Palantir CEO and Trump ally Alex Karp is no stranger to controversial (troll-ish even) comments. His latest one just dropped: Karp believes that the U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean (which many experts believe to be war crimes) are a moneymaking opportunity for his company.
At the New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Karp was asked about the worries over the unconstitutionality of the boat strikes.
“Part of the reason why I like this questioning is the more constitutional you want to make it, the more precise you want to make it, the more you’re going to need my product."
This is bond-level villainy.
I will keep saying this till I die, aspiring to be a billionaire is a very strong sign of multiple mental diseases involving addiction and sociopathy.
I would argue that “aspiring to be a billionaire” is more of a fantasy than a fixation in the population at large. People don’t really get to choose whether they become billionaires, as they have very little control over the mass appeal of their business ventures.
I would counter that becoming a billionaire is what results in multiple mental illnesses, as the rapid elevation of social status, the alienation from your non-billionaire peers, and the functional immunity from legal censure drives you insane.
Like, JK Rowling didn’t set out to become a billionaire when she wrote Harry Potter. But once her net worth crested into the nine-figures, her mouth-brain barrier disintegrated along with any sense of humility or decency.
I don’t know if this is accurate — striving to reach financial freedom in the form of near infinite levels of wealth is not a sign of mental disease. That’s what I’d call a dream, and it could be purely motivated.
Now, having that dream and being willing to do anything to obtain it — that’s a different story. That’s what it takes to be a billionaire, you have to be completely willing to crush people beneath you for the simple fact that it makes you more money. Many people, myself included, are simply incapable of deciding to harm someone else for simple profit.
Like, I’m not a hyper space nazi because I’d like to be a Viltrumite. I just want to live 1000 years and be super strong and fly and stuff.
Having billions is not financial freedom, it is thousands of financial freedoms. It is hoarding financial freedoms. To that end I can understand someone wanting something on the order of millions, especially depending on where you live (although that is still a shortcoming of education, healthcare, homing systems etc)