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Comment by pulkitsh1234 | Hacker News Reader

"A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case" -- Niccolo Machiavelli

It's a self fulfilling prophecy... while us commoners, or so called "activists" or ethicists ponder and debate on culture, morality, law and ethics... The powerful are just living an alternate life devoid of all these moral qualms and are have clearly distanced themselves from the mundane, have distanced themselves from the guilt or any kind of accountability. In their eyes, they are just capitalising on the human tendencies which have been always existed (the seven deadly sins), so the "absolve" themselves pretty quickly by saying that they are not creating new "sins", just leveraging, or allowing the people to go along those sins.

They think, why should they be the ones to not capitalise on them, if someone else might and will. It's a coordination problem of our society. No one wants to let go. They want to hedge, they invest in ozempic and invest in fast-food at the same time, there is no moral compass guiding them. It's for us commoners to debate and think about.

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Setting ethical and moral questions aside for a second:

Never pay a human again

Every time I see stuff like this (along with other more serious shenanigans like wage theft, union busting etc) I only ask myself the same question again and again - what is the end game here? If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all? If all their power comes from their wealth and if that wealth is threatened because consumers are too poor to buy, then what happens? Someone has to buy for the system to work, no?

If a small group of people fully automated all production and controlled it, they wouldn't need anyone to buy anything anymore; they could live off of it indefinitely and produce whatever they needed to in order to protect themselves from the masses. I don't see any obvious reason why this outcome would be prevented by a purely capitalist economic system (assuming that this sort of automation ends up being possible), which in my mind is an argument in favor of some sort of upper bound for wealth consolidation.

There is no end game. Short term profits are by definition not a long-term view. The family's future will be secured if I invest in plastics and robot payment mechanisms now. I won't live forever, so I won't get to rest under the shade of the trees I plant for my family. With money and influence, they will be best set up to conquer whatever comes in the future.

> what is the end game here?

They don't have one, outside of trying to hoard as much wealth and power as possible if it all falls apart. I firmly believe that greed is an addiction just like any other.

Why does the raging alcoholic drink themselves to death? Can they not see that they're careening towards the end? The powerful worship one concept at the expense of all others, and that is the endless accumulation of more.

> If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all?

No one. That's the idea.

A low-population paradise. Venice without its pesky people to mess with Bezos's wedding. Bora Bora without the peasants.

how's Bezos going to fund his wedding if there's no population of proles buying from Amazon, nor anyone putting their retirement into a fund that buys Amazon stock? does he just plan to use force rather than money at this point?

Why do you think they're all so into AI and robots?

The wars of the future will not be fought on a battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today, remember always, your duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots. Thank you.

That is in the past.

They need to? The have all the money right now already.

The plan is that he (along with a small number of other people) will already own everything. The only reason he currently wants proles to buy things from Amazon is that he has not yet achieved what he considers sufficient ownership of the world.

Yea, at some point, these guys won't really need the vast majority of us to buy from them. They'll be buying from and selling to other wealthy people.

That makes litteraly no sense. All the biggest companies are driven by middle-class purchases. Rich-only companies are boutique and are order-of-magnitude smaller than mass market companies.

This is actually changing. Many consumer and retail companies are already shifting their focus from the mass middle class toward high-income and affluent segments. Businesses find higher profit margins and more resilient demand in premium goods. And in enterprise, companies just pay other rich companies who pay them. (sometimes just directly).

50% of all consumer spending now is done by the top 10% and this keeps shifting up.

We've got a horribly K-shaped economy even before AGI.

> how's Bezos going to fund his wedding if there's no population of proles buying from Amazon

there will be new economy around satisfying super rich and few layers of their servants. You can think about shifting production and distribution to more luxury cars/clothes/jets etc for them.

Bezos and Andreesen won't live alone on planet, there still be population, just much smaller.

And who is going to maintain this low-population paradise of elites, if there is no one left but the elites ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot

Robots

Servants. Yes, robots eventually, but servants are the classical answer. The terrible truth is that palace economies are stable -- we see them in "resource-cursed" countries around the world and through time. When a single easily-owned fountain of wealth dominates the economy, a small group of people consolidate ownership and everyone else polarizes around them, forming into concentric rings of gatekeepers and masses struggling to access the only thing that matters. It's terrible but it's stable, and if you're inside the palace it doesn't feel like much of a curse at all.

The robots would have to be intelligent enough to be fully self sufficient, at which point they don’t care about people.

'Care' is a human concept. Robots, even extremely advanced ones, will not necessarily come bundled with aspirations. Giving a robot the capacity to care and want change, if it's even possible, would be extremely dangerous. It's completely realistic to imagine a world where robots just do what they're told because it's what they're made to do, because they lack any incentive to do anything else.

> It's completely realistic to imagine a world where robots just do what they're told

Yeah, although there are some wrinkles, doing anything else would be clinically insane.

You’re thinking the servants exist primarily to execute tasks. Servants exist primarily to abuse.

You might be interested in William Gibson's Jackpot triloy - The Peripheral and Agency.

Slaves. They will call 'em by another acceptable word though.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Servitor

Yeah. Billionaire techbros and neofascists love to mis-read Tolkien, but this is a much better picture of the future they want to bring. Down to the mystical doom cult of Peter Thiel and the techno-feudalism on Mars that Musk wants.

Of course they’d imagine themselves as the High Lords on Terra, not amongst the untold billions who died eaten by bugs or enslaved by evil space elves.

Personally, not being a billionaire, in a WH40k-type setting, I like to imagine myself as an ork. The dakka would make a lot of cool noises before I die.

There will always be a certain percentage of the population whose greatest aspiration is to be "house slaves" as opposed to "field slaves". They're the ones that today would be described as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". [1]

1. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-once-...

