Here’s the One Weird Trick to understanding the techbro billionaires who represent the emerging next generation of Conservative Funders.
Long Termism.
It’s the belief we must prioritize the long term viability of humans. It sounds like something you couldn’t possibly oppose. Why wouldn’t we want to prioritize the long term survival of humans? Until the other shoe drops, which says we should compromise current issues and concerns in favor of long term survival. That’s the ice-covered, double black diamond of slippery slopes. The ski slope leads directly into the bank accounts of the billionaires, naturally. What else would you expect?
I know it sounds nice to feed the poor today, but what if that money is needed by people far in the future? Staying on Earth is far too much risk, so we’d best have multiple, privatized space programs. It’s only a matter of time before computers and human minds are combined, the common link between long termism, the Singularity and Elon Musk’s Neuralink. To ensure the future of humanity we’ll need trillions of humans spread throughout the universe. Most of them, according to the true believers, will be “synthetic humans.” In other words, artificial intelligences.
This is some really bizarre stuff, it goes without saying. All of it will enrich the techbros. Who knows if they all believe it? With billionaires it’s always hard to separate what they believe from what they tell us they believe for the sake of money. Nonetheless, against anything which could be considered rational or logical, long termism has become the libertarian and tech-based religion of Silicon Valley.
Enter J D Vance, boy darling of the techbro billionaires and pretend hillbilly. He’s a special project of Peter Thiel, one of the most vile among the Silicon Valley libertarians. What do they have in common? Among other things the writings of Curtis Yarvin AKA Mencius Moldbug...both of which sound like pen names.
The writings of Yarvin/Moldbug contain some...novel ideas. Human biodiesel. Solitary confinement by virtual reality. By comparison, the dictatorship, white nationalism, and slavery seem almost pedestrian.
