Category Archives: Social democracy

Worry OK; Panic not so Much

Capitalism, Conservative, Decline of the west, Social democracy

 

A friend of mine challenged what I have been saying about the super elites buying condos in a former missile silo in Kansas by suggesting it is not reasonable  to suggest that one crazy idiot buying a condo in a missile  silo does not mean we are doomed.

 

Of course, one rich guy does not establish that we are doomed. In fact, no single act establishes that.  Even 15 crazy rich guys who have bought condos in a missile silo don’t establish that. But the accumulating actions of many people, including those “idiots,” are increasingly suggesting that western society is in a serious state of decline and perhaps even on the edge of collapse. I don’t know about you, but I am getting increasingly more pessimistic. And I am increasingly doubtful that our leaders know the way out.

 

There are also many other indices of this decline. I will be posting about some of them soon.  I know I have been going on interminably about these nuts who bought concrete condos in the former missile silo in Kansas, but I think it is interesting and significant.  These were business leaders. They were people who earned a great deal of wealth and respect. Many of them were in the financial sector or the tech sector who made fortunes.  Interestingly, it is precisely these people who panicked and starting selling their investments in the recent Silicon Valley Bank fiasco when there was no need to do so. These are the people who have now brought our financial system to the edge of collapse as a result of their unjustified fears!  All of this shows that panic is seldom a valuable tool to deal with serious problems whether it comes to buying silos or selling investments. Fear is sometimes justified; panic is never helpful.

In the US in particular, business leaders are nearly worshipped. Look at Donald Trump. I don’t know how many Americans I have met in the past 2 &1/2 months in this country who hail him as a business leader who can make the country great again. I consider him neither a great business leader nor great political leader, but many here think otherwise. Business leaders get automatic respect in America and Canada for that matter. When a group of 15 of them go so far off the mark as the condo buyers did in Kansas, it bears consideration. What is up with that?

To my mind, there are signs of the decline of western civilization all around us, but yet I admit there are also positive signs.

I am particularly encouraged by the improvement in the fortunes of the LGBTQ community in an astonishingly short time. Though I hasten to add they had to overcome the battalions of opposition from Conservatives each step of that way. Why is that? In fact, now the American conservatives seem determined to make war on transgender people who are among the most marginalized and vulnerable people in the country. They like to pick on minorities. The weaker the better.  In fact, as soon as they are not in minorities the conservatives tend to give up quickly.  I will post more on this later.

So, I don’t know whether decline or improvement will win out. We are in the midst of gigantic political changes so it is hard to predict what will happen. We will just have to wait and see, but I am worried. Not panicking, but concerned.

Things are not likely to be perfect in a Silo

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

How can you live in a former missile silo?

One problem is how to get away with the absence of windows. Can you imagine it? According to Osnos,

“The condo walls are fitted with L.E.D. “windows” that show a live video of the prairie above the silo. Owners can opt instead for pine forests or other vistas. One prospective resident from New York City wanted video of Central Park. “All four seasons, day and night,” Menosky said. “She wanted the sounds, the taxis and the honking horns.”

 

To me this sounds like virtual reality–with an emphasis on virtual. Will this be life behind these walls?  Hall has given some thought to how people will live there, but I wonder if he has given enough thought. It is ironic that these vistas are all part of the commons. I thought that was what they wanted to get away from. These are things the super-rich should have helped sustain, but many preferred to enhance their own private wealth instead. Now they want them?

According to Osnos,

“Hall [the developer of the missile silo] said the hardest part of the project was sustaining life underground. He studied how to avoid depression (add more lights), prevent cliques (rotate chores), and simulate life aboveground.”

Frankly I would not be satisfied with simulated life. Would you?  Or is even death preferable? This is particularly poignant when you consider that most (all?) life might outside the bunkers might perish.

