Like @cstross , I’ve only been realizing very late that extremely rich people are necessarily crazy.
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@cstross @26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael : you are right. This is also something very different from Europe, which never had slaves but is still rooted in aristocracy.
And, with all its problems, aristocracy has one advantages over slavery: aristocrats had responsibility. they were educated to be responsible. It didn’t always work but this was the norm. Honor and reputation were more important than "raw power" or "money"
@ploum @cstross @ravenbait @nathanael Europe had slaves. The Vikings were prolific slavers, for instance, and it went on for a long, long time. Europe just choses not to engage with that past.
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@cstross @26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael : you are right. This is also something very different from Europe, which never had slaves but is still rooted in aristocracy.
And, with all its problems, aristocracy has one advantages over slavery: aristocrats had responsibility. they were educated to be responsible. It didn’t always work but this was the norm. Honor and reputation were more important than "raw power" or "money"
@cstross @26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael : which was the cause of the French revolution.
Aristocrats took huge loans to preserve their honor (and sometimes to be responsible of their servants). The new "bourgeoisie" class took advantage of that and, as they were refused the honor, they simply took down the aristocracy because they had enough money and there was a famine that only their money could solve.
It never was about the poor. And the guillotine was mostly used between rival bourgeois
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@26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael @ploum To some extent that's an inevitable side-effect of a social hierarchy constructed on a foundation of chattel slavery. Slaves are property, they can't own anything, so to be poor is to be closer to that state of immiseration.
Slavery: the original sin of the colonizers of the Americas. (That, with a side-order of genocide-by-plague, but slavery left the biggest mark on the present day.)
And as Pratchet said: evil is treating people as things.
@cstross @26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael @ploum
The propaganda campaign at the other end too ; the illusion that people are rich because they are worthy creators of wealth.
Whereas the truth is that they are rich ... because of the rest. As Nick Hanauer puts it, without industrial civilzation, the most entrepreneurial guy in the world still just sells fruit at the side of the road.
They see the "poor" as their stepping stones and drool at the prospect of replacing us with silicon and steel.
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Like @cstross , I’ve only been realizing very late that extremely rich people are necessarily crazy.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
It’s logical: non-crazy people will, at some point, hit the "more money than enough even for my craziest fullfilling dreams".
People who are still destroying their social/ecological environment for more money above that level are, obviously, crazy. And dangerous.
@ploum @cstross Ah, you misunderstood, it's their score that is constantly showing in their personal heads up display.
And in their game of life, they play to get the high score and to make sure that the upstart that was born in the castle on the hill on the other side of the village doesn't beat them.
And if a couple of board cutouts that look like peons have to suffer, that's a a sacrifice they are willing to take.
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@ravenbait @cstross @nathanael @ploum killing them and taking their bunkers for themselves when the apocalypse they so desperately want to cause happens.
A consultant suggested to them that they could be friends with their security personnel. That suggestion did not go well with the audience.
They're too psychopathic to even understand the idea of friendship, much less be friends with people who they will depend on for their lives.
@isaackuo @ravenbait @cstross @nathanael : the whole Epstein story show that they don’t have friends. They have "connections". They want to go around people that would look nice on a picture in a journal. They don’t trust any one.
Epstein managed to make a business out of that: "convincing famous people that other famous people would be at his parties".
I’m sure that at least some were not interested in the sex part but did it "to be part of the gang" (which is no excuse)
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Like @cstross , I’ve only been realizing very late that extremely rich people are necessarily crazy.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
It’s logical: non-crazy people will, at some point, hit the "more money than enough even for my craziest fullfilling dreams".
People who are still destroying their social/ecological environment for more money above that level are, obviously, crazy. And dangerous.
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@isaackuo @ravenbait @cstross @nathanael : the whole Epstein story show that they don’t have friends. They have "connections". They want to go around people that would look nice on a picture in a journal. They don’t trust any one.
