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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
Do what Soros does but in reverse. Get cadres into low-level positions and have them use their powers to directly achieve goals - criminals do not pass GO, do not collect $200 in welfare, go directly to jail!
Ensure enemies face constant legal harassment and investigations into their corruption and incompetence.
But first you have to have cadres, reliable people. And that's where the think tanks come in, these are for supporting cadres. NGOs are like barracks for storing, training, maintaining troops. It's also good to have a bunch of ideas ready for when there's a crisis. You can then say 'we know what to do, it's all prepared right here in glossy paper'.
Think tanks are like, step ten of a twenty step plan. First you have to produce cultural conservative EHC, which means getting EHC through university while keeping them culturally conservative. That means 1) stuff about universities and 2) even before that, you need a social stratum which is culturally conservative, high IQ, and interested in being elite human capital, and it has to produce or recruit.
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Have a chat with some of your peers to stop acting like weirdos in public.
Unironically, the best thing billionaires as a class could do for their political reputations:
a) stay out of public sight, and in particular stay out of public politics. You don't even need to actually stay out of politics, just minimize the degree to which you are seen to be involving yourself. There's basically no way to not be seen as a corrupting influence on politics (because you inherently are), so the next best thing is to not be seen. Don't engage in conspicuous consumption (like, say, renting Venice for your wedding), don't try to make yourself a celebrity, don't promote yourself as a political player, etc...
b) set themselves up as Patrons of Humanity rather a jealous and superior species that needs to protect itself from the unwashed masses (this seems to be a problem really specific to tech billionaires). Do your best to look like you are Giving Back. You don't even need to be effective about it. In fact, you probably shouldn't, because the effective thing to do would be to focus on humanitarian aid in developing countries, whereas you need to be concerned with the electorates of the countries you actually live and do business in.
Compare/contrast the level of hate directed at Rob Walton vs Rupert Murdoch. They're both right-wing billionaires and Walton is dramatically wealthier than Murdoch, but Walton doesn't seek out the spotlight whereas Murdoch has actively positioned himself as a kingmaker and propagandist-in-chief.
First of all, one billionaire has little to no influence on other billionaires. Bloomberg can't make Thiel change his public behavior nor vice-versa.
As for a), what's the point of a billionaire if you can neither do big things nor enjoy personal luxuries (like renting Venice for your wedding)? And this doesn't actually help; laws directed at billionaires will wreck under-the-radar billionaires (and millionaires, and probably hundred-thousandaires) as well as ostentatious ones.
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The one billionaire who is very clearly a "patron of humanity" is the one most widely hated by the left.
If you're talking about Musk, you have that backwards. Musk has almost completely avoided the traditional philanthropic noblesse oblige of the extremely wealthy while being publicly self-aggrandizing.
I assume that the other commenter's implication is that SpaceX and Starlink have improved humanity's situation more than "philanthropy".
I grasped that. They're missing the point, if so. Like it or not, you don't get much credit for pro-social behavior that is also to your direct profit. The point is to be visibly philanthropic (or at least invisible) so people don't think you're a Bond villain.
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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.
There is phenomenally popular conservative art, though. Like yeah, pop country is never going to attract the appreciation of classical music snobs- but it's the most popular genre in the US, and has been for years. The normies do not have refined tastes.
And it is completely apolitical. No one listens to country music and thinks: "I must vote GOP harder, I must support the current day right wing cause!"
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You’re right. But still, if you’re an activist type, your emotions are too strong and sensitive to be satisfied with pop country. Pop country listeners are domesticated, not really in the arena of changing or caring about anything.
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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.
If you're actually worried about a special forces team and you are actually a person of means, you can secure your home against incursion adequate to at least decrease your odds of getting ventilated prior to your court date fairly trivially.
To the Twitter thread's point, elites don't really seem to think this way - although, for most of them, right now, this is hardly a serious concern.
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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.
I've worked for 4 different libertarian/right leaning think tanks. 2 of them as basically an intern, and two of them as web developer after I worked in private industry for a while.
I'd recommend against it.
The cons:
The pros:
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Very high verbal IQ, a minimal mercenary quality, and a willingness to accept below market rate salaries are the minima. Oh, and you also have to move around a lot.
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Based off of my family and social circle involved in this: be an upper middle to upper class white woman who went to an elite institution, get a semi-rigorous degree and be riotously far to the left and incredibly racist (anti-white).
The other people who got into that sort of role and were typical motivated by public service types, actual minorities and so on seem to bounce out but the ones that keep getting kicked up the ladder seem to match that description. The actual ownership class for the various firms is what you'd usually expect, but the people who do the stuff and middle management is pure Karen in my experience.
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I have two acquaintances who have worked at think tanks.
Using those two data points, I think you should work on being a female minority who has really strong opinions about Queering the Narrative In Education.
Once you've done that, maybe get a master's in public policy or something?
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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.
It seems pretty hard to tell what Mackenzie actually accomplished with that money, though. I'd almost make the argument that the Leftwing side of charity having a combination of superabundant funding and so much time to get the grifterverse together is way more efficient at stripping donations. Rightwing donors are more likely to have to make actual virgin efforts where it's easier to tell if something has occurred
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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.)
AIPAC is, in a US context, actually bipartisan. The right is defined by opposing trans women in women's sports, even when no one supports it, and the left is defined by supporting abortion rights, even when no one is opposing them. AIPAC does neither.
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