Some survivalists have mocked Hall’s plan. They say they won’t pay. They will just attack when the time comes. Hall claimed that he and his “guards” could repel all forces. And if necessary, the guards would return fire. What will Hall to secure the loyalty of the guards. After the apocalypse won’t things start over? What will money be worth? Why won’t the guards switch sides? Who would persuade the hired armed guards to stick with supporting the rich people hunkered down?  Why would they stick with the rich? How long could people survive a siege?

Things are not likely to be perfect in a former missile silo. I know I am deeply skeptical.

 

A Survival Condo Project in Missile Silo

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Social democracy

 

 

Evan Osnos in his New Yorker article, described the Kansas landscape that Chris and I  drove through on this trip to Arizona.  He drove to a place  called the Survival Condo Project near the town of Concordia and Salina Kansas which we drove through. When he arrived, he was met by a guard dressed in camouflage holding a semiautomatic rifle.  It looked impressive. The condo project was being built inside  an underground missile silo like the one Chris and I had seen a few years ago in Green Valley Arizona. That has been turned into a museum.

The facility housed nuclear warheads from 1961 to 1965–a mere 5 years. After that the site was decommissioned and a bigger and better silo was built somewhere else. I think that site is still secret as this one had been.  The  developers were building 15 luxury condos there because the site had been built with walls so thick it was supposed to survive a nuclear attack by the Russians. The site was originally built in response to a perceived threat from the Soviet Union that was engaged in a long-standing “cold war” with the United States and its allies. The developers are led by Larry Hall the CEO of the new project. As Osnos said, “Hall has erected a defense against the fears of a new era. “It’s true relaxation for the ultra-wealthy,” he said. “They can come out here, they know there are armed guards outside. The kids can run around.”

Wow is that the best the super-rich can do? Is there not more to life than being ensconced in a concrete cocoon? Presumably its better than getting incinerated in the nuclear attack. To me that sounds horribly limited. Maybe being super-rich is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Hall developed the property for which he paid $300,000 by spending another $20,000,000 for renovations. With that he created 12 private apartments that he sold for $3 million each in the case of full floor units and $1.5 in the case of half floor units. He sold them all except for one that he decided to keep for himself.

The silos in which the apartments are located are solid.  They were built by the Army Corp of Engineers to withstand a nuclear strike.  The inside has enough food and fuel for 5 years off the grid. Of course, it will require that people raise tilapia in fish tanks and hydroponic vegetables under grow lamps and supposedly renewable power that could function indefinitely, according to Hall. I am not sure how he would accomplish that.

In a crisis more drastic measures can be expected. According to Hall,

“In a crisis, his swat-team-style trucks (“the Pit-Bull VX, armored up to fifty-caliber”) will pick up any owner within four hundred miles. Residents with private planes can land in Salina, about thirty miles away. In his view, the Army Corps did the hardest work by choosing the location. “They looked at height above sea level, the seismology of an area, how close it is to large population centers.”

 

If owners of planes can’t fly them in they will need to make arrangements for a pilot and family members of the pilot. Where would they go after flying in? That does not mean that each prepper has an individual bunker. After all, hardened bunkers are expensive and complicated to construct. The complex looked and felt like a ski condo that did not have any windows. What kind of ski condo is that? But it had a central area with pool table, stone fireplace, a kitchen, and leather couches. No TVs of course. No poor people will stick around to man the TV stations.

What will life be like without poor people to do all the manual work needed to keep the place going.  Why will the people hired by Hall as security and to do necessary tasks  continue to work for the group? How will they be paid? Where will money come from? Why won’t they just take over and kick out the rich people whose wealth will no longer have any meaning? I have a lot of questions about this project.

It sounds to me like a crazy scheme for rich people that makes no sense except to the paranoid rich. Would you invest in it?

This might be the real grand finale.

