I just spent over an hour trying to find that image, which I’d just seen the other day.
Does he specify the species?
This is your periodic reminder that Thiel and his purchased NZ citizenship promote their political agenda through fuckpuppets like J. D. Vance, notably the idea that unmarried unfamilied citizens should be stripped of the right to vote because they don’t have any personal stake in the future of the US.
Not really. City maybe though.
I owe @Mangochin a sustainable beverage
I remember it mainly for the cameo appearance of Zurbarán’s painting 'Agnus Dei". Apparently it is a tradition, or an old charter or something, in these BBC reinventions.
Aaahh, now you’ve made me think about the Roman Empire, perkele!
Empires by their nature are the very opposite of self-sustaining.
I dunno, an empty one might hold Morlocks.
There was this writer, um… Cory Doctorow? You guys probably haven’t heard of him. But anyway, he wrote a version of Masque of the Red Death that featured preppers instead of royalty? It pretty well lays out the problems with doomsday bunkers. You survive the apocalypse by engaging with other people and working towards the common good, not by arming yourself to the teeth and standing guard over your Cipro hoard, bitcoin wallet, and Cuban cigars.
Basic response to this-so the fuck what? He wants to waste his money on this, that’s his business. His business decisions have an effect on millions everyday, but his personal life is not something to spend time thinking about.
Except for the impact it has on Hawaii, maybe? Yet another rich asshole driving up the cost of living there, and pushing out especially the indigenous community…
Plus, he shows that he has no interest in using his wealth to help fix our broken systems, but rather will keep helping to accelerate our problems in order to justify this.
So… yeah… this kind of wealth is never about “personal” life. He’s very much hoarding wealth and fucking up the lives of billions of people with his business. Billionaires don’t have “personal” lives when ti comes to this kind of thing.
I heartily recommend reading Douglas Rushkoff’s Survivial of the Richest mentioned upthread by @anon43374320. It delves deeply into how the very wealthy continually strive to insulate themselves from the negative impacts on society that their business decisions create, up to and including “escape plans” to ride out doomsday scenarios in isolated self-sustaining compounds.
You can’t really separate one from the other, because the insulation from the larger society helps them rationalize their business practices and the obscene wealth they accumluate from those business practices allows them to further insulate themselves from larger society. It’s a feedback loop that has dire implications for us all.
How is this bunker driving up the cost of living? Is there a new community of bunker builders moving in? The construction jobs alone would help the local economy.
The problems with hoarded wealth are far more serious than wether zuck is hiding on an island above ground or underground.
The same way that high end buildings drive up the cost of living in any community… And the same way that celebrities buying up land drives up the cost of living anywhere. It’s absolutely exacerbated by the premium on land on such a beautiful locale with very little land to go around… Regular folks can’t afford to live nearby, which likely pushes people out of their communities when a rich asshole buys up nearby land. This is double true for the indigenous communities.
It’s the same problem. They’re interconnected. You can’t extract him building a bunker-mansion from him hoarding wealth. Let’s not forget that housing/land/real estate are means of hoarding wealth. We’re constantly told that owning a home is an investment, not just a place to live. This is why the wealthy buy land all over the world - not to live in, but to invest and to ensure that at least some of their wealth will avoid being taxed…
There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire.
[ETA] Some links on this issue…
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/realestate/hawaii-housing-prices-pandemic.html
It’s not like space and natural resources are finite or or anything; especially on an island.
/S
That’s true in my city, which is not an island… people with wealth come in and buy up houses in certain neighborhoods, and pretty soon, all the working class people are pushed out, because they can’t afford their taxes anymore, even if they already own the house outright. There is a land-trust organization trying to help legacy residents, but it’s still a huge problem that is now unfolding over on the west side/west end… It’s pretty well dealt a blow to neighborhoods like the Old Fourth Ward and Sweet Auburn (and in that case, GSU played a big role in gentrification).
Zuckerberg bought the land ages ago. That he wants to put a stupid construction on it is not really the thing to focus on. How to effectively tax his billions is, to me, a more rewarding conversation. The ways real estate is used to sequester wealth is, to me, a more interesting conversation.
I’m saying that these two things ARE connected. Even if he already OWNS the land, the value is not some static thing. Infrastructure drives up the value of that land, increasing the tax burden for the entire community. Building a high-end bunker WILL increase the value of the land and drive up taxes for everyone else.
Plus this shows he has no interest in helping to fix the problem he helped cause with our national/global politics. He plans to hunker down if/when the shit hits the fan, and the rest of us can fuck off and die.
Why shouldn’t we be concerned? He’s using up a tremendous amount resources to support a lifestyle that makes it ever easier for him to ignore the plight of the vast majority of humanity.
No man is an island. Even one who can buy himself an island.