I know it’s easy to hate on the people that make up the capitalist class, but it really is a tragedy that they’re so alienated that they’d rather rule a little fiefdom by themselves than work with others to rebuild as a collective
I would call it a tragedy, but the alienation is of their own doing. When never have to pump your own gas or push a cart through a supermarket or ride a city bus and when you can make any consequences of your actions go away by throwing money at the problem, you’re never going to be relatable to or able to relate to the rest of the world.
Mark Zuckerberg could do things like improve the world around him for the people around him, but instead he builds a survivalist bunker in Hawaii and hopes he can judo down his security guards when they try to frag him so they can get the keys to the food pantry.
Even if he was absolutely convinced a survivalist bunker was necessary, he could do things like use his massive fortune to build such bunkers all over the place. They wouldn’t even have to be luxurious like his bunker, they could just have what is necessary for a large number of people to survive an apocalyptic event.
But they don’t care if other people survive. They don’t care about other people. I don’t find that tragic except in the sense that it’s tragic that they are members of our species but don’t actually care about our species’ survival.
I agree. Their preservation of wealth is a classic prisoners dilemma. I like to imagine myself as the next Engels if I had that wealth, but I can’t say for certain how I’d act. The tradegy of their alienation is absolutely juxtaposed against their actions, but they’re brutally efficient actions for their own preservation instead of cooperating to avoid the need for bunkers in the first place. I’m under no illusions though, a post-apocalyptic world will have the moral imperative to seperate them from their excess supplies forcibly
You could say that this imperative is already present based on the loss of life and human suffering endured by those in need of more fair distribution of wealth.
I know it’s easy to hate on the people that make up the capitalist class, but it really is a tragedy that they’re so alienated that they’d rather rule a little fiefdom by themselves than work with others to rebuild as a collective
I would call it a tragedy, but the alienation is of their own doing. When never have to pump your own gas or push a cart through a supermarket or ride a city bus and when you can make any consequences of your actions go away by throwing money at the problem, you’re never going to be relatable to or able to relate to the rest of the world.
Mark Zuckerberg could do things like improve the world around him for the people around him, but instead he builds a survivalist bunker in Hawaii and hopes he can judo down his security guards when they try to frag him so they can get the keys to the food pantry.
Even if he was absolutely convinced a survivalist bunker was necessary, he could do things like use his massive fortune to build such bunkers all over the place. They wouldn’t even have to be luxurious like his bunker, they could just have what is necessary for a large number of people to survive an apocalyptic event.
But they don’t care if other people survive. They don’t care about other people. I don’t find that tragic except in the sense that it’s tragic that they are members of our species but don’t actually care about our species’ survival.
I agree. Their preservation of wealth is a classic prisoners dilemma. I like to imagine myself as the next Engels if I had that wealth, but I can’t say for certain how I’d act. The tradegy of their alienation is absolutely juxtaposed against their actions, but they’re brutally efficient actions for their own preservation instead of cooperating to avoid the need for bunkers in the first place. I’m under no illusions though, a post-apocalyptic world will have the moral imperative to seperate them from their excess supplies forcibly
You could say that this imperative is already present based on the loss of life and human suffering endured by those in need of more fair distribution of wealth.
They can easily cure their alienation by giving away their wealth to the poorest people, a sort of self-Robin-hood.