The Takeaway — Collapse Isn’t a Flaw, It’s the Plan
The rich are not scrambling to prevent collapse. They welcome it — because they know they’ll be the only ones left standing. While the rest of us are told to “sacrifice” and “tighten our belts,” billionaires are building bunkers, buying private islands, and hoarding resources for the dystopia they see coming.
In the leadup to societal collapse (you are here!), land ownership matters more than anything. It is immune to inflation. To a lesser extent, stocks matter. It’s not like billionaires are sitting on a mountain of cold hard cash.
In the aftermath of societal collapse, control of
law enforcementprivate militias matters. If you can feed and house a militia, then you can control access to farmlands, roads, all kinds of resources. Control of those resources will allow you to support your militia and provide sufficient coercion for people to “willingly” join that militia. The only tricky part here is the transitional phase, and honestly, there’s probably enough cultural inertia that this will not be much of a problem at all.See: feudalism. It is the wet dream of every ultra-rich piece of shit.
Most of the world is highly dependent on long-distance transport for the necessities of life, including food. Look at any major American city. None of them are anywhere close to self-sustaining. Self-sustainability is something America has not only ignored, but actively avoided and prevented in the design of its cities in favor of the “efficiency” of factory farms.
The best time to eat the rich was yesterday. The second-best time is today. Billionaires are an existential threat to society.
Control of militias matters, absolutely. Now tell me why those militias wouldn’t immediately depose their billionaire and take what wealth he has for themselves.
Same reason they don’t today, generally: they are reliant on their jobs for their own personal safety and that of their families. Destroying the system that sustains them (even just barely) might not be in their immediate self-interest. They are disconnected from their peers (and those who would be their peers). Any direct action would be met with immediate hostility by the majority of the militia, and the best they could hope for is a volatile power vacuum.
See: prisoner’s dilemma.
This does not rely on the rank-and-file enforcers to be particularly malicious people, only for them to have no clear and safe alternative.
If we’re being perfectly honest, most of us are in similar situations today. I am fully aware that my tax dollars fund oppression all over the world, yet I still prefer to pay my taxes than go to prison. Realistically, I’m not going to stop participating in society, because it would hurt me immensely and it would help no one on its own. But I’m not kidding myself either; I am part of a corrupt system.
Real, lasting change requires organization and synchronicity. My choices as an individual are severely limited.
Inertia. Why did kings exist for so long?
They did not ‘exist’ spontaneously to begin with.
Grossly put, In early days France kings were elected. That’s how Hugues Capet became king of France around 980 AD (Hugh is considered the founder of the Capetian family that lead to Louis XIV and to Louis XVI). He was elected by the other members of the aristocracy, and he was far from being the most powerful/rich/vast land owner (his ‘kingdom’ was in reality quite small compared to the lands of other aristocrats). Then, it’s a lot of diplomacy and a lot more patience (over centuries), alliances and marriages (plus a few treason, and feuds) that made the difference and lead to his descents to become the incarnation of absolute power they once were peaking in the advent of Louis XIV and then it went to shit rather quickly (the dude died around 1715… barely 70-some years before the French revolution and the Republic), with only two more kings after him the second one, Louis XVI, ending beheaded. Meanwhile that Capet family was not ‘undisputed’ as the legit kings. Valois and then Plantagenet contested quite harshly their title and for quite some time they took it from them. It was only in somewhere in the XIII century that the Capet took back their power… up until 1789.
So, beside religion (bad karma, plus real risk of lessening one’s power) politics and pragmatism explain the non constant killing of new kings. The real risk of having to face a coalition of all the other aristocrats (hostile to power grab) and also the certainty that if anyone could kill a king to become king, well, anyone else could do the same to the new one. It was much better (and safer) to agree to keep one king alive for a while and then, while publicly submitting to his authority (up to a certain point, as there were almost constant… disagreements) to split practical power between them (aka, back then split land ownership). It’s also a lot cheaper than to have to fight constant internal wars to keep whatever you can put your hands on by a coup. Plus, publicly recognizing the dude as your king did not prevent you from secretly (or not so secretly) to weaken him or help to make his life hell. Ancient history of France is filled with that. It’s great read ;)