Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Stone Age billionaire can't words good. By Ennias.
Published on February 9, 2026. I was at the pro-billionaire march, unironically. Here's why, what happened there, and how I think it went. There's an image here. Description.
Chapter 2: What motivated the narrator to attend the pro-billionaire march?
News article screenshot. The headline reads, What happened when one man tried to organize a pro-billionaire rally subheading? Derek Kaufman wanted to change the discourse on America's richest people. Would anyone show up to his march?
Me on the far left. From Wall Street Journal. I'll why? There's a genre of horror movie where a normal protagonist is going through a normal day in a normal life.
Ten minutes into the movie his friends bring out a struggling kidnap victim to slaughter, and they look at him like this is just a normal Tuesday and he slowly realizes that either he's surrounded by complete psychopaths or the world is absolutely fucked up in some way he never imagined, and somehow this has been lost on him up until this point in his life.
This kind of thing happens to me more than I'd like to admit, but normally it's in a metaphorical way. Normally. Sometimes I'm at the goth club, fighting back the depression, and winning TYVM, and I'll be involved in a conversation that veers into. Quote. Goth 1. Man, life's tough right now. Goth 2. I can't believe we're still letting billionaires live. Goth 3.
Seriously, how corrupt is our government that we haven't rounded them all up yet? Goth 1. Maybe we should kill them ourselves. Goth 2. Haha, for real, for real, if only. We'll kill them soon enough. Just need a few more Luigi's. Everyone in earshot. Yep, yep. Nodding. End quote. I am sad that this is not an exaggeration. Every bit is literally things I've heard people say and witnessed myself.
It's horrifying to see normal people you dance with turn into Nazis so easily. There's an image here.
Person with long dark hair wearing black shirt and geometric pendant necklace.
Me at milk bar in Denver last year.
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Chapter 3: How does the narrator relate horror movie themes to real-life situations?
I know why it happens. I don't blame people for not understanding the complexities of a global economy that makes it possible to buy a nearly magic artifact that no human alive can create on their own for just 16 cents.
It feels like there is a certain amount of stuff in the world, and so if some people have a lot of stuff that's only possible because others have much less stuff, and that's unfair. If life is hard, it's the fault of the people who took all the stuff. What shocks me is how socially acceptable it is to openly say that good people should support lynching strangers based on their wealth.
Everyone expects that saying this will get you approval. The most racist nationalists keep their slurs to their friend groups or behind an online buffer unless they're looking to start a fight. Proclaiming your hatreds among strangers is risky. Even the ICE cowards wear masks. But when it comes to revulsion for billionaires, everyone expects to be cheered. I want this to change.
I want people to think at least a tiny bit this might be slightly socially costly to say. In theory, one way to do that is to be public about the fact that real people exist that find that sort of unthinking hatred repugnant. A group demonstration of this could be one way to do that. I signed up for the pro-billionaire march in hopes that it could advance this sentiment. 2. You get about 5 words.
The previous section is APROX 500 words. As we all know, when trying to convince a lot of people of something you get about 5 words. How the hell do I encapsulate all that in five words? I want to point at the hate directly. My first sign attempt included hate is ugly. But that is cliche and doesn't really communicate anything. Anyone could say it.
More importantly, I don't believe that hate is always wrong. It's good to hate certain things. Nazis. Criminals. Two boxers. If you don't hate anything then you don't love anything either. The problem is that blanket hate of billionaires is bad. I want to point at the fact that the hate is destructive and stupid rather than appropriately defensive. There's an image here.
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Chapter 4: What disturbing conversations does the narrator overhear at the goth club?
I did end up putting it on the back of my sign anyway.
3. The Code of Honourable Wealth The thing I want everyone to internalise, the thing that could let us talk about the future together, is the sentiment behind Paul Graham's essay How to Make Wealth, which in my memory will always be remembered as let nerds keep their stuff. Quote
For most of the world's history, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen would find a way to steal it. But in medieval Europe something new happened. A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. Ten, together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord.
So for the first time in our history, the bully stopped stealing the nerd's lunch money. This was naturally a great incentive, and possibly indeed the main cause of the second big change, industrialization. the Europeans rode on the crest of a powerful new idea, allowing those who made a lot of money to keep it.
Once you're allowed to do that, people who want to get rich can do it by generating wealth instead of stealing it. End quote. You need to read the whole essay to get the emotional payload that makes this summary deeply salient. But that essay is nearly 9,000 words. Not good for a marching sign. The closest I can distill it to is this. 1. Our society has a code we live by.
The code says that if you make the world better by creating things for your fellow man that she values, you can sell the thing you made for a price she's happy to pay. If you create enough value that you get very rich by doing this, then that is honourable wealth. You can keep it. You still pay taxes, but we recognize you did an honorable thing and won't come after you for it. 2.
This code has led to many people pursuing honorable wealth rather than the old methods of conquest, slavery, and theft. Because of this code directly, we have immense amounts of wealth. We get infinite hot water in our homes by turning a tap. We get antibiotics, and limitless music, and elastic pants. We can work 40 hours a week rather than grinding our bodies to death before our 50th birthday.
3. Following this code means that, in a global economy of 8 billion people, some people can and will become billionaires by completely honourable means. Yes, some will also use conquest or corruption or theft. Those people are evil and should be stopped. But in the USA, the majority of our billionaires have made their wealth by honourable means.
For coming after those billionaires isn't just bad for those billionaires. It is revoking the code of honourable wealth. It is returning to rule of the violent and slave economies and grinding global poverty.
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Chapter 5: What insights does the narrator share about societal perceptions of wealth?
There's an image here.
Aiella tweets, incredible journalists showing today. The image shows a group of people standing outdoors with palm trees and a city skyline visible in the background. Most people are holding phones or cameras, appearing to photograph something on the ground, while one person on the right looks at papers or a notebook.
What we saw. There's an image here.
Pro-billionaire protesters holding signs supporting wealth creators in California.
What they saw. I believe these two photos were taken at the same place, less than a minute apart. The kneeling guy with the crown is a counter-protester. I counted 12 counter-protesters at the initial gathering point.
It was hard to tell at first if someone was a counter-protester because the counter-protesters didn't seem to understand why one would be pro-billionaire and thus their signs were welcome among the protesters. For example the Poor and Proud and March, the 4th, 100 Irish signs are sentiments that literally every pro-billionaire protester would gladly endorse.
But they, and a couple others, didn't bother marching to the capital, dropping out once we started moving, which makes me think they were probably not actually there in support of the march. I think eight counter-protesters followed us the entire way, which made the march look a fair bit bigger in photos. 6.
Building Bridges The best part of the march was the occasional opportunities to talk to the counter-protesters. Over the course of a 40-minute walk it's hard to stay completely alienated from those you're walking with unless you retain strong distance discipline. One counter-protester commented to me, I bet you can't wait to accelerate the AIs down onto us.
I told him no, actually, I want them to pause all development immediately so we don't all die. He was surprised that we agreed, saying that he didn't expect long-sighted opinions like that from someone who was so short-term focused that he wanted to protect billionaires. This is exactly the sort of thing my Jehovah's Witness upbringing had prepared me for.
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