Of course he has
1y 20d ago by lemmy.world/u/artifactsofchina in reddit
I know which compound I’m targeting first.
I think they know the system is unfair. They are just greedy fucks who’d prefer to squeeze it completely dry to benefit themselves.
Capitalism being about companies competing to provide value to society is a myth we tell. Otherwise no one would have a problem.
I don't remember who said it, but I think about this comment a lot:
All these billionaires would rather spend their wealth building bunkers for when their actions cause social collapse, instead of trying to prevent social collapse in the first place.
The thing is, none of these bunkers are built by billionaires. Would be real unfortunate if they had some design flaws in them lol
Many Bothans have died to bring us this intel.
Doesn't need to be any design flaws, a few minutes with a welder and/or a truck load of concrete at the door once they're in there would render the whole billionaire problem "solved", Hotel California style.
Given we're talking about the total collapse of society, the goal in such an event would be less "keep the billionaire in" and more "get all the food and ammunition he's hoarding out. And any women."
The women will likely just open the door for you to get away from the creepy weirdos inside
lol any woman in there being kept under the implication would be happy to kill them and get out, the bunkers would eat themselves from the inside
Probably won't protect them from things like direct conventional bombardment of bombs or even bunker busters. Or even a nuke
These assholes always fantasize that their wealth and accumulation of luxury items will grant them the leg up to become rulers during the social collapse. They don't realize that in case of a social collapse the world won't immediately look like Mad Max, and they certainly aren't Immortan Joe. It will look more like Children of Man. Very slow and very gradual and with a lot mass governmental violence, not small arms violence.
Further, they don't have what it takes to survive off the land, nor the intimidation to warlord after.
Other than a pensioners its difficult to imagine someone more dependant on the systems.
No wilderness survival skills, how do they know which berries to eat and which will poison you, or which animal carcass have a ton of parasites you should never eat, never eat a carnivore or an animal that eats mostly carrion.
Because becoming a billionaire itself contributes to society’s collapse. They are opposite goals.
I don't think they necessarily "prefer" it. It's more just that they have what is an unimaginable amount of money in comparison to us, why not invest to preserve your long term survival?
They have already dealt with the normal shit the rest of us have to. They have a house, car, enough money for them and their families to never work again, to do whatever hobbies they like with no restriction.
If you are someone with a worth of a billion, this bunker development will cost something like 10m. That's 1% of your wealth. It would be the same as the median American spending $1920 in pure relative terms, but probably would have an effect more like $500 on their real finances (again, every other need has been financially met long, long ago)
Well, because I'm not a sociopath I think preserving the world's ecosystems is more important than a few years at the tail end of my life. Doomsday bunker with a Mad Max stockpile wouldn't occur to me as a thing to actually do.
Okay, cool. Probably so do a lot of billionaires, at least from a pure pragmatic POV of them not wanting their skull cracked open. The point is that for a tiny portion of their wealth, they can insure against a lot of more realistic severe problems (unrest, riots, communism arising in the US, war, assassination, widespread famine), in addition to more extreme and less likely problems (doomsday, machine uprising, environmental collapse).
Frankly, were I a billionaire and able to see the choices Trump is making to make the average civilian in America jobless, penniless and hopeless, I would also be making a bunker in the wilderness or distant nation.
Or you could use your indescribable wealth to prevent the things you need a bunker for.
Yeah but you can't though. Like let's be real, you have 1bn, you're not Elon Musk or Bill Gates level - and even they would not be able to stop an angry Donald Trump
It's more than enough to inject a little fear into the ruling class.
Not enough to fight the bigger fish, but 1 billion dollars is more than enough to make public works that aren't just a front (all these assholes have some foundation that is, at best, a zero sum charity), making better community spaces so they'll actually see you as a "good guy" instead of yet another fucking greedy asshole.
New Zealand mostly
Just people building their own tombs. Being a part of society is what keeps you alive. They already crossed the boundary by essentially removing themselves from it. It’s already over for them
If an apocalypse happens I'd rather be in the bunker with all the goodies instead of outside with the roving gangs vying for control.
The worst criminals would be in there with you.
Douglas Rushkoff
Author, media theorist, and cool guy
Does the Team Human podcast
To be fair, what could a single billionaire do? They are far more powerful than most, but they would have to cooperate with other billionaires to make that change.
There are 3000 billionaires. Who is going to stick their head out if the necessary changes will be opposed by many billionaires as well as huge parts of the regular population?
It would be better for society to improve itself instead of waiting for a solution by the billionaires. Difficult while being trained to be a consumer, but possible.
They might start fighting turning on themselves
The solution is to cull billionaires. They can lose their wealth or their heads, either will make a better society
And they all already have, insane, there is our trickle down economics at work, they would rather hoarde and spend every last cent on a bunker right before they drop dead from old age than give back to the world
It doesn't even have to be so combative.
Imagine being thrown together with 99 other survivors of the apocalypse and 1 of them was musk.
There's going to be medical people and trades people and farmers and naturalists and even people with governance experience from community groups et cetera.
Imagine how utterly useless a billionaire would be in that context. Their entitlement would make them worse than useless. Like I'd rather be stuck with nanna who is just a drain on resources rather than someone who's only skill is self interest.
Nanna is the keeper of the stories and the only person who has the entire new testament memorised.
That is such a great book.
And yeah, fuck them. I would absolutely never let them in.
Now ask yourself why these guys are suddenly so obsessed with AI, chatbots, and getting rid of roles previously staffed by humans.
I hope the virtual doorman hallucinates that they're a radioactive dog or some shit
lol
A delivery guy I know couldn’t make his (scheduled, daily) pickup at an Amazon warehouse because the robot security didn’t recognize him that day (despite being the usual guy, with a badge).
So yeah, that probably will be the most likely scenario.
if they want a cylon staff go for it.
Which is just a thousand times fucking funnier to me given that i'm someone with actual technical knowledge who works in the industry as opposed to a kholed nepo baby with parental funds.
Cory Doctorow's Masque of the Red Death novella (named after Poe's story of the same name) explores this theme a lot, especially how short sighted the rich can be and how well the poor band together to rebuild.
Here's the free audio book:
well it's not EAP, its CD - but using an EAP title. Sure we can be BFFs, but ill need a credit card number and PIN code
Didn't read the book but I get the scenario after a hypothetical world changing disaster, it's going to be a ratrace for high ground. It's a false sense of security to believe hoarding cash or guns or vehicle would be your ticket out of it, it's called pride and hubris.
A motor/car can't swim. Weapons are a sign of hostility. Cash could be useless. Even having access to an escape satellite doesn't guarantee you'll be hit by space trash or cosmic plasma streams. The Road is a example how depressing the aftermath really is.
The Road is a good example; this thread also has me thinking about the Amos and Clarissa arc after the meteors hit in The Expanse.
I had gone quite a long time without thinking about The Road.
Day ruined.
Being hired as security at a billionaire's Hawaiian apocalypse bunker has got to be the best job imaginable. You get paid to live in a tropical paradise in case The Worst should happen. If The Worst actually does happen, you just go inside the bunker and lock the doors, and if the billionaire shows up, you don't let him in. Easy peasy.
people like musk, thiel,altman have built complexes in other countries( mostly thiel,NZ) in case billionaires finally becomes the target they richly deserved, how are they going to staff thier complexes? with harems of women in cas thiel men, and slaves, willing to go with them.
Dude could have been cast as a white walker and HBO would have saved a ton in VFX and makeup costs.
An alien sent to earth
Fuck that guy.
Bunker Boy! Pale as can be for rotten is he.
Where are you getting the gas, Steve? Gas is only good for a few months in storage without treatment and a couple of years with it. Have you never read a fucking book?
"Gas goes bad."
-Phillip "Tandy" Miller
Petroleum distillation is incredibly simple. Give me a couple weeks in a junkyard with a welder and I can have your crude refined to any weight distillate you want. People were distilling petroleum fuels a century before penicillin was invented.
Fuck piss baby spez. But of you should see the crude "refineries" around the world run with just a tank, heated by the same crude inside, with just a long pipe as a condernsor that people manually water cool.
Key words in that sentence: give you those things. I doubt the lord tech bro could do any of that if the apocalypse happened tomorrow.
Even the janky version requires skill and knowledge, and if he doesn’t have the crude then both are useless anyway. Building a hole in the ground with motorcycles doesn’t help you when you depend on a highly connected world to fuel and maintain it.
The really funny thing about Spez is that he's far from a power player in the tech scene, nowhere near the likes of Musk and Zuckerberg. But he so desperately wants to be that he actually just looks sad and pathetic in the process.
Wtf is he going to do with his stockpile of motorbikes during the apocalypse? Start a Mad Max biker crew? What a fkn loser lol.
He's just going to the next tier of cuck that provides bikes for the raiders that get in his bunker. They should keep him alive as a manservant when his little apocalypse plan falls apart.
I can just imagine this as a scene in a fallout game. Lonely old rich fuck hidden away for years. You ring the intercom and he's so excited to hear another voice that he invites you in. Starts spewing shit opinions. You eventually realize he could've helped stop the apocalypse but built the bunker and profited instead. Look at all the loot. Inform him he can either become a smear on the wall or caretaker of your new place.
Little french maid costume?
And a large pineapple
He will flee to musk's compound in Texas at the first sign of trouble, trying to be part of his harem
Danny mcbride's gonna slot right in there
I just want to know the evidence for the motorcycles. Is it really a "stockpile" of them, or is he a rich bitch and likes motorcycles like jay leno likes cars?
I agree. Many people are imagining, "instead of using his vast wealth to fix the world, he dedicates all his money and mental energy to an elaborate bunker that will ensure his survival in a specific apocalyptic scenario he believes is likely to happen."
It might be more like, "amongst all the random wealthy-person shit he's bought, there are guns and motorcycles (because he thinks they are cool) as well as a pantry full of canned food (because everyone should have an emergency kit and you never know).
But I could be wrong.
He did what musk ask if him on moderating reddit twice, which let 2 waves of massive bans, plus the ongoing shadow and. And I heard they changed something. Recently to catch even the more sophisticated ban eveders
The first thing people will do when society collapses is head to where the billionaires live to raid their stockpiles.
If any are successfully defended, I propose we simply push a bunch of rocks on top of it.
Shit next to the intake vents. Make that spot the communal toilet. Lets see how long the filters last
I always find it funny that people imagibe that in an apocalypse a modern fossil fuel vehicle would be any good. Unless you know how to modify the engine to use realistically self-producable fuel you will be able to run it for only a few months before all the fuel in the world degrades and starts destroying/not running the engine. Better off getting electric vehicles as electricity is actually easy to produce.
A bicycle isn't a bad thing to have in an apocalypse. Not difficult to maintain, considerably faster and more efficient than walking, basically no infrastructure required.
For sure, but there would be use cases for bigger vehicles, especially if you don't want to be on the run but rather rebuild
Sure, but if I'm stocking a ragnarok bunker I'm going to stick a Trek in there.
Better to get a horse and a mule.
Unrelated? How would that apply to cars?
Cars can be converted to run on wood gas.
As I said, You would need to know how to modify your car for that.
This video walks you through on how to convert a vehicle to run on wood gas. I should have posted this instead of the link I posted.
I am sure there are instructions written down in case of no electricity.
Batteries are for sure harder to make than petroleum.
Depends on the battery, but sure, but they would last a few years, and some types of batteries would last even more
Lead-acid batteries aren't great, and you do need some care to recycle them to make them like new, but it can be done. They're good enough to run a small hauler that would be useful in and around your bunker.
I say that when the billionaires retreat into their bunkers we should all cover the entrances and vents with a couple hundred layers of concrete.
They're just building latrines for future civilizations.
There are things called bunker busters too
Those are too fast. I prefer to let them rot.
Multiple motorcycles? What's he gonna do, ride them all at once?
If you have a bunch of motorcycles going in a line and you ride another motorcycle on top of that line like a conveyor belt then you will be going twice as fast as the highest speed the single motorcycle could go.
More wheels is more faster, just like legs. That's why horses are faster than people. This Huffman guy might be onto something
If you stack them enough you can approach light speed as well!
Obviously him (and all the other oligarchs behaving like this) are counting on their entourage of sycophants following them. I don't think they have completely considered the fact that all of their untangible wealth will be worthless in an apocalypse situation, and instead they will just turn into golden geese sitting on a pile of stuff that everyone else, including their former sycophants, would like to sit on instead.
There was some guy that got to interview a bunch of billionaires for some reason and their views on an apocalypse situation are eye opening.
making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.
