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Comment by atleastoptimal | Hacker News Reader

Those with the power to change things have the power to suffer no negative effects.

I'd suggest a slight edit to this: Those with the power to change things believe they have the power to suffer no negative effects.

Billionaires can already live in underground luxury bunkers that can withstand a nuclear Armageddon for decades.

With accelerating tech, their ability to opt out of global catastrophic risks also accelerates. Not so for the rest of us.

I think that's what they believe, but I buy Douglas Rushkoff's argument that this is a collective illusion on the part of the billionaire class. See https://rushkoff.com/books/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fa...

There’s a lot of Russian billionaires discovering that their freedoms aren’t as unlimited as they thought…

Don’t you think billionaires would also rather sip cocktails on a beautiful beach vs their concrete bunker? There’s only so much you can do to spruce up a bunker. They’re not rooting for global warming, as a class.

This is a ridiculous take. You realise Pakistan is collapsing right now because Europe bought all the LNG and it’s super expensive now? I.e if you start taxing energy more or making it less abundant you will collapse societies.

How about France? The Arab springs?

This is not about the elites. Forcing everyone into less consumption will basically lead to revolutions.

The only way out of this is technology. You can’t force people into more expensive food and living conditions. You have to fail forwards.

Unfortunately it seems like most environmentalists prefer complete collapse of society, and depopulation, to technological progress

Edit: and btw, how are you gonna stop China building coal plants? Diplomacy? Seems unlikely to work. Military prevention?

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