In some (more catholic) regions in Germany you spend a (voluntary) week in a monastery during school - called Besinnungstage (loosely translated as “mindfulness days”).
I went and thought I would hate it at the time - mostly because I really really hated the narrow catholic mindset i grew up in at that time - but it actually was a really profound experience that I think back to often.
The life the monks led was simple, almost primitive, but it radiated a contentment and mindfulness that was inspiring. Also the brotherhood and love they had for each other.
Of course I only saw the surface and as a teenager I didn’t appreciate a lot of the lessons, but looking back it was one of the better parts of being in a heavily catholic coded school.
Edit: also my religion teacher told the story how we was a monk in his early life and then left everything behind when he fell in love with a woman - which immensely increased my respect for him. I though he was this dried up, humourless pendant, so finding out he had this great passion in his life was a great surprise to me
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that religious vocations in the Catholic Church are way more rare than they used to be. The church sometimes struggles to have enough priests to meet the needs of the parishes, let alone having enough monks to keep up all the monasteries.
Since there aren't enough monks, the church would have to pay people to come in and maintain the place - but they can't really afford that. So, either they let these beautiful places crumble and decay, or they sell them to someone who will hopefully be able to take care of it. Between the two, the latter seems like the least bad option to me. I certainly wish that these places could stay as part of the church and not be some billionaire's home, but I would rather they be a billionaire's home than go to ruin.
> landed a $10 billion software contract with the U.S. Army
The United States has ~$38,000,000,000,000 in debt which means a baby born in the US will get $1000 in Trump Bucks to invest in S&P 500 along with a $111,000 share of that debt with its $3,000 a year interest per person. Can someone explain to me how long this will be sustainable?
I'm a little sad that I'm not getting any free borrowed money in order to funnel it into $100M mountain properties. However, I'm trying to be objective. Given this situation what is the investment with the little bit of wealth that I have acquired? Do I need to worry about this not being sustainable and crashing?
I notice that when anyone says anything negative about the rich on the internet, people show up at lightspeed like you insulted their mom to defend them
This is not a productive, helpful, or interesting comment.
If someone has a good argument regarding x, it is not a good response to say “why are you defending x?” Just respond to the argument on its merit. You’re not adding anything useful to the conversation.
Couldn’t you also say it’s largely unfactual, since the vast majority of strivers and grinders never escape their economic class?
I guess it depends on what opportunity means to you. Does it mean something that’s “likely” or “less than one in a thousand”? To me, a “one in a thousand” chance to strike it rich is not good enough to justify the immense suffering our economic system causes.
> Can someone explain to me how long this will be sustainable?
It fails through stagflation. There are lots of people speculating the US is doing that right now, but since their most recent inflation numbers are bad, nobody has the data to say it for sure.
Just increasing government debit isn't a problem by itself. It becomes a problem when that raising debit isn't making the economy grow.
> since the firehose of government money creates a lot of market distortions and inefficiencies.
You mean elite capture¹ of government resources. Government money has repeatedly shown to create a lot of wealth, but the government should be free from the oligarchy. The monopolist sponsored narratives don't match with the data.
Buy gold and silver. Seriously. If you do not see the precipice we are a top of I have nothing else to say. ever since the great recession the Fed has been propping up the economy with low interest rates and Quantitative Easing. There is no way out of this but for an even greater depression.
All these fake trump bucks and investment plans are not for the children, they are for the investors that need the money in the market as another way to prop it up. The whole thing with Dell giving this money to these kids? Bullsht. He gave it to himself and to other investors. Nothing but a new kind of stock buyback plan.
Get ready to see poverty, and get ready to help each other. We are living through the 1920's again and it is crazy very few see it.
Good question. First start as small as possible. You dont need to design a massive system and burnout is a real possibility... which leads to: find groups already set up around you. We have a local food pantry that also cooks for people. It's ok to test drive various groups until you find good fits. There are various ways. Im helping a group get their non-profit status atm. Not super visible or boots on the ground but needed/useful. Other groups just need people to help reach out on social media.
It's as much a state of mind as physical actions and good for you for starting to see the need and opportunities.
Don’t worry about it - you know why? Because if the entire thing crashes, then everyone crashes with it, and there’s a million people (or more) that have a lot more skin in the game, a lot more power, and therefore a lot more incentive to make sure this doesn’t crash.
This is not your battle alone, so don’t worry like it is.
I thought this was going to be Peter Thiel but if he's on brand, he's living under or in a volcano on a tropical island somewhere. Plus he probably can't stand on previously consecrated ground.
Honestly, Palantir is one of those companies where I think I'd rather be homeless than work there. The amount of direct evil Palantir is responsible for is hard to overstate (eg [1]).
