When civilization collapses, J.C. Cole will be ready.
Hes founded Safe Haven Farms, a maximum security compound to ride out the next pandemic or climate-change disaster. And those who can afford to join him will also have a shot at survival, he promises. But the price tag isnt cheap.
A $3 million investment in his startup isnt just about getting admission. Members also get a stake in a potentially profitable network of local farm franchises that could reduce the probability of a catastrophic event in the first place, writes Douglas Rushkoff in his new book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (W.W. Norton).
Cole, 66, has two farms in development, one outside Princeton and the second somewhere in the Poconos, which he envisions as a network of secret, totally self-sufficient residential farm communities for millionaires, guarded by Navy SEALs armed to the teeth, writes Rushkoff.
The developer, who says hes not independently wealthy but did well in real estate, wont share the exact locations of either farm, at least not to outsiders, nor will he pose for photos as his concerns about security and the end of the world rides high.
The majority of Americans do not have an insurance policy by their choice, Cole told The Post. If/when the supply chain collapses, these people will not have food. A certain percentage of them will break the law and do whatever possible to get food. Therefore we want to remain not findable.
Cole is far from alone. The worlds richest are increasingly insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion, writes Rushkoff.
And while many billionaires have claimed that their interests are in saving the worldsometimes they even get into pissing matches on social media about who is more benevolent Rushkoff argues that the ultimate goal of the super-rich is to protect themselves.
For the wealthy and privileged, writes Rushkoff, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.
And theyre escaping in style. Texas-based Rising S Company sells luxury bunkers that run up to $9.6 million for the Aristocrat model which comes with a private bowling alley, swimming pool, bullet-resistant doors and a motor cave exit, so you can sneak out for errands like Batman.
California-based company Vivos sells luxury underground apartments, converted from Cold War missile silos and storage facilities into miniature Club Med resorts, writes Rushkoff.
Ultra-elite shelters like The Oppidum in the Czech Republicbilled as the largest billionaire bunker in the worldinclude amenities like simulated natural sunlight, a wine vault, and a place to hide all your stuff thats impregnable to hostile outsiders.
Youve worked hard over many years, taken risks, seized opportunities, made your vision a reality, the companys website tells its billionaire customers. Your reward is the means to acquire and curate all the beautiful, rare and precious objects you desire.
Luxury yachts large enough to be a billionaire Noahs Ark are seeing huge surges in sales 887 superyachts were sold globally in 2021, a 77% increase from the previous year and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, 58, even commissioned a smaller companion yacht for his main superyacht, as a separate space to store his helicopter.
New Zealand has become a prime destination for billionaires seeking doomsday refuge, from Google co-founder Larry Page, 49, to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman, 37, who let it slip in a 2016 interview that he and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel had a mutual agreement to escape to Thiels New Zealand compound via private jet at the first sign of societys collapse. (Thiels owned the property since 2011 but hadnt made the news public.)
But the billionaire bunker, whether on land, sea or someday (ostensibly) on another planet entirely, is at best a temporary fix, less a viable strategy for apocalypse than a metaphor for this disconnected approach to life, writes Rushkoff. Like a hiding toddler who thinks holding their hands over their eyes can prevent them from being seen, the billionaires who rely on a safe haven from the outside are in for a surprise.
Thiel discovered this recently when the 54-year-old entrepreneur worth an estimated $7.4 billion learned that his plans to build a 477-acre doomsday home overlooking Lake Wnaka in New Zealand was being blocked by environmental groups.
Even the preexisting bunkers offer only nominal protection, and the probability of one of them actually protecting its occupants from the reality of, well, reality, is very slim, writes Rushkoff. Whatever threat theyre trying to escape toxic clouds, plague and radiation it all has a way of spreading and seeping through the most well-thought-out barricades.
Cancer-causing microplastics are as plentiful in the polar ice as they are in the typical European town, Rushkoff continues. There is no escape.
