and focus on those issues you brought up in the first 50% of the comment, ie health care, housing and food which given the Maslow's hierarchy has a very large effect on the stability of nations.
My mother's mother came from a low level German noble family. They sold the title when the family fell on hard times.
I'm pretty damn upper class culturally. I'm just broke, in part because "no girls allowed in the old boys club." So I can't get access to the kind of information that helps men succeed.
I was basically a dilettante and didn't know it. There are plenty of "self made" men on HN. They don't have any trouble translating interest in their comments on HN into traffic for their projects.
I can't do the same. After more than nine years here, I know exactly one person from HN who is willing to talk to me regularly and he's currently banned. He can't play by the rules, which is part of why he's willing to talk to me: he also doesn't abide by the rule of "no girls allowed" and "oh, my god, what if people think exchanging emails equals some kind of internet affair???????!!!"
So anyone whose actually socially acceptable is incapable of treating my like anything but a piece of ass who should be seen and not heard, and preferably seen in something sexy. Otherwise, STFU, no one wants to hear what a woman thinks, basically.
College is great, but here in Sweden anyone with the intellect can study for about as long they want to endure minimal income from the state, staying at a one room apartment and cook and eat the cheapest food. There are plenty of people here who been at college for 10+ years and have nothing to their name in terms of power and wealth. Because the state pay for college being in college don't convey any implied wealth. In Swedish culture, staying a long time in college can imply low social economic status.
The "self made man" is a myth. Economist, sociologists, and many other in other fields have reach that conclusion. Wealth and luck always pops up as the correlating traits to more wealth and influence. With wealth you can meet and get in contact with other people with wealth. With luck you can raise money. With money you can survive the eventual bad luck. It all goes around in that circle until you either end up in top or fall out.
You have 14k karma and I got 10k karma. I don't have 71% of that one person from HN that you got. No job offerings, no "social network" I can use to get attention for my projects, no followers or anything like it. My average karma score on comments is somewhere between 1 and 3. Life of a man is to be treated as unwanted unless you got money and power, otherwise no one want to even acknowledge your existence, or worse see you as a threat. Does that sound like the kind of thing that helps men exclusively succeed?
If money alone determined "socioeconomic class," we wouldn't include that "socio" part in the expression. There are many more factors than current income to such things and your statement is basically just a kind of prejudice wrapped up in ignorance.
My other handle has a hair over 25k karma. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard. There absolutely are men on the leaderboard who have successfully used HN to enhance their career and their finances. Listening to this kind of dismissive crap from people on HN gets tiresome.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18512553
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466918
From what I have studied and learned through my years in college and afterward is that when predictive models are made, it is not enough to just look at income. Location, education and occupation also play as a factor. However the reason why they do so is relevant, and rather than assuming they exist as a matter of nature I follow the reasoning behind it. If you want to call that ignorance then that says more about you than me.
It just happens that studying at a location where a lot of rich people study is great correlation to wealth. Living where rich people live is similar great. Having a occupation which correlated to high income is great even if one do not have high income, as is an occupation which impact the wealth of others. All those are great proxies to wealth and power, which can result in people perceiving a person as being more wealthy.
HN karma do not automatically resulted in career and financial success. It no more does that than reddit points. Networking can be fruitful but it is very context dependent. HN scores are not. If you want to believe it is all a conspiracy against women then do so, but this is the reason why I agree with 90% of your original post that cover the poverty and the importance of housing, but strongly disagree when it jumps into ranting about how you get ignored "because I'm just a woman". You have a ally in the first part, but I suspect the disagreement over the remaining 10% means you see it as opposition?
Why bother keeping a bunch of old (formerly) rich men around when the guards can just get rid of them and take their share of the supplies to help ensure the survival of their own families and friends?
Nothing, really. Back when Western society was in a state of feudal anarchy (mostly after the dissolution of the Carolingian empire and up to the late 1100s) the monied people (which meant mostly the traders) had no power at all, in the words of Adalberon, bishop of Laon [1], "the whole edifice of mankind" was supported by "oratores, bellatores, laboratores", that is by the clergy ("oratores"), by the "warriors", i.e. nobles who could go to war at any one moment, and by the common people, the peasants, the people doing the actual work. The monied people were nowhere to be seen and treated quote contemptuously by the "oratores" and the "bellatores".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalberon_(bishop_of_Laon)
I am not aware of any other mechanism similar to BTCs multisig that doesn't require a trusted third party.
Rich people being paranoid and preparing for disasters is not exactly a new thing. I guess we are supposed to believe that the affluent are somehow more sane than the rest of us.
That said, Ted Nugent called and he still wants his shirt back.
Even the Survivalists who go out with "nothing" and build their shelters, start their own fires, hunt their food, they still need backpacks to carry their gear. They still need gear to carry, like saws, axes, fishing poles, knives. They still need clothes to wear. They still depend on the infrastructure of society in myriad ways.
It's a guide written by the author of american fuzzy lop (afl), and while it touches on end-of-civilization, guns-n-ammo prep, much of it is about practical preparedness for more likely disasters, such as a prolonged and widespread power outage; and how to reduce the risk of financial ruin or serious injury.