He means cylon guards, and we know how that turned out
with his OpenAI androids supplied by ZUCKERBORG and altman
Motorcycle centipede
Nawww is the little piggy boy scared we're gonna come for him?
Good.
Insane strategy, Silicon Valley execs. Sell the thing that you believe is gonna cause the apocalypse so you can afford to have apocalypse insurance. That definitely needed to happen...
This is it.. how about these dudes stopped preparing for the apocalypse that they themselves are causing, and instead changed the reality they've created, thus preventing said apocalypse from taking place in the first place..
That would require empowering the poors and they can’t be having that
But then number go down
Just collecting shit for badder men really. Dumb.
Gee, it was really considerate for these folk to collect all the shit our bandit rover band needed all in one place. Shame we had to eat all of them though.
Eat? No thanks. I don’t need that billionaire prion disease
Rushkoff wrote a book about consulting for these billionaire peppers.
https://rushkoff.com/books/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fantasies-of-the-tech-billionaires/
That's really interesting thanks
My library had copies available in ebooks and audiobooks, too
All these billionaires stockpiling in their secure bunkers have clearly never heard of the word 'siege'.
seige only works if the besieged don't have enough supplies and food production.
Well, if you can find the bunker and have nothing but time on your hands, you can get through concrete.
You don't even need power tools if you have enough time. Spent about £500 on disposing of all the concrete my garden was paved with, the only tools being a sledgehammer and crowbar. And like 10 pairs of gloves.
Same here but it cost me 0 as i already had the demo tools.
Archimedes was no fool
The tools were not the expensive part, it was paying for disposal of all the broken up concrete
I turned mine into crazy paving
It was thick and covered the entire garden. I wanted the vast majority to be completely unpaved. Fair bit of scrap metal and rubble below it too.
Or just shit in his air vents.
You do that the entire time you're working on cracking that nut out of there. But these are billionaires were talking about here. They likely have NBC filters and air scrubbers.
Ah, but filters can clog, and air scrubbers can only go so far for so long. Especially if you have someone at the air intake dedicated to making them stop working.
this is the thing, if you had time and nothing but time, all it takes is finding the air intake and filling it with something you really don't want to breathe. You don't need to get in, you just need a way to make being inside less appealing than being outside.
The nice option is shit. The less nice options... goodness, we're spoiled for choice.
That may have been true before explosives technology was developed
There is a reason the trebuchet was invented.
Self fulfilling prophecy
The rich would rather live in an apocalypse than let workers have some more of the wealth that the workers themselves have created.
Hilarious and sad considering those techbros are creating the conditions for a possible economic collapse, such as playing with creepto.
Oh yes, kinda reminds me of reading a chapter in World War Z (the book with its dark comedy is still more entertaining than the humorless movie), like how one character found himself on an island full of rich people... Guess what happened next?
If I remember correctly their bodyguards turn on them and kill them in their bunkers.
A parallel, similar would be ghandis govt in the 70s, was murdered by their own bodyguards because the pm was targeting sikh people for persecution.
I think there's a kind of sunk cost fallacy at work with preppers. Many of them start with the notion that it's good to be prepared, just in case. However, being prepared for this sort of thing isn't a casual exercise. It's a whole hobby.
What if the collapse doesn't come? All that time and effort would be wasted. Better do something to make it collapse.
I would like for them to find out the hard way that the characteristics to be a leader in a Neo-liberal capitalistic society are not the same in an apocalyptic wasteland.
And by hard way, I mean that they would be made the fucksock of charismatic warlord.
fucksock
This is my new favorite image
Theres a book that an advisor for the billionaire bunkers wrote, sorry my phone is glitchy so I can't look it up without abandoning this post. I heard an interview with him where he said he would always circle back to "if you use your vast wealth to improve these societal issues, there isn't a need for a bunker". They won't hear it. They're driving towards the apocalypse because they are all racing to be the richest. Nothing else matters.
All I'm finding when I drill down is a pulp romance between a billionaire and his scientist ex:
Everything went as planned...until it didn't. In a world overrun by a zombie pandemic, a billionaire and his scientist ex race to find a cure before his bunker--and the anZidote--fall in the wrong hands. ...>
A broader search returns a ton of right wing/prepper stuff. Any chance you can find the title?
Would rich people want to live in a world where there is no one else to enslave?