But survival may not be their only rationale for disappearing. The seasteading movement a Minecraft-meets-Waterworld future, Rushkoff writes, in which the wealthy live in independent, free-floating cities is not just about aquapreneurs escaping the dry-land apocalypse. Its also about creating a new ultra-libertarian civilization free from taxes, anti-monopoly regulations, and meddling politicians.
As the Seasteading Institute website explains, Weve had the agricultural revolution, the commercial and industrial revolutions, but why not a governance revolution? Enter the sea.
If they cant find sanctuary for their bodies, they can still outsmart the end of the world by having their minds preserved. Silicon Valley tech billionaire Altman paid $10,000 to startup company Nectome just to be on the waiting list to have his brain uploaded to a computer.
[Its about] only one thing: Escape from the rest of us.
Who joins Altman (or has already joined him) remains to be seen. This past July, Dogecoin creator Shibetoshi Nakamoto asked his followers on Twitter if theyd ever upload your brain to the cloud, and Elon Musk, 51, cryptically responded, Already did it.
Before coming to the United States, Cole spent 18 years in Eastern Europe, serving as a former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Latvia in Northern Europe. He witnessed firsthand the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he insists we should be learning from the Soviets mistakes.
I am deeply concerned with what I see happening in Europe, especially with energy and food, he said. That can easily happen here.
His biggest concern isnt a violent confrontation with the armed mob on the other side of the fence. Its the woman at the end of the driveway holding a baby and asking for food. I dont want to be in that moral dilemma, he told Rushkoff.
Cole hopes Safe Haven doesnt just provide protection from those wealthy enough to afford it but becomes a prototype of how sustainable farms can be used to make sure everybody has enough food to eat and protection from the elements.
Hewont reveal exactly how many wealthy investors he has, but he does claim the farms community will be evenly split between the rich and those with skill sets to rebuild the country, including doctors, machinists, and security.
But Coles ultimate goal, writes Rushkoff, is to ensure there are as few hungry children at the gate as possible when the time comes to lock down.
The mindset that requires safe havens is less concerned with preventing moral dilemmas, writes Rushkoff, than simply keeping them out of sight.
Read the original here:
How the worlds billionaires are paying to escape global disaster
- Floating Cities of the Past and Future | ArchDaily - December 21st, 2022 [December 21st, 2022]
- Charter Cities: The Real Reason for Brexit and the Bigger Picture - November 1st, 2022 [November 1st, 2022]
- Free Private Cities with Peter Young - What Bitcoin Did - September 17th, 2022 [September 17th, 2022]
- Raymond Craib: Rich Tech Libertarians Have Fantasies of Escape, but a ... - August 14th, 2022 [August 14th, 2022]
- Peter Thiels Candidates Are More Unabomber Than Tech Bro - Yahoo News UK - July 31st, 2022 [July 31st, 2022]
- Stream It Or Skip It: 'Love, Death & Robots: Season 3' on Netflix, The Return of David Finchers Adults Only Animation Anthology - Decider - May 21st, 2022 [May 21st, 2022]
- Peter Thiels GOP Makeover - The Bulwark - March 18th, 2022 [March 18th, 2022]
- Freedom as a Preset: Joanne McNeil on Metaverses Past and Present | - Filmmaker Magazine - January 19th, 2022 [January 19th, 2022]
- I rule my own ocean micronation - BBC Future - December 22nd, 2021 [December 22nd, 2021]
- Floating Cities: The Future of Urban Construction | BigRentz - December 17th, 2021 [December 17th, 2021]
