[ExI] A Nobel laureate and climate change

[Tomasz Rola]

On Fri, 16 Sep 2011, BillK wrote:

> 2011/9/16 Tomasz Rola wrote:
> <snip>
> > ...but I don't buy this. If things go screwed, they are going to face
> > hundred millions of very hungry people (the rest might be dead but
> > a hundred mil is a problem anyway). And their servants will be the
> > first who can easily pack them a bullet in a head from the back. If you
> > look at the history of Rome, "barbarians" very rarely managed to kill an
> > emperor. I assume they may be arsholes but not idiots. Therefore I expect
> > them to do everything to turn our small boat away from a shite, if this is
> > possible to do, of course.
> >
> >
> 
> I don't buy that story either.  :)
> 
> The super rich are money psychopaths (to a greater or lesser extent).

I think this kind of statements is easily acceptable as long as one 
doesn't demand for some proofs. I find myself prone to the Easy way, which 
shows me that I am really a human. On the other hand, I don't really like
Easy. What I value is Truth. For this reason every time I see myself 
judging other people by their belonging to some group, I force myself to 
distinguish between Easy and Truth.

Assuming that super-rich starts from 1 billion dollars, I don't think I 
have ever met someone from this group. So, no real life experience. I 
could have met few who had more than a million but I wouldn't call them 
psychopaths, even if not all would fit as cool guys, friends etc.

Going further, we can grab few real names from the net:

1. Philip Zepter - born 1950 in small Serbian town (ca. 35000 people), now 
has 5 bil $ [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zepter ]

2. Elon Musk - born 1971 in South Africa, sold his first program at age 
12, CEO of SpaceX, one time a big shareholder in PayPal, how much does he 
own is hard to say, probably below a 1 bil $ but still a nice sum :-)
 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk ]

3. J. K. Rowling - b. 1965, author of "Harry Potter", worth close to $1 
bil, maybe more [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling ]

4. Michael Bloomberg - b. 1942, worked as parking boy to pay his uni's 
tuition, now has $18bil and is 13st most wealthy USian 
 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg ]

5. Bill Gates - b. 1955, while the whole MS politics is controversial for 
me and I may dislike it, but still, it was people who gave him his wealth, 
nowadays worth about $56 bil [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates ]

Now, I don't know any of those people. However, this is exactly this lack 
of supporting data that I would rather not call them psychos. While their 
biographies might have been fabricated, I have no reason to believe that 
they indeed were.

So, what do you mean by "money psychopaths" and what data do you have?

> They are not survivalists, stocking up on guns and tins of food,
> preparing for the end of the world.
> Though they probably have hired a company (like Blackwater) to stock
> their Caribbean island and defend it.
> The rich don't expect total destruction around the world. They do
> expect wars over resources and much starvation and die-off in
> populations.

You know, I think I can point to some holes in their supposed plan.

First, isolating myself on a tropical island, without easy access to 
resources and with not much place, if, say, I wanted to make tanks to 
defend myself there - this simply doesn't sound good. Maybe rich guys are 
that stupid but they are supposed to have advisors to give them something 
better than this.

Twice, the wealth depends on the planet going more or less like it is 
today. The wealth forms an ecosystem itself.  Once you remove the 
underlying fabric, the wealth has nobody to sustain itself. The money thus 
becomes no better than a toilet paper - and I would prefer toilet paper 
because it is made to be soft. Assuming that they hire guns to defend 
their island, at one moment it is going to be guns versus 
worse-than-toilet paper. I would bet guns will take over the islands, end 
of game.

Now, I can see this and am no big brain. Clearly rich guys can hire 
someone to look after them and repair their mistakes, and get their 
monthly pay for this?

> The USA already has about 20% of the population surviving on food
> stamps. Even if that increases to 50% or 60%, the poor probably won't
> attack the rich in their seaside mansions. The poor have entertainment
> and food - they won't risk losing that in order to attack a few
> thousand billionaires.

If they have food and games, and don't require anything else, apparently, 
why worry? Seems like they have been taken care of rather than been packed 
into old cattle cars and driven into the ocean.

> Eventually, more attention will go to developing new energy sources,
> but the rich are only really concerned about the remainder of their
> lifetime and they expect to continue business much as usual for that
> period.

Sounds like the rich have no children. And if they have, they don't really 
love them. Because, obviously, they only love money?

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **