this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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[–] [email protected] 98 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Remember when all those politicians, actors, and activists went to that global climate change meeting on private planes?

Rich ppl will do nothing if it even inconveniences them a smidgen.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Most people won’t. But rich people especially won’t.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

unlike rich people, most people can be incentivized or compelled to behave

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah... most people want to be like those rich people.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

People like to point at rich people on planes but really it's actually the car dependency and carnism that are destroying the planet.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 weeks ago

They don’t care about serving good coffee at affordable prices either. I drink black coffee and their Pike Roast tastes like burnt flavor crystals.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

It's an apartheid.

Their wealth can protect them from climate change, so they have no good reason to change their behavior.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Increasingly I think it actually might protect them. Not in a postapocalyptic bunker or a libertarian private island but rather in the upper echelons of a less climate-striken authoritarian country. One where there's still a functioning society, enough labor to sustain an economy and a compliant political and law enforcement classes happy to maintain some form of apartheid. The Arabian peninsula countries could be a model.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh, definitely. In most countries the wealthy can simply buy citizenship.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The thing why I am not 100% sure this will work is that the wealthy especially today increasingly hold abstract wealth. It's in the form of money and other financial instruments. All of those are IOUs owed to them in labor. In other words it's only meaningful because someone will accept these IOUs in order to do some work in exchange. This is even true for natural resources and more automated services because all of them require some amount of labor to extract or maintain. With that in mind, say the source countries where these IOUs commanded labor fall apart (mass death, political upheaval, etc) then they go with these IOUs to Qatar to Uncle Putin to purchase a citizenship. Putin could accept those IOUs in exange for a citizenship. However he wouldn't be able to buy anything with them from because they are no longer accepted. So why would he take the wealthy person? Surely he isn't so naive to believe every wealthy person is actually as valuable in their ability as their wealth. So I'm thinking, and I'm not confident in this thought, but I feel like its possible that the first wave might be able to buy its way into Traditional Values Federation, while the global economy isn't dead yet. As things start to crumble, it'll get harder and harder to do so. Perhaps in the later rounds of the lottery, only people who have some other type of capital, not financial, would qualify. E.g. a guy from ASML with all the blueprints to build 1nm lithography machines. In fact, even if financial capital is accepted in exchange for citizenships it will probably not be accepted in the landing country in order to prevent it from being deployed against the existing political class. Adding a lot of billionaires in Russia and letting them spend domestically can dismantle the regime that let them in.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It could be you're right.

I don't think anyone can really say how it will work out in the end, but I am comfortable in saying I'm sure the wealthy will survive it unscathed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes that's probably the safer bet. Plus no tears here for the ones that don't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Money can only buy people if people still value the money. In a world where their money means less and less, they will have less power/ value and may not survive unscathed.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

I would say I would boycott Starbucks, but that would imply they have a product I desire.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

I've never been in a Starbucks.The thought of drinking coffee that isn't does not appeal to me.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

My take is that the super wealthy already know there's no saving this mess, and they won't survive much longer either, so they're just squeezing the lemon for whatever juice is left before it all blows sky high.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This has been their mentality since late 70s

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

🧑‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

It has always been their mentality.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 weeks ago

In Ministry for the Future, one of the major plot points partway through the book is that eco-terrorists (eco-partisans, really, considering the subject matter and general gist of the book) start blasting planes out of the sky. They hit a few civilian airliners, but the vast majority of their targets are private jets.

Do with that what you will.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

we could very reasonably get rid of CEOs

edit: i didn't mean murder 😭

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

how much carbon dioxide does this supercommute produce, expressed in cars/day?

edit: i guess it's just cars

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago

The commute itself? Hard to say. But according to the article, a billionaire produces emissions equivalent to a million average people.

There are 3,311 billionaires.

Once they are eliminated, that's the emissions of 3.3 billion people taken care of.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I want to know in paper straws per day.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

How many bananas for miles travelled.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

It's actually difficult to estimate, but there are ways to calculate it. I gave up because I found one part of data expressed in CO2e per mile, another in CO2e per hour, and yet others with CO2 instead of CO2e. If I get into calculating that, I'm going to require funding.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Now that is a punchable face.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

how do they all do it? It's like going over a certain threshold of wealth makes ones face take one some subtle traits that increase the desire of others to punch.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.” ― William Gibson, Count Zero

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

If it's a boeing, he ain't going......to reach his destination.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago

People don't achieve ultimate privilege by caring about other people.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Jesus, if I remember correctly, usually travelled by donkey or by foot

If Jesus had access to it, he'd totally be a fixed gear bicycle cat zooming through the alleyways of Jerusalem.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

BMX Jesus FTW

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

But would he take it off sweet jumps?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Starbucks just can't stop shooting itself in the foot. Just when it had given some concessions to the union. Fuck Starbucks.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

I bet every one of his corporate employees has to commute to work though. Hypocrites.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

so does Taylor Swift

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

They do care about supporting genocide though

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Starbucks is HORRIBLE for the planet

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago
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