What effect did COVID have on the minds of the ultra-wealthy?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨wuffah@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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:

Before broad adoption of reliable vaccines, they were conceivably vulnerable to the same indiscriminate illness as everyone else.
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.
For the first time it demonstrated that a universal income model is not only possible, it is completely affordable and can be quickly implemented.
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?

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slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Increased portfolio yields.

Those in power and will money still did whatever they wanted during covid.

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GreenBeard@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
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.

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FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world ⁨39⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
They lie and cheat more openly now because of the idea many hold/held that covid was a control psyop by billionaires and the government, testing how much they can ouch common citizens around et cetera.

I am neutral on the topic.

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litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨38⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
An intriguing question. I do agree that even the ultra-rich had an eye-opening time during the pandemic, but I don’t agree that their wealth acts as a singular shield, which if pierced would herald their downfall.

When someone has the resources of tens of billions of dollars, the principle of defense in depth is both practical and is most prudent. For each of your points that suggest the ultra-rich were vulnerable, it might actually prove the strength of their fortifications.

they were conceivably vulnerable to the same indiscriminate illness as everyone else.

The thing with disease is that it cannot teleport: the transmission vector must convey person to person, through airborne particles, or some other physical means. What the ultra wealthy can – and do – buy are exotic islands or chalets in faraway places from other humans. Meaning that once there’s notification of a pandemic, they are best positioned to flee to whichever of their overseas fortresses as they may choose. Meanwhile, the masses have to hunker down at home, which is their only refuge, and hope for the best.

the government can and will shut down your business

The ultra-rich leave the daily operations of their businesses to professional managers. It has been a staple of prudent management for decades to have disaster preparedness plans and business continuity plans. You may have seen some form of these through wildfire or earthquake notification systems, so that a company can confirm which of their employees are accounted for. But such systems also serve as a planning exercise, in case a natural or manmade disaster takes out an entire industry.

The businesses of the ultra-rich already plan for things like the loss of most of the world’s hard drive production capacity due to flooding and the closure of EU airspace due to volcanic ash. These aren’t as detailed as those specific situations, but are about the business impacts: what it products can’t get to customers? What if required materials can’t reach the factory? What if war breaks out domestically and the production line is taken over by the government?

Not to minimize the impacts of the pandemic, but the difference is that it activated multiple continuity plans simultaneously, an unprecedented scenario but otherwise not unrecoverable. Fortune favors those who make plans.

Indeed, a part of many business’s plans during a catastrophic situation is to – unsurprisingly – beg the government for aid or a bailout. After all, if they can get the taxpayer to partially implement their plan, they will. And business lobbying for a bailout only requires a telephone and a contact list, so the ultra-rich’s lobbyists were kept busy in the summer of 2020.

What is most telling is that the USA stock markets recovered in the latter half of 2020. The ultra-rich have plenty of resources to survive a few months of disruption, as they have more runway to wait things out than, say, a typical working class household that needs rent relief or faces eviction.

universal income model is not only possible, it is completely affordable and can be quickly implemented.

One of the most under-assessed aspects of the ultra-rich is that they find ways to make money whichever way the wind blows. Even in a UBI scenario, they can still make bank if they are the sole vendors of certain commodities.

In fact, a UBI system which automatically tracks inflation is essentially a license for vendors to also increase their prices with exacting precision, perfectly in-time with inflation. This is why a UBI system should not be implemented on its own, but alongside other social safety nets and regulation on the “demand side” of money. That is to say, business regulation (eg rent controls, anti-monopoly rules, banking reform) are all part-and-parcel of a long-term plan that defeats economic inequality. They are not separate pieces, but the ultra-rich can still take solace that not everyone recognizes this yet.

The war of information would still be on their side even if UBI were voted into effect today.

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.

I didn’t exactly care to track the happenings of the ultra-rich during the pandemic years, but did they actually suffer such scarcities? Their business empires recovered by the end of 2020, and it’s not like rich people don’t just find other intrigues to spend their time on. Rhetorically, what is a few billion here or there?

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