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It's funny how people think a post-apocalyptic landscape will be relatively flat socioeconomically. At most they think there will be small-scale warlords or Dunbar-scale anarchist communes. No. There will be deathstar billionaires with private armies and narrow-deep tech stacks.
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The industrial age has made us (falsely) believe that an "industrial base" has to necessarily be a nation-state scale at minimum. No. A complete industrial tech stack can be built as a fairly narrow single-billionaire pillar.
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The economics might be stable but will the politics? Why will the security guys not shoot the billionaire and take over? The fracturing of power/wealth has been in constant tension against the ambition to expand/consolidate for all of history.
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Billionaires exist because there are many stable nations which protect their assets. They are the most fragile peak, the people *most* dependent on the existing social order.
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That can be true at the same time as the opposite proposition that they’re also the ones most likely able to secure a pretty deep survivability of political collapse (mountain bunkers stashed with gold and guns and equipment and medicines and spare parts...)
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But how do they defend the bunker/stop people from torturing them for the code to get into the bunker? In our world, property rights are protected by the government. Without a government, how do you "own" a bunker of loot?
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The same way medieval feudal lords held on to their estates with or without strong kings. You hire a personal army, have loyal people running your affairs, rule like any minor king or baron would.
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