There's been plenty of good sci-fi written about this, but surely they know that any any display of power is meaningless without someone to have power over? The wedding in Venice only means anything because people live in Venice and you're still able to "take over". Any "paradise" built like this will never be paradise, it'll be just chasing the next extreme until there's nowhere left to go

I would have called BS on that before but I think now I would just call BS on the part where it was people like Bezos or whatever. It seems there is a neverending number of people who would do the same. Look at the stories about the sunflower fields that had to close down before the pandemic, or the current overrunning of cities and villages in Italy (like Lake Como). Or competing for views on social media (not just attempting to get them). Fighting for status is as old as.... well maybe humanity. What is fairly new is money and real property... and virtual property.

There probably is nowhere left to go. Maybe one of those little islands in the South Pacific but you can't live there and they are all mapped too.

> There's been plenty of good sci-fi written about this

Can you recommend me some? I feel like my brain still can't fully internalize the world these people are pushing for.

Accelerando remains my favourite.

Vernor Vinge's Peace War and especially Marooned in Realtime both touch on this point of view.

Baxter's Flood, then Ark. Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, too. Down And Out in the Magic Kingdom is tonally similar, if you like Doctorow, although that explores a different manifestation of disconnection from others. All great for a romp

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model is a good look at this IMO.

Others have listed some great examples, but to be honest I was actually thinking of something somewhat more contemporary, specifically the eldar (or dark eldar perhaps) in Warhammer 40,000.

The long story short is that the Eldar once had paradise, and spent their time seeking greater and greater excess and pleasure, which eventually gave birth to an immensely powerful demon of excess. For the current-setting followers of this demon, their lives are spent in a desperate hunger for excess that can never be satiated, every greater excess they experience quickly becoming too dull to bare. As for the Eldar, their paradise is gone and their race is doomed, all they can do now is fight off the inevitable.

Obviously I don't think the rich have much to fear in terms of giving birth to a demon, but you get the point

You don't have to look at sci-fi, go look at the history of the Republic of Venice. It was ruled by a tiny group of ultra-wealthy people while the vast majority of the population owned nothing and had zero influence.

Absolutely not, sci-fi is just often a good vehicle for these kind of ideas (plus it gives me an excuse to talk about warhammer), but your right, theres plenty of real world examples to look at too.

Eh, you see too many of these guys complaining about declining populations for this to be a thing.

I don't think you need Machiavellianism to explain their actions. These people have everything they could need, but death comes for all of us and they aren't getting any younger.

Purely speculating, but if you had everything in the world (except time) wouldn't you put everything you have into building a future with a 10% chance of living as long as you wanted? What would you sacrifice for that?

> Eh, you see too many of these guys complaining about declining populations for this to be a thing.

Overpopulation is the best way to get to low population - eventually.

> if you had everything - wouldn't you put everything you have for a 10% chance of living [forever]?

No, I wouldn't, that sounds awfully silly.

> What would you sacrifice for that?

Nothing. I don't sacrifice stuff for BS even if it's 100% sure.

Lots of those people complaining about population decline aren't really talking about the absolute number. They're dog-whistling about demographic replacement - the idea that minorities are reproducing too fast and whites are reproducing too slow.

We’re already heading into a certain demographics crisis. It’s not only about the pyramidal system that retirement is but also about who will be your nurse when you’re old, make your car, be your doctor, etc if there aren’t enough people anymore? Every developed country is well below replacement rate with no real plans from the powers that be to address it because it’s so far in the future that it’s the next best guy problem (30 years horizon)

Time of the robots has come! ;-)

Countries are not doing anything about low replacement rates because its currently in the interest of the elite to keep them low so that they can sell the need to import lower paid foreigners instead.

Elite is interested to have their country to win the race and not other, and healthy menpower is still essential for this.

When you are far removed from everything, your logic doesn't always make sense.

The problem with local workforce is that you have less threats hanging over their heads. Ones you can threaten with deportation, separation from their children, or just shoot in the streets, are just more controllable.

Imported labour has less rights and will be more open to grovelling.

you still need local country to be attractive enough to make people come and fear of deportation, meaning locals will be Ok too.

Either:

1. These people are detached from reality.

They would never see water that can be ignited because of the contamination so don't know the scale of their actions. Or

2. They think they have enough power to make the other countries worse, pressure on the EU, bombing the middle east, that making life worse for locals is offset.

That describes aristocracy. Those have been economically and politically compromised, or were assassinated in the 1930s.

Modern elites do not belong to any particular country; this is the entire selling point of globalism. They have no stake in any country's success.

We may pride ourselves on distinctions but when you put a white guy, an African and an Indian through the grinder, the same pink slurry comes out the other end. We're all just mince to them. We aren't even ruled from within our own borders anymore.

I don't think humanity will run into any capacity problems because of that, due to how grotesquely overpopulated it currently is. As far as I see it, every country in the world should be well below replacement rate, for the long run. Setting aside some problematic side effects stemming from our current social system setups. A small fraction of the current world population would probably enable everyone to have a much higher quality of life, if organised properly. We probably don't need to worry about who builds our cars when there are close to 10 billion of us. Where we'll get our food from, on the other hand -- I think that's where the real crisis lies.

But why wouldn't the rest of society kick them out before that point? Like at some point, there's going to be a lot of political pressure to fix things, especially if the majority of the population is going hungry or struggling to find work.

Feels like at some point, some 'rogue' political figure will win election by saying the elites need to be overthrown, and the latter's influence will burn to the ground. If even a percentage of the world's countries are still democracies by that point, then any sort of 'leave the population to suffer while we live in luxury' plan will fail.

I keep questioning this as well.

Also, what protects their wealth is the justice system and the enforcement mechanisms, which are run by ordinary people.

There is no invisible force that will prevent the “peasants” from attacking the wealthy if the police also loses belief in the system and just starts looking the other way. Or just suddenly becomes _less competent_.

You don't even need a democracy for this - the moment people go hungry beacause of you, they will do something about it.

Bread and circuses. The only thing sustaining our civilization at the moment.

The moment people go hungry because of you, they will eat each other long before they think to challenge their oppressors.

Those selling you the romance of revolution are ones sabotaging your food supply. They're sadists, and taunting you with false hope.

