While we are planning our weekends, the rich are planning for doomsday in NZ | Hacker News Reader

While we are planning our weekends, the rich are planning for doomsday in NZ

bloomberg.com

41 pointsekovarski32 comments

If it really gets to that point, the rich are going to get all their NZ compounds taken away from them by the people they hired to build and defend them. If you’re a Special Forces veteran hired to protect the Zuckerberg compound why wouldn’t you replace Zuckerberg with your cousin Eddie? What can Zuckerberg offer in a world where money is worthless?

A vision to connect every remaining human to relevant advertising?

Also forget the personal security team turning on you - if the shit really goes down, it's pretty hard to imagine New Zealand's national sovereignty holding up.

As if elites in Australia, or in the actual pacific mil powers, are just going to happily burn/drown in geohell while New Zealanders, with no real military, sit smugly in a still-comfortable climate / social situation.

Well they are on an island, and it's not exactly a trivial task to plan, organize/recruit, and supply an amphibious invasion of a size necessary to completely subjugate a country the size of NZ (even if they have no standing army).

Around 4500 regular army, and another 2500 reserves; mechanised infantry, light armour, artillery and AT. Also a few small warships and patrol boats and a ~16 combat oriented helicopters. The main weakness would be the lack of any combat aircraft. An invading force with even a small aircraft carrier, or using long range bombers, could be a significant threat.

We have a standing army. Kiwis have fought with distinction in both world wars, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the Malayan crisis etc. etc. We're in Afghanistan, Iraq, we helped restore peace in East Timor...

http://army.mil.nz

Yeah but is the NZ army gonna fight bravely for the rich of the rest of the world who have fled all the riff raff in their countries?

So then it's even less trivial to take the island by force.

Which island ;) We have two main ones.

Pick one!

If we're considering doomsday scenarios here, the answer to your question lies in the traditional tactics of tyrants.

Hypothetically, Zuckerberg is going to have family members of the people guarding him locked away somewhere as hostages with other people set to guard them with the original guards kept out of direct communication with anyone but Zuckerberg or his trusted lieutenants. Cousin Eddie isn't going to take over when it means Cousin Franny gets to live less than or equal to how long Zuck lives.

Horrible? yes. Rational? Also yes.

EDIT: Remember this is a hypothetical. I'm not saying anything about Zuck's character or motivations here.

In the absence of civilization tyrants are rare, what you get are feuding family units, tribes, and warlords. Personal strength of arms is tantamount, and frankly Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos and the like won’t last a day. Who cares about how rich you were when there is nothing stopping someone else from taking your life and everything else you laughably “own” right?

Hypothetical fantasies aside, they can only do those things after civilization collapses, and by then it’s too late. Power in the absence of civilization doesn’t depend on the ability to delegate everything, it depends on the ability to beat someone to death with a jawbone.

An actual tyrant requires a government, and it would be quite some time after a traumatized populace stopped just trying to survive day to day for such high level organization to re-emerge. On all likelihood, generations would need to pass.

The thing is that being a warlord and a Silicon Valley CEO are completely different. If the shit really hits the fan, my point is that all of these bunkers will be seized by the warlords from the CEOs.

The people setting up doomsday bunkers should probably consider your point. I proposed a strategy they may resort to if they don't (or, as you say, even if they try).

This is some crazy graph of bodybuards guarding each other's family members. If you kill your client then why on earth would his other employees give a shit and kill some defenceless wife and child to avenge their former master?

You could ask the same sorts of questions about why fiat money works (if this money has no intrinsic value why will the merchant give over his tangible products for it?). Yet people do terrible things for tyrants. I don't understand exactly why it works but then again I'm not a tyrant of any sort.

Fiat money works because when it’s working well, it is a win win for all concerned.

When it isn’t working well, it fails dramatically (Zimbabwe, Argentina, etc).

Fiat money (or any money, for that matter)only works till it works because it’s extremely useful for all concerned, and the alternative is a PITA.

The doomsday scenario is hardly a win/win.

People do terrible things for tyrants (or their bosses more generally) because if their boss or tyrant is eliminated the resulting power vacuum will likely harm them with high likelihood (new ruler purges old loyalists) and reward them with low likelihood (they become the tyrant)

Some rich people are genuinely charismatic. If he were alive, I doubt Steve Jobs would have too much trouble finding people to follow him even if money is worthless.

Or just taken away by locals who don't like rich foreigners trying to buy our country. The fact that Peter Thiel got citizenship here is a disgrace.

"New Zealand isn’t the best solution, he said, because a tsunami caused by an asteroid strike in the Pacific could submerge the island’s highest point."

Highest point: Aoraki Mt Cook 3,724 m 12,218 ft

That's a pretty big tsunami...

https://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap/nz26258/Aoraki%2fMount-C...

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltanin_impact

"The size of a possible tsunami has been calculated. An asteroid that was 4 km (2.5 mi) in diameter falling onto the 5 km (3.1 mi) deep ocean would have blasted the water off the ocean floor for at least 60 km (37 mi), and made a wave over 200 m (660 ft) high on the southern end of Chile and the Antarctic Peninsula. After ten hours, waves around 35 m (115 ft) would reach Tasmania, Fiji and Central America, and the New Zealand east coast would have been washed with 60 m (200 ft) high waves. If the impact object was 1 km (0.6 mi) in diameter, the wave heights would be five times less.[3]"

The best way to prepare for doomsday is to prepare everyone for doomsday and to keep civilization and the rule of law functional.

Oh man imagine being the pilot that gets to hold these twats hostage above the Pacific ocean

Having done the military bit and currently doing the SV bit, I promise you in this situation the military experience is worth a heck of a lot more.

This looks more like an escape plan if wealthy person was sure he would get convicted and end up spending years in prison. Scenario like Enron case where it’s CEO Ken Lay decided to die just days before the start of sentencing and his funeral was kept strictly private.

Haha, this article - the cartoon refers to "the island"... singular. Come on guys, you even mentioned Cook Strait, the stretch of ocean separating the North and South islands.

Well, it worked for Nazi Germany. Loads of them ended up in South America after their Third Reich collapsed; which from their point of view was probably a doomsday scenario. Many of them had been hoarding their riches there for years before that and lived out their lives in luxury after the war. I think the key thing to look for though would be extradition laws. From that point of view, New Zealand looks a lot less attractive.

Reminds me of a ted talk a few years ago: "The pitchforks are coming": https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocr...

Did none of them read World War Z? Might be a good idea to see what happens when doomsday occurs with respect to secure compounds.

But how would one get to NZ? It isn’t exactly around the corner. Couldn’t pick a further place if tried.

10 hour jet, the article suggests that and/or shows it in photos.

If you're asking how you'd travel to there repeatedly, that's kind of the point -- its remote-ness is a feature.

The idle rich need something that seems meaningful to occupy their time.

There go the East Coast guys poking fingers in the Left Coast guys eyes.

Watch for the payback in the next Marvel movie ...

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