- Seasteading book series - Galt's Gulch - November 28th, 2021 [November 28th, 2021]
- The rise of the neoclassical reactionaries - Spectator.co.uk - November 28th, 2021 [November 28th, 2021]
- Thiel Foundation - Wikipedia - October 21st, 2021 [October 21st, 2021]
- How to Start a New Country 1729 - October 21st, 2021 [October 21st, 2021]
- Peter Thiel Embodies Silicon Valley's Conservative Past and Dystopian Future - Jacobin magazine - October 11th, 2021 [October 11th, 2021]
- Discover the hilariously epic failure of a crypto-fueled libertarian cruise - Boing Boing - September 16th, 2021 [September 16th, 2021]
- Five Doomed Attempts at Planetary Colonization - tor.com - September 16th, 2021 [September 16th, 2021]
- Asgardia: What the first space nation in human history wants to create - Market Research Telecast - September 16th, 2021 [September 16th, 2021]
- So You Want to Be an Architect? - Sierra Magazine - September 12th, 2021 [September 12th, 2021]
- The story of the first "cryptocoin cruise ship" is exactly as weird and dumb as all those words imply - The A.V. Club - September 10th, 2021 [September 10th, 2021]
- First Thing: DoJ vows to protect women seeking abortions in Texas - The Guardian - September 10th, 2021 [September 10th, 2021]
- Beyond the culture wars - New Statesman - September 4th, 2021 [September 4th, 2021]
- Active Projects | The Seasteading Institute - June 13th, 2021 [June 13th, 2021]
- Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the ... - June 13th, 2021 [June 13th, 2021]
- Floating Island Project | The Seasteading Institute - June 2nd, 2021 [June 2nd, 2021]
- This is why the Thai navy busted a seasteading American - June 2nd, 2021 [June 2nd, 2021]
- Ocean colonization - Wikipedia - February 22nd, 2021 [February 22nd, 2021]
- 9 Breathtaking City Concepts That Could Be Your Future ... - February 22nd, 2021 [February 22nd, 2021]
- How Do We Regain Trust in Institutions? - The New York Times - January 29th, 2021 [January 29th, 2021]
- The aftermath of Palantir's culture-war IPO - Quartz - October 7th, 2020 [October 7th, 2020]
- Ephemerisle is Burning Man on boats in the Sacramento River Delta - San Francisco Chronicle - July 5th, 2020 [July 5th, 2020]
- Seasteading a vanity project for the rich or the future of humanity? - The Guardian - June 24th, 2020 [June 24th, 2020]
- John Bolton's explosive new book, COVID-19 spikes in these three states and meet Kim Jong Un's enforcer - NBC News - June 24th, 2020 [June 24th, 2020]
- Seasteading | Ocean Builders - December 24th, 2019 [December 24th, 2019]
- Future ahoy: Are you ready to live in a floating city? - San Francisco Chronicle - October 7th, 2019 [October 7th, 2019]
- The Seasteading Institute - Home | Facebook - August 16th, 2017 [August 16th, 2017]
- Peter Thiel - Wikipedia - July 28th, 2017 [July 28th, 2017]
- Floating City Project Wants To Make A "Deregulated" Hub Of Scientific Research - IFLScience - July 28th, 2017 [July 28th, 2017]
- "Unregulated scientific innovation on an isolated island? Sounds like a very bad thing" - Dezeen - July 26th, 2017 [July 26th, 2017]
- The Seasteading Institute's floating cities are designed for unregulated innovation - Dezeen - July 24th, 2017 [July 24th, 2017]
- What does a boat party have to do with reinventing government? Find out at Ephemerisle - Sacramento Bee - July 23rd, 2017 [July 23rd, 2017]
- Auditor-General won't investigate Thiel citizenship - Otago Daily Times - July 18th, 2017 [July 18th, 2017]
- Auditor-General won't be investigating Peter Thiel's NZ citizenship - The National Business Review - July 17th, 2017 [July 17th, 2017]
- Floating City: Will Rising Sea Levels Force People To Move Into Ocean Homes? - International Business Times - July 11th, 2017 [July 11th, 2017]
- The 'seasteading' movement imagines floating cities in the sea - WBFO - July 10th, 2017 [July 10th, 2017]
