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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A traditional "industrial base" has steel, sulphuric acid, power plants etc. at the bottom, and space programs and aircraft carriers at the top. This kind of stack can now be replicated with a *very* narrow footprint. I think you could do it for $3-4 billion in a small city.
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Replying to @vgr
I did *not* expect to hear this take from you. Details???
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Replying to @vgr
Like, do you have links to estimates of what’s necessary for an “industrial base” & how much they cost? Have costs come down recently?
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
I mean why don’t you expect this thought from me? It’s a speculative first-principles hypothesis, not data-driven
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Replying to @vgr
Because you don't seem to want power. "Being king is super easy...but I'd rather not" is an odd combination of opinions.
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More like “once you’re king it’s easier to stay king than people realize.” My own preferences don’t come into it. This is just abstract curiosity. I’m interested in billionaires in approximately the same way I’m interested in whales. And I’d rather not be a whale either.
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