What? I mean why are we out here in this canyon.
If y’all have played Bioshock… Rapture was a libertarian fever dream. No taxes, no regulations, everyone free to do whatever they want.
Look how that turned out.
(also I never really understood how that could even work, even a regular city needs constant maintenance, one under the sea, exponentially more so. Building it alone costs a fortune, maintaining it too, and as a closed ecosystem, and you either need to fund the maintenance somehow, or use slaves - admittedly, Big Daddies were indeed slaves but that came later on. Without taxes, nobody cleans the common areas, nobody fixes the ventilation, broken glass, etc., because there’s no money pool to pay the workers from, buy the raw resources and tools from, and so on)
Well, in theory the poorest members of society will work hard in exchange for money from the rich, then use that money to become rich themselves.
In practice, you either get slavery or bears.
I mean, have you heard of the bear infestation from a libertarian take-over in Vermont? Yeah, it turns out bears love the trash that libertarians were neglecting on their properties.
Nice to see some philosoraptor.
They know that the reality is they could never truly defend themselves if the tide turned. I have a theory that the reason they are ramping up so rapidly now is they see the writing on the wall and are behaving like a cornered animal. They’ve already done too much to be forgiven so the only option is to accelerate their end goal even though its clearly undercooked.
The smartest thing they can do is to nationalize their companies into any applicable public utilities. Liquidate the rest and set up some sort of charitable trust or some nonprofit that will help sort funds into various social programs.
Then slink off and live off the wealth they stole. Bar them and their family from starting new business endeavors for 100 years.
They think they will start a new kingdom with them as a ruler.
What it means is they are gonna get murdered in a bunker.
Also important to remember that the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is about a billion dollars.
https://futurism.com/future-society/apocalypse-compound-fails-wealthy-residents-turn-on-each-other
You know things have gotten bad when even the vaults from Fallout seem more egalitarian…
Seriously! I remember some story about how they brought out a psychologist to contemplate how to control their population. He basically said “just be friends with them” and they said “Na, what about bomb collars?”.
They really think the legal protections they’ve enjoyed their whole life, will extend once there are no more laws. They are trying to destroy the only thing protecting them, the system.
Caesar Speedrun
Veni Vidi Vhoopsiedoodle
They’re building very nice bunkers for their security teams.
Yes, I did play Bioshock
I am currently mid-playthough and there is one Andrew Ryan quote that caught my attention:
On the surface, the Parasite expects the doctor to heal them for free, the farmer to feed them out of charity. How little they differ from the pervert who prowls the streets, looking for a victim he can ravish for his grotesque amusement.
https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/Parasite_Expectations
It reminds me of a significantly more recent real life Facebook group called “Communists are just economic incels”. I’d say Bioshock predicted this, but this kind of bad take was probably around for a long time.
There was a theory (disputed and in some cases discredited) that basically said this is why most historical empires started around a river surrounded by desert. Their subjects were more willing to put up with oppression because going somewhere else was hard.
My first thought is that that kind of location also makes invading harder. For thousands of years, armies had to acquire most of their provisions on the road because logistics are hard when you’re marching thousands of people on foot, and “acquire” usually meant “steal” even on home territory.
Being invaded fucking sucks, so it’s quite possible that a lot of people were willing to trade personal liberty for security.
It’s really easy to think of examples of that, wow. I don’t fully buy it but i can see how it could be a factor in some civs.
Counterexample: Rome, most European countries in fact, plenty of Asian countries which started in fertile lands etc
Yeah,.not denying it. Just saying, could be a factor in some cases.
Exactly. Who’s gonna volunteer to be the servant class for the journey and beyond? Your children would be born into slavery.
Outer Worlds
To be fair, they can already do whatever they want, consequence free, in the continental US. The Mars exploration and ocean bases may just be honest “let’s do cool science fiction shit (and profit off government contracts to do so)”.
That would make it real easy to claim that they are drug traffickers and blow them up without any due process. Apparently it’s perfectly legal.
Might as well call it Epstein Island
That’s because of the implication
This is why Musk and co are trying to speedrun robot development.
As long as their separation fantasies turn out like the Führerbunker for everyone inside, I’m all for it.
first thing I thought about when bezos did his we’re gonna move workers to space schtick.
