Thread by @Jonathan_Witt

Ambitious people are always looking for the next avenue to further themselves. In the case of the wealthy this becomes exponentially harder with increasing success. This is both a function of the rarity of unicorns (think Google, Facebook etc.) & the metrics at that level. 🧵

If you’re worth $10 then making a deal which will increase your wealth to $100k is a massive increase and success, but when you’re worth $100 million or $10 billion it’s not even worth looking at the things which won’t make a percentage change to your net wealth.

Besides for the obvious attraction of power, this is why the wealthy elite are involved in every global issue - there’s money to be made. Take climate change for example. The renewable energy industry is worth $900 billion, but by 2030 it’s estimated to be valued at $2 trillion.

A segue at this point to remind you that 1 million seconds is 11.5 days, a billion seconds is 31.5 years, and a trillion seconds 31 688 years or 31 and a half millennia.

Anyone who has more than $100 million is wealthier than most of us can reasonably conceive at a glance.

If you’re one of these super wealthy folks then you’re looking for exactly this type of investment - massive growth potential with billions of dollars up for grabs. Do any of these people care about ‘climate change’? Maybe, but probably not; cf. Obama’s oceanfront estate.

What they do care about is making sure this is an industry that grows rapidly. That won’t happen by them supporting combustion engined cars (even though they usually buy and own many themselves) or by speaking reasonably about reliable energy generation sources such as nuclear.

Instead they hop on the bandwagon suggesting it will soon be too late to save the planet unless everyone drives an electric vehicle, embraces wind turbines (ouch), and downgrades their lifestyles to ‘save the environment’. All the while investing and benefiting from the changes.

This is why the hypocrisy is so blatant and obvious. None of the elites are going to stop eating meat or flying on private jets because they care about a modeled rise in temperatures by 1 degree, but they expect you to so that they can become even richer.

Many such examples can be found throughout the past few decades, from supporting war under the guise of patriotism whilst investing in arms companies to backing technology they won’t let their own children have access to but from which they profit handsomely.

Historically the solution to this kind of behavior has been violence. The most famous example is the French Revolution. In general the elites consider themselves invincible, and the average man in the street doesn’t see the manipulation until it’s too gross to ignore.

Perhaps this time we can avoid getting to that end. That will however only happen if journalists stop colluding with the elites by misinforming the public. People are being unknowingly led to misery so that the wealthy can become wealthier. It’s a recipe for disaster.