 

Over valuing private goods and undervaluing public goods

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

 

For a long time, it has been my opinion that people under value pubic goods and over value private goods. For example, good schools, hospitals, libraries, parks and many others are really important and valuable.  One of the problems with some rich people, like those who bought condos in the missile silos of Salina Kansas, was that most of these privileged people no longer recognize the benefits–the mutual benefits–provided by the commons. They have either forgotten how important they are or they never realized it.  They really believe only private goods count. Only private goods are really good. Public goods are irrelevant.  Robert Johnson who Osnos interviewed for his  New Yorker article realized  this was not the case. He said,

“If we had a more equal distribution of income, and much more money and energy going into public school systems, parks and recreation, the arts, and health care, it could take an awful lot of sting out of society. We’ve largely dismantled those things.”

 

It is difficult to discern why the privileged are so fearful. What do these ultra-wealthy people have to fear? If money does not buy happiness, surely it buys security. If one thought that, one would be wrong. As Osnos reported,

“As public institutions deteriorate, élite anxiety has emerged as a gauge of our national predicament. “Why do people who are envied for being so powerful appear to be so afraid?” Johnson asked. “What does that really tell us about our system?” He added, “It’s a very odd thing. You’re basically seeing that the people who’ve been the best at reading the tea leaves—the ones with the most resources, because that’s how they made their money—are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane.”

In other words if people valued the common good as much as they valued their own private good, there might be a lot less anxiety.  When the über rich are so fearful it really make you wonder about the stability of the system. Do they know something the rest of us don’t know? Or it that guilt poisons their perception? Or do they just not understand what is important?

Sometimes the most. important things we have are the things that we share.

 

 

A Deeper Crisis

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Social democracy, Social Justice

It is also interesting how the privileged classes have selected things to worry about.  As Evan Osnos reported in his New Yorker article:

 

“Élite anxiety cuts across political lines. Even financiers who supported Trump for President, hoping that he would cut taxes and regulations, have been unnerved at the ways his insurgent campaign seems to have hastened a collapse of respect for established institutions. Dugger said, “The media is under attack now. They wonder, Is the court system next? Do we go from ‘fake news’ to ‘fake evidence’? For people whose existence depends on enforceable contracts, this is life or death.”

 

It is also interesting how the privileged classes have selected things to worry about.  As Osnos reported

 

“Robert A. Johnson was another person that Osnos interviewed.  He saw the fear of his peers as “the symptom of a deeper crisis.”[2]  I agree with that. I too see the fear as a manifestation of fundamental unease about their place in modern society. They are unmoored and their wealth, which often is extreme wealth, is not able to fill the void. Johnson was the manager of a hedge fund. He was also the head of a think tank. He called himself “an accidental student of civic anxiety.”From my own career, I would just talk to people. More and more were saying, ‘you’ve got to have a private plane. You have to assure that the pilot’s family will be taken care of, too. They have to be on the plane.’ ”

 Johnson saw the fear of his peers as “the symptom of a deeper crisis.”  I agree with that. I too see the fear experienced by the über wealthy as a manifestation of fundamental unease about their place in modern society like those who bought condos in a concrete missile silo in Kansa. They are unmoored and their wealth, which these days often is extreme wealth, is not able to fill the void. Johnson was the manager of a hedge fund. He was also the head of a think tank. He called himself “an accidental student of civic anxiety. More and more wealthy people were telling. him, ‘you’ve got to have a private plane. You have to assure that the pilot’s family will be taken care of, too. They have to be on the plane.’ ” Escaping the apocalypse is not easy.

Osnos analyzed this situation this way,

“By January, 2015, Johnson was sounding the alarm: the tensions produced by acute income inequality were becoming so pronounced that some of the world’s wealthiest people were taking steps to protect themselves. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Johnson told the audience, “I know hedge-fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.”

Johnson is like some other wealthy people that have not entirely lost their sense of empathy or their sense of justice. Osnos described their situation this way,

“Johnson wishes that the wealthy would adopt a greater “spirit of stewardship,” an openness to policy change that could include, for instance, a more aggressive tax on inheritance. “Twenty-five hedge-fund managers make more money than all of the kindergarten teachers in America combined,” he said. “Being one of those twenty-five doesn’t feel good. I think they’ve developed a heightened sensitivity.” The gap is widening further. In December, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a new analysis, by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, which found that half of American adults have been “completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s.” Approximately a hundred and seventeen million people earn, on average, the same income that they did in 1980, while the typical income for the top one per cent has nearly tripled. That gap is comparable to the gap between average incomes in the U.S. and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the authors wrote.”

