Submarine Tour to Titanic Missing

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

I'll be honest. I can't muster much sympathy or empathy for these people. I don't have it in me any more to give a crap about every person on the planet, let alone these people who chose to do what they did in a sketchy homemade sub.

I care as much for that billionaire as he likely did for all the people he exploited to get the money he does.

I do care about the people who are living under tarps and makeshift tents near the LRT line I was riding on this morning. That pains me.

I usually don't pile on people suffering like this as I try to be a decent person, but something about this story just encapsulated how I feel about the excesses of the 1% while I struggle. I just don't care right now and am making the tasteless jokes I normally wouldn't.

At worst I'm a hypocrite as I've called out people in the past for making jokes that I feel are really tasteless, so I can at least shut my trap in the future when that happens.

To be fair, as much as people want to act like holier than thou little dweebs because people are dunking on the rich, they’re mostly just still stuck in “American dream” mode, desperately throwing themselves on in front of mean words to protect the rich, thinking “oh gosh, maybe one day that will be me! I hope people will be nice!” End of the day though, most people are going to dislike them anyway. Not just because they’re rich, but because they’re rich dweebs.

The reason “rich” factors into this isn’t because the people are rich. If a rich person gets hit by a car, people don’t go “LOL OMG RICH, HAHAHA.” It’s because the way they’re going out is an exclusively rich person problem. It’s fascinating that these people are dying in a way even the casually wealthy couldn’t dream of dying.

It’s the perfect cautionary tale about living in excess and hoarding wealth. When you get so rich and so hungry for elite experiences that you’re willing to debase yourself and risk death just to have a valueless experience that 0.00001% could dream of having, and you die? That’s just good comedy.

[MoneyGuy]

I’m not cheering on their deaths; I just don’t care about them, except for the 19-year-old. Things I do care about: world hunger, homelessness, poverty, the U.S. losing its democracy and their sh1t drifting north, war in Ukraine, ocean plastics, global warming…those kinds of things.

[PepsiFree]

I don’t think anyone prefers finding them dead or not finding them at all to finding them alive.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Meanwhile hundreds of migrants die on a ship off Greece and no one bats an eye.

The migrant ship has been all over the news. It’s a major global news story, not something nobody is batting an eye about.

If this was just a case of a few rich people dying at sea, it wouldn’t have gotten much coverage. Rich people sailing their boats are lost at sea every year, and it’s barely a story. The reason this case is getting so much coverage is because A) it’s associated with the Titanic, and more importantly B) it’s a race-against-time rescue mission. Which almost always becomes a media circus. It’s the reason why the Thai kids trapped in the cave got vastly more media coverage than the hundreds of Thai children who die in traffic accidents every year. It’s not as though the cave kids were rich.

Here you are participating in a thread about the billionaires in a sub, while it doesn’t look like you’ve been similarly engaged in discourse about the migrant ship. So you seem to be one of the people who find the former more interesting. Does that mean you care more about the lives of billionaires than migrants?

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan

Sorry, what? I need to hear your rationale beyond just a general disdain for inequality. I don't think it's particularly healthy to dislike any group based on an attribute. Judge people on their character, not a characteristic.

Billionaires are fairly obviously a cancer on society, and people not accepting that is a major reason why the world is so incredibly effed. The reason why so many people think billionaires are something other than a cancer is rich people spending tons of money and influence convicing people that rich people are important.

There are two types of people who don't generally speaking hate the rich: rich people and stupid people.

[Russic]

I have this odd pull to give the CEO some credit here for getting on the thing every time. If you'd told me a billionaire hacked together a submarine following an afternoon adventure at Pick Your Part, I'd wager all my money that he'd be in the control room eating shark-fin soup and bloviating to the media about them "doing all they can to retrieve those brave souls." *blows gently on his soup*

I don't know that I can categorize this guy as a grifter. He is (was) very open about it being a fly-by-night operation and wrote out a contract that basically outlined that you're taking your life in your hands. People who have done it before reported saying goodbye to their loved ones and coming to terms that they may not make it back up. There's very little deception going on.