The rich are just trading assets with Monopoly money at this point. None of it's real. I have to wonder how far we are from the richest 10,000 owning literaly everything where the rest of us are just living in worker housing on grand estates, in debt that'll never be paid off, the latest incarnation of South Asian brick kilns.
More people need to be informed that Peter Thiel fancies himself a theologian. Or this is all just a sick joke to him, to pretend like he is the “solution” to the antichrist. It would be quite on brand for his personality - poor delivery with an overly complex premise.
I know who I was thinking of. Theil is looking fro the Antichrist, and the antichrist is Karp.
Signs of the antichrist:
1. He will exalt himself.
2. He will heed his inner voice above others.
3. He will be hostile toward the true God.
4. He will exalt human logic above faith.
5. He will prosper for a season and be loved.
6. He will not desire women.
7. He will not follow the faith of his fathers.
8. He will viciously persecute Jews and Christians.
9. He will think of himself as greater than God.
10. He will become increasingly lawless.
11. He will honour military power above faith.
12. He will love wealth.
13. He will hoard precious things.
14. He will become a man of war.
15. He will wage a war on all people of faith.
16. He will force Israel to ratify a treaty.
17. He will divide Israel and Jerusalem.
18. He will invade Jerusalem.
19. He will enter the restored Temple.
20. He will declare himself above God.
This list is all heavily extrapolated and there are good reasons to reject any antichrist is well defined or even prophesied as lists like this claim. The Bible warns of escalating deception and a future opponent of Christ through passages like John’s letters, Paul’s “man of lawlessness,” and Daniel’s prophecies, but the highly detailed profile of a singular Antichrist, complete with global empire, mark of the beast, and dramatic persecutions all depends heavily on the Book of Revelation’s vivid imagery. Without Revelation, these elements largely vanish, leaving a more restrained and debated concept focused on blasphemy and false teaching rather than an itemized checklist of traits and events. Moreover, Revelation itself faced significant controversy in the early church, with doubts about its authorship and theology leading some fathers and Eastern churches to reject or marginalize it for centuries before its eventual acceptance around the 4th–5th centuries. Thus, claims of precise, comprehensive biblical knowledge about one ultimate Antichrist figure are overstated, as the most elaborate details stem from a book whose canonical status was far from immediate or unanimous.
I wish more people HN could recognize sarcasm or a joke or just an analogy or just something fun to say that mimics the ridiculousness of the people we have ruling our culture right now in this weird cult that they think they know everything and think they’re hubris is not gonna land them face first in the mud.
Yeah my bad I somehow thought you were serious and so I wanted to explain why even if you’re religious Christian that this antichrist concept isn’t really so well justified at all.
The man who fancies himself a modern-day Sauron (yes! [1]), who says “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." and who wants to assemble a neo-theocracy by a wealthy elite does something.
This is the CEO of Palentir, one of the more dubious or evil companies out there
The stratification has become much worse the last few decades and the trend is not showing signs of slowing. This cannot be taken out of context of the larger going ons in the US and the world. People see the kleptocracy because they are so brazen they do it right out in the open
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” - Mark 8:6
Enjoy your mountain fortress Karp. The afterlife won’t be kind to you.
The afterlife does not exist. Ask Santa Claus if you don't believe me. Unless you mean how future lives will judge Karp, which is valid.
how are you so sure the afterlife does not exist
Life imitates art
The Mountainhead https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35396529/
This movie isn’t getting nearly enough attention
In some (more catholic) regions in Germany you spend a (voluntary) week in a monastery during school - called Besinnungstage (loosely translated as “mindfulness days”).
I went and thought I would hate it at the time - mostly because I really really hated the narrow catholic mindset i grew up in at that time - but it actually was a really profound experience that I think back to often.
The life the monks led was simple, almost primitive, but it radiated a contentment and mindfulness that was inspiring. Also the brotherhood and love they had for each other. Of course I only saw the surface and as a teenager I didn’t appreciate a lot of the lessons, but looking back it was one of the better parts of being in a heavily catholic coded school.
Edit: also my religion teacher told the story how we was a monk in his early life and then left everything behind when he fell in love with a woman - which immensely increased my respect for him. I though he was this dried up, humourless pendant, so finding out he had this great passion in his life was a great surprise to me
I donno. Seems like a maintenance nightmare made easier only when you got a cenobium living on the grounds.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that religious vocations in the Catholic Church are way more rare than they used to be. The church sometimes struggles to have enough priests to meet the needs of the parishes, let alone having enough monks to keep up all the monasteries.