Why do you think countries are creating more and more ways to quickly squash dissent. If people can't organize because their messages are being monitored and public protests will get you immediately imprisoned then the resistance will come too late.

How many years remain where the population actually still has any way to kick them out? Once military robots are sufficiently advanced, we've lost. We'll be fully at their mercy. Optimistically speaking, that's maybe 5-10 years out?

Are there any robots that can withstand a 50 caliber rifle slug? Don’t rule out ‘muricans just yet!

Unfortunately, even if a unified resistance formed by all gun-owning Americans were to march against them, it would buy the labor class a few months at most. Once enough capacity has been established (either production or troops) our only possible recourse would be to hijack/destroy their control, and that's unlikely to be possible if e.g. communication & compute originate from satellites.

I am increasingly disappointed by how sci-fi dystopias are moving from implausibility to inevitabilities.

But that assumes the population can't vote for someone else who will kick them out. As far as I know, there are no plans to stop third parties from being created, independents from running for political roles, or people voting for whoever they want to vote for.

If a large percentage of the population is going hungry or can't find jobs, then they'll vote for people that (at least say) they'll change that. If any of those people actually do that, then billionaires are toast, their assets could be seized and the laws could be rewritten so things like a universal basic income are implemented.

It doesn't matter how many resources someone has, they're not overthrowing the government, replacing democracy with a dictatorship or doing anything of the sort, especially not worldwide.

Today, the working class already have a miniscule influence compared to the rich and powerful. What makes you think the people could vote them out once they have an automatic army...? Why would they care about any kind of vote?

Seriously, imagine SV had produced 1 million autonomous robots, and a US government like today's was in power. How long do you think a strike would last? Many of these people are already openly talking about how we should adopt the 996 system, and how most people shouldn't be allowed to vote. I don't see any reason why we should expect anything but the worst.

I think there are a few things missing here.

First, the assumption seems to be that the US is the only country on Earth, or that every other country will follow their lead. There are plenty of places (especially in Europe) which are a lot more... left leaning in their political philosophies. As crazy as the US government may be, I doubt they'll literally attack Europe or Canada or wherever else even if under the thrall of Musk or Thiel.

2. Even in the US, the vote still has a pretty big effect on the government and how it's run. The person in the White House right now only got in because a percentage of people in certain swing states voted for him/the Republican Party, and it could have easily gone the other way. The whole 'billionaires get to do anything, law and order is a farce, ignore the constitution for the sake of it' system in play right now was only possible because Trump won the election.

> First, the assumption seems to be that the US is the only country on Earth, or that every other country will follow their lead.

How so? The elite class acts & collaborates on a global scale, as we've seen demonstrated time and time again, especially over the last decade. But even if there is no collaboration, all that's needed is for the US to develop an advantage in this field. Once heads of other countries get the choice between either possibly being targeted militarily or taking a leadership role managing a vassal state, how many of them would stick up for their country instead of selling their people out? They're already doing so without any real personal risk, purely for profit.

> 2. Even in the US, the vote still has a pretty big effect on the government and how it's run.

Maybe I'm thinking about this from a completely different perspective, but how would this scenario play out in your mind? Say it's 2030, the US government is centrist instead of far-right, and autonomous production of military robots is rapidly scaling, slowly rivaling even the military.

Then the SV elite decides to take over, with backing from at least half the government. Any governmental resistance can decide between playing along or likely being hunted down by said autonomous robots, and the military can't take over control since this takeover was prepared on the hardware side.

What does your vote do?

You may think this scenario is unlikely, but IMO given the current direction of the world it sounds far more realistic than stuff like Project 2025 did, yet here we are.

there is nothing magically good about economic activity, it has merely been necessary thus far.

once it's no longer necessary and once they can have robot security they will decouple from the rest of society.

they would also require military grade deterrence. eventually they will either steal, buy or make nukes.

https://www.wkms.org/energy/2025-07-25/billionaire-peter-thi...

> A California-based company with ties to billionaire investor and Trump ally Peter Thiel announced plans Friday to build America’s first U.S.-owned, privately developed facility to enrich uranium in far western Kentucky.

It becomes sort of like the dystopian future imagined in William Gibson's "The Peripheral" - most of the human race has died off, but technology has advanced so that the elites can self-sustain anyhow. Big cities are haunted with holograms running scripts of people going about their day to make them feel lived in.

The end game is that we're all dead, and they live off their robot slave army in a world of abundance, no poors, and no governments to tell them no. I wish that were hyperbole, but it's what they want more than anything if you really pay close attention to what thy're doing, which as you say doesn't make sense given an end game where you and I are part of the system. When then say "everyone in the future will be rich" they don't mean that poor people will be made rich; they mean poor people will all be dead, or don't count as people, thus trivially leaving only rich people.

I still can't wrap my head around it.

So we're all dead, robots take care of the infrastructure and healthcare, and there's maybe 50-100 billionaires left on the planet. Then what? They drive their sports car, do bungee jumping, sip cocktails and watch ai made movies. They don't have children? The human race dies with them? Or they have children, somehow avoid the trap of inbreeding and their children in turn have children and in no time there's again a billion of "us".

We're talking about a level of control over the remaining humans, them and their friends, that require absolute totalitarianism. Of course billionaire A won't accept to live their life according to billionaire B so it'll be a mess in no time.

This thing makes no sense to me when they can already enjoy everything the world has to offer and on top of that they're for all practical purposes above the law.

> Then what? They drive their sports car, do bungee jumping, sip cocktails and watch ai made movies.

It's helpful to think of the world as if it were a gigantic vacation resort for about 1000 people, and the remaining 8billion of us are just the staff keeping it luxurious for them. They would be 100% fine if the resort didn't need or have any staff.

> This thing makes no sense to me when they can already enjoy everything the world has to offer and on top of that they're for all practical purposes above the law.

It doesn't have to make sense because these are not well-reasoned theories of the future. Thiel, Yarvis and Musk, from what you hear and read on their interviews, come off as drug-addled losers who hate other human beings and anything that doesn't have to do with their hyper-optimized partial view of the world.