People want experiences, and it's in our nature to keep searching for the next impossible challenge. Sometimes that desire is healthy and it leaves you trying to run a 5k in under 27 minutes, sometimes it goes a bit extreme and you do increasingly dangerous things until you're crushed by 328,000,000 cubic miles of seawater.

I think being a billionaire does present some fascinating challenges. It's turning on god mode, but for life. We all have challenges so it might be impossible to square, but a life without challenge isn't all that fun. I think that's part of why we see billionaires often doing increasingly moronic things in the pursuit of feeling anything. As horrifically stupid as it is, going to the Titanic in a home-made submarine is pretty punk rock.

One thing I do find interesting is that this story is really a micro Titanic story itself. Rich people die in a poorly made boat, garnering tons of attention. This story will continue on for decades and it will annoy people, just as shipwreck fans find the constant focus on Titanic disproportionate and annoying.

[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by Itse

Billionaires are fairly obviously a cancer on society, and people not accepting that is a major reason why the world is so incredibly effed. The reason why so many people think billionaires are something other than a cancer is rich people spending tons of money and influence convicing people that rich people are important.

There are two types of people who don't generally speaking hate the rich: rich people and stupid people.

Wow. Sorry, I just can't agree with this on any level. Not trying to advocate for the billionaire class or anything but this type of reductionist thinking is...it's just not great for anyone. You paint yourself into an intellectual corner with statements like that.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan

Sorry, what? I need to hear your rationale beyond just a general disdain for inequality. I don't think it's particularly healthy to dislike any group based on an attribute. Judge people on their character, not a characteristic.

Well billionaires are awful people by design, you don't get that much money without stepping over a lot of other people on the way. Instead of discriminating against skin color, sexuality, or gender, the world would be a much better place if we collectively directed that hate towards the richest 1%

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

Well billionaires are awful people by design, you don't get that much money without stepping over a lot of other people on the way. Instead of discriminating against skin color, sexuality, or gender, the world would be a much better place if we collectively directed that hate towards the richest 1%

It is a shame that the culture war gets so much of peoples attention, because I agree. Out battle isn't left vs right, it's upper class vs everyone

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Russic

I have this odd pull to give the CEO some credit here for getting on the thing every time. If you'd told me a billionaire hacked together a submarine following an afternoon adventure at Pick Your Part, I'd wager all my money that he'd be in the control room eating shark-fin soup and bloviating to the media about them "doing all they can to retrieve those brave souls." *blows gently on his soup*

I don't know that I can categorize this guy as a grifter. He is (was) very open about it being a fly-by-night operation and wrote out a contract that basically outlined that you're taking your life in your hands. People who have done it before reported saying goodbye to their loved ones and coming to terms that they may not make it back up. There's very little deception going on.

People want experiences, and it's in our nature to keep searching for the next impossible challenge. Sometimes that desire is healthy and it leaves you trying to run a 5k in under 27 minutes, sometimes it goes a bit extreme and you do increasingly dangerous things until you're crushed by 328,000,000 cubic miles of seawater.

I think being a billionaire does present some fascinating challenges. It's turning on god mode, but for life. We all have challenges so it might be impossible to square, but a life without challenge isn't all that fun. I think that's part of why we see billionaires often doing increasingly moronic things in the pursuit of feeling anything. As horrifically stupid as it is, going to the Titanic in a home-made submarine is pretty punk rock.

One thing I do find interesting is that this story is really a micro Titanic story itself. Rich people die in a poorly made boat, garnering tons of attention. This story will continue on for decades and it will annoy people, just as shipwreck fans find the constant focus on Titanic disproportionate and annoying.

This is so true and I, too, find it fascinating. There just aren't really any industries set up to serve billionaires that aren't equally accessible to multi-millionaires worth a fraction of a billionaire's net worth. Bigger yachts? Bigger mansions, I guess? Problem with those is bigger isn't really that much better after a certain point that's not even all that big, I'd imagine. Like, going from a 10,000sf mansion to a 40,000sf mansion would be kind of unsatisfying.

At the end of the day, you spend eight hours a night in a bed no bigger than the one I have. You drop a deuce on a throne that probably looks cooler than mine, but really, I have a heated seat, heated bidet, LED-lit bowl and remote control with two profiles. How much better is a billionaire's? I'm guessing not that much. So now you have an extra 30,000sf of mansion over the multi-millionaire's 10,000sf mansion? Awesome. You get to have a bunch of roommates (aka staff) to maintain it. That would suck.