If you are the fortunate beneficiary of such largesse, it is difficult to believe that that such extreme inequality is justified. It takes a special kind hubris. Or perhaps blindness. The result is fear that some day that injustice might be rectified.

Apocalypse Insurance

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Decline of the west, Social democracy

 

There are different types of apocalypse insurance. Pascal said you should bet on Christianity. Many of the über rich, like those who purchased condos in a former Titan missile silo near Salina Kansas, believe that money can buy you anything. Everything is for sale. After all, if your own soul has been sold, everything must be for sale.

 

No one knows exactly how many wealthy Americans have bought into the fear that the west is headed towards a Russian style revolution event, but the numbers are not insignificant. Many of them see New Zealand as a refuge. It is far enough out there to satisfy them. Evan Osnos, writing about this phenomenon for the New Yorker, asked Steve Huffman the 33-year-old founder of Reddit to estimate what share of fellow Silicon Valley billionaires have acquired some level of “apocalypse insurance,” in the form of a hideaway in the U.S. or abroad.  He guessed 50%. That is pretty good chunk of the wealthy.

One of the things that scares survivalists and also that scares me is Artificial intelligence.  “The fears vary, but many worry that, as artificial intelligence takes away a growing share of jobs, there will be a backlash against Silicon Valley, America’s second-highest concentration of wealth.”  Many of them, like Huffman asked “Is the country going to turn against the wealthy? Is it going to turn against technological innovation? Is it going to turn into civil disorder?”

There is something inherently barbarous about ultra  rich people taking such extreme measures to protect themselves from hazards that their own reckless disregard for benefits to other classes has wrought. Max Levchin, a founder of Paypal and of Affirm, a lending start-up, admitted this to Osnos, when he acknowledged,

“It’s one of the few things about Silicon Valley that I actively dislike—the sense that we are superior giants who move the needle and, even if it’s our own failure, must be spared.”

It shows the deep injustice of their wealth and the deep justice of their fears! If only these multi-millionaires and worse spent some of their money helping others, or even if they moderated the exploitation of workers and the system in their own favor, and spent less time worrying about how they can survive the impending troubles a solution to the problems might actually be found. That is perhaps the saddest thing about this profoundly sad movement.

Levchin told Osnos that he prefers to shut down cocktail party discussions on the subject by asking people instead,

“So you’re worried about the pitchforks. How much money have you donated to your local homeless shelter?’ This connects the most, in my mind, to the realities of the income gap. All the other forms of fear that people bring up are artificial.”

In his view, this is the time to invest in solutions, not escape.

“At the moment, we’re actually at a relatively benign point of the economy. When the economy heads south, you will have a bunch of people that are in really bad shape. What do we expect then?”

We can try to escape or we can try to solve the problems we face. Which makes more sense?  When the wealthy and powerful are overcome by fears, this a  pretty good sign of decline. Or even collapse.

Investing in Escape or Solutions?

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Decline of the west, Social democracy

 

Well now that I have concluded a 10 day meander through the films nominated for the Best Picture, it is time to meander back to the issue I was dealing with. That was the startling fact that very wealthy people have been buying up condo units in an old Titam missile silo near Salina Kansas which Chris and drove near to on our trip to Arizona. I have been more than puzzled by this extraordinary phenomenon. I have mused that I thought the fears of the wealthy had a connection to guilt.  Guilt breeds paranoia. Evan Onos wrote a fascinating article about this phenomenon in the New Yorker magazine which I have been drawing on.

