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Notes -
Meanwhile, (in) famous Australian xitter activist Drew Pavlou calls billionaires to (cultural) battle.
TL;DR: You big moneybags have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, do not waste your money on some farcical "charter cities" or "network states", spend them on activists like Drew.
The Red Cavalry is on the horizon, this is now or never!
We need more ... think tanks!
Centi-millionaire/billionaire activism driven by money alone had been debated here previously, and the record is not encouraging.
If the situation is really so dire as Drew believes, if fate of Western civilization hangs in the balance, if Mamdani is really new Lenin ready to set the Earth aflame, something more than policy papers is needed, but what?
Any better ideas and suggestions from Mottizen elite human capital? Not castle in the sky plans and fantasies, but something that humble billionaire can do alone or with few friends.
edit: links linked
You need a counterconditioning counter-culture. Progressivism is extremely attractive from a basic conditioning point-of-view. It has a monopoly on women who look like French models and heartthrob interests in Hollywood romantic comedies (not Hallmark), it has an excellent propagandistic visual culture that is way superior to conservative visual culture (outside of groyper edits), it has a neat good-vs-bad storyline, it has aversive atrocities it can use to support its positions that every kid learns in school, it has the all good music, and it has a cadre of loyalists who will work for free because they treat their ideology like a quasi-religion with totalizing importance. If you’re a normal urbanite who has unmet needs and isn’t autistic or self-sacrificial, everything is much better with progressives: it’s fun, it’s beautiful, and the women are hot in a particularly fashionable way.
You can’t fight this unless you have your own loyalists and artists; you get loyalists from making your ideology exciting with a clear battle of Urgent Good vs evil; you get artists by seeding communities; when you have the art and the excitement, the hot women will come.
The closest thing to a viable 21st century defense against progressivism was, I think, the Redscare Podcast niche culture. It actually managed to get art hoes in cities to become conservative. It attached itself to Catholicism because that’s the storage facility of great conservative art and it presents an exciting alternative conservative worldview.
You can’t rally people around “people should be able to be billionaires”, because that’s intuitively disagreeable. You can rally people around “my benevolent Renaissance-like patron is superior at promoting the common good than state bureaucracy, though”. That’s a good start IMO.
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Seen it suggested that a multibillionaire could do a version of the 'charter city' thing except they create literal 'company towns' where they revitalize some downtrodden area with a new industry (even if heavily subsidized at first) and make sure all the townspeople are employed, safe, and well-fed.
Which can translate into "will fight to protect you if the feds come knocking." You just have to be willing to let much of your wealth intentionally trickle down.
Elon has sort of done this with Starbase, Texas.
This does little to tackle the primary issue head on, though.
You probably mean this unrealistic xitter thread.
If the feds "come knocking" in serious way, they will arrest you when you are out of the city, or will send special forces team straight to your home in surprise raid at time when everyone is asleep.
Even if locals with their rifles are willing to open fire at feds, they can do absolutely nothing in either scenario.
On the one hand that is likely correct.
On the other, Cliven Bundy is still a free man.
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Man, how does one get hired by a think tank? It's always seemed like the ideal job to me.
Graduate hires are usually political science / policy studies / government type grads from relatively good to elite universities (say like Georgetown) who intern there (they recruit from these places).
More senior hires and leads are usually either ex-government (either civil servants or elected politicians), or academics. You see people from industry, like finance, contracting or journalists, too depending on what it is.
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I interned at Independent Institute back in 2008. I figure if I'd gone to graduate school and made more of a go at writing papers I might today be working there.
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What sort of "think tank" are you looking for? RAND has jobs posted on their web site. So does the Heritage Foundation even, it seems.
But I can imagine more niche options that look like billionaires' pet policy promotion are probably in practice patronage programs.
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You need to be a writer first.
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If you've gotta ask and/or aren't an elite-tier striver you're probably not getting in.
Also how much do thinktanks actually pay? I get that it's a 'job' but I always assumed it'd be more a posting for people with familial resources to vibe around whilst the thinktank itself didn't actually have that much money
I once dated a girl who worked for the RAND corporation. She had a graduate degree in sociology or public policy or something equally useless-sounding. As best as I can recall, the job involved performing studies into topics that were so boring they weren't even worth asking about. Like the Regional Industrial Development Corporation commissioning a study to determine how employment outcomes in certain industries for people with 2-year technical degrees compared with other types of training. Based on her lifestyle, I'm assuming the pay was about average.
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A billion dollars really isn't that much in the grand scheme of things + most current billionaires aren't exactly holding a billion in liquid cash that can easily be yeeted onto worthy consideration. Jeff Bezos' ex-wife, Mackenzie, has launched 10 figures into charity in the last couple years, and it seems remarkably difficult to tell what that figure has actually accomplished in terms of yield and realworld impact.
Part of me wonders what happens if this same attempt is made in a European country and somebody comes in with strong accusations of platforming Neo-Nazis or racists or whatnot.
She could do it, because there is already huge, decades old network of left wing charities and NGO's ready to be funded. Lots of the cash was snatched by the organizers for large mansions and other necessary expenses, but most of really went where it was supposed to go.
There is no such thing in right wing world (excluding mainstream and useless conservative institutions). All of potential right wing donor cash will be instanly appropriated by grifters and scammers.
The difference between supplying organized army that is fighting, vs just sending stuff to nowhere.
That feels very much not true. Considere AIPAC. Sure, notionally bipartisan, but I will call support for an ethnostate with a far-right government enacting far-right policies a right-wing cause area.
And quite effective, too. I think there was recently a vote where only about a quarter of the representatives were willing to vote for cutting funding for Israel. I doubt that this reflects the electorate.
(White nationalists, you heard it here first: don't waste your donations on the KKK, MAGA or Neonazi groups, when AIPAC can offer you ten times the blood on your hands per dollar spent.)
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