When you have everything, you want something new and different. The whole Epstein scandal is literally about this, you want to kill babies, r*pe the kids, do sacrifice rituals, etc because nothing gives you sensory satisfaction anymore. In the view of the commenters above, humanity will just be the final playtoy, let's have a little nuclear bomb in that town and film it in 4k, etc.

Nah, they were just fucked up, plenty of rich people not into that and plenty of poor people that are into pedo rings etc.

Why the Orwellian self-censorship?

You have to put yourself in the mindset of a virus, then it makes perfect sense. The point is to consume and exhaust without thinking (introspection), not to sustain and thrive.

btw none of this will be possible because it's a dumb plan and would never work, but it's their utopia.

> they can already enjoy everything

What I love Elon Musk for is teaching me that even if you have everything in the world, you can still be an empty miserable shell of a human, unhappy, unliked, and satisfied with nothing. His example makes me far less driven to acquire more and rather just be happy with what I have. But we should be aware these people could own everything on Earth, the Moon, and Mars and it wouldn't be enough to satisfy them. They're fundamentally empty and insatiable people, it's such a shame so many aspire to be like them or join their ranks.

>btw none of this will be possible because it's a dumb plan and would never work

Ensure you realize that "not working" and them "not trying" are two totally different things. Because they absolutely will try just as many dictators have tried in the past with horrific outcomes, even though the end point was it not working out.

Yes, usually the way it turns out is "If I'm going down I'm taking the rest of you with me".

I'm not even sure they care about living. They only care about the growth of capitalism. At some point it seems very likely capitalism won't need humans to continue growing, and all humans may be killed off.

There's people that actively cheer this on, Theil and other billionaires may be among them.

You are assuming they are acting out of greed, but maybe they are just doing what they've spent their whole lives doing - accelerating the growth of capitalism.

>I still can't wrap my head around it.

Mmhm

> So we're all dead, robots take care of the infrastructure and healthcare

Yep, and then there's a few hundred or few thousand kings and queens of the world that can do whatever they want! And no more dirty fucking lowlife scum to worry about (poors).

Nah, still a few million people. Million.

You are right and all these people replying to you are living in some kind of fantasy world.

I forget what it's called, but there's this fallacy of ordinary people, that states that we attribute superhuman abilities to people far enough from us on the social scale. In reality, rich people are far from movie villains, life is much more mundane.

It is scary for me to see how many well-educated people here on HN are so conspiracy-theory minded. In a quest to avoid these fantasized dictators, it is very well likely that we will vote for the one who promises to give us what we want, if only we give them enough power. In the end, the world's worst political systems were also the ones promising of liberating the poor and equalizing everyone.

> It is scary for me to see how many well-educated people here on HN are so conspiracy-theory minded.

The basis of so much of the era of computing I come from was basically based on a 70s Berkeley hacker mindset, which had a strong hippie crossover of that era that largely later became the basis for the Open Source movement.

I don't know how you mentally separate or understand the modern computing era without that era.

I think the end game is to only do interesting things and automate all the mundane parts of life.

We used to have to wash clothes by hand and it took all day. Now we have a washing machine and it takes 2 hours.

People used to spend time washing clothes and now we have more members of the household working.

I think the future from scifi that I remember (eg, Star Trek) is that humans are just being creative. Usually some sort of post scarcity where there’s no more need for money.

If everything is automated away, you won't see a Star Trek style post scarcity utopia because everyone on UBI will have lost basically all of their political power. They aren't employable so they can't threaten to withhold their labor in order to get any sort of leverage. The most they could do is withhold consumption to some extent. If you have a dependent population being managed by the same state that's already allowed wealth to accumulate to its current levels, what incentive does the state have to do any more than the bare minimum?

You actually believe this is what these people want to create?

Why then are they directly attacking many forms of creativity (writing, photography, art, filmmaking, even programming)?

Why do they resist all forms of social programs if these technologies are supposed to create untold wealth (ala Star Trek)?

That's not what the tech bros are saying the end goal is.

In universe the society of earth and the federation only happened because there was a devestating global thermonuclear war that left the survivors being highly selected for collectivist impulses and then on top of that the eugenics wars where there was another filter (even the common people).

The people who advocate this expect to be part of a very small group of humans who own literally everything, so they don’t share your concern.

> what is the end game here?

You are asking the wrong question.

There's no end game. They just really hate life and the living. They want you to suffer.

> what is the end game here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One_(film)

A tale as old as time, power and control, over the means of production and (what those seeking this power and control consider lesser) humans.

If you think they're doing this for "the betterment of humanity," I would ask you strongly re-examine the evidence. "Watch what people do, not what they say."

"The wealth of the top-400 Americans surpassed 20% of GDP at the start of Trump's second term."

https://www.ft.com/content/2472ef5a-798d-4e7b-b4be-020855cf3... | https://archive.today/8X9dw

These guys have already all but built Elysium--just not in space.

They live their lives completely insulated and apart from the masses. They go to different events, they have other people shop for them and transport them around. They don't really interact with us at all. When was the last time you even saw a billionaire in person, let alone talked to one? They have private security to keep us away from them. They only interact with each other.

Certainly, and it isn't enough, is it? It's never enough. Political spending, lobbying, etc. That's the point, the accumulated wealth and their actions are simply symptoms of the dysfunction.

"Just another billion bro." Like a food driven shark, I acknowledge the shark's existence, while wanting the strongest cage possible between us when in close proximity. Never envy, always recognizing the danger and need for self preservation from the paperclip maximizers.

Several times a year in the USA during the last 15 years with several 'You don't need to knows'...

About 2008 in Hamburg, Germany. Some woman jogging with her St. Bernard dog along the empty beach of the Elbe river at around 4:30AM at earliest dawn(blaue Stunde), while I was tending the last glow of a camp-fire, alone, and she complained about the smoke. I complained back. We complained back and forth for about 30 minutes until she jogged away, exasperated :->

Hilarious!