Since there aren't enough monks, the church would have to pay people to come in and maintain the place - but they can't really afford that. So, either they let these beautiful places crumble and decay, or they sell them to someone who will hopefully be able to take care of it. Between the two, the latter seems like the least bad option to me. I certainly wish that these places could stay as part of the church and not be some billionaire's home, but I would rather they be a billionaire's home than go to ruin.
> made easier only when you got a cenobium living on the grounds
or being a billionaire.
Property appreciates for 75 years without paying property taxes. Seems like a huge giveaway to the church.
> landed a $10 billion software contract with the U.S. Army
The United States has ~$38,000,000,000,000 in debt which means a baby born in the US will get $1000 in Trump Bucks to invest in S&P 500 along with a $111,000 share of that debt with its $3,000 a year interest per person. Can someone explain to me how long this will be sustainable?
I'm a little sad that I'm not getting any free borrowed money in order to funnel it into $100M mountain properties. However, I'm trying to be objective. Given this situation what is the investment with the little bit of wealth that I have acquired? Do I need to worry about this not being sustainable and crashing?
I notice that when anyone says anything negative about the rich on the internet, people show up at lightspeed like you insulted their mom to defend them
This is not a productive, helpful, or interesting comment.
If someone has a good argument regarding x, it is not a good response to say “why are you defending x?” Just respond to the argument on its merit. You’re not adding anything useful to the conversation.
Because we're all temporarily embarrassed startup founders who haven't exited yet.
This attitude is what’s beautiful about the United States and is in large part responsible for why it’s so wealthy.
There’s a widespread faith and believe in the idea that there’s opportunity in every corner, regardless of familial status or other shortcomings.
This belief is largely factual, as the vast majority of unicorn founders and billionaires come from an upper middle class uninteresting background.
Couldn’t you also say it’s largely unfactual, since the vast majority of strivers and grinders never escape their economic class?
I guess it depends on what opportunity means to you. Does it mean something that’s “likely” or “less than one in a thousand”? To me, a “one in a thousand” chance to strike it rich is not good enough to justify the immense suffering our economic system causes.
Because stereotyping is not, in fact, OK when you do it.
Not a single billionaire worth shedding a tear over.
Too much influence, too much power over others, and way more than their share of... Everything.
> Can someone explain to me how long this will be sustainable?
It fails through stagflation. There are lots of people speculating the US is doing that right now, but since their most recent inflation numbers are bad, nobody has the data to say it for sure.
Just increasing government debit isn't a problem by itself. It becomes a problem when that raising debit isn't making the economy grow.
The debt will be inflated away, we'll lose access to cheap debt, and tech-company bonds will be the new treasuries.
ultimately we may be better off over the long term since the firehose of government money creates a lot of market distortions and inefficiencies.
Better not skip the ads or your retirement savings will tank…
> since the firehose of government money creates a lot of market distortions and inefficiencies.
You mean elite capture¹ of government resources. Government money has repeatedly shown to create a lot of wealth, but the government should be free from the oligarchy. The monopolist sponsored narratives don't match with the data.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_capture
They can take your stuff faster than you can make it.
Buy gold and silver. Seriously. If you do not see the precipice we are a top of I have nothing else to say. ever since the great recession the Fed has been propping up the economy with low interest rates and Quantitative Easing. There is no way out of this but for an even greater depression.
All these fake trump bucks and investment plans are not for the children, they are for the investors that need the money in the market as another way to prop it up. The whole thing with Dell giving this money to these kids? Bullsht. He gave it to himself and to other investors. Nothing but a new kind of stock buyback plan.
Get ready to see poverty, and get ready to help each other. We are living through the 1920's again and it is crazy very few see it.
get ready to help each other
This. This will make all the difference, everything else is secondary.
In today’s media/social-media hellscape, how does one even begin to build a community? Every front page is filled with negativity, divisiveness.
I used to think preppers are nutjobs. As I grow old now, it feels more like they have a point
Good question. First start as small as possible. You dont need to design a massive system and burnout is a real possibility... which leads to: find groups already set up around you. We have a local food pantry that also cooks for people. It's ok to test drive various groups until you find good fits. There are various ways. Im helping a group get their non-profit status atm. Not super visible or boots on the ground but needed/useful. Other groups just need people to help reach out on social media.
It's as much a state of mind as physical actions and good for you for starting to see the need and opportunities.
Doesn't feel so roaring.
Not for you…
Don’t worry about it - you know why? Because if the entire thing crashes, then everyone crashes with it, and there’s a million people (or more) that have a lot more skin in the game, a lot more power, and therefore a lot more incentive to make sure this doesn’t crash.