 

While most captains of industry are unable to see anything that is not in their own immediate advantage, a few, a rare few, do recognize that there are vulnerable people out there who have been screwed by the system and many of them may seeks “solutions” to their problems that may involve insurrection, as far-fetched as that may sound to some of us. As Robert H. Dugger, a lobbyist for the financial industry told Evan Osnos, “Anyone who’s in this community knows people who are worried that America is heading toward something like the Russian Revolution.”  When you hear that you must conclude the guilt is oozing out of control.

 

Many of the über  rich think, as the aristocracy of France did before the French Revolution that the poor can eat grass. Others fear revolution that might upset their privileges. Dugger said,  “People know the only real answer is, fix the problem,” he said. “It’s a reason most of them give a lot of money to good causes.” At the same time, though, they invest in the mechanics of escape.” Investing in justice is just something that does not come naturally to the super-rich. It is the last thing they think of. Escape is something that leaps to mind.

Elite fantasies of escape are often exactly that–fantasies. There are all kinds of logistical problems. Many of the wealthy cannot see these problems. They assume there must be a way for them to escape. Can’t money solve all problems? After all they deserve that escape. They have earned that right to escape. So at least they think. Why do they have all this money if they can’t use it to escape. That is the only form of justice many of them understand.

Dugger told Osnos about a lavish dinner in New York City after 9/11 and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, “A group of centi-millionaires and a couple of billionaires were working through end-of-America scenarios and talking about what they’d do. Most said they’ll fire up their planes and take their families to Western ranches or homes in other countries.” One of the guests was skeptical, Dugger said. “He leaned forward and asked, ‘Are you taking your pilot’s family, too? And what about the maintenance guys? If revolutionaries are kicking in doors, how many of the people in your life will you have to take with you?’ The questioning continued. In the end, most agreed they couldn’t run.” You can run, but you can’t hide.

It is also interesting how the privileged classes have selected things to worry about.  As Osnos reported,

“Élite anxiety cuts across political lines. Even financiers who supported Trump for President, hoping that he would cut taxes and regulations, have been unnerved at the ways his insurgent campaign seems to have hastened a collapse of respect for established institutions. Dugger said, “The media is under attack now. They wonder, Is the court system next? Do we go from ‘fake news’ to ‘fake evidence’? For people whose existence depends on enforceable contracts, this is life or death.”

 

All of this shows that guilt can lead to paranoia.  If you fear that the tables will turn, no ideas are too far out there.

 

Triangle of Sadness

Movies, Social democracy

 

 

This film surprised me. I don’t know what I was expecting. I knew little about it before I watched it. The only reason I watched it was because I wanted to see all the films nominated for Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Pictures. And this was on the list. So I thought, I must watch it.  I am glad I did.

I was surprised at how funny this film. I heard it was a dark comedy.  That is what it is. But that means it is a comedy. It is a dandy comedy. a comedy of the absurd.

It begins with a very attractive couple Carl and Yay arguing about money on what appears to be their first date. Both claim they don’t care about the money, but obviously both do. I soon realized this is a movie about money, and the production of money.  In the modern world this means it is a film about capitalism. On the boat they are constantly photographing each other. Their job is to create the illusion of happiness. That is their job. But instead they create the reality of sadness. The triangle of sadness visible upon them.

The real question is whether or not the film is as shallow as the empty-headed rich people it tries to skewer.  It seems to assume that all rich people are shallow. In doing so it picks easy targets for its satire. It would have been more interesting had those targets been less obvious, but that would mean the film would have to work hard. It wants the easy targets instead.

Somehow the young couple  are on a luxury cruise with the very wealthy. The wealthy are not attractive so the young couple is in a class by themselves in this respect. And the rich are made easy targets because they lack beauty, grace, and intelligence. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. They don’t have a chance. Who would love them?

On the ship Carl and Yaya meet Clementine and Winston, a dim British couple who made their fortune selling grenades. Who could love arms dealers? When a grenade is later tossed onto the yacht by a gang of pirates Clementine, like a dunce she is meant to be, picks it up and says, “It’s not one of ours,” before it explodes in her face and causing the ship to sink.