About 2003 in Gevelsberg, Germany. Some inventor, amongst them tools for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDC_(electrical_connector) (LSA+). Fixed his computers and network.

Interesting. Big house, but living alone, with the exception of some really nice horses. Otherwise no extraordinary luxuries. No kitsch.

August 1988, Neuss, Germany. 'You don't need to know'. Fucked daughter which I knew from boarding school, because she had a crush on me, and her parents wanted to fulfill her wishes.

So I've been invited home for a weekend. Besides riding Freya and being ridden by her with full consent of her parents, I had much joy riding their horses with her in lush greens.

Yeehaaa!

About 1983 in Bonn Bad-Godesberg, Germany. Some Tanya (former classmate) 'You don't need to know', living right next to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Spinat (been paperboy, and played with the horses), with some Bettina (then classmate(very well off, but not extraordinarily rich) of Tanya) at the same time :-)

Doubleplusgood Fun!

About 1983 in Bonn Bad-Godesberg, some Anja, daugther of 'You don't need to know', really big into pencils, pens, all sorts of stuff for painting and drawing. After her mother overheard what I've been talking about to her, of some extraordinary thing I did, which she got confirmation of behind my back via telephone from the hospital in which I did that, then I had 'carte blanche', and the adoration of her daughter.

Sweet careless fun!

About 1980 to 1981 in Bonn Bad-Godesberg, playing with Max, son of 'You don't need to know' , big into fire extinguishers, living right over the street from me. When he's been there. They lived elsewhere, too. He was also in boarding school most of the times, unhappy about it. Very, very smart and friendly mother, though.

Interesting. Because humble.

About 1980 to 1981 in Bonn Bad-Godesberg, some René, son of 'You don't need to know', Big Pharma by themselves, and the German exclusive distribution rights for other stuff. Very unhappy child, they had it all, butlers, gardeners, security, really big house with laaarge garden, big indoor aviary with shiny hummingbirds. But something seemed to be always 'off', like tension because of domestic problems.

Interesting, because that made it obvious that money alone is not making you happy.

About 1980 in Pech, Germany, near Bonn Bad-Godesberg. One of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haribo heirs. Been watching the compound with the deers, but really hoping to see the private https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook in Haribo livery starting or landing there on the private heliport. Someone came walking to the edge of the fence I casually leaned on, with a rifle or shotgun over his shoulder. Asked me what I wanted. I told him. He said bad luck, it's in Sankt Augustin for maintenance. We talked a little, and he said who he was. I asked him how it felt to be responsible for countless cavities all over the world?

Not good!

Luckily I've been really fast on my road bicycle, and just gave him the bird while speeding away while he cussed and cursed.

Intense!

Comparing GDP to net worths isn’t very meaningful

Its a measure and visualization of undemocratic power and control through wealth and resources.

Considering that many people are not able to accumulate any real assets beyond their ability to generate wealth which is then captured by others, what meaningful comparison would you suggest.

that sort of crappy movie with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster that is supposedly dystopian but far more utopian than the reality would be.

wonder if the overlords will allow meat or only gruel or bug bars like that Bong Ho movie to the survivors. heh but serious.

I think you're arguing against something that is made up by doomers. They truly believe (evidence by the comments below yours) that the billionaire class are all a of one mind and want to eradicate other humans, live in cloud cities, and have robots cater to their every need.

I don't even really know how to start refuting this. It seems to absurd to even start.

We have an entire history of rich elites abusing their wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. It's lead to various conflicts and social upheavals. And we currently have tech elites selling the idea of full automation, machine godhood, and opposition being the antichrist. Also they like talking about replacing democracy with some sort of digital feudalism.

How it all plays out remains to be seen (predicting the future is hard), but calling people who point this out doomers is very dismissive and one sided.

I think people think this because many billionaires outright say it. We can’t pretend they aren’t salivating at the idea of eradicating labor when they literally talk about how excited they are to eradicate labor.

Ok fine, I guess not all billionaires. But the other ones are reaaaal quiet.

Look at how they fantasize about humanoid robots and you will understand.

Why the humanoid form, with all of its engineering inefficiencies and difficulties? Because it is a thing which can be dominated.

The whole purpose is domination. Ever seen Apocalypse now or read Heart of Darkness? They are little colonel Kurtzes. The will to dominate for these people goes to the depths of their soul.

> Someone has to buy for the system to work, no?

Well yeah, but not human consumers. Businesses can buy from other businesses and that can be the only surviving part of the economy. Even further, maybe those businesses are fully autonomous. There's no reason this wouldn't work, as far as I can tell.

The economy would be much more focused. It would be mostly energy, materials, and tech.

Exactly, it seems many if not most people are trapped in an 1800s ideal of how an economy works. "You do work, you get money, you spend money, you do work" In fact the entire "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." statement is in full force here.

It's impossible for most people to envision an economy without them even though there are economic systems that will work without them.

>It's impossible for most people to envision an economy without them

It's possible that's the case because (at least in the US) 68% of GDP is consumer spending[0]. As such, 2/3 of the economy is "them."

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DPCERE1Q156NBEA/

Yes, that's the inefficient part of the economy that can and will be eliminated as far as the elite are concerned. The only reason that hasn't been achieved yet is because so far you still need manual labor to support the wishes of the elite.

From AZ's perspective that's someone else's problem (i.e., governments step in with UBI or whatever)

Wasn't much of the population too poor to buy most stuff, back in the day? It seems to have worked out fine for, say, European Aristocrats c. 1400s-1700s.

I really wish that logic held.

Automation doesn’t need customers.

Automation just needs more automation, and access to energy and natural resources, both of which don’t require money if you have enough automation.

Ultimately, Money is only used to pay wages, nothing else… so no wages to pay, no money required. In the post employment scenario, money is not needed by industry. You don’t pay the forest to cut the trees, you don’t pay the dirt to mine the iron, and you don’t pay the sun to grow the crops.

