They are a systemic threat to humanity and should be eliminated immediately by any means necessary... ALL OF THEM.

And they might not like it. People will not take this forever and rhe ultra rich are not immune from the consequences. History. It's a real thing.

The thing they don't control is people like Luigi Mangione. And they know it.

illionaires are more concerned than ever about the safety of themselves and their families.

Tensions spiked after the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. Then came the January kidnapping of French cryptocurrency founder David Balland, who was held for ransom for two days while the assailants mutilated his hand, followed by an April arson attack on the home of billionaire Steve Sarowitz by a suspect who also made ransom and kidnapping threats, prosecutors say.

These assaults have come as resentment toward the rich and powerful increases amid wealth inequality, overseas wars and hyper-polarized politics. A recent Emerson survey, for instance, reported that 41% of voters aged 18 to 29 believe Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of Thompson was “acceptable.” (Mangione has pleaded not guilty). Risk management company Nisos found that online threats against CEOs increased 41% as well in the six weeks following the shooting.

All of this has led the nation’s wealthiest people and the companies that employ them to seek out personal security at increased rates over the past few months, 13 firms tell Forbes. Five companies said the number of inquiries for their services was among the highest ever, while four said it was the highest. Allied Universal, the biggest provider of private security guards in the world, says it’s getting 1,500% more threat assessment requests than this time last year.

...

Hiring a somewhat reputable bodyguard on the cheap might cost as “little” as $120,000 per year. But that’s rarely what experts recommend to mitigate risk. In fact, most U.S. billionaires don’t have a full-time bodyguard. Among the more common services: A team that monitors the internet for threats and leaked personal information (typical cost at the most elite firms: $200,000 to $300,000 per year for sophisticated 24-7 coverage); personal drivers who also have security training ($250,000 to $500,000 for two drivers); residential security, including cameras and armed guards ($750,000 to over $1 million); and protection while traveling (costs vary based on location). A full executive protection team, which tends to involve all of the above, plus part-time bodyguards who have medical training and professionals who secure sites before a billionaire arrives, costs at least $2 million—and frequently much more—with team members often making $200,000 each, according to the experts polled by Forbes.

These costs are sometimes covered by companies as part of executives’ compensation packages. The U.S. tax code allows employees to write off that benefit as long as there’s a demonstrable cause for safety concerns. Last year, Snap paid $2.8 million for CEO and cofounder Evan Spiegel’s personal security. Alphabet paid $8.3 million for CEO Sundar Pichai. Meta paid $24.4 million to protect Mark Zuckerberg and his family.

Zuckerberg likely pays additional security fees out of pocket. He has among the biggest executive protection teams of any American billionaire—probably around 20 full-time people, two experts estimate. “He’s incredibly adventurous and does all these wild and crazy things because he can,” says Michael Julian, CEO of MPS Security. “That guy’s got a full team everywhere he goes, if he goes on a run or mountain biking. He’s got a team that does nothing but water sports, that’s trained and knows all the life-saving stuff.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicahunter-hart/2025/05/09/how-the-ultra-wealthy-are-protecting-themselves-against-arson-attacks-kidnapping-and-worse/

so it's not like it would have a huge impact on humanity. Just less super-yachts and 100,000 sq ft mansions.

has become batman or iron man or green arrow... such slackers.

The Atlantic has some very interesting and thought provoking stuff — I’m also referring to the article on Kash Patel recently.

I don't think that people talk enough about this topic. Any discussions of the super rich just devolved into short memes, but it is really a complex topic that I don't think enough people really understand. I don't think the average person understands what drives the super rich, average people only think of things in terms of material comforts and not having to work. The super rich are all about power and legacy. They feel the need to exercise power over others and that drives them more than owning a super yacht. And a super yacht isn't even about having something that's all that useful, it's about a demonstration of power and status.

This as extremistan vs mediocristan or simply man-made systems versus organic/natural systems. A simple analogy, wealth versus body. In a normal sample of humans, their wealth can be many orders of magnitude different. But humans can at best maybe be an order or two different; you never expect to see a 25 ft tall person walking around but millionaires and billionaires are by comparison quite common.

Essentially, we’ve created a system that doesn’t have biological controls to keep from getting out of wack (until there’s a catastrophic system failure).

My guess is we’ve removed any possible mechanism of control by allowing big businesses to continue operating after they’ve caused huge systemic financial breakdowns, or too big to fail. Without real consequences for bad behavior, the same folks are propped back up to make the same mistakes again.

You build a company, you own it, you control it.
But if at some point you get so rich that it lets you buy 4 or 5 other companies, or 10 or 20…then what are you being rewarded for? If you built a nice car company or delivery company, and you get rewarded by being able to also buy a social media company or a newspaper, what did you do to deserve to have control over those institutions? Let alone control over the government?

The simplistic notions used to praise capitalism in our childhood upbringing become more and more absurd, when control over vast reaches of enterprise across many industries is in the hands of the same not-so-big club of people who coordinate their activities and their political spending.

One day we all wake up on a spaceship, being charged for the air we breathe.

Even Elon for instance is not driven at all by material possessions, he's driven by power over others and legacy.

Expecting people to bow and curtsey whenever they walk in the room.

