[HN Gopher] The Great Aboveground Empire
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The Great Aboveground Empire
Author : pabs3
Score : 36 points
Date : 2023-05-23 06:34 UTC (16 hours ago)
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| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| i am afraid it has long escaped tech.. and has become just
| everyday.. a wishfull-thinking-ocean of kind.
|
| i mean, "i did 10 headshots in a row" isn't about passport
| photos..
| stinkytaco wrote:
| Privatizing profit while socializing risk is not a new
| phenomenon. But it's not all bank bailouts, Golden Parachutes and
| bitcoin millionaires who run to the SEC when things go south.
| It's also rescue services when my backpacking expedition goes
| wrong, or the fire department when I stupidly start a grease
| fire. There's a difference between "I want the rules not to
| apply, except when I do" and "I made a colossal mistake and I
| hope the apparatus of society that I contribute to can help me,"
| but I'm not sure where it is.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > bank bailouts, Golden Parachutes
|
| > rescue services, or the fire department
|
| I think it's around "when a life is at stake"
| stinkytaco wrote:
| Perhaps. But I'm also a big advocate for a social safety net
| because people make mistakes. I was a pretty poor kid because
| my parents made some bad decisions. They weren't bad people,
| but they were immature and unlucky. Without that net, I'm not
| a productive professional today.
|
| I realize this article is abou t the cultural issue, not the
| political one. From crypto anarchists to VCs, people want to
| profit of off "disruption", then fall back on the safety net
| of society when that goes wrong. They have all the trappings
| of underground with the real benefits of a structured
| society. I agree, but the metaphor the author is using strays
| closely to a world really unfortunate people inhabit either
| through their decisions or someone else's.
| cobertos wrote:
| So if I read this right...
|
| There are multiple "symptoms" that sort of signal
| abovegroundedness. Like advertising the "undergroundness" or lack
| of life altering/nonreversable risk.
|
| But it really comes down to how much reliance on current societal
| functionality you have to reduce your risk (things insurers will
| insure, societal services or infrastructure setup to keep you
| safe, monetary backing provided by others who can absorb it)
|
| And as like many things it's a spectrum of "abovegroundedness"
| and "undergroundedness" with areas in between.
|
| Personally, I think as long as your reliance on society is not
| antithetical to your mission, then it seems reasonable to use
| society where you can and cut reliance where you cant
| cobertos wrote:
| Isn't HN pretty aboveground, by the articles definition?
| mattknightlewis wrote:
| U.S. Army libertarians
| timerol wrote:
| My first thought was people whose disaster preparedness
| strategy is guns and ammo before water and food. Imagining
| violently defending your compound between weekly trips to the
| grocery store feels very Aboveground to me
| chrisco255 wrote:
| If we're talking some sort of civilizational collapse
| scenario, you would unquestionably want firearms over food as
| preparation. First of all you can hunt with a gun. Secondly,
| you can take other people's food with a gun. Finally you can
| defend your own food from being taken once you've acquired it
| by any means necessary.
| cobertos wrote:
| Doesn't this require a ton of resources (gas and mobility
| gear, manpower to find and move food, or continuously
| migrating your living area) and assume everyone you meet
| will be an enemy you will want to take food from?
| courgette wrote:
| Above firearms, you want a community where trust exists.
| DennisP wrote:
| Guns over food seems like a straw man. I was interesting
| in survivalism a couple decades ago, and every writer I
| came across put a heavy emphasis on water and food. Guns
| were something they considered necessary in an
| environment where you're one of the few with clean water
| and food. Trying to attack others who'd stocked up wasn't
| recommended by anyone; if they stocked up on food they'd
| probably have their own guns.
|
| Eventually I read a great little book by someone who'd
| lived through the currency collapse in Argentina, who
| said all their rural survivalists got picked off by
| roving gangs. That doesn't mean the gangs had a great
| life expectancy either. He advocated staying in town and
| getting to know your neighbors, setting up a neighborhood
| watch, helping people start gardens, etc.
| iisan7 wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this. A quick search turned up this
| book, is it the right one?
| https://archive.org/details/modernsurvivalma0000agui.
| Fernando Aguirre, 2009. The Modern Survival Manual:
| Surviving the Economic Collapse.
|
| It would be really interesting to compare/contrast his
| account from others from Ukraine, Syria, the Balkans.
| What I hear in your comment is that the advice you heard
| was about having weapons for a strong defensive posture
| rather than to be used offensively. I guess the strength
| of both communities and gangs is in their size, they'll
| win out over the lone wolf fantasy.
| danaris wrote:
| _Serious_ survivalists know perfectly well that what you
| 'll need is water, food, and skills like farming,
| spinning, sewing, cleaning, digging latrines, etc.
|
| Unfortunately, there are a _hell_ of a lot of people in
| the US who are essentially "survival LARPers" who
| imagine themselves as heroic alpha (or, better, _sigma_!)
| wolves who fight off thousands of degenerates coming for
| their canned food. ...Hey, did anyone think to get a can
| opener?
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| There is also a point where another gun or another case of
| ammo doesn't help as much as a case or three of MREs or
| HDRs
| textfiles wrote:
| During the LA Riots, some people parked in the parking lot
| spaces to loot supermarkets.
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| Years ago I found a wonderful anecdote on Metafilter about
| someone who lived through this very situation:
|
| https://www.metafilter.com/78669/What-if-things-just-keep-
| ge...
| textfiles wrote:
| Yesterday, I turned off the caching, thinking "It'll be fine."
| Whoops.
|
| Going back on again.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > people want all the cachet of being outside the boundaries, in
| lawless territories where you survive on the wit and bravery (or
| brutality) of Taking The Initiative and damn the costs and risks,
| but also want to be protected and safe with all the constructs we
| in Civilization provide
|
| One fundamental problem is in the second word, "want". Many
| people take this childhood perpsective, based around 'want', like
| someone else will provide it for them. When you're an adult, you
| provide. There's nobody else to do it. The government, the
| community, the society is you. If you don't act to create a free,
| safe, prosperous, harmonious community, there's nobody else to do
| it. There's no cavalry, no parents, it's just you and me. What
| you do determines what community we have; if you're lawless, your
| community will be lawless - that's what you built.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My sense is that community has always been something like a
| (inexact numbers) 5%, 35%, 60% split of "make things happen"
| "help those who make things happen" and "enjoy the fruits of
| the work of the minority, while occasionally making token
| gestures of contributing"
| wahern wrote:
| The prosaic version of Lenin's vanguardism. I also like to
| remind myself that those groups aren't fixed--at any moment
| the composition of the 5% can be different, and any
| particular person can often be placed in different groups
| according to context.
| gota wrote:
| > It's a situation where people want all the cachet of being
| outside the boundaries, in lawless territories where you survive
| on the wit and bravery (or brutality) of Taking The Initiative
| and damn the costs and risks, but also want to be protected and
| safe with all the constructs we in Civilization provide so you
| don't wake up with your throat slit and your pockets turned out.
|
| I thought this was going to be anarcho-capitalism based on this
| introduction
| textfiles wrote:
| I have a longer essay coming up and I was worried that I was
| going to be sidetracked/waylaid into a rather silly debate, so
| this essay is meant to be pointed to when I hit that part of
| the discussion. Naturally, these are themes present in a lot of
| discussions, I just wanted one for my set.
| masswerk wrote:
| Archived:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230523070732/http://ascii.text...
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