Capital doesn’t need to produce goods for customers. It just needs coercive power to gain and maintain access to resources and energy. You know what gives you that power? An army of 20 million self manufacturering robots.

It’s the grey-goo scenario, only with a few humans nominally involved, and on a macroscopic scale instead of nanotechnology.

Humans are the main impediment to unchecked capital growth. Soon, that impediment could be largely removed. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

With automation, there is no need for the rest of us to exist in order to support the capital class. Ai enabled robotics won’t just eliminate employment, it will make money (and increasingly, people) irrelevant to capitalism. The new capital is automation capability, and you only need energy and raw materials beyond that.

You don’t buy a yacht, you build a one-yacht factory and build it from raw materials. With a few million self manufacturing robots, you don’t need money to have enormous wealth and power.

When they want money, they will mine it. Gold, bitcoin, whatever doesn’t involve hiring people. The rest of us outside the gilded walls will be increasingly irrelevant scavenging over the scraps and trying to maintain some kind of agrarian society since manufacturing will be largely pointless.

Wouldn't everyone else just restart the same economy with what resources they do have?

Without access to easily harvested energy sources and raw materials? Good luck.

Sort of, maybe to a 1900s kind of economy.

it's because it is a narrow set of never-pay-a-human. in that world, only certain task won't be done by human.

"Who is left buying it all?"

Nobody cares about that at the top. At some point they will have robots doing their bidding and the people at the bottom are economically squeezed to build and "train" their replacement.

Once that is done, there is no "need" for people to exist. This is how they think about people, disposable and replacable "resources" providing "value" over "time". This logic has shaped corporations for decades at this point. "Value" has been redefined and those who still cling to "common sense" are exploited.

We have been observing the cracks of this philosophy of anti human design for a while now and yet there are still people believing they are doing something that brings humanity forward or at least they believe they will have a spot in that future.

If you truly believe in a utopian outcome, you probably have never been on the receiving end of cold calculation, in terms of layoffs or work and/or starve to see how this can backfire, regardless of what you do and what common sense tells you.

Just challenge the micro agreements you had to make while growing up into becoming an adult to justify doing the things you do and the way you are forced to treat other people while doing business.

I see cold judgements on a daily basis, when someone is instrumentalized to do or say objectively immoral things, despite them just wanting to pay bills. It is ordinary men all the way down until reality arrives. Fear of certain consequences is the biggest lever that is being pulled every time, no matter what direction you look at.

Despite that I'm still optimistic and believe people will pull back and change direction.

Happy to read your thoughts on this

Where this demand for the "end game" comes from? Why do you people assign some long-term vision to a bunch of sociopaths with money and influence that came from being born in a proper family and having lot of luck, whilst ditching any moral integrity along the way?

The is no plan, there is no endgame. There is greed and complete lack of morals, and a completely inhumane system so often praised here - capitalism. It has a single logic, logic of accumulation. Everything else is a mean to that end. System doesn't question its purpose, as its purpose defines its essence.

Well, this is not a problem at all - long before you ever need to ask "who will buy stuff" the world will burn.

That will fix the problem & whoever rises to power from the ashes will be hopefully more careful than their predecessors - maintain social stability and not radicalize big parts of the society against you.

For this system. Their fantasy is effectively automated luxury palaces and the poor exist primarily for exploitation (mostly sexual and gladiatorial).

you just need to have a balance. - enough rich people like you so you don't feel alone - enough middle income people that buy to keep you rich and strive to become rich - enough poor people that try everything possible to become richer and throw middle income people to poor.

so you are super rich while others are busy fighting to defend their position or to rise their position.

Nietzsche also described it well when noting there are those who deem themselves nobles and feel they are righteously above the laws and those who derive their identity from suffering under the same laws.

Nietzsche died broke and insane. Was that from following his own advice or failing to do so?

Newton put needles in his eye's and probably suffered greatly from self inflicted lead and mercury poisoning; Why do you trust his laws of motion?

Being successful or not in your wealth doesn't make you right or wrong about anything with the exception of maybe running the business that generated your wealth.

Nietzsche presented two prototypical sets of human who interface with laws and ethics. He described why those believes exists and are self-reaffirming even if they are puzzling from the other side.

The Ayn Rand stans say the same.

My uncle told me not to smoke, but he's a smoker so I didn't listen.

Good, lots of other people who aren't smokers can tell you that

So did Tesla and Vincent Van Gogh, but how much did he create?

Faraday was poor, etc.

Lenin deteriorated, and Marx was always poor.

Anyway...

> Nietzsche died broke and insane

If he was alive today he’d probably have a YouTube channel and be making bank shilling dietary supplements.

You jest, but that's the point a lot of people here are missing: Nietzsche would fit right in with the YouTuber bros, right up to the ignominious downfall.

No, not really. Nietzsche was a trained philologist with a brilliant academic career, before he ended it early because of health issues. He was leaps and bounds more educated and knowledgable than 99% of people making philosophy content on YouTube. He was also a pretty meek and gentle person, even if his ideas are anything but.

Most people haven't actually read him though, and their knowledge of his work comes from poorly-researched YouTube videos.

I tried, even in German on the theory that he was badly translated. Nietzsche was an undisciplined writer and a beefing gossip, among other infuriating characteristics.

Nietzsche was also a pure troll

Not a follow of Nietzsche and critical of him but this is just unfair the sort of pandering to the audience that is required for a popular philosophy channel on youtube is something he would never debase himself to do (or probably any serious thinker).

It's deeply embarrassing to be a whore even if it's well payed.

Is there a name for this style of non-argument? I guess it’s an attack on credibility due to the inability to attack the content of the argument?

ad hominem.

Based on the comments its even shallower than ad-hominem. It's loose association to the "bad" they learned from the "good". Therefore everything from bad is bad. It's team sports thinking.

If I had to guess they probably read some wired article saying tech people are followers of Nietzsche based on one guy quoting one thing one time. Although probably used more dramatic terms like Nazis or fascist or something.

It's interesting if you think of Solidarity in these terms.