(Hey King Farouk - I have a rotten tomato here,.. would you mind if I throw it at your head ?)

See research in the post below, but essentially, humans evolved to share. Hoarding community resources -- which is basically what amassing great wealth is -- undermines basic parts of what it is to be a feeling, connected, being.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221186304#post41

thing as a billionaire.
When they don’t even have to acknowledge the rights, or even the existence of others on this planet, they are not compelled to be a part of the human race.
Thus, the have the power and compunction to make whatever kind of society that furthers their own interests and existence which harms the rest of humanity in so many ways.

its easier for a camel to fit through an eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to go to heaven.

I think that very accurately sums things up.
The comments on Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are absolutely correct.
We have a situation where money, power, and control have birthed monsters who are running wild across the planet as if it's their personal play thing.

It's mind-boggling to see working people worshipping an obvious con man like Cadet Bonespurs.

And I want to see that movie mentioned in the article.

Untouchable.

Wealth and power should carry with it ethics, empathy, and a desire to build a more sustainable future with equal rights and opportunity for all humanity.

Dangerously, the opposite is true. The level of wealth the article addresses turns these multi billionaires into sociopathic lords whose vision for the future is unfettered freedom for themselves and subservience or worse for everyone else.

Wealth -- not even extreme wealth -- reduces compassion and morality:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221186304#post41

Until heads end up on pikes or in a basket in front of a guillotine. I’m not joking. The French masses discovered the other, much smaller estates couldn’t kill all of them, or even enough of them to matter, and then it was on. The French Revolution.

My response to the zillionaires is, we can do this easy. Or we can do this real easy. Their choice. That’s not hyperbole. It’s a warning.

However, the Revolution began in 1789, but there were various monarchs and emperors along the way until a permanent republic was finally established in 1870.

Billionaires can exist so long as they don’t have the power to make life immeasurably worse for regular Americans.

Without guardrails, all bets are off.

I suspect I will only be able to finish it with a couple more drinks at hand.

Death is the final equalizer.

is that almost everyone can't see this for themselves by observing those around us, those in the news and learning about human nature.

The rest of us must offer sacrifices to them in the hope they do not squash us as bugs.

Rec

If Elon Musk didn't earn another dollar and decided to spend $1 million per hour, 24 hours a day, 24/7, it would take him 91.3 years to go broke.

We somehow HAVE to tax these motherfuckers out of existence.

There are three classes in the world;
The Trillionaires,
The Billionaires,
and The Millionaires.
we don't belong.
We are ants, worker drones.
They will eliminate all the worker drone jobs.
Through robotics and Ai.

Last edited Mon Apr 20, 2026, 07:16 PM - Edit history (1)

there were receptionists in every office, secretaries for every boss, aides for the important workers …

Ushers in theaters, guys who pumped gas

so many jobs lost

Thanks for the thread UpInArms

With that imagined worth (not monetary) comes a sense of lifting up on a pedestal. From that comes lack of accountability.

Insulation from accountability is a bad thing.

...if he meant only his own mortality could stop him.

May that please happen soon.

a blood clot

at the very least. So there’s been one plucky little blood clot that tried to save the world. Maybe more.

He says he’s gobbling down full-size aspirin every day so he can have “nice thin blood” coursing through his veins. Maybe we can get an uncontrollable bleed next. A nice triple A or something on the Circle of Willis.

That’d do.

That pretty much sums it up nicely I think. We are chess pieces. Scenery. Faceless extras on the set of their lives. Cattle.

I cannot help but think though that increasing wealth disparity across the world would allow corrupt politicians and tech companies to make a case for the type of exploitative and imvasive mapping of personal space and fueled by one’s own and other peoples’ “data as oil”- that too in the most cynical and meretricious contexts imaginable often I would be willing to wager. I really hope my govt here in India has better sense than to force this misguided rot as “development”.

It is just a creepy turning back of the clock on women’s rights and human rights.

And our brains’ relationship with information is changing as I just started understanding how in this Black Mirroresque way if your brain is prone to picking up nonsensical patterns that are perhaps notable for their absurdity, but that gets really old really fast.

I don’t know. I am not exactly anywhere near fringe in behavior and cheap shots aside though, I would have assumed most people took their lives seriously and any mismatch netween behavior and stated motivations…malice and or stupidity should not be the go to guesses.

The systems humans have in place are robust enough when humans exert rights we already have instead of using the tails of the distribution wrt bad behavior aka oligarchs and politicians as the mean with the dumbest counterpropaganda ever.
Ha

And unfortunately that's about the only thing that actually "trickles down" in our society.

Poor man wanna be rich. Rich man wanna be king. And a king ain't satisfied 'Til he rules everything.

...a straw breaks the camels back, nothing major, just a society that says enough. Many of the extreme wealthy probably have completely forgotten or become dismissive it could happen to them. They think their wealth can insulate them. They've crapped enough on communist and socialist ideology to think no one would ever use it as a means to bring them down, and they are right. But when shit hits the fan, usually there isn't one underlying ideology, just anger and frustration. The ideological ones just take advantage later after most of the work is done.

They may be shrewd and successful business people, but students of history, they are not.