They will always find someone to enslave
Yes, but one would think in an apocalypse bunker the pickings are slim
May not matter. Authoritarian mindsets might be quite happy enslaving just one other person. Here's a documentary about it.
What the fuck! We could lock them all up with one volunteer each and improve so many lives!
I'm pretty sure the zuck bunker has separated quarters for security and service staff. They ain't going down there alone bro.
what does an android have to fear for biologicals.
Mutiny will come pretty soon once the staff realize they can just dispose of the suckyberg
In a bunker, class consciousness happens on speedrunning mode.
I mean we say that, but look how happy people are to just go with the status quo just because 'it could be worse' or some variation.
That's why its one wannabe oligarch per bunker.
They than get to (try) to play god with everyone they so generously allowed into their 'fiefdom' without any known opposition.
Waiting for robot slaves, assuming they don't follow the path of cylons
Electric motorcycles? Do preppers have an understanding of how gasoline absorbs water from the air and is substantially worse within a matter of months? Even with stabilizer, you get a few years out of it, tops. What are you going to use for the rest of your life?
To be fair, the writers of post-apocalyptic Hollywood movies don't understand it, either.
Create your own gasoline refining plant in your bunker and crank out fuel as you need it? Should be fine because motorcycles don't use a lot of gas. But you would think if you had tons of money you might put some solar panel stuff in storage as well just in case
Could always set up a refinery of sorts.
And while gas absorbs water from the air, I'm sure there is an expensive way to if not outright prevent it, than slow it down way more than current mass adopted storage.
Off the top of my head i imagine some sort of giant glass tank involving vaccums and check valves would at least extend the usable life by a fair amount.
And while there are a lot of popular motorcycles whose gas mileage is little better than a car there are also a good amount with amazing gas mileage.
There's also the possibility of converting the motorcycles to alternate fuel sources like propane or natural gas.
Or as these people are just rich assholes indulging in their fantasies they may really take their cue from movies.
At least i know where to find the motorcycles, guns and food when the apocalypse comes
It's almost like we should strike now before they have a chance to run and hide.
at least we know who to rob.
That would be a nice vault to loot.
AI isn't the problem. Greedy, power-hungry people are. Tale as old as time (the saying will be even more true after AI solves time travel).
Agreed. “Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest.” -George Washington
If only the US would have more honorable people in positions of power.
Communism doesn't prevent greed and power seeking individuals from ruining it for the rest though, it doesn't stop its people from being greedy and going outside the system seeking more than what they're given, and Communist countries will eventually find someone in power who decorates their palaces in gold while starving their people.
I'm not saying one system is better than the other or anything like that, Capitalism has plenty of issues, but various systems of government will find an era of prosperity followed by corrupt people figuring out how to take advantage of the system, leading to its demise or devolution into something else, something worse.
Idealistic communism or idealistic capitalism is simply unobtainable. Greedy, power-seeking individuals will always ruin them due to a system being established for so long.
Communism has never existed and never will, however the systems that communists implement inevitably focus on allocating resources to a well-connected elite.
I'm sure he'll find unpaid volunteers to carry his ass, that he'll sell out once they reach the bunker.
/s
People are crazy and we are ruled by the crazy
Bunker boy should be the first to go into hole
thiel, musk, bezos, altman, they have thier palaces, complexes much like putin does.
They’re just preppers who happen to be wealthy. They’re no different than the poorer preppers who blame a CME or some nefarious plot that will catastrophically disrupt the world.
The only difference in their echo chambers is money.
Good to know. I will put it on the map of rich people to rob when life becomes a Mad Max movie.
If you're in a bunker how many places can you ride your guns? Realistically.
It's ok, they're gathering supplies for the people. Once things start it'll all be in one convient place to take.
Aaron Swartz is spinning in his grave
Edit: Misspelled his last name
Aaron Schwartz
Aaron Swartz
Corrected. Thank you, kind stranger
Just don't ask about the dusty old box of VHS tapes.
"Bring cycles, guns and Huel" just doesn't have the same ring to it
The crappy thing, is that while they plan on a possible collapse of soceity, they could just as easily plan on what to do about all the displaced workers created, by all their technical solutions seeking problems.
