Tech tycoons are believed to be preparing for the apocalypse, but in reality they live and act like medieval feudal lords, columnists for the Hong Kong English edition of the Asia Times write on March 1.
Thus, Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire CEO of Meta (an organization whose activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation), whom the publication calls “one of the main architects of today’s world” dominated by social networks, is buying large areas of the hawaiian island. Kauai island.
Zuckerberg and his wife are building a gigantic Ko’olau ranch complex there, including a “huge underground bunker.” The construction of the complex will cost approximately $260 million and is being built in strict secrecy. The area of the estate is 5.5 million square meters, it is surrounded by a two-meter wall and is patrolled by numerous guards on all-terrain vehicles.
Doomsday bunkers are becoming commonplace in modern American pop culture dedicated to the apocalypse, the publication writes.
At the same time, public interest in the (increasingly lucrative) bunker industry is fueled by media headlines.
However, the amenities of Zuckerberg’s ranch are perhaps more worthy of our attention: several enormous mansions, each the size of a football field, no less than 11 tree houses connected by rope bridges; Equipment for purification, desalination and water storage.
Zuckerberg announced on social media that he now raises his own livestock and feeds them macadamia nuts grown on the ranch. Zuckerberg’s other plans involve preserving wildlife and restoring native plants.
The founder of Facebook (an organization whose activities are banned in the Russian Federation) is not the only billionaire building giant complexes in Hawaii. The popular American television presenter Oprah Winfrey bought a 163-acre estate on the island of Maui in 2002 and since then she has acquired additional land with a total area of more than 650 thousand square meters. As the wealthy move there, Native people already living on the land are increasingly displaced from their lands, as Indigenous ownership is often not legally recognized in Hawaii.
At first glance, it might seem like these moguls are “preparing” for a 20th-century apocalypse depicted in countless disaster movies. But that’s not true.
Yes, its vast properties include bunkers. However, Zuckerberg, Winfrey and others are embarking on much more ambitious projects. They strive to create fully autonomous ecosystems where land, agriculture, the built environment and labor are controlled and managed by a single person. This arrangement has more in common with the feudal lord of medieval times than with the capitalist of the 21st century.
Some argue that the tech industry has invented a new form of “technofeudalism” or “neofeudalism” that involves “data colonization” and corporate appropriation of personal data.
We agree, but we also suggest that what is happening in Hawaii actually corresponds to the traditional understanding of feudalism. In the feudal system of medieval Europe, the king owned almost everything and the property rights of everyone else depended on his relationship to the king. The peasants lived on land given by the king to a local lord, and the workers did not always possess the tools they used for agriculture or other trades such as carpentry and blacksmithing, the publication notes.
And here it is easy to see the contrast between Ko’olau Ranch and previous attempts by billionaires to build bunkers to “escape” some future cataclysm.
What we see in Zuckerberg’s project is not the result of a conflict between a billionaire and society. On Kauai, community members consented or agreed to let a plutocrat manage their land in the name of conservation. This is a business model that goes directly back to feudalism.
Among billionaires, the idea arose that survival depends not only on the ability to hide in a reinforced concrete pit, but also on the development of their own ecosystem. It’s very easy to assume that because some of the richest people in the world are buying property on remote islands and outfitting them with bunkers, they must be privy to some inside information. However, the publication believes that the truth is simpler and harsher. Billionaires build complex real estate… because they can.
Billionaires don’t know how to use some of their money, so they use it to build underground fortresses. Bill Gates, for example, owns at least eight properties in the United States alone and, according to the Hollywood Reporter, “It is rumored that there are underground security zones beneath each of their houses.”
Source: Rossa Primavera
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.