There is a kind of solidarity of persistence under harsh natural conditions. And another kind of solidarity of persistence under laws.

So it might follow that the former group, those who feel above laws, also lack in a feeling of Solidarity. That would suggest a strong adherence to Individualism as a key component to their identity.

> who wishes to maintain himself

This is the key. Everyone wants stability in their circumstances, but you have to go to extreme lengths to sustain an extreme lifestyle, particularly if it is based on preserving a high rate of accumulation instead of accumulation itself.

Researched some companies and their founders, many are YC alumni: LendUp W12, uBiome S14, Zenefits W13, Kalshi W19.

The halo effect is real: https://medium.com/@trendguardian/rigged-networks-1d5ad5c6f8...

I think you are interpreting the quote incorrectly. It is not that the prince should be immoral, but rather that he must understand political reality is often filled with perfidious actions and motives. He must recognize that within his principality, there will be those ready to backstab him to gain power. His duty is to the continuation of his principality and the preservation of his own power.

This is not merely selfish ambition; it becomes a duty. People depend on him to defend their city and owe him for the stability of their affairs. Therefore, he must dedicate himself to his principality and, by extension, his power, rather than acting morally like the common man who must navigate political reality.

What is incredible about the current state of the western world is that Andreessen Horowitz seem more like common men. They believe they can simply continue their profession, they are the prince's of are time and are the pinnacle of power in the west. They seem to think there are good guys and bad guys, viewing those who dislike them as bad, while those who accept their power are good. They believe people should never conspire against them.

Precisely because they are dedicated to a particular set of morals, they are unlike the prince. These are morals both of us dislike, yet they believe in them dare I say, naively and idealistically. They view capitalism and profit as an immutable moral truth that others must accept as righteous power.

This is a luxury only afforded in most times to the common man, who can maintain false notions of morality despite his profession depending on the political stability of some sovereign. I don't hate these people; I am just perplexed by their lack of understanding that history is littered with men who worried about politics, yet still fellto fellow members of their class, mercenaries, and scions seeking more than money.

I don't think there is much good in the common people, as bitter resentment is always their. They would do well to know that money does not protect them from it. Most of what is called morality and ethics are cheap, self-serving philosophies. The only exception is true mystagogy, a beautiful flower that cannot grow in the barren American mind. It grows only through the blood of the martyrs.

> Precisely because they are dedicated to a particular set of morals, they are unlike the prince. These are morals both of us dislike, yet they believe in them dare I say, naively and idealistically. They view capitalism and profit as an immutable moral truth that others must accept as righteous power.

They actually don't believe in capitalism and profit, because if they did, they'd recognize that extreme concentration of wealth is actually detrimental to capitalism (the system's) performance. Ricardo, Mill, and Smith all saw this dynamic, but "capitalists" like Andreessen have shown zero interest in combatting it for the health of the capitalist system as a whole.

They also wouldn't, for example, try to use government to prevent the market from building housing near their mansions: https://therealdeal.com/san-francisco/2022/08/08/marc-andree...

You're ascribing way, way too much intellectual consistency to these people. They have no moral system.

I concede partially to your point about not believing in capitalism, the issue is I think though Smith sincere I do not think that Smith's moral positions are based on a need to ascribe moral value to the budding industrialists and the moral scorn on the aristocracy and Tory power. The adoption of these ideas by the British empire is that they are the best way to exploit and the talk of free markets by empires both British, American and Chinese? (later no doubt) is that they are to be promoted when it is useful to do so. The best capitalists therefore are the ones who understand subconsciously or consciously that the ability manipulate the market by some means or to have the market already pre-figured in your favor is the purpose of the talk of the good of the free market. It is true how ever that free market no doubt turns against all empires and the economic, political, military reality shifts in a way that is outside the control of the empire.

That is all to say that the cynical attitude of Andreesen or Thiel is what I think it's always been about. I probably sound a little Marxist or just cynical but I am not a Marxist and I do right and wrong, I do think that the modern theories of morality should be understood cynically as their purpose is primarily a political attempt to change or preserve something and in some sense when one examines them deeply we see self interest usually hidden and diffused by moralising prose and sentiments in these modern theories of morality. So techno optimism manifesto is a more brash, bold and crass version of these works of moral theory indeed a making a sort of unintentional parody. None of this is to say that political economy is only moralising (which techno optimism is).

> Ricardo, Mill, and Smith all saw this dynamic, but "capitalists" like Andreessen have shown zero interest in combatting it for the health of the capitalist system as a whole.

They just tried to cope by denying the essence of capitalism, just like wannabe commies cope by proclaiming that "it wasn't a true communism". Andreessen just follows the system to its natural conclusion.

Is saying that cancer is bad and should be mitigated simply "denying the essence of cell division?" Nope.

There is no system on the planet, big or small, that can be stabilized by a reinforcing feedback loop.

The difference is that capitalism is a human creation, whereas mitogenesis is not. And this kind of naturalization is one of the reason we end up in the current situation, where it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.

Even assuming that difference is real (seems questionable IMO), why is it relevant?

Same thing with a manmade thing: Is saying that you ate too many breadsticks just denying the essence of Olive Garden's unlimited breadstick basket?

https://www.esv.org/Psalm+73/

>It's a self fulfilling prophecy... while us commoners, or so called "activists" or ethicists ponder and debate on culture, morality, law and ethics... The powerful are just living an alternate life devoid of all these moral qualms and are have clearly distanced themselves from the mundane, have distanced themselves from the guilt or any kind of accountability.

I have been musing, good deeds aren't paying off - heck the peasants don't even notice, or think I'm a loser. I'm tempted to think like the powerful...

The man has repeatedly invested in shady, unethical businesses. We don’t have to make a debate out of why, since plenty of rich and/or powerful people DON’T do those things.

My (over-simplified) conclusion is that he’s not a decent person. End of story.

Machiabelli was a big Florence patriot and was writing his advice specifically to help a prince better govern Florence and hence increase the chance that Florence will not be annihilated in the constant wars that raged on the Italian Peninsula at the time.

