Why Some Billionaires Are Actively Trying to Destroy the World [video] (opens in new tab)

It's 35 years past 'greed is good' that inspired a whole generation, 15 years since with the post financial crash bailouts plutocrats became convinced they were effectively untouchable by government and institutions but feared the 'pitchforks' of the masses that would eventually come from relentlessly driving inequality, 13 years since the first successfull mitigation of the pitchforks at occupy wallstreet by having them turn on each other, and 9 years since the systemic institutionalization of that strategy in SDG and later EDI.

Today all that has changed is that Gordon Gekko now wears a rainbow t-shirt and preaches to aim your inequality pitchforks at your fellow workers under his rule.

It has been well over 2000 years since "divide et imper", and nothing has changed, really.

Interesting video. Other reasons billionaires would be on the side of failure are their isolation from common views and sensibilities, and they have much more resources permitting them a safety net and insulation from whatever happens. They'll be fine, whatever happens, so they can experiment on or fuck everyone else if they want and have more power than most to do it. They can "chop down all of the trees on the island and make Moai", but then move to Europe, Hawaii, or Mars.

Another point is that most civilizations last roughly 10 generations, or 250 years, on average. Doomers like Thom Hartmann brought up a reference to this a few years back, and there's something to it. I think the cyclical "saeculum" is a better model because it defines collapse crisis points happen in cycles, and that civilizations don't just disappear, they diffusely fall apart and are either reformed or replaced after there is sufficient decline, strife, and chaos. Most of the time, people choose periodic, limited reform.

tldr: If you're not a billionaire, billionaires don't care about your survival.

PS: Perhaps the prevalence of works of fiction dealing with apocalyptic themes are a sociological thermometer, and that memetic replication of this possibly leads to a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that doesn't necessarily need to happen. For example, climate change isn't a binary, omnicidal apocalypse (or not) and most of it its worst effects are reversible for -$10T's spent on efficient carbon sequestration.