Beyond the broad impact the COVID crisis had on society, it feels like it kicked the one-percent’s authoritarian instincts into overdrive. I have a theory that they saw their extreme wealth was not the impenetrable bulwark they thought it was, and it shook them to the core:
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Before broad adoption of reliable vaccines, they were conceivably vulnerable to the same indiscriminate illness as everyone else.
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It demonstrated that the government can and will shut down your business with the full regulatory weight of the US government, in the interest of public safety over profit.
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For the first time it demonstrated that a universal income model is not only possible, it is completely affordable and can be quickly implemented.
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The luxury services that their money had always effortlessly bought could be quickly ended by decree, scarcity, and the loss of human labor to illness.
What do you think? Did COVID deeply terrify the rich? Or was it just another opportunity for them to make money and maximize hegemony?
It spooked them. Think of them like stunted teenagers who think they’ll live forever and have no concept of consequences. Suddenly being faced with the potential consequences of their largess, and the potential for coordinated, distributed, non-hierarchical response, as well as the recognition of their own mortality sent them into a state of existential panic. Their retrenchment and consolidation in response to this panic has only accelerated the damage they’re doing. They fully expect a mad-max style social collapse, and want to be sitting on a little slice of Eden when it happens.
The fact that we could avoid all of the necessity for recreating the most horrific dystopias mankind has ever envisioned by them simply… not being so damn greedy seems to have missed them entirely.