Well, the harsh truth about the integrity and fortitude of billionaires is finally out in the open for all to see, and the results are repugnant: Billionaires are gutless, chicken-hearted cowards. The proof is found in the pudding as several Silicon Valley billionaires purchase massive underground bunkers built in Murchison, Texas shipped to New Zealand, where the bunkers are buried in secret underground nests.
All of which begs this question: What’s with capitalism/capitalists? As soon as things turn sour, they turn south with tails between their legs and hightail it out of Dodge. However, they feast on and love steady, easy, orderly avenues (markets) to riches, but as soon as things heat up a bit, they turn tail and run.
History proves it time and again, for example, FDR rescued capitalism, literally rescued it, from certain demise by instituting social welfare programs for all of the citizens as capitalists fled and/or jumped off buildings.
Then during the 2008 financial meltdown capitalists were found curled up in the corners of rooms as all hell broke lose. Taxpayers, “Everyday Joes,” had to bail them out with $700B in public funds, and even more after that. All public funds! Taxpayers, average Americans, bailed them out!
Capitalists can’t take the heat as well as gritty American industrial workers that ended up bailing them out of the “jam of the century.” As explained by Allen Sinai chief global economist for Decision Economics, Inc, discussing Milton ‘laissez-faire’ Friedman’s free-market dogma vis a vis the 2008 economic meltdown: “The free market is not geared to take care of the casualties, because there’s no profit motive.”
The chicken-hearts from Silicon Valley already have Gulfstream G550s ($70M each) readied at a Nevada airstrip for the quickie escape journey to NZ.
Escape, from what?
Well, of course, the 99%, you silly!
This revelation comes from Robert Vicino, founder of the Vivos Project, a builder of massive underground bunkers who claims the Silicon Valley elites developed detailed plans to flee to New Zealand while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where the world’s richest biggest kahunas meet every year to take victory laps and discuss future biz battles.
According to Vicino: “They foresaw a revolution or a change where society is going to go after the 1 per centers. In other words, them.” (Source: Olivia Carville, Wealthy Americans Have Stepped up Investment in New Zealand. Parliament Votes to Ban Foreigners From Buying Bolt-Hole Homes, Bloomberg LP, Sept 5, 2018)
Maybe a copy of Jean-Paul Marat’s Chains of Slavery (publ. 1774) was passed out as bedtime reading material at Davos. Surely a radical political theorists like Marat’s verbal flailing of “princes/aristocrats” with extremely harsh mean-spirited judgment must have dealt them a sleepless night or two.
And maybe the nighttime reading packet also included Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three (publ. 1874), which discussed the beheading of King Louis XVI, the Terror, and the monarchist revolt that was brutally suppressed by the new Republic. Heads rolled!
Whatever the source or reason, something happened to flush-out these yellow belly lily livered fraidy-cats, out into the open, but actually deep underground where they’ll live in constant fear that the 99% will hunt them down. Lest they forget, when mobs ruled France, thousands of aristocrats lost their heads to the guillotine, not a fun prospect, which likely has today’s billionaires shaking in their Lucchese boots. Otherwise, why the elaborate plans?
The sorriest part to this story has everything to do with the “privileged” aspect imbedded in the glory of capitalism, which ratchets upwards in lock step with vast monetary accumulation. The formula seems to be that the more money one has the more “privileges” one is entitled to at the expense of everybody else, same as 18th century France in Hugo’s Ninety-Three, wherein an aristocrat’s carriage hit and ran over (and killed) the child of a poor family but the aristocrat, without hesitating, kept on going lickety-split to his estate to hide behind locked gates, which is another example of a yellow belly lily livered chicken that can’t take the heat when times get rough.
Evidently, money doesn’t equate to toughness because a principled billionaire would stay back and help in times of trouble, not run for cover. Billionaire plans to escape as soon as things turn rough is a sure sign of weak-kneed namby-pamby pansies on the premises!
Victor Hugo comprehended the French Revolution very well. The aristocrats, whilst prancing about in goofy ruffled clothes and sprayed with perfume and riding in golden carriages, turned up their noses at the masses, looking down upon them with contempt. No help for the starving. In turn, their hubris turned hungry masses into a machine of mass murder as they roamed the streets in search of some dignity, similar to America’s bereft industrial cities today; loss of dignity turns people into something different, nothing to lose, anger, elect Trump, get really mad, do crazy things. In Paris in the 18th C they killed the rich, with abandon.
Actually, billionaires today have much more to consider other than a French Revolution-style uprising that targets the one-percent (them). There are other factors at work like nuclear war, a killer germ, or climate Armageddon, when every street turns dangerous with gangs trolling for food and gasoline and ammo and rich people.
Solving all of those nasty problems, New Zealand allows émigrés to buy residency via investor visas. As a result, super wealthy Americans have poured a fortune into the country and whenever possible acquire palatial estates. For example, James Cameron of Titanic fame bought a mansion at Lake Pounui.
Sotheby’s claims several well-heeled Americans have bought multimillion-dollar properties in the Queenstown area over the past two years. Maybe these billionaires are privy to information of a pending alert or upcoming disaster. Who knows?
Peter Thiel, the PayPal billionaire and renowned super-super-super libertarian and unapologetic Trumpster love-fester achieved New Zealand citizenship in only 12 days and bought not only his citizenship but a $13.8M estate in Wanaka, a lakeside community.
According to a phone interview with the former PM of New Zealand John Key, “If you’re the sort of person that says I’m going to have an alternative plan when Armageddon strikes, then you would pick the farthest location and the safest environment – and that equals New Zealand if you Google it… It’s known as the last bus stop on the planet before you hit Antarctica. I’ve had a lot of people say to me that they would like to own a property in New Zealand if the world goes to hell in a handbasket.” (Ibid)
Hence, when Armageddon hits, all of the billionaires will huddle together in New Zealand.
That’s really creepy!
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.