- The 'seasteading' movement imagines floating cities in the sea - PRI - July 9th, 2017 [July 9th, 2017]
- Jetsons in reality soon? A city in Earth orbit may not be too far away in future - Financial Express - July 8th, 2017 [July 8th, 2017]
- Who is Peter Thiel? | Radio New Zealand News - Radio New Zealand - June 29th, 2017 [June 29th, 2017]
- Living on Earth: PRI's Environmental News Magazine - June 28th, 2017 [June 28th, 2017]
- ZenCash's Robert Viglione Talks Borderless Cryptocurrency and More - Finance Magnates - June 24th, 2017 [June 24th, 2017]
- As sea levels rise, are floating cities the future? - Yale Climate Connections - June 8th, 2017 [June 8th, 2017]
- Libertarians Seek a Home on the High Seas - New Republic - May 30th, 2017 [May 30th, 2017]
- How to build your own country - CNN - May 30th, 2017 [May 30th, 2017]
- Floating island off Tahiti won't harm says environmentalist - Radio New Zealand - May 26th, 2017 [May 26th, 2017]
- Floating island off Tahiti aims to be eco-friendly - Radio New Zealand - May 26th, 2017 [May 26th, 2017]
- Seasteading by Joe Quirk on iBooks - itunes.apple.com - May 22nd, 2017 [May 22nd, 2017]
- Seasteading - bitcointalk.org - May 22nd, 2017 [May 22nd, 2017]
- Facebook, Google greed will lead us to info armageddon - The Reporter - May 20th, 2017 [May 20th, 2017]
- Facebook and Google greed will lead us to information armageddon - NEWS.com.au - May 18th, 2017 [May 18th, 2017]
- New nature books ready for spring | Sports Columns | register ... - Beckley Register-Herald - May 7th, 2017 [May 7th, 2017]
- Real Utopia: The World's First Floating City May Be Built in the Pacific - Sputnik International - April 7th, 2017 [April 7th, 2017]
- A floating techno-libertarian city might be coming to the Pacific - Mashable - April 7th, 2017 [April 7th, 2017]
- 6 Examples Of Billionaires Acting Like Supervillains - Benzinga - April 3rd, 2017 [April 3rd, 2017]
- Editor's Insight: Money-losing ethics, seasteading, Mansfield and more - The National Business Review - April 2nd, 2017 [April 2nd, 2017]
- Faced with rising seas, French Polynesia ponders floating islands - The Guam Daily Post (press release) (registration) - March 21st, 2017 [March 21st, 2017]
- Floating countries of the future - this could be your new home - ABC Online - March 17th, 2017 [March 17th, 2017]
- Imagine a Silicon Valley of the Sea - Bloomberg - March 17th, 2017 [March 17th, 2017]
- This Shipping Route Map Shows Why Floating Cities May Make Sense - Inverse - March 10th, 2017 [March 10th, 2017]
- 'Logan' proves Wolverine is the most libertarian superhero ever - Red Alert Politics - March 6th, 2017 [March 6th, 2017]
- Why French Polynesia Could Have the World's First Floating City - Architectural Digest - February 24th, 2017 [February 24th, 2017]
- Rethinking 21st Century needs - Newsday - February 23rd, 2017 [February 23rd, 2017]
- French Polynesia signs agreement for Floating Island Project - Bizcommunity.com - February 9th, 2017 [February 9th, 2017]
- Could Floating Cities Help Us Adapt to Climate Change? - Triple Pundit (registration) (blog) - February 6th, 2017 [February 6th, 2017]
- Seasteading | Book by Joe Quirk, Patri Friedman | Official ... - January 31st, 2017 [January 31st, 2017]
- Architectural Design Contest | The Seasteading Institute - January 27th, 2017 [January 27th, 2017]
- Tyler Cowen: Ahoy, young libertarian! Seasteading could ... - December 11th, 2016 [December 11th, 2016]
- Live Free or Drown: Floating Utopias on the Cheap | WIRED - September 3rd, 2016 [September 3rd, 2016]
- Seasteading Institute aims to build floating city by 2020 - August 10th, 2016 [August 10th, 2016]
- FAQ | The Seasteading Institute - July 5th, 2016 [July 5th, 2016]
- FAQ | The Seasteading Institute - July 3rd, 2016 [July 3rd, 2016]