This is not your battle alone, so don’t worry like it is.
They're going to issue a bailout that saves themselves via your paying for it all.
That happens a lot... Too Big to Fail should never be a concept.
[dead]
[flagged]
Are you implying that Palantir is subject to market forces?
I’m not even implying: if it wasn’t Palantir it would have been someone else. They just got there first and they have massive balls about it all.
The invisible hand would cover for Palantir if they didn't?
I call this neoliberal fatalism where what they do is inevitable and resisting is useless.
> Mountain home near Aspen, built for monks, sold to Palantir CEO for $120M
So the God's envoy on Earth, bought a house. Really sweet.
I thought this was going to be Peter Thiel but if he's on brand, he's living under or in a volcano on a tropical island somewhere. Plus he probably can't stand on previously consecrated ground.
Honestly, Palantir is one of those companies where I think I'd rather be homeless than work there. The amount of direct evil Palantir is responsible for is hard to overstate (eg [1]).
The rich are just trading assets with Monopoly money at this point. None of it's real. I have to wonder how far we are from the richest 10,000 owning literaly everything where the rest of us are just living in worker housing on grand estates, in debt that'll never be paid off, the latest incarnation of South Asian brick kilns.
[1]: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
The ego of these people is humorous.
Do not laugh at the billionaire.
Laughing at billionaires is the antichrist.
I am trying to figure out why you’re getting downvoted. Maybe not enough people are picking up on your sarcasm?
I guess he is referring to Peter Tiel, but the reference is too subtle even for HN public.
More people need to be informed that Peter Thiel fancies himself a theologian. Or this is all just a sick joke to him, to pretend like he is the “solution” to the antichrist. It would be quite on brand for his personality - poor delivery with an overly complex premise.
It is probably for the best that Alex Karp is kept in isolation.
It's not that isolated, temporarily during a snowstorm, sometimes. Otherwise it's neither off-grid, nor at the end of the world.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=St.+Benedict%E2%80%99s+Monastery+i...
Several bizjet-capable airports near there. And that's all that counts :)
[flagged]
You’re thinking of Peter Thiel, who is not the CEO of Palantir.
I know who I was thinking of. Theil is looking fro the Antichrist, and the antichrist is Karp.
Signs of the antichrist:
This list is all heavily extrapolated and there are good reasons to reject any antichrist is well defined or even prophesied as lists like this claim. The Bible warns of escalating deception and a future opponent of Christ through passages like John’s letters, Paul’s “man of lawlessness,” and Daniel’s prophecies, but the highly detailed profile of a singular Antichrist, complete with global empire, mark of the beast, and dramatic persecutions all depends heavily on the Book of Revelation’s vivid imagery. Without Revelation, these elements largely vanish, leaving a more restrained and debated concept focused on blasphemy and false teaching rather than an itemized checklist of traits and events. Moreover, Revelation itself faced significant controversy in the early church, with doubts about its authorship and theology leading some fathers and Eastern churches to reject or marginalize it for centuries before its eventual acceptance around the 4th–5th centuries. Thus, claims of precise, comprehensive biblical knowledge about one ultimate Antichrist figure are overstated, as the most elaborate details stem from a book whose canonical status was far from immediate or unanimous.
I wish more people HN could recognize sarcasm or a joke or just an analogy or just something fun to say that mimics the ridiculousness of the people we have ruling our culture right now in this weird cult that they think they know everything and think they’re hubris is not gonna land them face first in the mud.
Yeah my bad I somehow thought you were serious and so I wanted to explain why even if you’re religious Christian that this antichrist concept isn’t really so well justified at all.
I mean… people literally do believe this and there’s literally zero indication you’re not among them.
Exactly I had assumed they believed it and so I was attempting to start a debate by addressing the shaky foundations of these types of beliefs.
selah
How are people irate about this?
The man who fancies himself a modern-day Sauron (yes! [1]), who says “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." and who wants to assemble a neo-theocracy by a wealthy elite does something.
Some people: “we do not like this”
Random internet guy: “stop disliking this guy!”
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/takedemocracyback.org/post/3lk4u55a...
People see the rich getting richer while they struggle. This is your daily reminder we live in a segregated society
Why does this bother people? Who cares? There's always going to be stratification. Has literally no impact on anyone. Is it just jealousy?
This is the CEO of Palentir, one of the more dubious or evil companies out there
The stratification has become much worse the last few decades and the trend is not showing signs of slowing. This cannot be taken out of context of the larger going ons in the US and the world. People see the kleptocracy because they are so brazen they do it right out in the open
Because their riches come directly at the expense of 95-99% of people. Stop pretending like you don’t understand this.