Epstein managed to make a business out of that: "convincing famous people that other famous people would be at his parties".
I’m sure that at least some were not interested in the sex part but did it "to be part of the gang" (which is no excuse)
@ploum @ravenbait @cstross @nathanael Yeah, one thing no one ever told me when I was young was that you had to be constantly hustling and networking.
This idea of constantly viewing other people as nothing more than useful tools for getting ahead ... I didn't get that ingrained in me.
Was I lucky? Was I unlucky? Had I been indoctrinated into hustle culture, maybe I'd be more prosperous right now. But as it is, I can only imagine living that way as miserable. To me, at least.
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@cstross @26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael : you are right. This is also something very different from Europe, which never had slaves but is still rooted in aristocracy.
And, with all its problems, aristocracy has one advantages over slavery: aristocrats had responsibility. they were educated to be responsible. It didn’t always work but this was the norm. Honor and reputation were more important than "raw power" or "money"
@ploum @cstross @26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael Besides, I’d argue serfs were slaves even though in some places and times had distinctions to slaves.
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Like @cstross , I’ve only been realizing very late that extremely rich people are necessarily crazy.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
It’s logical: non-crazy people will, at some point, hit the "more money than enough even for my craziest fullfilling dreams".
People who are still destroying their social/ecological environment for more money above that level are, obviously, crazy. And dangerous.
@ploum @cstross yes I believe their is a problem for the super privileged after a lifetime of education and peers telling you, you are not the same as the hoi polloi, the rules dont apply to you, it is hard for them to modify their behaviour. True even when their actions are potentially fatal to many people in society, they dont feel to need to engage. In Covid when people werent allowed to drive the only cars we saw on the road were the highest end ones..
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@nathanael @ploum You misunderstand. It's not about economics, it's about primate pack dominance and hierarchy. The motivations of the hyper-rich are very much *not* rational, otherwise they'd have stopped collecting money long ao.
@cstross @nathanael @ploum Yeah, and primate pack dominance and hierarchy is HOW they feel rich.
They don't feel rich from owning stuff. They feel rich from owning people.
And you don't get to own people if everyone can just quit and do something else instead. You only get to own people if the alternative is suffering and death.
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@ploum @cstross @26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael Besides, I’d argue serfs were slaves even though in some places and times had distinctions to slaves.
@mojala @cstross @26aafa19 @ravenbait @nathanael : they were, indeed, but it was very different in the sense that they could not be sold. It was not "institutionalized" slavery with people whipping them and selling them.
They had the duty to give food to their master but how they did it was their own responsibility. I’m not arguing it is "better", just that it allows to subtly gain more rights because you are not "an object to be sold"
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@cstross @nathanael : but the worse is that they are becoming increasingly "stupid and crazy". To the point any great vilain in a novel would appear sane.
They believe in their own marketing shit: living like riches on Mars, without poors and with AI servants (that will somewhat program and maintain themselves).
That explains why their greatest fear is currently "robots rising and rebeling".
Yeah, they are that deep in their crazyness…
@ploum @cstross @nathanael Remember when Elon Musk thought he invented a clever way for people to "afford" going to Mars, and everyone replied that he just "invented" indentured servitude?
Yeah, they want their slave servants on Mars also.
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Like @cstross , I’ve only been realizing very late that extremely rich people are necessarily crazy.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
It’s logical: non-crazy people will, at some point, hit the "more money than enough even for my craziest fullfilling dreams".
People who are still destroying their social/ecological environment for more money above that level are, obviously, crazy. And dangerous.
@ploum @cstross there is a sort of corollary in behavioral economics - the happiness equation. Happiness = Reality - Expectation
So our happiness depends on the relative condition we encounter. To a person who thinks money can buy happiness, the happiness equation defines their disappointment. The money brings expectations which can always outpace improvement in their reality. To think one can transform reality more readily than adjusting one's own thinking, is truly crazy. -
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