The couple also meet Dmitri a Russian oligarch who got rich “selling shit.”  That doesn’t mean he sold shitty stuff, as we might think, rather it is literally true, he sold fertilizer. That is big business in Russia and Ukraine.

Another wealthy matron insists the Captain see to it that the sails are cleaned because they are gray. But there are no sails as this is a powered vessel. Dim rich again.

Therese, a stroke victim can only say one thing , in German: “in den Wolken.” It’s in the cloud. Like so much is these days. Everything is in the cloud, except intelligence.

As the sea is starting to get rough and the rich people sea sick, except Dmitri and the unhinged Captain, brilliantly played by Woody Harrelson. No one does deranged better than Woody.  They have a drunken debate about socialism that consists of sending verbal barbs to each other consisting of amusing quotations from famous people. For example, Dmitri says,  “Can I tell you a joke. Do you know how to tell a Communist? It’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And do you know how to tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin!” Ronald Reagan.  Captain: “Never argue with an idiot, they’ll only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.” Mark Twain. Dmitri responds, with a joke from Ronald Reagan, “Socialism works only in heaven where they don’t need it, and in hell where they already have it.” Captain That’s pretty good. I’ve got one here. “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.” That’s Edward Abbey. Dmitri,” Listen: The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Margaret Thatcher.  You’re going to like this one…”The last capitalist we hand will be the one who sold us the rope” Karl Marx. Captain:. “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in Ancient Greece. Freedom…for slave owners.”

Over the PA Dmitri tells the already awfully sick passengers their Captain is a Communist, but the Captain corrects that, “I’m a Marxist.”  That should make them feel a lot better. But the Captain admits he is a “shit socialist,” because he has too much.

Meanwhile the passengers get increasingly sick either from the waves or food gone bad and pretty well everyone is soon projectile vomiting or trying to hang on to their toilets. As the ship has turned into a floating palace of derangement, pirates blow it up and the survivors are washed on to the shore of what appears to be a deserted island.

On the island the cleaning lady, Abigail, saves the survivors because she can catch fish and start a fire while the rich passengers are useless. But Abigail turns out to as bad as the rich.  She may have been a cleaning lady on the yacht, but now that it has vanished she insists on being Captain with all the privileges of wealth and power. She controls the food and has no intention to share equally. Why should she share now that the tables have turned? She usurps jurisdiction over the life boat (now called “The Love Boat”) and uses it to exercise dominion over pretty boy Carl much to the chagrin of pretty girl Yaya.  Carl tells her, “I love you; you give me fish.” The peons are as shallow as the rich.

Dmitri, a Russian Oligarch not famous for sharing, suddenly wants to share and build “a good society,” when he realizes here his wealth buys him nothing. Now he adopts Marx’s maxim, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” He is surprised when his fellow wealthy passengers do not know this saying.

Later, when the tables are turned again and it appears that the group will be rescued, Abigail is sad because she will become a cleaning lady again.  She picks up a rock and stands behind Yaya and we wonder if she will kill her.

Yaya was right, “it’s surreal.”

My favourite magazine, The Guardian was impressed by the social critique in the film. I was much less impressed. I think creators of this film set up straw men and women just to pull them down. I think films can do better. Though Woody Harrelson alone was worth the investment in this film. He has paid rich dividends to us all. We are enriched by the comedy. I hope we are not dim.

 

Logical Fear

Decline of the west, Fear, racism, Social democracy

 

As we drove through Salina Kansas where rich people have bought bunkers in an old missile silo to protect them from the impending chaos, I asked myself, for them what might that be?  I asked myself, ‘What generates fear among rich people”?  Particularly what triggers fear among rich white people?  I think the answer is obvious. They fear African Americans because they know they have the objects of horrific injustice that has never been remedied or compensated, and in many cases even acknowledge.

