
The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods - taylodl
https://onezero.medium.com/the-privileged-have-entered-their-escape-pods-4706b4893af7
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the__alchemist
It's not clear the article describes or provides evidence for its headline.
Anecdotes about well-off people having the luxury to short-term move overseas,
buy webcams on Amazon, stocks etc. No justification.

Could have made the point by describing how while service industry workers are
being impoverished, wealthier people, or those in other industries are doing
as well as or better than before, but that's not the subject.

~~~
ideonexus
I think this is addressed here:

"For there’s the real rub with digital isolation — the problem those
billionaires identified when we were gaming out their bunker strategies. The
people and things we’d be leaving behind are still out there. And the more we
ask them to service our bubbles, the more oppressed and angry they’re going to
get."

~~~
valuearb
Yea, I can’t imagine how angry my landscaper and pool service guys are that I
have the gall to pay them money in exchange for services.

I haven’t seen either this week, perhaps they are at a meeting of the
revolutionary workers.

~~~
EliRivers
Rich people often seem surprised that the peasantry don't view them as the
benevolent foundation of their own prosperity.

~~~
valuearb
Since neither you or I am rich, how would you know?

Since my landscaper and pool guy are both independent entrepreneurs, maybe
they view me as a valuable customer?

~~~
xg15
Yes I know, no one is rich, we're all just various layers of middle class -
even if we're hiring landscapers and pool service and think of ourselves as
supply-side jesus.

~~~
valuearb
So now living in a home with a pool is a mark of “the rich”?

Apparently half of Alabama now qualifies.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Yes, we are all rich in a sense in the programmer world. That pool guy in my
town, Seattle, or the guy cutting my grass today where the air is dangerous
with smoke, they are out in it and I'm not.

I was paying my lawn guy to not come during the early part of the pandemic, he
wanted to come so I let him.

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twox2
The author seems to suggest that most folks have some kind of ethical/moral
dilemma around how to best look out for their personal well being by spending
their money to make themselves as comfortable as possible. Pretty sure normal
people don't think this way.

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freeone3000
How can you do well while others are doing so badly? When evictions are
happening, how do you buy a new graphics card? When food stamps are being cut,
how do you justify an iPhone? It's normal to have empathy to other people in
bad situations.

~~~
elindbe2
Couldn't you say that at any point in time? There hasn't been a time any of us
were alive when, for example, kids in poor countries weren't starving or dying
due to treatable diseases. So it seems your point is you should never live
well, correct? I would agree if that's your view.

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cblconfederate
The disdain over the new tech-enabled, eco-friendly lifestyle that COVID
enables and nostalgia for the cramped, overpriced, traffic-infested demand-
based lifestyle of the past decades is the new luddism, and it can only come
from overprivileged ivy league professors (I wonder if his university has
increased their enrollment, despite now being remote, or if they continue
being exclusionary).

~~~
HappySweeney
Middle managers are getting in on that action as well.

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xg15
ITT: People in privileged bubbles being irritated the article suggests they
live in privileged bubbles.

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batsigner
> Yet while VRporn.com is certainly a safer sexual strategy in the age of
> Covid-19 than meeting up with partners through Tinder, every choice to
> isolate and insulate has its correspondingly negative impact on others.

Author seems too horny for this job.

~~~
antepodius
Or not horny enough. pornsitedotcom's a poor substitute for physical intimacy.