Sure, there are effects like that power corrupts. But there are differences between powerful people.

TLDR: "Don't hate the player, hate the game".

No, we really should hate the players. They are keeping the game from changing.

A small number of players set the rules of the game.

A players collectively choose that everyone must follow those rules.

No sarcasm: play a different game. If you play their game, of course you'll suffer. But if you play a game they're repulsed by, you can win a life they'll never have access to: one filled with people who love and respect you and an environment where your best self and life can emerge.

The parent comments are talking about how the game is negatively impacting society. Your suggestion is to check out and leave society to them. One of the many problems with that suggestion is that it's hard for your best self/life to emerge in a bleak future.

That's not what I said. I didn't say anything about leaving society, I alluded to leaving their society. That's the thing: people keep giving these guys money and attention. If you take that away, they become more than irrelevant. Simplified: if they're going West, you go East.

The more "small time" people reject this narrative that we need a bunch of elitist white guys shoving their mediocrity down our throats, the faster we rebuild a society they're barred from accessing.

    I didn't say anything about leaving society, I alluded to leaving their society. That's the thing: people keep giving these guys money and attention. If you take that away, they become more than irrelevant.

Can you explain how to do that without either drawing attention to them via discussions like this or leaving society altogether? I don't personally fund a16z, but my taxes do. Calls to coordinated action to stop giving them money also count as attention.

Leave Babylon behind and go build local businesses and communities in what they refer to as "flyover country." That's what I'm doing. Easy? Fuck no. But does it take their relevancy away from them? At the scale of everyone who isn't a coastal barnacle: big time.

They view the rest of this country with disdain and indifference. I'm suggesting that others quit looking at these people as lords and sages to be placed up on a pedestal. Most of them are quite incompetent, skill-less, and frankly, not cool enough to want to hang out with (why they're making "jokes" about there only being two jobs left in the world in the future: Anthropic employees and hookers for Anthropic employees [1]). I'm sorry but I'm not taking direction from a bunch of dorks who can't get laid without paying for it. And I'd take a wild guess that given the climate, the lion's share of America is with me.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tjrCFuEA1ds

What does flyover country have to do with the present discussion? Kalshi is just as big a problem (or bigger even) in Nebraska as New York. Taxes going to Anduril happens whether you live in Malibu or Missouri.

> What does flyover country have to do with the present discussion?

Read what I already wrote above, I made it pretty clear.

They can still buy laws that negatively affect me as long as enough others are giving them money.

What if their game is to flip the boards of everyone else’s games?

Then so be it. Hopefully they've considered all of the angles and can defend themselves against people being radicalized to the point of hunting them down.

Turns out their obsession with moats was prescient.

You can, of course, distance yourself from their world and work on things they would never see as valuable. However, you can't check out of the most grand game we're playing, the game of life and existence. Those people desperately want to toy with things that could eventually prevent you from being able to live a life where you still have food, water and shelter. You can ignore it while they're still not all-powerful, but as their wealth and influence grows, you will eventually have to confront it.

That’s a cop-out. It’s the most powerful “players” who are making the “game” what it is, and they make the rules be whatever benefits them.

It would be pretty reasonable to hate the player who brings a machine gun to a stadium, kills every opponent to start scoring and when people complain says “Nothing in the rules says we can’t kill other players to score. If I didn’t gun everyone down, the opposing team would’ve. Don’t hate the player, hate the game”.

Yes this is their reasoning, it doesn't mean we shouldn't hate the players and the game alike

It’s not the players we should hate but the ones who make the rules of the game. Specifically not the ones who make the rules for the greater good but for themselves.

So, the players?

No rule makers. Players are not the one making the rules of a game. They just play it.

That is like hating a hacker who hacks into your vulnerable server that is outdated and allows ssh password login. If there is vulnerabilities in the system someone will eventually exploit them, sure not you or me but there is always someone out there that will.

That same hacker can choose to responsibly disclose the vulnerability through the proper channels, or take advantage of it to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Which one they choose objectively determines the quality of person they are.

That is how we find ourselves in this mess, we design systems thinking only of everything that can go right and not what can go wrong.

Protecting yourself from every possibility where things can go wrong is not something anyone can afford.

Let’s bring your example into the physical world:

“That is like hating a thief who robs your home which has an old lock and a window you forgot open. If there is an open window in the house someone will eventually climb through it, sure not you or me but there is always someone out there that will.”

It is perfectly reasonable to hate the person who robbed your house or hacked your server. “If that someone hadn’t, another someone would” is in no way a defence. It is not OK to actively harm someone just because they didn’t protect themselves.

Yes. My point is that until you learn to lock your door, thief will enter and steal your property. You can hate them all you want, that wont change the facts or magically lock your door.

I prefer to live somewhere where I can be relatively sure that forgetting to close my windows doesn't get me robbed. That means punishing those who take advantage of open windows. Turns out deterrence can be quite effective.

Unfortunately the thief has introduced legislation that bans any better locks, and they have a magical veto that allows them to strike down any attempts at changing said laws.

Should I still not hate the thief?

Security is always about tradeoffs and in a functioning society you don't need to have perfect security (and pay the extreme cost required for it) because we do indeed put blame on individuals that abuse the system.

> The powerful are just living an alternate life...

So, you consider anyone with a job "powerful"? Personal ethics are arbitrary enough to poo-poo any job. It's just as easy to call everyone else "useful idiots".

> So, you consider anyone with a job "powerful"?

That is not what OP said, so you may want to re-read what they said.

What did I misunderstand?

There is simply not anything in their post which says what you said (So, you consider anyone with a job "powerful"?).

If paraphrasing is a hurdle, keep in mind it isn't necessary, you can just respond to their own wording of what they said.

If I may try to provide an outside perspective: your paraphrasing being accurate depends on others' acceptance of your proposal that jobs are mutually exclusive with ethics.

And speaking personally, I did not follow what you were saying about useful idiots. Sorry.

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