 

The election of Barack Obama led to a spike in survivalism. Many of white Americans feared (and this is the operative word) that as a black President he would ignite racial tensions because expectations of Blacks would rise too high and too fast. They thought Obama would react by restricting gun rights and expanding the national debt. Many of them loaded up on freeze-dried cottage cheese and beef stroganoff that had been promoted by Glen Beck and Sean Hannity. As Osnos reported, “A network of “readiness” trade shows attracted conventioneers with classes on suturing (practiced on a pig trotter) and photo opportunities with survivalist stars from the TV show “Naked and Afraid.” The fear of American whites—based on the fear of the tables being justifiably turned over against them—is a deep and pervasive fear. Such fear is a is a well spring of racism.

 

Not all survivalists think collapse is about to happen soon. Many of them take the position that the risk of catastrophe is so severe if a political collapse occurs that the smart betters will take precautions. They are playing the odds. As one of the techies told Evan Osnos The New Yorker writer, “Most people just assume improbable events don’t happen, but technical people tend to view risk very mathematically.” He continued, “The tech preppers do not necessarily think a collapse is likely. They consider it a remote event, but one with a very severe downside, so, given how much money they have, spending a fraction of their net worth to hedge against this . . . is a logical thing to do.”

 

To them,  in other words is fear is logical. It is not paranoia it is a reasonable fear.  Such fear may be unreasonable. By definition, it that is correct this is  not paranoia. One C.E.O. of another large tech company told Osnos, “It’s still not at the point where industry insiders would turn to each other with a straight face and ask what their plans are for some apocalyptic event…He went on, “But, having said that, I actually think it’s logically rational and appropriately conservative.”

I think it is a sign of the decline of western civilization.  The rich elites are losing their confidence. Do they know something we don’t?

 

Unreasonable Fear of the Super-rich

Decline of the west, Fear, Social democracy

 

Paranoia is one of the least appreciated yet most significant emotions in the United States today.  As Richard Hofstadter explained decades ago in his book based on an earlier article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, paranoia is the basis of one of the things that is undermining the country as it reinforces conspiracy theories.  America is a fearful country and that fear manifests itself in many strange ways.

What is paranoia? It is unreasonable fear. We all have fears and many of us also have unreasonable fears. Disaster can flow from unreasonable fears if they are not constrained. America has experienced this repeatedly. It experiences it now. There are many examples of the power of unreasonable fears.  This morning we drove near to one of them

An ancient Titan missile site is located near Salina Kansas close to the Nebraska border.  It was one of two such sites in North America during the Cold War. The other was located in Green Valley Arizona where Chris and I lived for a month a couple of years ago when we first enjoyed an extended stay in the American south in winter. That missile site was turned in to a museum. We toured it with friends John Wiebe and Margaret Daley-Wiebe.

The second site near Salina where we drove today, is being developed as a security haven for the super-rich of America. It is astonishing, but these are among the most fearful people in America. You would think they had nothing to fear. After all, what can harm the super-rich?

As Evan Osnos said in an article for The New Yorker, “Some of the wealthiest people in America—in Silicon Valley, New York, and beyond—are getting ready for the crackup of civilization.” Sometimes the practitioners of this art are called survivalists, because they hope to survive what they see as the inevitably impending doom. They hope to survive something that is intuitively unsurvivable. Full disclosure I fear the same thing but have not invested a fortune is finding a way to survive it.

 

As Osnos said,

 

Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. 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.

 

 

I am fascinated that this is being developed by the very rich. Why is that? I don’t know, but I have a theory. I think the rich in America live in fear.  They fear that their wealth will crumble and they will be left to their own devices among drug crazed hooligans out to get them and their families and their wealth. In fact, I think (entirely without evidence of course) that this fear emerged out of a sense of guilt. Guilt is the existential edge of unreasonable fear. American society–and American wealth in particular–is based on 2 ultimate horrendous injustices. The first was the genocide of Indigenous peoples that the first European settlers encountered in the New World. The second was the astonishingly long imposition of slavery on African-Americans. Immigrants from Africa as Ben Carson famously called them. That injustice leads to guilt, which leads to fear. Many rich Americans are incredibly fearful.