Here’s an idea for a sf novel: a team of “dragon hunters” match their wits against oligarchs who have taken their hoarded wealth and gone into hiding rather than submit to wealth reform policies designed to ensure that no individual can amass more than a million constant dollars in personal wealth.
Imagine a fascist cocksucker1 like Peter Thiel hiding away in a Bond supervillain’s lair off the coast of New Zealand while continuing to run a corporation like Palantìr from the shadows. Or scumbags like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in their orbital cyber-palaces. Imagine their terrors as their guards flee and the dragon hunters close in on them, busting down doors and tossing flashbangs.
Granted, David Brin did something like this in the backstory for his novel Earth, where Switzerland got invaded for acting as a tax haven.
It probably isn’t a good idea, but maybe it’s something I can work into Starbreaker’s backstory. After all, the Phoenix Society wouldn’t want any meaningful opposition to coalesce around surviving robber barons as they become post-apocalyptic feudal warlords. Not if they’re going to maintain a monopoly on legitimate uses of violence.
Of course, an anarchist might be justified in characterizing the Phoenix Society as just another bunch of gangsters running a protection racket. But I suppose the only difference between a state and a protection racket is that the state bothers with propaganda and concerns itself with the perception of legitimacy. In the absence of a “divine right of kings”, the Phoenix Society’s legitimacy would depend upon the consent of the governed, especially since it claims enforcement of the Revised Universal Declaration of Human Rights as its primary mission.
The problem here isn’t that Peter Thiel allegedly sucks cocks. The problem is that Peter Thiel has provided material support to fascists and fascist sympathizers by donating to conservative causes, and therefore sucks fascists’ cocks in at least a figurative sense.↩︎