So then you buy a private jet. Okay, the guy with 1/4 your net worth has one, too. You have a yacht? Okay, awesome. More roommates on your boat with you. Maybe you like having servants around? I wouldn't; it would feel skeezy. Like, when my kids were young my wife and I toyed with having a live-in nanny. Where I just couldn't do it is I refused to live in the same house as somebody, but live better than them. That's morally corrupt IMO. Like, we're all going out for steak, nanny, there's some KD in the cupboard for you. Or, we're going on vacation to Thailand...we'll say hi to your family for you while we're there. Would you like us to drop some of your paycheque off with them to save you from having to go to Western Union? My wife and I knew we'd just start treating this person as a total equal to us because we're not selfish psychos, but we didn't want another adult equal in our house, so we just carried on with a mix of after-school care, day homes, etc. while we worked.

So what can billionaire's actually buy with their billions? Luxurious time off, yes. Wild experiences (space tourism and deep-sea adventures, I guess). The step up in lifestyle from the poverty line to a net worth of, say, $2 million is incredibly dramatic. $2 million to $200 million insanely dramatic as well. $200 million to a billion+? I don't think you get that much richer of an experience. It's probably pretty isolating, weird and anticlimactic. And who are you going to complain to? Nobody wants to hear your poor little rich man story.

[Winsor_Pilates]

A bunch of guys who spend way to much time obsessing over multi millionaires who play a sport; on teams owned by billionaires, all that you make much richer through your support, are choosing this moment to fight for equality by bashing the rich?
Thr ironing.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates

A bunch of guys who spend way to much time obsessing over multi millionaires who play a sport; on teams owned by billionaires, all that you make much richer through your support, are choosing this moment to fight for equality by bashing the rich?
Thr ironing.

The commonality is that we view rich people’s value as almost exclusively entertainment. I don’t see how that’s ironic at all.

[JohnnyB]

Wealth passes generations and more people are just born into circumstances that make them billionaires than there are those who step on others to climb the ladder.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Winsor_Pilates

A bunch of guys who spend way to much time obsessing over multi millionaires who play a sport; on teams owned by billionaires, all that you make much richer through your support, are choosing this moment to fight for equality by bashing the rich?
Thr ironing.

Is that what is going on here?

[CaptainCrunch]

Is there anyway that we can move the class debates to its own thread?

[btimbit]

Hockey is fun ≠ societies built in inequality. I can't believe that even needs to be said, lol

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

Wealth passes generations and more people are just born into circumstances that make them billionaires than there are those who step on others to climb the ladder.

Sure, you're definitely not wrong there, and I certainly don't mean to come across like one of those people that seems to think personal success should be frowned upon. Of course it's a giant generalization, but I still can't ignore that most of the issues plaguing lower income people could be solved if the super wealthy didn't choose to just keep profiting over it instead

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Is there anyway that we can move the class debates to its own thread?

Has some fascinating new news come out? There's really not a lot left to discuss, I think all the bases have been covered.

[GordonBlue]

I would really love to know the billionaire's thinking.
Why go on that crappy homemade sub when you have the means to have a better experience in a Triton.
With the means he has, why wouldn't he want the best possible experience, instead of what he actually did?

If I had a billion and had a desire to go to the titanic, I'd go on a sub that I read is the only submersible ever to be certified to unlimited depth.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Has some fascinating new news come out? There's really not a lot left to discuss, I think all the bases have been covered.

Well, now that they are almost certainly dead, we could discuss the morbid topic of what will happen to their bodies if the vessel is still intact...

A totally sealed chamber very near freezing temperature...will they be largely preserved in their current state?

[nik-]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

I would really love to know the billionaire's thinking.
Why go on that crappy homemade sub when you have the means to have a better experience in a Triton.
With the means he has, why wouldn't he want the best possible experience, instead of what he actually did?

If I had a billion and had a desire to go to the titanic, I'd go on a sub that I read is the only submersible ever to be certified to unlimited depth.

A sub forged at the center of a star.