Billionaire Island #5

[history79]

Comments

[donnblake]

The essential problem (practical, that is, not moral or ethical) with this sort of set-up is that guy with the gun. Now, our society has all sorts of cultural traditions and balances to ensure that the guy with the gun guarding the rich folks doesn't just point the gun at them and make himself the new rich man. Other societies have had other sets of traditions and balances which have worked... variably well.

These guys? I give them a week before they go from "A bunch of obscenely wealthy people with a private security force," to "A small military dictatorship with a pharonically rich charismatic dictator."

That's not to say it's unrealistic that someone would try it, there've been sea-steading proposals from libertarians for quite a while, but usually they espouse *some* ethos beyond naked greed.

I wonder the same thing about those expensive entry bunker complexes you hear about from time to time. Once society collapsed and you have no more money to give the men with guns because there is no such thing as money do you think the employer/employee relationship might change?

[roguefankc]

Once society collapsed and you have no more money to give the men with guns because there is no such thing as money do you think the employer/employee relationship might change?[/quote]

THIS. If the world is destroyed, money is worthless. And people with skills will be the new currency, so yes, that relationship would change. I'm glad I'm not the only one who spotted that.,

Actually, I'd give it several months before instead of a dictatorship, we'd have complete anarchy and they all kill each other in the end.
With so many billionaires, you just need several with big enough egos and a desire to be "number one" to cause a civil war on that island in an effort to cut each other down which pretty much causes the whole island to either get destroyed or the whole structure collapses.

[mazway_75]

I get what they're going for, the guy who built this really having noble goals and not grasping how it would fall apart. But really, you'd think he'd have checked these folks out first rather than assume of course they have to be experts at what their companies do and not seeing from the start the greed and ego pushing them.

Again, a fair idea except how it should be obvious from the start this guy is simply too naive to ever think this "utopia" was going to work with his partners.

[zachbeacon]

You've never worked for an obvious idiot because you needed money for survival?

[jlbarnett]

he seems to grasp, but then is unable to accept it. Why does he need this to be viable?

[thezmage]

This is pretty much directly Atlas Shrugged, right?

[zachbeacon]

Nah, less trains and the writer isn't trying to convince us the villains are the heroes.

[super_fly]

More like an hour after Atlas Shrugged http://angryflower.com/348.html