Billionaires are making private plans for societal crises

Transcript

From the transcript The Diary Of A CEO publishes with the episode.

1. 47:15

   the definition of the word nihilist, but I guess it's someone who believes that life is essentially meaningless. I think there's a nihilist vein running through Big Tech where a lot of them have go bags. They have a plan for, if shit gets real, if there's a zombie apocalypse or there's a revolution or there's a massive pandemic, they have definitive plans and they've spent tens of millions of dollars. They meet their pilots at Oakland Airport. They get on in their Gulfstream 650. They fly to New Zealand to Oakland and they have a bunker built out. Is this true? Oh, there's a lot of them.

2. 47:49

   Really, there's a lot of go plans amongst the wealthy and sometimes it's not as dramatic. Sometimes it's just a home, nuclear attacks, cyber attack, revolution, but I would say amongst billionaires, I would bet conservatively one and three have some sort of go plan and that's nihilist. Also, to a certain extent, I think wanting to be an interplanetary species is a little bit nihilist. Also, if they're saying that in the future people aren't going to have jobs and there's robotics and there's this AGI, this superintelligence, which is going to be smarter than everybody, and even if there was a one percent chance, a one percent chance that these doom of predictions around AI could come true, I would stop. A one percent chance of humanity sort of self-employing or destroying itself. Wouldn't a rational person stop? Well, okay, you're up in aheimer.

3. 48:40

   It's going to take three million American deaths to invade Japan, Japan will not surrender, and you're you've been charged of splitting the atom. There was much more than a one percent chance that our ability to split the atom and then show and then show we would use it against a civilian population would result in the end of the world. Should he have stopped development of it? So a lot of scientists, nuclear scientists killed themselves, they committed suicide because they were convinced once we'd split the atom and use it against civilians, it was the end of the world.

4. 49:08

   It was just a matter of time before we were all all using nuclear devices. So I don't I think you keep moving forward. The nihilism where nihilism impacts these people, let me go back to the go bag. I talked to one of these people. He outlined his plan for me, right? He's a beginner. Yeah, outlined his plan. His plan B, if things get really ugly, right? And my view is, okay, boss, let's play this out. Something happens. There's an event. It's too dangerous to stay here. You meet your pilots at the airport. I mean, shit really gets real.

5. 49:39

   People scaring for food. People become feral. I mean, you don't think your pilots are going to kill you and fuck your wife. What do you think is going to happen? You don't think the people in New Zealand are going to be like, let's go take the rich guy's shit. It strikes me that these are such misallocated efforts in capital that if you're really focused on your own future, whether you're wealthy or not wealthy, that your resources and your talent should be allocated towards trying to make this place a little bit more habitable, not trying to colonize Mars, not having a go back. And this is part of the problem with the point 1%. There are 900 billionaires in the United States. And I would imagine 300 of them give money. They're responsible for 20% of all political donations and that 20% number is misleading because they can be more strategic.

6. 50:32

   So unions are big givers, but they just give money to whoever's pro union. So it's not that strategic. Billionaires can allocate capital to a specific issue, really ramp it up. So they have a disproportionate amount of control over our elected population. And the problem is the point 1% are not invested in the health of America. Why? They don't have to put up with TSA lines. They fly private. They don't have to put up with shitty health care. They have concierge medicine and access to the best medicine in the world. They don't have to put up with 40% of third graders can't read or write. Their kids go to amazing schools that spend on average $75,000 a year on their kid versus 15,000 at a public school, 10,000 at a public school in a long America. They don't need police. They have dormant and security. Where I live in Soho,

7. 51:19

   there's no homeless. As far as I can tell, there's no crime. There's no cops. There's cameras everywhere and dormant everywhere. My point is they are no longer invested in the well-being of America. They've totally dissociated from the investments required to make America a better place because they're sequestered from it. They're no longer invested in the well-being of America. And what I find strange about this nihilism is that these individuals think that they are no longer as invested in the well-being or the safety of the world. I think that's very unhealthy.