Yeah, like these attention whores will stay in their bunkers and not come outside, like the ppl constructing them wont target them first to get themselves a fortresss, thats what id do if I made them and we had an apocalypse, id leave myself multiple backdoors
thier BODYGUARD will be the ones to turn on them first, either tha tor thier harems , or thier slaves. take a lesson from indian govt in the 70s, when the ghandi(ghandis family) govt was in power, the pm was murdered(blown up with a bomb) by her sikh bodyguard because the pm decided to persecute them.
this is whats going to happen to these billionaires, they would have to be paranoid as putin to escape potential threats.
Well that was because irsrael trained indian military to do operation bluestar where they massacred hella civilians at the golden temple to get to one dude, which is what they do now lol
india loves israel because they helped them consolidate their power, toppled the last of the sikh empire, punjab still doesnt have water rights, ima bring it up whenever since wikipedia says it was an alleged massacre and only like 100 ppl died when eye witness accounts say 1000s, but ppl trust the government here for some reason
They desginated sikhs a warrior race/caste, made them their body guards, then werenlike hey we're gonna go kill your people protect us lol
Honestly, y'know what? Those people can go into the fortresses.
We'll just cement the entrances and exits shut. Let them asphyxiate.
I'm pretty good at the motorcycle stockpiling myself. Just ask my wife lol
For real though... Why are so many people freaking the fuck out over AI? Sure. A robot can replace a forklift driver or a cashier. But there are an insane amount of jobs still that robots or ai can't replace for decades upon decades yet. But people believe that chatgpt will somehow create megabot blue collar workers within the next few weeks
Because whether or not AI can actually do a certain job is irrelevant when the c-suite thinks it can.
I've become convinced that the c-suite doesn't even care of they think AI can do a job. If they can convince investors and/or the board that they should dump money into it and their golden parachute, that's good enough.
Now, if only there was a term for intentionally misleading people investing in your leadership into thinking something is much more capable than it really is and running with the cash...
You're underestimating:
- The speed of progress of the current generation of AI
- The number of jobs that AI can already replace.
- Just how many fuckin' people are forklift drivers or cashiers
- The will of your employers to be rid of annoying, needy employees
You're overestimating:
- The actual productivity of most people
- Your actual worth to your company
- How much company leaders understand about AI outside of "I can cut headcount by a lot"
I think the part that most people miss is that it's not about being a 1:1 replacement. With proper use of the AI tools we have now, it's not at all unexpected for one person to be able to do the job of many by overseeing the running and output of AI agents. AI isn't going to replace whole industries (yet), but it is absolutely going to replace half of the members of a lot of teams.
I think the thing I haven't quite sussed out is... Well, let's take Wal-Mart and Dollar General. Wal-mart and DG both have this weird niche of being both major employers for rural areas, as well as depending on nearly their employee base as customers. If they automate all their jobs away, who do they think they're going to be selling to? My guess so far is that all these MBAs think that certainly their customer base won't run out of cash by having their jobs automated away.
Seems to be the case for a lot of industries, even if not as blatant. The economy thrives when people have the means to buy products. You can make production as cheap as you want, you're not making much profit if only the 1% can buy them.
Even Henry Ford understood this, and paid his automobile factory workers well so they could also be his customers.
Ford might have been a bastard, at least he was a smart bastard who didn't let the idea that someone might benefit from something that also benefitted him stop him. Which is a major problem with the current batch. And I know he was a fascist. He was bad, somehow people strive to be worse.
Company's aren't some kind of "world conspiracy". They don't work together much besides what they have to to make more money.
Company A doesn't care whether company B suffers because people don't have enough money to buy company B's products because company A doesn't pay their employees properly.
Company A only thinks for itself, and if paying employees less is saving it money, then that's what it will do.
Walmarts and such are actually a special case because their employees will typically spend their money back at the very same company. But that's the exception, not the rule. And also we're talking about white-collar labor being automated, not so much cashiers and such.
But what do those forklift drivers and cashiers do?
Is your vision for the rest of us merely a few weeks ?
Or can you see past June 2025 at all from where you sit ?
I agree that AI is overhyped and these billionaires are dumb out-of-touch psychopaths. All these people are in a kind of fascist/accelerationist cult (e/acc, Dark Enlightenment, etc). They're also trying to focus on automating the well-paying white-collar jobs away now. It was possible to automate fork-lift drivers away decades ago (I've worked in a factory that did just that), it's just usually cheaper to pay someone a low wage to do it.